by Trevor Shand
“Well if they were in your way, what could you do?” Bryon continued the joke.
“What I had to do,” Russ said, though not in a reflective way, but matter-of-factly. He handed Bryon the beer.
Bryon took a long swing, then lowered the beer. “So, do we want to party tonight guys?” As he asked, Bryon reached into his pocket and pulled out a quart sized zip lock back. In the bag were a collection of much smaller baggies. Each one of these smaller baggies held a small white cube, a little smaller than a dice.
“Hell yeah,” Russ chimed in.
“Yeah, while you were out sweating your balls off, I was here building my business,” Bryon said. Russ disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a dinner plate. Bryon set the bag on the coffee table and reached back into his pocket to produce a small plastic cylinder. Taking a seat on the couch, he deftly snagged one of the smaller baggies, extracted the cube and dropped it into the top. He then spun a handle on top and fine white powder drifted out of the bottom.
“That’s fancy,” Russ chided.
“What is it?” Mario asked.
Bryon looked at Russ before replying, “It’s a grinder, grinds the coke up nice and fine. Nothing worse than trying to snort chunks, am I right?”
“You know that’s true,” Russ responded. Glancing over at Mario he added, “Contrary to what you see in the movies, coke isn’t moved in powder form, it’s a solid block. These are eights, and because they are a good quality, they come in smaller cubes, basically showing that Bryon here cut pieces off a larger block and he didn’t grind it up to mix with anything more, to stretch it.”
“Gotta maintain a reputation for a quality product,” Bryon said looking at Mario and nodding his head.
“Oh,” said Mario. Bryon finished grinding the cube and a small pile of white powder sat on the edge of the plate. Bryon whipped out a credit card and a five dollar bill. He handed the bill to Russ and smoothly cut out three lines from the pile of white powder. Russ handed him back the bill, tightly rolled into a tube. Rather than snorting a line himself, Bryon handed the bill over to Mario who took it hesitantly.
Mario had never done cocaine before and was not exactly sure what he should be doing, or if he should be doing it at all. Russ and Bryon looked at him expectantly. Mario looked down at the bill in his hand and then at the plate. He slid off the recliner and knelt before the table and the plate on it. Trying in his head to match the scenes he had seen in movie, he placed the bill at one end of the line then inhaled through his nose as he ran the bill down the length of the line.
The white line disappeared but Mario did not feel the finely ground powder as it filled his sinuses. In fact, the back of his throat instantly went numb. He sat back and blinked.
“Yeah, there you go,” Russ laughed. Russ leaned forward and repeated Mario’s actions on the next line. “Wow, this is good.”
“I told you, only the best,” Bryon said, then leaned in and his line disappeared, “Now, let me call some girls and have them bring more beer.” Thirty six hours later, Russ and Mario said goodbye to Bryon. All three looked haggard and tired having not slept. The beer was gone, the girls were gone and the blow was gone. For now, that was not all a bad thing.
Adrian and Steve sat in a car near Pioneer Square. Pioneer Square was where Seattle had been founded. It was full of history, both above ground and below. Most people do not know, but what everyone knows as the ground floor of downtown Seattle, was at one point actually the second floor. Because Seattle was built on flood plains, many years ago, the City built walls around the first floors, raised the streets, forcing the building owners to do the same, leaving the original first floors as deserted basements. But Steve and Adrian were not in Pioneer Square for a history lesson.
They sat in a tan Toyota Camry with slightly tinted windows. The car was only a few years old and had low miles. It was nicer than the normal stakeout car. The FBI had confiscated it from a drug dealer just a month ago so it hadn’t seen the hard times that most of the other department vehicles had and this one would in time. Steve sat in the passenger seat dressed in sneakers, jeans and a 24 Hours of Lemons t-shirt. Adrian was in one of his seemingly endless supply of suits, this one a solid color of dark gray.
“You know, this is far more boring than you see in the movies,” Steve said to Adrian.
“Stakeouts are like that,” Adrian replied not shifting his gaze from a street corner a block and a half down the street.
“Why don’t we simply come back later, we know they’ll be here thenand we can bust them then.”
Adrian finally turned to look at Steve, “Not everything is so cut and dried. We don’t want them. But it’s not like they can point us up the ladder even if they wanted to, which they don’t. So how this works is, the guys on the street set up shop, then a mid-manager swings by and hands them their product. You don’t trust street level hustlers to hold onto a large amount of product. The mid-manager then swing by at the end of the shift for lack of a better term and collects the remaining product and the money.
“So what we need to do is be here when mister mid-manager swings by, then follow him back hopefully to his supply center. If he doesn’t go back to the supply center, then we come back here and wait until he picks up at the end of the shift. Got it?”
“I got it. Then we go kick in the door of the supply center,” Steve said brightening.
“Well, we’ll see. Usually we wouldn’t even be scratching the surface to the levels, but the intel says this is a much flatter organization than most other operations. We have to figure out who the players are and follow them.”
“And people wonder why I never became a full FBI agent, I just hang around as a contractor,” Steve muttered.
“Because we wouldn’t take you?” Adrian said, though with a laugh. Both men knew it was true, but not because of any commentary on Steve. Steve was a former CIA agent and the two agencies did not hire each other’s former agents for paranoia reasons. They both competed for the same pool of congressional money, so there was a lot of political in-fighting. Last thing either agency wanted was to hire a former agent who wasn’t so former, who would then send all the dirty secrets back to the other agency.
Neither Steve nor Adrian liked or played the political games. But they also understood they were a part of their world and were not delusional enough to think they could change them. These games had gone on as long as the two agencies had been in existence and would continue after they had both retired: Steve for the second time since technically he had already retired from the CIA years ago.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Steve laughed. He took out a small flask and unscrewed the top.
“Really?” Adrian said.
“I’m bored, come on,” Steve protested. Adrian didn’t say anything, he simply held Steve’s gaze. “Fine,” Steve said after a slight hesitation, then he screwed the cap back on and put the flask away.
Just then a black Audi A6 sedan with tinted windows pulled up next to the corner Adrian was watching. As if by magic, seven boys ranging in age from younger than ten to mid-teens materialized from the surrounding buildings. The rear driver’s side window lowered and one of the older boys leaned in. A few words were exchanged then with a quick look both ways by the boy, a package was handed out the car’s window. The car’s window rolled up as the car eased away from the curb and back into traffic.
“That was smooth,” Steve said, “I didn’t even see those boys hanging around, not that I was looking but I don’t usually miss things like that.”
“People are so used to seeing kids on the street, dressed as they are, and dismissing them, that they become part of the landscape,” Adrian intoned. He was watching the boys intently.
“Social commentary?”
“No, just fact.” The older boy who had taken the package, gave it to one of the younger boys who scampered off down the block. He stashed the package behind one of the newspaper boxes for Seattle Weekly, a free weekly newspaper. As he w
as doing this the boys dispersed. One of the small boys took each corner. The older boys grouped two and two, the group containing the boy who had taken the package drifted up the block in the Camry’s direction, but not as far as the young lookout. The other two drifted down somewhat near where the young worker was stashing the package.
The young worker finished stashing the package and jogged over to the duo near him and handed them a handful of something. The shop was set. Just as Steve watched their first customer pull up in a beat up blue Dodge Ram pickup, Adrian fired up the Camry, hung an illegal U-turn and followed the Audi. The two men drove in silence for several blocks, Adrian following the Audi at a discreet distance and Steve thinking about what he had just seen.
The two men followed the Audi through the streets as it made other stops. The stops all looked similar, the Audi pulling up, the boys appearing from the landscape and then dispersing into position. Adrian continued to keep a reasonable. It was more important to stay out of sight than it was to not lose the Audi. If they lost the Audi, they could pick it up the next day, if they Audi knew someone was following it, the responses could vary, from closing down the corners until the heat died to a shoot out, and everywhere in between. Coming back the next day was a lot easier.
Finally, the Audi made its finally stop, just as night was truly settling in, and headed out of the area, south toward the Mariner’s Stadium and the docks. Adrian and Steve followed it to a club called Foxy Ladies, a mid-level strip club. The Audi pulled up in front and three of the four doors opened. Adrian pulled the Camry into an open spot on the road across the street from the club. Steve already had the camera out and was taking pictures.
The digital SLR whirred as it snapped off the pictures, even though there were no moving parts to whir. Most photographers were still used to the sound of SLRs before they all went digital, so camera companies added the sound into the advanced machines to give users a sense of comfort. Steve let the camera whir from the time the doors open until the three men were in the club and the driver, the only man left in the car, pulled the car down the road to park. He did not immediately get out of the car, so Steve put the camera down.
“Well, I guess they aren’t going back to the club house just yet,” Steve said, “So what do we do?”
“Easy, we wait,” Adrian replied as he eased the seat back and settled in.
Katie entered her house, a small place in Renton, a bit south and east of Seattle proper. The community was mainly working families but it did have its rough element. But an extra lock and some simple precautions were enough for her to basically feel safe. Most of the crime was that of opportunity, not of some hardcore criminals.
As she swung the door open, the smell of chicken pot pie wrapped her senses. She was momentarily swept back to her childhood, entering this same house, after playing in the streets with her friends, greeted by the same smell. She knew her mother would be in the kitchen, pottering around the kitchen in her blue apron. Even though the pies took nearly an hour to cook, her mother never left the kitchen while they were in the oven. Katie’s mother took great pride in her pot pies and baked them not based upon time, but smell.
Katie’s mouth immediately started watering. She hurried to drop her keys into a bowl on a shelf next to the door, then hang her coat and purse on hooks next to the shelf. It was not until right then that Katie realized how hungry she was. She also realized she had forgotten to eat the lunch she had brought to work. After Devon left she had back-to-back meetings, then spent the afternoon filing paperwork and worrying about Devon.
She truly believed he still had the opportunity to straighten out his life and she wanted to help. While she knew her job was technically only to assign her clients their jobs, check up on them to make sure they were staying out of trouble and administer the occasional drug test, she could not help herself from taking some of her clients personally, as if Devon’s choice to stay straight or go awry, was somehow her responsibility. She knew she was not his mother but she often felt like she might be.
“Is that you?” she heard her mother’s loud but calming voice ask from the kitchen, located straight back, down the hallway.
Katie hurried down the hall to the kitchen, replying on the way, “Yes, mom.” Katie entered the kitchen and saw her mom, wrapped in her blue apron as expected. Her mom was an older lady with graying hair and kind eyes that were a slightly darker shade of gray than her hair. Carrying a little extra weight but was by no means obese. Katie reflected that her mother would be called solid; her voice, her weight, her personality and her love.
Katie scurried across the kitchen and gave her mom a quick kiss on the cheek. “How much longer until dinner?”
“Not exactly sure, but I’m thinking we should be ready in five or ten minutes. I can smell the crusts just starting to brown,” her mother squinted her eyes and sniffed a few times, her nose twitching like a mouse trying to locate the cheese.
“Great, I’ll go get washed up,” Katie said. She scurried back down the hall to the washroom and was back momentarily.
“So how was your day?” Katie’s mom asked.
Katie took a second to reflect. Most of her day had been filed with paperwork, dotted with brief meetings with parolees that, while she prayed for them, she held little hope for them. The parolees had been conditioned by too many years of living in a social structure that re-enforced bad habits and a system that focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Then she thought of her meeting with Devon. “It was pretty good. I have a new charge, Devon, who has a real opportunity to turn things around,” Katie smiled.
“That’s great to hear. I so seldom get to her about clients who you are positive about,” Katie’s mother said.
Her mom meant it as a casual comment designed to support her. But reflecting, Katie sighed internally, knowing her mother was right. She had gotten into this field to help others, to break the mold when it could still be broken. But slowly and over years, she had allowed her job to become a chore and an assembly line of crossing “t”s and dotting “i”s. Reflecting on how she’d gotten here, and Devon, she decided she needed to take charge of her world. She could not change everything, but she could do more to ensure that she made a difference to at least one person for whom she was responsible.
Sitting in her kitchen, listening to her mom scurry around the room, clanging silverware in the drawer, cups clinking together as she selected two, the drawer slamming as she retrieved two placemats, she suddenly felt as if a large weight she had not even known she was carrying, was lifted. As the weight rose into the air, it tugged the corners of her mouth up into a broad smile. She sat up a little straighter as her mother brought over the pot pie and set it on a pot holder in the middle of the tiny table. Katie stood and said, “Sit mom, I’ve got this.”
Looking a little startled but pleased, Katie’s mom said, “Really, well thank you.” She took a seat in her chair, Katie served the pot pie to both of them. They ate, re-telling stories about Katie’s childhood and moments that had meant something to her. After dinner Katie ushered her mother into the living room and set about cleaning the dishes. She hummed a light tune as she cleaned.
Hours later, the Audi pulled up in front of the club followed by a murdered out 1996 Chevrolet Impala. The three men Adrian and Steve had watched walk into the club came out. They laughed and joked as they made their way out while seamlessly spreading out between the Audi and the Impala. Once they were all in their cars, the drivers pulled out. Adrian fired up the Camry and followed, initially with the lights off, turning them on about a block from the club. “OK, let’s see where they go,” Adrian said.
Adrian and Steve followed the Chevy which followed the Audi. They did a near reverse of the earlier track. With the roads being emptier, Adrian had to give the Chevy more space but with less people they had no troubles following the two cars. In a mirror of the drop off, the Audi would pull up, one of the crew would approach the car and hand in an envelope presumably filled with cas
h. Then that person would walk away and the Audi would drive off. The Chevy would pull up and another member of the crew would approach handing in the grocery bag filled with the remaining product. Then like ghosts, the crew would disperse into the shadows created by the copper colored light thrown out by the phosphorus street lamps.
It took about an hour for the Audi and the Chevy to make the rounds, then they accelerated toward the north of the city. Getting on 99 and heading over Lake Union on the Aurora Bridge. Once over the bridge the two sedans split up. The Audi took the first Freemont exit, the Chevy made no indication of following.
"What do we do?" Steve asked Adrian.
"Follow the money," Adrian replied and steered the car after the Audi. Slicing through the back streets, always maintaining exactly the speed limit, the Audi eventually turned into the parking lot of a closed tire and rim shop advertising rims up to 24 inches. A kaleidoscope of colors bounced off large chrome rims in the window, reflecting the lights of the city.
Adrian drove past in the Camry while Steve turned to watch the men exit the sedan in the parking lot and walk to the side entrance. After a knock and a short pause, the door opened, bathing the men in a pool of white light. They handed the envelope to a large man blocking much of the entrance.
"What do we do," Steve asked.
"Well, I think stopping might be a bit obvious," Adrian said smoothly as he accelerated the Camry," We have a drop off. That is something."
"Fair enough," Steve replied, his head cranked around trying to watch what was going on as the car drifted by. Shifting forward, he relaxed in the seat, closing his eyes and without moving finished with, "Well, that seems as if the night is done, drop me at the closest bar."
Adrian gave Steve a stern look but realized that any response was moot. A block after, Adrian pulled into a parking lot and with a stiff finger keyed into the GPS a request for the closest bar. He glared at Steve who never moved and seemed relaxed to the point of falling asleep. The female voice of the GPS suggested a local watering hole. Steve made no response to the suggestion. Adrian glanced one more time at Steve, then accelerated out of the parking lot and headed toward the GPS destination.