“What crawled up your ass and died?” asked Tasker.
“This whole task force and that fat-ass Dooley. We’ve done nothing I couldn’t do easier workin’ with my own squad. I thought we were gonna go after the big-time robbers. Banks, serial robbers, not this chickenshit stuff.”
“We’ll get there.” Tasker said it but didn’t believe it. He could already tell the FBI was after stats, not quality arrests. And Dooley had gone out of his way to treat Sutter and Bema like junior partners. Tasker didn’t know if it was racial or because they were locals. In the day since the shooting, the task force had done absolutely nothing, but Tasker had avoided a confrontation with Dooley over the slow pace. He rationalized that it would do no good.
Sutter shrugged his shoulders. “You got nothin’ to worry about. FDLE gets to work decent cases. You guys travel, get the choice of investigations. Good cars, good bosses. I’m stuck here in the city. Outside of Miami, I got no authority. But inside the city limits, this really is my town. I take it personal when shit happens here and I don’t know about it.” Sutter folded his lean arms and stared out the window at the passing buildings.
“You don’t like Dooley controlling some of our cases, do you?” Tasker smiled, trying to provoke a response.
“I don’t like that Boston butthead, period. And Bema’s a typical, conceited Cuban asshole, too.”
“Hate to think what you say about me.” Tasker smiled but he wondered about the answer.
“You’re a cracker, but you been okay. You’re our interpreter for Dooley. You’re useful for now. It’d help if you stood up to him a little more. You’re too laid-back.”
“Just like the low profile,” was all Tasker said.
“No, man, you need to get in the fat man’s face. Otherwise the man gonna keep treating all of us like shit.”
Tasker kept quiet, deciding how much to share with his new partner. “I know what you mean. I was raised on cop shows where the detectives don’t take any shit. But in real life, shit happens.”
Sutter changed his tone. “That how you became a cop—TV shows? You seem more like, I dunno...”
“An accountant?”
“A tennis pro.”
“What? How’d you get that?”
“You know. Good shape, laid-back. You look like a tennis pro.”
Tasker laughed. “Nope, in high school I worked in my dad’s dry cleaners. Every Saturday, five in the morning, start the boilers and get to work on the stains. I knew I had to do something else.”
“You’d be a good dry cleaner.”
“Now my brother is a good dry cleaner. You trying to tell me something?”
Looking at Tasker’s black eye, Sutter said, “Yeah. Don’t try out as a catcher for the Marlins.”
Tasker touched his fading black eye, now more yellow. “What about you? How’d you become a cop?”
“TV really did make me a cop. I lived through the old reruns. What shows you watch growin’ up?”
“Usuals. Dragnet and Adam-12 reruns, Miami Vice, but my all-time favorite was Hill Street Blues.”
Sutter laughed. “I liked the sergeant, the one who died.”
“Yeah, but no one stole the show like Belker.”
“The little crazy one?”
“Tough, honest, above reproach.” He liked the sound of that.
Sutter looked at him. “I prefer tough, rich and a pussy magnet.”
“As a cop, you might get two of those three.”
Sutter smiled and said, “You never know.”
THEY drove in silence through Liberty City, then under I-95. Most of the buildings needed major repairs, with gaping holes and missing doors exposing the people sitting inside, trying to stay cool. Some buildings even had scars from the last riot, bullet holes and scorched walls. As was the custom in Miami, the riots were named after the cop who’d shot someone. The last one had been called the Lozano riot after the cop who’d shot a motorcyclist on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Junk cars littered the parking lots of the two-story tenements. Most of the fences had long since been smashed to the ground and were starting to look like part of the natural landscape. Tasker noticed that no grass grew in the shell rock yards. Mostly weeds. Dark patches of oil spotted the front yards where old junkers leaked or people changed the oil in their cars and let it run into the porous ground.
Tasker smiled at some kids using an old mattress as a trampoline. He turned to his passenger. “You see any action during the last riot?”
Sutter pointed to a small white scar on his forehead. “Bottle over at Third and Fifteen. What about you?”
Tasker said, “I was brand-new. They needed a warm body on the special operations team and I got recruited. They gave me a black uniform and an MP-5, then we cruised around in our van drawing fire.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“Nope. The van still has a couple of forty-five holes, but that was the only casualty.” Tasker smiled, thinking back on his adventure. “We dumped a lot of gas into the building the shots came from.”
“Our brass wouldn’t let us return fire unless the shooter was isolated, aiming at us, wearing a target and against a brick wall. That’s why things got so out of hand; we weren’t allowed to defend ourselves. They’d throw a few bottles and rocks and we’d pull back. Gave the crowd courage.”
Tasker said, “We’re better trained this time. After the hurricane duty and a lot more practice, we’re ready this time.”
“Ready to deal with violence but not to deal with people.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“None of you guys want to see what the community is upset about, only that they’re gonna riot. If you looked deeper, you might agree with their outrage.”
“Not my job, man. I work for the Department of Law Enforcement, not the Florida Department of Understanding Everyone’s Gripes.”
“Go ahead and joke, but if it’s like last time, twenty to fifty people are going to die over a stupid verdict on a minor incident.”
“You think Hernandez was wrong?”
“He suckered the man into a fight he couldn’t win.”
“How do you mean?”
“Hernandez had time and cover. He didn’t have to open up on Jackson so quickly.”
“Jackson had just robbed a liquor store and was armed.”
“Hernandez didn’t know that. Shit, he didn’t actually see the gun until after the shooting was over. I think he suckered the man so he could be a hero.”
“I think cops need to be left to do their jobs. Charging a guy like Hernandez sends the message that we shouldn’t do our jobs and use our common sense.”
“That’s depending on how much common sense you have. Some of these Cubans don’t have common sense. Shit, half can’t talk English good. We used to have the patrol zones here in the city numbered ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy. Now they eliminated sixty and added eighty. Know why?”
“No idea.”
“The Cubans couldn’t say sixty clearly enough on the radio. They’d call for backup in zone ‘fisty.’ The city didn’t make them learn to say it right, they just changed the numbers.”
“Big deal.”
“That’s what everyone says. No one cares ’cause it’s the blacks that lose the jobs to them. In my academy class, there were twenty-two Miami recruits. Of the eleven Cubans, nine are in jail. All river cops.”
“That was one situation that sucked all of them into corruption. White or black cops could’ve been trapped in that kind of dope deal. They didn’t push those security guards in the river, they jumped. That’s not a Cuban thing.”
“I think you’re wrong, Bill. They had protection and the advantage of a foreign language to insulate them. It was definitely a Cuban thing.”
Tasker said, “They reprimanded a Cuban sergeant for using his cruiser off-duty.”
“If it were a black cop, he would’ve been thrown on a desk and left there.”
Tasker didn’t answer. Sut
ter had made up his mind.
FBI Special Agent Tom Dooley sat in his government Buick Century as he burped up his breakfast chili dog and watched Cole Hodges walk into the Alpha National Bank of Miami. He carried his big briefcase and met with the fat little manager. Same thing every Thursday. At least he was consistent. Dooley needed some consistency. Aside from his boy, everything else in his life was fucked up. Thursday was his day to dream.
Dooley spent most Thursdays watching Hodges. It gave him time to think about life in retirement with that nice little windfall he expected. Probably over a million in cash by now. A snitch had told him Hodges took more than half of all donations. That meant one heavy safe-deposit box. Other guys around the Miami FBI office knew the CCR was a scam, but no one wanted to get mixed up working a civil rights leader, even if he was a crook. The office was full of rumors about this box, but Dooley was the only one with balls enough to do something about it. He felt some pride in that knowledge. Not too much, because over the years the spines of most FBI agents slowly dissolved into a fine mush, geared toward nothing but making it to retirement without a lawsuit. At least that was how Dooley saw it. He’d seen plenty of good guys kick ass when they were new, then get slapped down by administration so much they just gave up.
He also thought about how to hide the money, because Swiss banks weren’t what they used to be. Maybe the Cayman Islands. He could ask one of the DEA agents. They were always rooting out dope money. They’d know what was safe. Maybe the FDLE guy Tasker. They do a lot of drug work.
The robbery task force was the perfect place for him now. Out of the office, seeing what was going on. He could take Hodges anytime and teach that smart-ass a lesson. The only drawbacks were the nigger from the City and the Metro-Dade spic always hanging around. It wasn’t like the old days when J. Edgar didn’t let his boys work with the darker races. Commies and bank robbers, man it was great. No legal problems or civil liberties lawyers to worry about. Even though he’d missed the old cross-dresser by a few years, Hoover’s legacy still benefited Dooley. Now it was time to get out. He loved his time with the Bureau but wondered what kind of loot he could have had stashed away if he had stayed a Boston vice cop. When he’d left in the seventies, it was all penny-ante stuff. Now a smart cop could shake down the dealers for thirty, forty grand a month. Instead, he sat around in freezers with these local morons waiting for robbers. He’d given the Bureau twenty-six good years; he deserved a retirement bonus. Something to go with the awards and citations for cases during the years. That was one thing he’d always have, the knowledge that on at least a few occasions he’d done what needed to be done. He could follow little Katie Smorsen’s scholastic career since he grabbed her from kidnappers in 1985, and know he was responsible. Or he smiled whenever he heard about the Timmons family of bankers, because he’d locked up the youngest brother for defrauding sixty old couples of their life savings. Sure, he had helped some people, but now it was time to help himself.
Dooley snapped out of his haze, hearing a voice say, “Why chu here, man?”
He looked out his side window at a scrawny black guy in baggy pants, a knit ski cap and a shirt with Africa on it and a slogan saying “It’s a black thing.” He held a half-filled McDonald’s Coke that looked like it’d been dribbled down his shirt. He had a long face with huge eyes that looked like they’d been popped out of his head. A light scar skittered down the side of his chin. Dooley gave him a good stare and said, “What’s your name?”
The man hesitated, then said with pride, “The people call me Spill.”
Dooley shrugged and nodded, seeing the reason behind the handle and said, “Okay, Spill, you got three seconds to disappear before I spill some of your blood.”
The man said, “Why don’t you go hassle the big guys? You scaring away my customers. Why you here?”
Dooley fixed a stern stare on the man. “Walk away now or I’ll arrest your ass.” All good humor was washed from his voice.
The man straightened like he was standing up at a protest. “I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘arrest.’ It’s a white man’s term.”
“Do you know the meaning of the words ‘excruciating pain’?” Dooley watched as the man moved down the street toward the intracoastal, muttering under his breath.
As the crack dealer disappeared around the corner, Dooley saw Hodges walk out of the bank swinging his case. He’d emptied it into that damn box again. First chance Dooley got, that box and eight grand would be in evidence. What would the good reverend and his lawyer say? “We stole a hell of a lot more than eight thousand dollars.” Dooley doubted it.
Dooley looked at his watch and realized he’d have to hump it to get over to the U.S. attorney’s office. The locals were raising another stink about the need to go after bank robbers. It was like their damn mantra, bank robbers, bank robbers; it was starting to annoy the shit out of Dooley. He’d make them understand that he intended to handle any bank robberies personally.
TASKER looked out the eighth-floor window of the U.S. attorney’s office. I-95 curved to its unceremonious end a few blocks south, and Little Havana sprang up to the west. Nice little houses and clean apartments. No scars from civil unrest. The Cubans wouldn’t allow it. The only times they’d almost rioted were when Bill Clinton hinted Castro might not be such an asshole and when the INS grabbed little Elián Gonzalez.
After listening to Sutter bitch during the ride over, he felt like pushing the fact that they weren’t going after big enough fish. No one wanted Dooley in charge, but everyone wanted to work on bank robbers. They had to take the good with the bad. The Feds went after bank robbers and that was all there was to it.
Rick Bema, wearing a polo shirt with a Metro-Dade badge patch on it that accentuated his biceps, sat talking with Tom Dooley.
Dooley nodded, saying, “You don’t think twenty-eight is too old to live at home?”
Bema said, “Oh no, no. My brother is thirty-three and he lives at home. My mama loves us.”
Sutter cut into the conversation. “Rick, you live at home, like with your folks?”
Bema nodded. “Yes, they live with me.”
Sutter stayed on him. “Who owns the house?”
Bema bowed his head slightly. “My dad.”
Sutter asked, “Your mama do your laundry?”
Before Bema answered, the man behind the desk who had been reviewing a report spoke up. “Let’s get started,” said the short, squat assistant U.S. attorney, running his hand through the few strands of hair he had left. “I hear you gentlemen aren’t happy with the task force.”
“We want more important cases,” Rick Bema said, rising out of the overstuffed leather chair. Derrick Sutter smiled as he beat Bill Tasker to the empty throne.
“Gotta walk before you can run, Ricky,” offered Tom Dooley with a smile.
“Gotta get off your ass to catch a bad guy, Tommy.”
“Saying I’m lazy?”
“No, I saying the FBI is lazy.”
“Listen to me, you shit-eating, ass-licking, jerk-off little Cuban—”
“Gentlemen, save it for the street. I have other matters to deal with,” said the attorney.
This little guy can handle himself, thought Tasker. Nice job. But Rick’s right.
“I got intel that the Eighth Street Boyz might hit a bank if there’s a riot,” said Sutter.
Dooley stood up. “Where?”
“In Tampa, you idiot. Where the hell you think? Overtown.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“The FBI knows what the Miami gangs are up to?” asked Sutter.
“There isn’t nothing worth taking out of an Overtown bank,” said Dooley.
Sutter continued, “We could still start some surveillance if there’s trouble.”
“That’s just stupid. If we followed that logic, we could just watch every bank all the time.” Dooley shook his head.
“What’d you want, Mr. FBI, more convenience stores?”
Tasker chimed in.
“We need something more, Tom. A bank might be a good start. I could sit on it for a few days. See if anyone else is watching it. Maybe Sutter could keep track of some of the Eighth Street Boyz, I could watch the bank and Bema could keep up with the other stuff over at the task force.”
“I said no.” Dooley didn’t blink.
Tasker stiffened. He usually avoided wasting time arguing with idiots but this guy was out of line. “What are you, my mother? Last I checked, you were just an agent with the FBI. Aside from a little jurisdiction, that doesn’t give you any right to dictate what we do.”
Dooley remained silent as he stared down each of his fellow task force members. It didn’t bother Tasker; he’d been glared at by the best of them. Finally, the heavy FBI man said, “Why not more commercial robbery targets?”
“We need bigger targets. We could start a daytime surveillance of Alpha National of Overtown.” Tasker now felt like this was a control issue.
Dooley backed off a little. “What’s the big deal about a bank anyway? All robberies are felonies.”
Tasker said, “We’re supposed to go after high-profile robbers. To me that sounds like bank robbers.”
Bema jumped in with, “The Eighth Street Boyz, they cause shit all over the county, not just the city. Be sweet to pinch some of them.”
Then Sutter said, “Only a few of them would try a bank. They been trying to turn their image around and be some kind of role models.”
Dooley snorted. “What kind of role models would those mopes be?”
Sutter answered, “Best the kids got right now. These guys have been real serious lately. That’s why there’s a split in the gang.” He paused and turned his charcoal eyes onto Dooley. “What about bank robbers?”
Dooley’s ruddy face turned red. “Well, maybe, with better intelligence, we could work on a bank. But we’re not wasting our time in Overtown.”
Just then the door to the big office swung open. A Cuban guy in a silk pin-striped suit said, “Jury’s in.”
Walking Money Page 3