“What’s this cat’s name?” asked Ray.
“Jem Dandy.”
“What’s his real name?” Ray said.
Booker answered with a quick shrug, accompanied by a shake of his head.
“How about this?” Ray said, leaning forward. He had to squint slightly because of the cigarette smoke. “You make a phone call for us, setting up a deal for an Uzi or Mac-Ten. Once it’s set up, we get you outta here, you make the buy, and turn the gun over to us. Then we’ll take care of this bullshit shoplifting-beef.”
“Shit, man, you ain’t gonna arrest him tonight, is you?”
“Nah,” Ray said. “We just get the fuckin’ gun, then that gives us an in for a warrant later.”
“He won’t even know you were part of it, when it finally comes down,” Tony said. “You got our word on it.”
Booker frowned for a moment, then licked his lips.
“You get me outta here on an I-Bond tonight?” he asked, bringing the cigarette to his lips.
“And, we might just throw in a half-pint,” Tony said.
“Okay,” Booker said after a moment, “I guess we got a deal.”
It took about fifteen more minutes to set the deal up. They checked the station records for arrests and information on anyone known as “Jem Dandy”, but found nothing. “But we might’ve arrested him on another name. This could be a new street name,” O’Shay offered. After getting Booker’s property, and letting him dig the number out of his little address book, he made the call on one of the special phones in the interview room. The conversation started off rather smoothly, with Booker saying how he got himself fired, and wanted to pick up on a little action.
“What you lookin’ fo’,” the voice on the other end of the phone asked him. “A baby nine, or something?” Tony was listening in on an extension. Booker made the motion with his fingertips on his lips again. Ray gave him another cigarette.
“I don’t wanna mess with no little pussy-guns,” Booker said. “Man, I’m looking to get me something big.”
“Big? Like how big?”
“You get me a Uzi?” Booker asked, almost coyly.
“What you want with a gun that big and nasty?” Jem Dandy asked.
“Hey, man, do I ask you about yo’ business?” Booker said with just the right mixture of outrage and propriety.
“That kind of fire power don’t come cheap, man,” Jem Dandy said, suspicion edging into this voice. “I mean, I got it, but I also gots to wonder how you can come up with the bread for it, brother.”
The tone seemed to worry Booker, who glanced nervously at Tony. Tony, his hand covering the phone, mouthed: Tell him you’ll go for the nine. Booker’s brow furrowed in incomprehension, the look in his eyes of incipient panic. Ray drew a nine on the paper and tapped it. Booker glanced at it and seemed to immediately recapture his composure.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I always like to check out my merchandise a little anyway. How much that baby-nine goin’ fo’?”
“I could let it go fo’ say, three yards,” Jem Dandy said.
“Shit, two-fifty and you got a deal,” Booker said.
“All right, but you better have the cash, man. No fucking food stamps or dope or pussy or nothing. Just cold, hard cash, understand?”
“That’s cool,” Booker said. “I’ll be callin’ you in a bit. You still gonna be at the same place?”
“Yeah,” the voice said. “I’ll be waitin’. You call me and then maybe we meet at that same place as last time.”
“You got it.” The connection broke.
“Well, that’s that,” Booker said, slapping his hands together with exaggerated motions. “Are we outta here, or what?”
“Not so fast,” Ray said. “Give us the address where this thing’s going down.”
“Plus, we need time to get the buy money,” Tony added.
“You mean I got to set in jail all that time?” Booker said mournfully.
“We’ll be back in no time,” Ray said, pushing the paper and pen across the table. “The address.” He punctuated it with a peck of his index finger.
As Booker scrawled the numbers on the piece of paper, he looked up with a smile. “You gonna check this out, huh?” he said. “See if I’m bulljivin’ you or not. Well, that’s okay, ‘cause I’m not, but how about leavin’ me the rest of them squares while I waits?”
Ray frowned and shook out three more cigarettes.
“This should hold you,” he said.
CHAPTER 10
Wednesday, April 15, 1992
4:10 P.M.
Linc was glad when they broke work off early, because he figured it would give him a chance to shoot over to Diane’s and fix things up. He had Rick stop his Eagle Talon at a flower shop on the way so he could get a dozen long-stem roses. When he didn’t have enough, he came running back out to the car to borrow a ten from Rick.
“You could probably get carnations instead,” Rick said, plucking the bill from his wallet.
“You don’t use carnations for a long-stem-roses job,” Linc said with a grin.
That line came back to him when he waved as Rick drove away after dropping him off in front of Diane’s. He chuckled softly, then turned toward the house, hoping to himself that the flowers would turn the trick and make her forget what an idiot he’d been. Why had he disrespected her, calling her a ‘hoe? It was just that he’d been so tired, and she didn’t realize what they’d been through. She was always being so damn critical. Sometimes she didn’t understand nothing, he thought.
The house had belonged to Diane’s grandmother, and the elderly lady, who was now in a nursing home, let Di stay there. It was an old wooden-frame two-story house badly in need of a paint job. The dilapidated garage looked pretty shabby too. Linc thought absently that maybe he’d get some paint when the weather got better and slap a coat on. He walked down the narrow strip of sidewalk toward the back door. No sense giving her a fit by trying to go in the front with his muddy work boots on. The rusty metal gate listed so badly it couldn’t even be secured. He’d have to see about fixing that too, he thought as he switched the roses to his left hand to get out his key. One of the thorns pricked his finger. Damn, those things were sharp. Like razors. Swearing under his breath, he managed to get the keys out, and slipped the right one in. The knob turned and the door gave, meaning the deadbolt wasn’t on. Good, that meant she was probably home.
“Hey, baby,” he called out, entering the kitchen.
No answer.
Maybe she ran out to the store for a second, ‘cause he knew she wouldn’t leave for long without doing up the deadbolt.
Linc thought of the pretty glass vase in the living room that would look great with the roses set inside and headed through the archway that separated the two rooms. Suddenly an arm closed over his throat, cutting off his wind. A voice said, “Don’t move, motherfucker.”
Another form appeared before him, arms outstretched. This one Linc could see, was a white guy.
Reacting out of instinct and training, he swatted back at primary threat: the person cutting off his air. The man grunted as the thorns of the roses raked over the left side of his face. The grip around his neck relaxed and Linc shifted his weight and fired off a snapping front kick at the honkey in front. His boot caught the guy in the balls, and the guy sagged to the floor. Raking the flowers again, he felt the other assailant’s grip slacken even more.
He ducked down, at the same time pushing upward on the encircling arm. Immediately after slipping out of the guy’s grip, he pushed the man’s side hard, sending him toward the wall. Linc saw that this second guy was big and black. The man turned, regaining his balance with an uncanny precision, like a fullback keeping from going down after being hit. Linc threw the roses at the man’s shiny head. A Michael Jordan wannabe look: almost shaved-slick. But he kept coming, and Linc suddenly noticed just how large this cat was.
Bigger than me, that’s for sure, he thought, moving back into the kitchen. His instinct was t
o fight these fuckers, but he didn’t know if they had guns, or something. He figured them for burglars. Probably crackheads looking to make a score. One of them being white kind of threw him. But there might be more of them, too, he figured, so he decided escape was the best course of action.
The big man was almost on top of him when Linc, using his quickness, lashed out with a left. But the guy blocked it and countered, sending Linc back against the kitchen counter. Damn, this fucker was strong. Like a motherfucking buffalo. He swung up his right leg and kicked the man’s left knee, then followed up with a glancing right off the slick head.
But he shook it off and lunged at Linc again, this time getting in close enough to grab him. Linc knew that with the bigger man’s superior weight he’d get taken to the floor, which wouldn’t be good, especially with the honkey already getting up from his knees. Instead of trying to meet the force of the man’s body head-on, Linc pivoted and, grasping the other man’s left arm, managed to flip him over with a hip-throw. He landed on his side and was already rolling to his feet when the white guy came rushing at Linc. This one was young, but skinny, so Linc merely swatted him away with a mean right lead. The white guy reeled against the refrigerator, causing the brother to stall for a second getting to his feet.
That was all the time Linc needed to grab the nearest thing to him, a toaster oven, and swing it in an arc against the big man’s face. He bellowed like an enraged bull. Linc shot for the back door and twisted the knob. He was down the steps and approaching the garage when the first shot smacked into the old wooden structure. Shit, they were shooting at him. Linc vaulted over the fence and bolted forward, keeping the cover of the garage between himself and the shooters. After rushing down the alley a few more feet, he turned left, pushed open a rickety old gate, and ran through the yard toward the next street. Another shot sounded.
Running up the yard, Linc glanced quickly over his shoulder. Seeing no one, he pushed through the front gate and shoved it closed behind him. They had guns, and he had nothing. He needed to hide, but where? Then he spotted the porch of the adjacent house. It was one of those old extended wooden structures with the pillars that ran the height of the front of the house. Lattice-panels had been fitted in place on the sides by metal pins. But the area under the steps was open. Glancing again, seeing nothing, Linc made a quick two-step over to the next yard. He flattened out and did a low crawl under the steps, hoping there wouldn’t be a rat’s nest or something under there. It was dark and moist. The resident had apparently been using the space to store his old laths and storm windows, and Linc’s left knee knocked into the corner of one. Fighting to suppress the pain, he scurried in close to the house, then pulled some of the filthy old windows on top of him. The cinder blocks of the foundation felt cold against his back. He forcibly shortened his breathing to controlled gasps through his open mouth. Then he heard the scuffling of footsteps.
“Shit,” a voice said. “Where the fuck he go?”
It was the white guy.
“We gotta get that tape,” another, deeper voice said. “He must be the boyfriend.”
Tape? Linc thought. What the hell were they talking about?
“Yeah, well, we still got the bitch, don’t we?” It was the white guy again. “Uh-oh, sounds like we got something else, too. Hear that?”
Linc strained to listen, then he heard it: the echo of sirens.
“I told you not to shoot,” the black voice said. “I coulda chased him down.”
“Yeah, right. Come on, we gotta get outta here. I’ll call Bobby to pick us up.”
“Not without the tape.”
“We ain’t gonna be able to get it if we’re in fuckin’ jail, man. We’ll squeeze the bitch again. Make her tell us exactly. . .” the voice trailed off. Linc stayed where he was, waiting and wondering who these guys were, what they were after, and, most importantly, if the woman they had was Diane.
Linc waited in the darkness underneath the porch for a good ten minutes before pushing off the storm windows and moving to the edge of the lattice. Peering through the holes he surveyed the street. A few kids were playing a couple of yards down. There were cars parked along the curb, but he didn’t even know what kind of car these dudes had. Deciding he’d be better off trying to get back to the house and calling the police, he crawled over to the pillars by the steps and pushed through the slanted opening. Standing, he brushed himself off, then saw the fucking shorties watching him. He walked back the way he’d come, but warily. As he approached the alley, he veered off to the adjacent yard and began peering around the garage toward Diane’s house.
Suddenly he heard a voice say, “Freeze, police.”
It was a woman’s voice. He started to look around, but the voice said, “I said freeze, motherfucker. That means don’t move.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw a uniformed black woman approaching him from the left, her gun stretched out in front of her. “Put your hands on that wall,” she said. Linc complied, actually feeling sort of relaxed that it was the police, and not the other two guys, who had found him.
“I got shot at by two guys,” Linc started to say.
“Just keep your fucking hands on that wall,” the cop said, moving forward and running her hands over his body.
“Look,” Linc said, “that’s my girlfriend’s house. I been stayin’ there. I come home and find these two guys breaking in.”
“How’d you get so dirty?” the cop asked.
“I work construction,” he said, feeling her hands tug at his wallet. “And then I hid under a porch when they started chasing me.”
He heard some huffing sounds and saw another cop, a white guy, come running up.
“You got him, Julia?” this cop asked.
“No, she doesn’t,” Linc said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Julia, the female cop said. “It says here you live in Beverly. What you doin’ in this neighborhood?”
“Look, I do live in Beverly,” Linc said, desperation creeping into his voice. “I told you I stay next door with my girlfriend, too. Her name’s Diane Cassidy.” He repeated the address and phone number. “I got keys to her house in my pocket.”
“Come on,” the male cop said, grabbing him by the arm. “Let’s check it out.”
Linc was going to tell him to keep his hands off him, but decided it would be best to have a police escort going into the house. They went up through the yard and across to Diane’s. There were more police standing at the side of the house. One of the patrolmen was busily writing on a clipboard. He looked up as they approached.
“The inside’s been tossed,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“Says it’s his girlfriend’s house,” Julia said. “Found him creeping around the yard next door.”
“Can the neighbors verify that you live here?” the male cop backing up Julia asked.
“I guess so,” Linc told him. “But like I said, I got the keys right inside my pocket here.”
After verifying with the elderly woman who lived across the street that Linc did in fact stay there periodically, they all went inside. Linc saw the roses trampled and scattered over the kitchen floor. His mind was racing, trying to figure out just what was going on, and how much, if anything, he should tell the cops.
The officer with the clipboard came up to him and asked what happened. He recounted the events leaving out the words he had heard while underneath the porch.
“You ever seen these guys before?” the cop asked. “Around the neighborhood, or anything?”
“Huh-uh,” Linc said slowly.
“Where’s your girlfriend at?”
“I don’t know,” Linc said. “I figured she’d be home now. She works downtown, but she been off since the flood.”
“Yeah, that’s a trip, ain’t it?” the cop said. He continued to write on his clip pad. “Can you tell if anything’s missing?”
Linc looked around at the living room, which had a couple of chairs overturned. A large garbage bag sat in the middle of the floor in fr
ont of the television. Inside it were all of Diane’s VHS tapes. Aside from the scattered roses, the kitchen looked pretty normal.
“I really don’t know,” he said quietly, reaching down to pick up a rose.
“Looks like they were getting ready to rip off your VCR. Well, I’ll tell you what,” the cop said. “We’ve ordered an evidence tech to stop by, but we’re a little backed up right now. You can wait here for him, and then get with your girlfriend when she comes back and make a list of what’s been taken. The investigator will be getting in contact with you.”
“Sounds good,” Linc said. “Okay to use the phone?”
“Yeah, I’ll be finished with this in a couple of minutes.”
Linc dialed his uncle’s number and asked him to come over to Diane’s as soon as possible. Henry picked up on the urgency in Linc’s voice and said he’d be right there. It took him about ten minutes to arrive, and the last of the police were just leaving.
“What’s the cops doin’ here?” Henry asked, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Linc.
“Two guys broke in here and took a couple of shots at me,” Linc said, watching the squad car pull away. Then he turned and went back through the house to the kitchen. Henry followed.
“Two guys what?” he asked. “Who were they? What’d they want?”
Linc was down on all fours now in front of the stove. He was busily unscrewing the dust catcher on the bottom.
“I don’t know who they were. Uncle Henry,” he said. He had one side unscrewed and moved over to the other.
“What you doin’ on the floor?” Henry demanded.
“Diane has her special hiding places that she thinks nobody’ll find,” Linc said, taking the long cover off the bottom of the stove. This was the place she always hid important things, like money, jewelry, and hopefully. . . Linc stretched his arm under the stove and felt around. Lots of dust motes, the gas line, then he found it. A cigar box. He pulled it out and opened it. The stack of cash had been rubber-banded and compressed into the box. It still looked like a lot more than it was. Henry’s eyes widened when he saw it.
The Heist Page 14