The folks in the bar can make out the end credits of a show, the lead-in for the 11 o’clock news. A female anchor on a split screen is talking about the daring daylight bank robbery that occurred earlier in the day. Tom is soon joined by his cohort John who has ditched his work clothes, his official dress uniform and has dressed down to shorts with a pullover polo golf shirt. He is off duty for real.
“This ought to be good,” John says, speaking under his breath.
Tom quips with a snicker, “Now, now; let’s listen young man, uh . . . to what they’re going to say.”
The evening news comes on and they sort of catch a glimpse of a black and white grainy photo of a surveillance snapshot photo flashed across the screen. This is their lead story tonight. As is typical of these bank surveillance photos, the quality is poor, which makes the print almost impossible to figure out who the man in the photograph is. Of course, much of the person’s features are obscured by the dark sunglasses, goatee, mustache and ever-present hat.
The lead female reporter starts talking, “Just after opening their doors this morning, a lone robber held up the Citizen Bank & Trust with a bomb and escaped with an undisclosed amount of money. The device was in actuality only a bomb threat; no real explosives were found by the Police Department’s bomb squad. Local detectives and the FBI are looking into this robbery and sources here indicated off the record . . . this may be the work of a serial bank robber who has hit in several different states since last year.
As is so typical of today’s news coverage, the side-kick talking head, man with perfect jet black hair sitting next to her reads his part from the teleprompter.
“Yes, News Eleven has followed this story all day long and our sources are indicating now thus far that there have been at least eight robberies across the southern half of the United States of America. Sources also tell us here at News Eleven, again off the record, that the FBI’s crack, Bank Robbery Nation Wide Task Force is looking into these cases. Each one occurred in a different state, but the suspects always wear some sort of uniform and leave behind or use some type of a fake bomb in a small box to pull off the robbery.”
Our female reporter continues, “Yes, as far as we know, this is correct, Tim. Now it turns out that the fake bomb used in today’s robbery was nothing more than a small gift box with a lone business card inside. Authorities are not telling us at this time what was on the card or what the front of the card said. A source close to the investigation did confirm to us here in the newsroom that the card contain some sort of writing or group or series of numbers written . . . maybe typed on the card, but nothing more.”
“Still, my sources at the police department to anyone out there watching—if a bad guy, a bank hijacker tells a bank teller that he’s got a bomb inside of a box, the general rule is you need to take the threat serious. There is no way to tell a fake bomb from an actual bomb. Therefore, you have to believe the threat to be real.”
In perfect sync with her, Mr. Male reporter, with the perfect hair adds, “Yes Jane, consider the bomb a real one.”
“As you know, I certainly covered many bank robberies over the years and most of the time, the bombs are fakes, but again, when an armed mad-man tells you he placed a bomb in the box . . . what can you do? No one can tell the difference simply by looking at a wrapped up box. Turning to his right for camera two, he changes stories . . .“Now, for our other top stories . . .”
* * * * *
Across the country some 742 nautical miles away in the heart of downtown Houston, at a discreet little cop bar named Fuzzy’s, a group of men gather, drinking and chatting about their day. Fuzzy’s is a cop bar in the middle of downtown Houston. There is no neon beer sign hanging outside to tell all who pass by that Fuzzy’s is right here. The owner does not need to advertise, nor does he want to. His special, extremely special breed of clients know exactly where the little bar is. On the right side of the sturdy steel front entrance door is simply a small 3”x12” brass sign with a simple inscription: PRIVATE CLUB.
The tavern is housed on the first floor of a rather old ten story brown brick office building. The structure was built after the turn of the century. She stands in the shadows of the ever present tall fancy 50, 60, 70 story modern office towers or . . . skyscrapers. This edifice, this structure was built by men, real men, one brick and one floor at a time long before OSHA and the invention of safety lines. Today, more than half of the buildings along with half of the entire block are vacant or listed for rent. In today’s rough economy, a rather large portion of the entire downtown office space is vacant.
Anyone who enters the tavern notices right off that all the walls, the ceilings, the tables, everywhere—this is a cop bar. There is police stuff, police memorabilia everywhere. The walls, the tables, everything is covered with cop-stuff, red emergency light bars, police motorcycle helmets, a busted up right front fender from a marked police car, Dirty Harry posters, machine gun ads, and more. Hell, even cop stuff is painted on the floor, No Parking, Tow Away Zone, Handicap Parking Only! And the collection goes all the way to the ceiling. Attached way up to the ceiling tiles is part of a wrecked helicopter . . . it now belongs to Louis, the bar owner; it’s his wrecked police chopper hanging down from the rafters.
On one of the walls, is a rather new large flat screen 51” TV with the original Dirty Harry movie made back in 1971 running. The movie alone was one of the greatest recruiting tools for the nation’s police departments ever made. Data at the time indicated that more people applied to the local police departments after seeing that two hour piece of film, all by itself was an immense recruiting tool in the seventies.
Across part of the picture, you can spot that the closed caption settings are on and you can read the scene where Clint Eastwood as Inspector Callahan is holding his Smith and Wesson, model 29 blue steel .44 magnum in one hand and eating a hot dog with the other saying something about a .44 magnum, the greatest handgun in the world . . . do you feel lucky PUNK? . . . as the letters scroll across the bottom half of the TV screen.
The clock on the wall behind the bar indicates early morning—2:00 am. A lone Vietnamese man, actually a native born South Vietnamese bar-back named Ha Tran, is cleaning up behind the large scuffed up wooded bar top. Today, he is a simple bar-back . . . a helper . . . a menial thankless job, but he is happy to be here in America . . . he is mighty happy to even be alive. Back in the sixties and seventies, he was a soldier, an army officer in his home country of South Vietnam.
Ha Tran, like his father and most of his extended family, worked for the US government all throughout the so-called 10 year long Vietnam War. Mr. Tran and several of his family members were some of the few lucky ones who escaped to the US back in late May of 1975 right as Hanoi was falling into the communist hands of the Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnamese Army. His dad and other family members were not so lucky. They never made it out of the country during the last days of the War and haven’t been heard from since. In his heart, in his gut, Ha Tran knows they are all dead. Not a kind death either. The North Vietnamese people were well schooled in the oriental art of torture.
At this late hour, the club is almost empty except for Fuzzy’s Old Salt bar owner Louis J. Washington, a medically retired helicopter cop with a bad limp. He was the city’s first ever black street officer selected for the aviation unit. At only five foot ten, he was never a basketball star, nor was he a hip teenager in high school. He was actually a bit of a school geek.
Math and science came easy to him and these talents helped him get through Army Flight School at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. He always wore thick dark rimmed glasses and even played trumpet in the school band. Louis was also a decent second baseman on the varsity, class 3A baseball team. They made it to State one year, but never advanced past the first round. He was attending a local community college on a two-year baseball scholarship when his draft lottery number was coming up. He decided to join up r
ather than be drafted, which offered him the opportunity to fly—he wanted to fly military helicopters for the US Army.
In regard to the Police Helicopter unit, it was not like he wasn’t qualified, it simply turned out that he was the first African-American officer to apply to get into the unit. A highly trained pilot, he had flown high-tech, state of the art military choppers for the United States Army in Vietnam and joined the Houston Police Department in 1973 after his three-year tour with Uncle Sam was up. That was now a long time ago.
Seated at one end of the bar are four men—three off duty, seasoned men, mid to late 50s, with a bit of gray hair mixed in—city plain clothes detectives and one FBI Agent. Mind ya’ this is no regular old wooden bar. This bar is the one from the old, world famous . . . at least at one time—world famous, Rice Hotel. She was constructed by men, real carpenters and masons . . . brick by brick back in 1912 on the actual site of the former Capitol building of the Republic of Texas and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Rice Hotel is where former President John F. Kennedy and his lovely wife Jackie spent his last night alive on earth, his last November Thursday night—the one before his fateful Friday morning trip on Air Force One up to the City of Dallas. He was assassinated the next morning up on Elm Street in Dallas, Texas back in November 1963 by, as the story goes, Lee Harvey Oswald.
No real police detective ever bought the line of political mumbo jumbo. No real police detective would fall for the standard political double-talk about the lone shooter and the magic bullet story nonsense. All the men sitting at this bar know firsthand what a bullet entry wound looks like. Any beat cop working the streets of any large city gets to see gunshot victims every weekend. More than that, they also have direct firsthand knowledge of what a real exit wound looks like . . . and it ain’t pretty.
Furthermore, like most Texans, all these men have hunted South Texas White Tail Deer with high-power rifles since they were boys. They know the distinct signature and kick of a high—powered rifle. Besides, they also are well schooled at the type of damage it does to flesh, animal or human flesh.
Still even more ironic to the sad story is that the President’s limo had a moment ago turned left off of Houston Street. Talk about an eerie link to the City of Houston. The hotel closed down in the mid-70s, but she was a grand hotel, a local landmark, still near and dear to the hearts of many life-long Houstonians.
Although their dress coats are removed, their semi-auto multi-shot pistols, badges, and extra magazines still hang from their belts—a couple of 40 caliber Glocks, an Heckler & Koch .45 and a classic Colt model 1911 on Salvatore. He never cared for the new fancy plastic-polymer hand guns which are so popular these days. He doesn’t want a plastic gun on his side. Sal never bought into all the new fancy high-tech gun stuff. When your life depends on a weapon during a real life gunfight on the streets of Houston, Sal wants a hunk of metal called a Colt Model 1911, .45 cal semi-automatic eight-shot pistol. Battle proven in the real world in World War I, World War II, Korea, and in the Vietnam War, this is the weapon he wants in his right hand in a real gunfight.
Black ankle holsters show a smidgen under both Salvatore’s and Senior Detective Clint, CW, Williams’ cuffed pants leg. Their dress shoes rest upon a worn two-inch brass foot rail. It came attached to the bar from the Rice Hotel. CW’s is on his right leg and Sal’s is strapped to his left ankle. CW is left-handed and the cross draw, opposite ankle makes it work better for both men. Both holsters house a small lightweight Smith and Wesson .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver as a backup weapon.
Seated with them is an old friend, Senior FBI Special Agent, Robert “Bob” Irby. At two am in the morning, they are a tired looking group of guys. This is their watering hole, their bar to come in after work to drink and relax . . . to spend some quality times with friends, to be with good friends.
Senior Detective, Salvatore Antonio Joseph, Sal as he is know, is a full blooded Italian with dark hair, dark brown eyes and a bit of a bushy mustache. Both sets of Salvatore’s grandparents came from the old country. More specifically, they came from the northwest corner of the little Island of Sicily. Seated next to him on his right is FBI Agent Bob Irby. Part Irish and part Scottish. No mustache here, but these two men both still sport the GI flat-top haircuts from the early 60s.
To tell the truth, they don’t care if you like their hair cuts or not. They’re both ex-military men and career lawmen. Bob was in the United States Marine Corp. He was a military office—a mud Marine, who was out in the jungles and bush with his men, while Sal was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. Sal was a Crew Chief on an F-100 Super Saber and later on the F-105 Thunder Chief during Vietnam. Their motto with regard to their hair cuts is . . . “fuck ’em if they don’t like it.”
Hanging over the large wooden countertop of the varnished bar, are two big screen 42” television sets; Nightline with Terry Moran beams down on them. The lead news story being covered is the scoop about the serial bank robbers hitting all over the nation. He’s telling of the many different banks across the United States and how the FBI’s Washington DC Bank Robbery, Nation Wide Task Force is on the job, taking over the investigation.
Officially these guys are the best at cracking and tracking down bank robbers. Off the record, the real FBI agents out in the field call them a bunch of desk-bound, paper-pushing bureaucrats trying to act like real FBI field Agents.
Our lead Detective, Sal . . . just Sal to friends and Detective Sal to the bad guys, is somewhat drunk, drinking, and smoking a cigar—he spouts off, shaking his cigar holding hand up toward the TV, “Bullshit! Those fuckers couldn’t solve a suicide—a plain and simple suicide.” Whoever is pulling these jobs is a pro . . . those pricks in DC are way out-classed on this one. These guys are as good as . . . no, they are in fact better than those fuckers who flew in from Chicago to rob that big friggin’ jewelry store over at the mall back when we were in Patrol. Uhh, what was the name of the fuckin’ place, uh, some Jewish name.”
Next to Sal, on his left, sits his long time partner and best friend, Det. Clint J. Williams, Det. CW. He’s sipping on a Bud Light. The guys tease him and call him Clint Eastwood from time to time because he was one of the first street officers to purchase a Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum pistol after graduating from the Police Academy. They worked the streets together in a blue and white squad car and both earned their promotions to Detective First Class in the early 80s.
He chimes in, “Yea, I’ve been hearing about this for a few months now and it’s more like fourteen different robberies in as many states. An old SWAT buddy of mine out of the South LA Bureau these days told me the other day that they don’t have a clue—a single clue in the world who in the hell is pulling all the jobs.”
Not to be left out, Det. Roberts, the athlete of the group . . . or should we say the old man trying to stay young via sports, the jock of the group retorts, “Yeah, sure. Like you two could solve something, uh . . . this damn big. Ha!”
He is known to all simply as Det. Roberts. He aced the Detective test and placed number one among the 327 officers who took the promotion test that day in April 1981. Rumor spread quickly thoughout the department and all his buds dubbed him Detective Roberts from that moment on. He tried to play it down, but he was smarter than he liked to let on—his IQ was north of 160, but no one at the city knew it—he just wanted to be one of the boys.
Taking a sip, he says, “Uh . . . You two fuckers can hardly solve a 7-11 convenience store robbery or a Stop and Go robbery when you got ten minutes of live video to show on the six o’clock news.”
At one time he was a real live baseball pitcher in minor league system for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He even made it the big leagues for a 16 day call up, but that was all his time in the majors . . . his time in the bright lights. With nagging elbow troubles since high school and on into college, his left arm could just not keep up wi
th the intensive big league tempo. He had already undergone three different surgical procedures and decided promptly he did not want to go through a fourth one.
He’s now an ace for the Department’s softball team leading the team to a multitude of gold medals in the National Police Olympics for the last four out of six years. Tonight, he’s also a bit drunk, chewing on a toothpick.
This is a tough crowd here at the bar tonight—the sharks are beyond a doubt circling in the murky water. Laughing almost uncontrollably, Det. Roberts damn near falls off his vinyl-covered bar stool. It is a darn good thing all these guys are such good friends. They don’t cut each other any slack here at Fuzzy’s Bar or back in the squad room either.
These men do, however, share a bond, the kind of bond one gets from being in combat together. Not a declared war type of combat, like World War II, but from big city street combat . . . from living each day in Harm’s Way—from attending more funerals . . . more dead policemen’s funerals, as many as ten in a one year period . . . more than they ever care to recall.
To finish, Agent Bob, the real Field Agent, the dapper one of the group, chewing on his pipe, continues the conversation with “Yeah, sure, yeah.” His demeanor is more British, rather prim and proper. He appears to be a bit more mellow or calm than what one might expect from a mud Marine who spent two tours on the ground in Southeast Asia as a young Lieutenant and later as a Captain. He saw real combat first hand in the jungles of Vietnam and has a couple of dozen pieces of shrapnel embedded in his right side and arm to remind him of that part of his life every day. If you met him on the streets or in a restaurant, you would never know he was a combat vet, much less a real mud Marine.
“You guys want the official version or my opinion? This fucker, these fuckers have been hitting all over the country, but I’m telling ya, there is no pattern whatsoever . . . no rhyme or reason of when or where he or they will hit next. One week they hit in West Texas and . . . well . . . two months later they are in Kentucky. What gives?”
Con Trails/200 Sky Obscured Page 2