Threaten to kick his ass. Act mean. Don’t need to touch him, just create the illusion that you are about half crazy and are going to do it any second. Do the old good cop, bad cop routine, but keep it fluid. Do the new version that Sal and CW developed and used more than once on the felony pricks.
Laughingly, they called it the bad cop, bad cop, crazy fuckin’ cop routine. These two senior Detectives both turned up the heat. These seasoned Detectives really cranked it up . . . off the friggin’ scale. They both acted a bit more than half crazy, some of the other detectives called them the best at breaking down the hard core cons. They pushed the legal envelope to the exact edge, but were the absolute best at breaking down the scumbags of the armed robbery world and scared the piss out of more than one hijacker over the years. They even started hitting on each other, actually the two were play acting, fighting over who was going to get to punch the bad guy first.
They even had one routine where CW brought in three cups of steaming hot coffee and gave one to the suspect. This is a standard investigative technique to help the crook relax and talk. Then the two detectives would get in a shouting match and start pushing and shoving on each other. After that, CW would pour a half cup of hot coffee on Sal. Salvatore would react like it was scalding hot, but it was really cold. Hell, this routine always worked fantastic.
All the bad guys never could figure this one out. After a few minutes of these two crazy fucking cops hitting on each other, literally fighting over who gets to throw the first punch, this con game always spooked, if truth be told, freaked out the bad guys stuck in the interrogation room. Most criminals not only wanted out of the interrogation room, hell—they wanted out of the friggin’ station. They were more than happy to be sent over to the County Jail . . . they wanted out of that interrogation room with those two fuckin’ psycho cops. Talk and you can go, was the subliminal message.
Make him/her believe you are serious and if he is lying, nine times out of ten, he or sometimes . . . she, will break down and start telling you most of the truth: their version of the truth. It might take them a few minutes to an hour to really confess, but they usually give you enough information to make the case. Hell, they even had crooks confessing to crimes no one here even knew about. One time, they were pressing this bad ass about a jewelry store robbery on the south side of town when this puke confessed to three other ones up in Dallas and one over in San Antonio, Texas. Hell, no one in Houston Squad even had any idea about the other cases, but if this guy wants to confess, let him sing. If he is an ex-con, he may take a bit longer, but this routine works on 99% of them.
“Stop! Enough.” Sal again chuckles as he stretches to his right, his left and moves about the area.
As the people drift by, a couple of pilots walk by. Some look worn out and tired while one or two look sharp. Sal speaks softly to himself.” . . . what a bum,” as he sips on his beer.” . . . what a slob . . . what a babe.” He rates almost everyone who walks by. Two United States Marines walk smartly by, almost marching as they carry on a conversation, followed by three airport rent-a-cop security guards who look pathetic compared to the Marines, in their wrinkled uniforms, black tennis shoes, and uncombed hair.
Softly to himself, he adds, “What a shame. Look at the way those jerks are wearing their uniforms. When’s the last time they ran a hot steam iron over their blue shirts? What is this world coming to? They would have never made it in my Boot Camp. Hell, they would have never made it in the friggin’ PC, Police Academy.”
He starts digging through his folders and files as he looks about the area. He’s going over his collection of 8”x10” surveillance photos. Most of them are black and white, but a few are in color. This time he notices that in some of the photos, the hijacker is wearing what appears to be uniform trousers, the ones with the thin, narrow stripe down the side. However, in one color photo, he further notes that these pants are out of place; seems that the pants do not quite match the coat, shirt—hmm? Scratching his head, this certainly gets him to thinking. What is he missing? He keeps on plugging away. He pulls off his glasses and rubs his head again.
Later in the night, back inside his condo, Sal is at his computer work station, hammering away. On the TV, the original movie Airport with Dean Martin is playing. He stops for a moment and notes the flick. Talking again to his computer, “Ol’ Dino . . . what a good movie.”
The doorbell rings and he gets up, stretches out a bit as he moves to answers the door. Walking the few feet, he adjusts the small pocket pistol tucked into his right waist band. Ah-ha, the pizza man or pizza kid has arrived. Reaching into his wallet, he grabs for a quick twenty dollar bill to hand the cash money over to the skinny kid standing on the other side of his front door.
He looks through the peep hole—Sal has learned to be cautious, ever cautious in this big city, his big city where people get knocked in the head and robbed every day. In the summer time, the City of Houston almost always logs in with well over 1200 armed robberies per month. Don’t ever open the front door or any front door blindly. You may be expecting someone, like the pizza delivery man, but three thugs may have just killed him two blocks away and figure out his next stop would be an easy target. Hell, your home address, your name, and telephone number are taped to the top of the delivery box. The bad guys further know you are expecting a simple knock on the door and that you at least should probably possess a twenty dollar bill in your hand. If they can kill some poor pizza driver for a buck, they will damn sure kill you for a whopping twenty dollar bill.
In some ways, these bad guys are dumber than dirt, but in other ways, they are awfully street smart and savvy. Senior Detective First Class Salvatore has seen all this before more than once here in Houston. When you work robbery cases . . . actually hundreds of armed robbery cases a year, many of them home invasion robberies, you know better than to ever open your front door, any door unarmed.
Looking over the delivery driver, Sal quickly assesses to his satisfaction that the kid is alone and OK. Digging in his wallet, he fishes around for his elusive twenty dollar bill.
“Uh, how much was the tab . . . oh never mind, you keep it . . . thanks,” as he shuts the door. Tweaking the secure dead bolt lock, he turns around, then walks back to his couch. Next, Sal opens up a fresh beer and eats while becoming absorbed in the movie—especially the part where Dino and his mistress are discussing their three days in Rome.
Sal’s still carrying on a one-way conversation with his little inner self and the pizza eating continues on.
“What a life, Rome and a beautiful woman for three days. Those fly boys are lucky fuckers . . . same way when I was in ’Nam. All the jet jock fly boys got all the fantastic looking chicks, while us NCOs got all the leftover gals.”
He shifts mental gears back to the case, back to the computer work station and is clicking away, researching and eating. Not too much maybe a couple of slices for now . . . maybe more later. Tasting his last sip of beer, he picks up the remote to turn off the television set, but pauses at the scene where Dino is negotiating with the mad bomber. The bomber had his bomb hidden inside of a brief case. After a moment more, he flips off the TV set and walks over to the front door. He next punches in his six digit alarm code to arm the perimeter alarm system and leaves the house, to the sound of three distinct beeps.
During the drive toward downtown, the city’s unique skyline is silhouetted against the evening sky. All the structures, everything from the 1 Shell Plaza building, the old Exxon structure, to the Houston Astros’ baseball field on the east side of town are in grand view tonight. He takes the right side of the two possible downtown exits into the heart of the city, the Pierce Avenue exit and slows down to the precise speed of 22 mph. Since he has driven this way once or twice in the last 25 years, 22 mph is the correct speed to time all the traffic signal lights so they’re all green. Any faster or any slower and you are bound to catch a dozen or so city red traff
ic lights.
On the cruise down the city streets, traffic is a bit light tonight here in downtown Houston. Sal pulls into Fuzzy’s empty parking lot and slides into a parking space. A block down the street and some 35 feet high up on a bill-board, two workers are papering up a new billboard sign with a new add for a computer networking company called Data-Link, Inc.
He stops for a moment and examines the three men at work as they paste up the last section . . . the final strip which has the words Link on it. With a brief look up to the sign, he talks to the billboard.
“Link, yea, yea . . . I get it. Even the damn signs are mocking me.” Now, yelling to the sign, “If I knew the answer, I would be a rich . . . !” followed by, under his breath, a soft voice, “. . . stupid fucker.”
He enters the dark tavern walks past the vintage Seeburg Jukebox, a real old style machine with real 45 rpm records playing inside the box . . . a classic record player kept up and in good working condition by Louis. Sal goes to his regular spot at the end of the bar and grabs a seat. At this time, the place is peaceful . . . it’s a quiet night and still a little early—10:15 pm. Louis is in his office working. The office is off to the left side of the bar; Louis is on the phone. Sal reaches behind the landmark mahogany bar, gets his own beer out of the cooler and starts talking.
Speaking softly to no one, he offers, “A little quiet in here tonight.” Looking at his wristwatch, “. . . well I figure it is still a little bit early.”
A trek back over to the jukebox, Sal drops in two quarters; three plays for fifty cents. He next selects and plays record number J-9 Crazy, by Patsy Cline; followed by N-7, Freddy Fender’s, Wasted Days and Wasted Nights and finally L-7, Frank Sinatra singing My Way.
As he walks back to his vinyl-covered metal bar stool, he takes another drink of his beer as he spies what appears to be a new 5”x7” photo placed behind the bar by Louis, encased in a silver picture frame made of metal, new, and shiny. The photo is of Louis when he was a much younger person, almost a kid compared to now, standing by one of HPD’s Hughes model 500C police helicopters.
This new photo is placed behind the bar of our pilot friend Louis in his flight suit, and seeing it triggers something key in our investigator’s mind; it starts him to thinking—his mind, his investigative mind, shifts into high gear. He next spins around and notices another photograph of the entire Police Helicopter Division on a side wall. He moves toward it and looks it over closely. Adjusting his reading glasses on his nose, for a better look, he looks it over. Sal notes that the squadron photo contains a mix of ten Hughes 500C and 500D model police outfitted helicopters staged along with a set of three Cessna police equipped airplanes. Their big four-spot flood lights and the FLIR (forward looking infrared camera pod) are smartly attached below the bottoms of the aircraft’s belly.
The photo looks like a typical military squadron photo with the crews standing or kneeling in front and the aircraft in the rear; now he’s rapidly putting all the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle together. He moves around the walls and notes, for the first time, several other photos of police helicopters and airplanes all over the place in between all the other cop photos. On the walls around are other photos of the HPD units and even some of the LAPD flight squadrons.
He next breaks and scurries toward the back of the saloon to the old style, real honest to goodness payphone booth. Sal is frantic as he searches for a phone book, but the book is long gone, ripped out some time ago by most likely drunken off-duty cop. Next, he dashes into Louis’s tiny office knowing full well he’s right!
Louis is seated at an old metal second hand desk talking on an old coil corded black telephone as Sal rushes in. Frantic, he starts digging around looking for the yellow pages phone book.
A peeved Louis looks up and says, “Hey, hey! I’m on the phone here. I’m trying to run a business here!”
“Sorry, quick, quick, I need the yellow pages,” says Sal.
“Louis with a grimace offers, “Bottom left.”
Sal rips open the noisy metal desk drawer and pulls out a phone book, but the one is the M-Z book. The other one is on top of Louis’s des, under his left elbow. “Shit! I need the other half.”
Louis, now hanging up and just about pissed off, fires off a quick.”Have you gone fuckin’ mad? Here, here. Now, will you please tell me what in the hell is going on . . . what is soooo damn important?”
Flipping the pages, the dim yellow pages faster and faster, he continues. “The link, I think I have found the link on these hijackers. Here! Right—here!”
The book is open to the airlines section. On the top left corner, there is a half-page ad for SouthEast Airlines and their logo is, Your Link to The South. “Here, look here! Here on the pages in front of you is how these two are traveling across the country jacking banks.”
“On a jet airplane . . . on an airliner?”asks Louis. “Are you friggin’ crazy?”
“Yeah, yeah, I recognize it now . . . we’ve got us a couple of Thrill Freaks, uh, huh, Adrenaline Junkies jacking banks for sport!”
Louis wants to slow things down a bit. “OK, OK, calm down, now I follow the link theory; this makes sense to me, but what’s this for sport bullshit?”
“Think man, think! You flew helos in ’Nam. How many times have you told me wonderful stories of how you flew low and slow hoping for someone to shoot at you . . . to shoot at your ass so you could pounce on them . . . remember? You have told me on more than one occasion how you used to have fun being the worm. Remember? Something about being the bait, the worm on the end of the fishing line I think you once said,” offered Sal.
A grinning Louis flashes back to another time to the jungles of Southeast Asia, South Vietnam. He was a bit younger back in 1971, only about 21 years old and simply a bit wilder, no, no a bit crazier back then. He grins and says, “Yeah, doing all that was just a little bit, uh, of being fuckin’ crazy . . . uh, looking back on those days. Being out there was actually fun, yeah, it was a blast on some days, flying low and slow over the treetops hoping some stupid little Dink would open up fire on me with his AK-47 rifle. Hell, I was a king in my chopper.”
“I could call in helicopter gunships, fast-mover jets, hell, I could even call in the giant squadrons of B-52s . . . I did love those crazy times. Damn, man I was authorized by our Uncle Sam to spend a million dollars a day if I needed to. Yeah, it was fun and it was one hell of a rush. Hmm? Never realized I was an adrenalin junkie, but it sure seems like I was one. Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“I remember this one time, this F-4 Phantom jet jock got shot down in my AOA (area of operations) and I was the first one to hear the mayday call on the guard frequency 243.0 MHz. I mean I’m merely trolling the jungles looking for Charlie, when all of a sudden I hear this guy hollering out,
“Mayday!
Mayday!
Mayday!”
He’s hollering right through my headset . . . the call came out over the airways and the transmission was loud; I recognize he had to be close, damn close. I mean he was definitely fuckin’ loud. So, I kick the anti-torque pedals and spin my chopper around about a hundred and eighty degrees and I mean . . . right out front, a couple of clicks or two away, right out in front of my Plexiglas window, are two U.S. made orange and white emergency parachutes drifting down into the thick jungles. I rev up the engine and closed the gap in mere seconds. I sort of circled around over the one guy I could see . . . I think he was an Air Force guy . . . uhh, trying to give him cover while he might possibly find a hiding place from the bad guys.”
“Hell, the jungle got real fuckin’ hot I’m telling you. Charlie without doubt came out of every little nook and cranny when they had a chance to capture an American. They always loved it when they could shoot one of us down and they especially fuckin’ loved it when they might snatch one of our jet jockeys out of the skies alive.”
“His buddy
in another, Uh . . . yea, I’m pretty sure they were Air Force . . . I think they were Air Force F-4s flying over head. This guy was damn near out of gas and had to leave his friends in my charge. Hell, I called in all kinds of air support; choppers, fast attack jet aircraft, napalm, and Huey helicopter gunships. Hell, I’d bet I spent close to a fast million dollars in a half day’s work . . . that afternoon; and I was only on station about a half hour or so before I turned the rescue scene over to the real search and rescue guys.”
“A bit later, some Air Force FAC guy a—Forward Air Controller jock in one of those funny looking Cessna 02, push-me-pull-me birds, you remember those weird looking planes, showed up and took over. Hell, I was running low on fuel myself. As I was leaving, the Cavalry was on their way in, but I don’t recall, I don’t think they got those men out that afternoon . . . the sun was setting too fast, I seem to recall. Yeah,” his voice trailed off as he scratched his head—trying to remember all the details from that day.
“The Jolly Green Giants—those big fuckin’ Sikorsky Helicopter Boys with their Sandy A-1 Sky Raider escort aircraft were on the way in . . . you remember those big old prop planes which can carry a fuckin’ ton of fire power. I think even one of those Sandy pilots shot down a Mig-21 jet during the War. How about those apples? A piston plane jock shoots down a Mig jet airplane . . . wow! Hey, I’m a telling you those planes were built like a friggin’ tank . . . small arms fire would merely bounce off the sides. Those boys could light up the jungle,” Louis continues. “Uh, sorry, I got a bit sidetracked here.”
Sal says, “You were saying something about these two guys being a couple of cowboys? They’re hot-shots jacking for sport . . . like a hobby, ya see, like those thrill seekers who ride those fuckin’ bulls or skydive on weekends . . . they’re adrenaline junkies!”
Con Trails/200 Sky Obscured Page 11