by Luis Samways
Bobby had clocked off and was sitting outside the warehouse where he received his deliveries from other delivery men. It was a vicious circle of corrupt packages and moonshine. Clubs bought the cheap, untaxed hooch, and punters bought special-delivery coke and meth from the back of the van. It was the perfect cover-up.
The perfect drug deal.
In the day and age that Bobby’s bosses lived in, one had to be smart when it came to selling drugs. Gone were the days when a dealer could just walk into a club and hand out his stash. That wasn’t how things worked anymore. Nah, things were different now, and you had to be a smarter businessman.
Most club owners would take a percentage off the drugs coming into their establishments. They were aware of what was going on and let the dealers into their domain. It was good business, after all. More drugs meant more good times, and those good-time gals and boys would spend their good-time money on some drinks. It was a vicious circle, but that all changed when the bouncers were not just your average Joe from the block. New rules and laws were put in place, making it harder for dealers and club owners to reap the rewards of some coke on the side.
But that was where Bobby Sanders’ bosses came into play. They saw the potential disruption to their money train and decided that initiative was needed. They came up with the plan of making a legit company that sold booze to the clubs and used the delivery trucks to sneak drugs into the establishment. That was the game, and it worked well. The legit booze was hardly ever actually sold, though. Most of the booze bought was imported, but cops don’t go snooping into pubs and clubs looking for dodgy liquor. They go in looking for drugs. And if they found them in any of the clubs in Boston, they would be hard pressed to find the people responsible, because they were cruising down the highway, going to their next delivery point.
It was the perfect con, indeed. Drugs were flowing back into the city, and that made Bobby Sanders’ bosses happy. He was happy as well. Making up to three grand a night had its perks; so did staying out of jail. A new hybrid dealer was born.
Everything was going fine until somebody killed Bobby Sanders. And then everything came undone, and the perfect con turned into a nightmare for the dealers. All hell was about to be let loose on the dirty streets of Boston. All because of one fatal shot to the head.
“Hey, Sanders!” a voice said out of the shadows. Bobby lit up his cigarette and turned around. He was met with a muzzle flash and an unflinching shot to the head. The gunshot echoed off the warehouse parking lot. The man in the shadows put his gun back into his pocket. “Message delivered,” the man said as he walked off.
Two
Frank McKenzie was doing his rounds at the office. He was handing the usual incident reports to the usual suspects. It had been a quiet week for the homicide detective, and he was bound to office work and paper-pushing. He was usually busy at all times of the week, but that week in Boston, there was a cold snap when it came to the murders. He was fresh out of work and didn’t fancy taking on any of the legacy cases some of his men were working on. Whenever jobs dried up, most homicide detectives did one of two things: They went home to catch up on sleep, or they slogged through some of the cold cases.
No detective liked working the cold ones. Everybody preferred the new cases where a fresh crime scene was present and a barely dead corpse was in the morgue. It made the work easier for them. It was terribly hard to beat a cold case. Witnesses tend to run dry after a few months, and people forget. Not because they are cold-hearted or without understanding. They forget because something else comes along. Usually one of those fresh murders that detectives prefer.
“What you doing, Detective McKenzie?” a voice from afar asked. Frank turned around and saw the Chief of Police approaching him.
“Nothing, just handing out reports to the uniformed officers. You know, paper-chasing boredom and all,” McKenzie said, the hint of dissatisfaction ever present in his downbeat tone.
Chief of Police Shaw gave him a forced smile. He didn’t like seeing his usually upbeat, off-kilter detective in the dumps. He knew how much solving crimes meant to detectives, and saw that it meant a whole lot more to this one. He saw the absolute need to be the best in Detective Frank McKenzie’s eyes. Along with other things, the detective in front of him was a peculiar one, indeed. He knew McKenzie had his demons and was a tortured soul, but he saw what most didn’t in McKenzie, and that was brilliance.
“I might have something for you,” Shaw said, seeing the lights come on in Frank’s dome, lighting up his eye whites like candles in winter.
“Really? What have you got?” Frank asked, putting down his folder of paperwork and facing the Chief directly. He was giving Shaw his full attention. He only managed to do that when he wanted a case. It was his way of proving that he wouldn’t mess around, and he had full intentions of solving everything he touched. He felt he needed to do such a thing because of the reputation he carried. A reputation of a maverick cop. The reputation of an unstable detective.
“There has been a shooting down a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. One man down, dead on the scene. Gunshot to the head. Looks pretty clean,” Chief said.
Frank nodded his head and cracked his knuckles under all the excitement.
“Sound interesting. Anything else? A few bombs, maybe a meth lab?” Frank said, laughing a little under his breath. He was one for excitement. He enjoyed the thrill of a good manhunt and loved a good backdrop to an epic tale of good versus evil. That was Frank McKenzie all over. A real 80s maverick stuck in the year 2014.
“Matter of fact, there is a meth lab — well, sort of,” Chief Shaw found himself confessing — light-heartedly, considering the seriousness of the situation. He always felt a slight ease on a case when handing it over to his star detective.
“A meth lab? Wow, nice one,” Frank said, getting even more excited.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, McKenzie. Anytime drugs are involved, the DEA get a hard-on for our crime scenes. I’m thinking of playing this one on the down-low until we at least have an idea of what went down.”
Frank nodded his head in agreement. The hustle and bustle of the police precinct echoed in the background as he got the information he needed from his boss.
“So, you’re saying that the meth lab is in the back of a van? Some sort of delivery truck?” interrupted Frank as his boss Shaw slowed down his case briefing.
“It’s not quite a meth lab, but it’s the next best thing,” Shaw said.
“Like what?” McKenzie snapped impatiently.
There was a slight pause in the conversation, long enough for the adrenaline in Frank’s body to kick in and his bowels started to rumble.
“We have a small warehouse packed to the roof with drugs and moonshine. Looks like we just stumbled on a little special delivery service that could really bust the streets wide open,” Shaw said.
Three
The dapper man in the suede suit walked into the downtown diner with a look of unease on his face. The man sitting across the room in the booth to the back noticed that look. He could smell fear and failure a mile away. What he smelt then was a mixture of pancakes, bagels, topped with a little fear. The failure part must have been missed, because he wasn’t expecting the shit-storm of failure that was about to be splattered all over him and his men. If he were aware, he would have met up with the man in the suit at a discreet location so he could bust a few of his ribs and make someone pay for the failure at hand.
“Have a seat,” the big plump man in the booth said. The man in the suede suit obliged and pulled up a chair. The horrible screeching sound of the chair being pulled up to the booth made the man sitting in it squirm in protest. “Oh, God, do you have to pull the seat like that? Didn’t the teachers at school when you were a little shit tell you to lift a chair up and not pull on it like that? You’ll scratch the damn floor up like that!” he said, his big burly shoulders moving up and down with every syllable he spoke.
The sound of the man’s voice made the
other man in suede a little nervous. He knew how powerful the man in the booth was. He knew how much trouble he was in and was very thankful for the fact that they were sitting in a public diner. If it were anywhere else, he wouldn’t be so ready to deliver the news he had. He knew that if it were anywhere else besides the diner he was in, he’d be minced meat and sucking on heavy blows to the face. They’d do him proper. Probably wouldn’t kill him; that wasn’t like them. Not for a man like him. He knew he was valuable, but the question was, how valuable after news like this? Only time would tell, and that time was edging ever nearer.
“I have some bad news, boss,” the man in suede said, stuttering under his breath. He picked up a sugar packet and started playing around with it.
The man in the booth noticed it and disapproved of it straight away. “Are you going to use that packet, Fred?” he asked the man in the suit.
“No, I’m just nervous, Harry, that’s all,” the man called Fred replied.
“Well, put it down! People have to use that after you, and I’m positive they don’t want your damn dirty fingernails all over their fucking sugar!” Big Harry in the booth said.
Fred immediately put the sugar packet down. He looked at his boss, Big Harry, and gave him a coy smile. Harry knew what that meant.
“Tell me the bad news already!” Harry huffed, taking a chunk out of a donut that sat on a plate below his great girth. He chomped on it a few more times, awaiting the bad news, but Fred was taking his time, and that wasn’t going down as easy as the donut was. It left a sour taste in Harry’s mouth, and he would have slapped the crap out of Fred if he were anywhere else. If only, though.
“The shipment has been hit,” Fred finally said, sounding like a vinyl record that was about to split into two, rendering its sound quality scratchy.
“Hit by whom?” Harry said. The diner itself was near empty, except for a few old-timers drinking their coffee. It was early morning, after all, but Harry didn’t want to cause a scene. He looked around and repeated the question, this time at a lower decibel level. “Who hit the fucking truck?” Harry said.
Fred started playing around with the sugar packets once again. Harry grew impatient and slapped him in the face. The slap was so hard the sugar packets went flying off the table. The sound of the slap seemed to echo in everybody’s ears, making a few brave souls stare into their direction. They soon stopped staring and went back to business. That was what it was like to be Harry Donavon. He didn’t get bothered by onlookers. People wouldn’t dare utter a word against him.
“It wasn’t only the van, sir, it was the whole downtown warehouse. One of our delivery men was shot outside the warehouse. Police were called, and the feds now occupy the area. All our new gear is gone, sir. Six trucks were in that warehouse. A few kilos of…”
Before Fred could finish off his sentence, Harry interrupted him. “I’m fully aware of what was inside the warehouse, dipshit. I put it in there!”
Fred nodded, this time reaching for his cigarettes. He was nervous as he put one in his mouth, the butt shaking between his lips. He lit up and inhaled a large mouthful. He looked to calm himself down a little. He watched as his boss just sat there in the lonesome booth, contemplating what to do. He could see his boss’s mind click. He could practically hear the gears and cogs getting to work. And then the heavy silence was broken.
“We do nothing. We sit and wait,” Harry said.
Fred looked surprised. His suede suit creased a little under his flexing arms, which he lifted to his face. He smoothed back his hair, soon grabbing for the ashtray and taking another drag on his cigarette.
“Why would we do that? Shouldn’t we run, boss?”
Harry shook his head.
“No, we wait. We wait, and then we hit the feds themselves,” Harry said, his voice bearing both menace and tranquillity at the same time.
“But that’s suicide, boss! Nobody hits the feds, sir.”
Harry took a second or two to take another bite of his donut. And then he smiled a double-glazed sugary grin.
“That’s the beauty of it, Fred. Nobody hits the feds. Don’t you think it’s about time somebody did?”
Four
The scene at the warehouse was a messy one. The attending officers found the victim, Bobby Sanders, dead from one clean gunshot wound to the head. They hadn’t found much in the way of shell casings or other forensics, but when they obtained a warrant to search the warehouse the victim seemed to be guarding when he was killed, they found a mother lode of drugs and hooch.
Detective Frank McKenzie and his partner, Santiago, arrived at the crime scene about the same time as the warehouse doors were being busted open. From the inside of their Ford Capri, McKenzie and Santiago got a front-row seat to the ballgame that was Boston’s biggest drug bust in ten years.
“Looks like we are in for a long one, San! We just hit the jackpot of all cases,” McKenzie said to his less than enthusiastic partner.
“I don’t know, man. Drugs busts like this can only mean one thing, my friend.”
Frank took his hand off the steering wheel and checked his eyes in the mirror. Bloodshot red from a few sleepless nights dreaming of a new case. That sort of thing kept him up. While most cops would savor the downtime, Frank needed the thrill of a hard case to crack.
“And what could a drug bust like this possibly mean, Mr. Silver Lining?” Frank asked.
“Drugs like these, operations like this one, can only mean bad people are behind it. And bad people means looking over our shoulders and making sure we don’t end up with a hole in the head like polo-mint over there,” Santiago said, getting out of the car and stretching his legs. The cold breeze made his fair hair flap in the wind. Frank just smiled at his partner and gave him a wink.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I signed up to police work for all the gunfights and car chases!”
Santiago nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders in defense.
“I guess I signed up for divorce papers and a beer gut!”
They both laughed, and Frank got out of the car second. They strolled over to the dead moonshiner on the floor and watched as the CSI guys finished up on the corpse.
“He took a clean bullet to the dome. We haven’t found any casings, but taking into account the size of the hole in this fella’s head, I’m guessing nothing more than a 9mm pistol here, gents,” a tall CSI guy said as he got up from the floor and brushed himself down. He was holding a flashlight and managed to shine it into Frank’s face. Frank didn’t say anything, but he didn’t appreciate blind spots showing up in his vision. For the next couple of minutes he had light smears in his eyes. All he could see were spots of hot light, shadowing over his normally clear vision. He rubbed them a few times, but it was useless.
“You okay, buddy?” the CSI guy asked.
“Yeah, just dandy,” Frank replied, giving his partner Santiago a wide look.
“Maybe you can tell us more about the killer?” Santiago asked.
“I thought that was your job!” the CSI guy replied, laughing a little, bobbing his flashlight some more.
“What angle did the killer come in from?” Frank asked.
The CSI guy pointed in the direction in which Frank was standing.
“From behind? But the vic has a bullet hole to the forehead. How can that be?”
“I reckon the killer knew the vic and got his attention somehow. He then blasted the fella — that’s why he landed on his side. He must have been turning around when he got shot. Hence the corkscrewed position of his corpse.”
Frank nodded his head. The smearing lights were finally gone. The little nagging voice in his head was beginning to stir. He didn’t like living with his unstable mental ailments, but he had pills for them. Pills that made his life that much more interesting - made his life that much more normal.
“Excuse me,” Frank said as he grabbed his pill container out of his inside jacket pocket and chucked a few into his mouth. He swallowed them dry and put th
e container back in his pocket. He saw how the CSI guy was looking at him, as if Frank were hiding something. Frank didn’t appreciate such an accusation. Even if the accusation was not even spoken, he could tell when somebody suspected something. After all, he was a homicide detective!
“They are antacids tablets,” Frank found himself saying in defense.
“Okay,” the CSI guy said. He then looked at Santiago, who was a little uncomfortable. San knew of Frank’s mild schizophrenia. He knew how much it bothered Frank. There had always been rumors of Frank’s aliments and the exact name of those ailments, but he was never one to rat his friend out and discuss his personal demons with the other cops. If anything, Santiago felt a certain defense mechanism toward gossip about Frank. He didn’t know why, but he cared deeply for Frank McKenzie, even when others didn’t.
“I get bad heartburn, too,” Santiago said out of the blue.
The CSI guy shook his head and pointed at the big warehouse doors behind him. They were covered in blood spatter and brain matter from Bobby Sanders.
“Go through there and talk to the DEA dude. He said he wanted to talk to the senior detectives on this one,” the CSI guy said, still pointing ominously at the wooden doors.
“Man, they got here fast,” Santiago said.
“Fucking vultures,” Frank replied.
“Don’t let them hear you say that!” the CSI guy interjected.
With that, all three men fell silent. The awkwardness of the crime scene was alleviated when Frank and San made their way into the warehouse. What they saw crushed all sorts of doubts as to whether the case was a big one or a small one. Because when they entered that warehouse, there was no doubt about just how big that case was going to be.