The Big Dive

by Bruce Most

  Shit! Bock was getting to be a damn pest. First Ellen Greene, now Sheppard. I could steer Ellen away from the truth but Sheppard would be much more difficult.

  “Come on, Lou, you know Bock’s had it in for me ever since the Rawlins case. All of homicide has. He’s trying to spread rumors, that’s all. He wasn’t digging for information on me. He was putting a bug in your ear to harass me. Dig it out and throw it away before it lodges in that half-ass brain of yours. I’m not a dark rider, and Bock is an prick.”

  I slammed down the phone. I wasn’t optimistic Lou would let it go.

  I rolled down my driver’s window as I sat watching Zingano’s office. I desperately needed a cigarette but didn’t dare light one from fear he’d spot me. A delivery truck whooshed by and diesel fumes filled my nostrils. Off in the distance whined the siren of an ambulance, probably headed for Denver General. Bored and restless, I was ready to cash it in for another night of stakeout and head back to my empty house when a prowl car with a single uniform behind the wheel pulled into the alley along the north side of the building. It stopped by the side entrance and the driver got out and opened the trunk. Moments later, three shadowy figures hurried out of the building. One I easily identified: Big Z in his trademark cowboy hat. The second resembled Wes Jackson. Both wore civilian clothes. The third shadow was another uniformed cop like the driver. I could tell by the silhouette. He was shorter than Jackson but the alley was too dim to identify him. Probably the elusive Alan Haynes, the third co-owner of the Jet X Laundromats.

  Zingano dropped a large, heavy canvas bag with a thunk into the trunk of the patrol car. The vehicle backed out of the alley onto Santa Fe and headed north with Zingano in the front passenger seat and Jackson and Haynes in the back.

  Following them proved tricky. I couldn’t stick too close. They likely were on their guard. Fortunately, enough late night bar traffic allowed me to keep cars between us, and it was easy to track a vehicle as obvious as a patrol car with a fat red dome light. It helped that they stuck to the main drags, traveling first on Santa Fe and then on Stout, heading downtown.

  At 25th, they turned left. The streets were nearly deserted of traffic here, forcing me to hang back. Four blocks later, they turned right onto Lawrence. When I reached Lawrence, I gambled and drove straight through the intersection on 25th, just in case they’d pulled over to check for tails.

  As I passed, I glimpsed Zingano and Jackson getting out of the patrol car in front of a three-story building a third of the block up Lawrence.

  Once out of their view, I eased to the curb, scrambled from the car, and doubled back on foot until I could peer around the corner of a jewelry store. The uniform remained in the driver’s seat and Haynes in the back, while Zingano and Jackson opened the trunk. The street was so quiet I could hear the driver monitoring dispatch chatter over the car radio. Zingano lifted out the heavy canvas bag and lugged it to the front of a used clothing store, Blair Secondhand. While Jackson stood guard, Big Z took a pry bar out of the bag and began to jimmy open the front door.

  The sonofabitches were burglarizing a store in my own precinct! Mere blocks from the pawnshop where Benedict was murdered. Right out on the street with no fear.

  I knew the store. Two sisters had owned it for years. Pearl Blair died four years ago of a ruptured appendix. Her younger sister, Alma, who smelled like my grandmother used to smell, now ran the store, though not with the keen business sense of her departed sister. Not a lucrative store to hit, except for one thing: Alma Blair kept her life savings in a safe in the back room. She’d confided this to me once and I’d tried to persuade her to move her money to a bank. Hell, one was right up the street. To no avail. Alma had mistrusted banks since the Great Depression.

  Now she was going to lose it all to dirty cops.

  Zingano jimmied the door open in seconds. He scooped up the bag and he and Jackson slipped inside, closing the door behind them.

  The prowl car pulled away. I figured Zingano and Jackson would be inside for a while. Alma had bought herself a solid safe and it would take them a bit to crack it open. I couldn’t risk the patrol car cruising by me while I stood on 25th observing the store, so I rushed back to my car. I drove around the block, came down Lawrence, and pulled into a small parking lot wedged between two buildings fifty yards up and across the street from the clothing store. I stuffed my Studebaker between the only two cars in the lot, a dinged-up Pontiac and a ten-year-old Nash that belonged to a janitor who cleaned a nearby office building until 3 a.m.

  From the tiny lot, I had a good view of the front of Blair’s and the street. My watch read 12:48. They’d been inside eight minutes. The patrol car rolled by, without Haynes. Probably dropped him off in the alley behind the store as a lookout. I ducked behind the parked cars until the cop passed. I still couldn’t get a good look at him.

  My hand dropped to my gun. Disgust boiled up in me. Nothing but common thieves with a badge!

  For a moment, I wrestled with the notion of racing across the street, weapon drawn, and pulling down on the bastards while they were inside breaking into Blair’s safe. Sure, there was the risk of the passing patrol car and the other man I figured was on guard close by. But I could do it. I could pull it off.

  Then I knew just as quickly that I wouldn’t. As much as I wanted their crooked asses off the street, I wasn’t going to do a damn thing to stop them. Not tonight. I needed to learn what role they may have played in Benedict’s murder, and I couldn’t do that with them sitting in jail. I needed to con my way into their crew and gather evidence before I put them away.

  My hand pulled away from my gun and I took in a deep breath to calm my nerves and my anger. I waited.

  12:57. A room light snapped on in the fourth floor of the office building next to the clothing store. Inside, the Negro janitor, Benny, was likely pushing his long-handled broom across the warped wood floors, humming a spiritual.

  Minutes later a tan Ford coupe with three noisy, drunk teenagers weaved up the street and disappeared around the corner of 26th.

  At 1:06, the cruiser slowly crawled by the front of the store. Wes Jackson stepped out just then, scanned the otherwise deserted street, and signaled to the driver to stop. He faded back into the building and seconds later he and Zingano came out dragging Alma Blair’s steel safe with a heavy strap. Sparks snapped as metal scraped against the concrete sidewalk to the rear of the vehicle.

  The driver bolted out of the cruiser. I recognized him in the streetlights: a seven-year veteran name of Patrick Burke, who worked a different precinct.

  “Christ, what are you guys doing?” he barked, his voice carrying in the cool night air.

  “Couldn’t peel it,” said Jackson. “Broke a saw blade. We’ll peel it back at the office.”

  “Quit jabbering and help us get the fucker into the trunk!” snapped Zingano.

  I watched dumbfounded, and with profound sadness, as the three cops wrestled the safe into the trunk of the cruiser. A year ago, I’d heard a story of another clothing store in town allegedly burglarized by cops. A common burglar busted into the place but fled empty-handed when a patrol car stopped. The uniforms called in the break-in, and within five minutes several prowl cars pulled up and officers began carting out merchandise. One uniform went through the racks and scooped up all the size 14 dresses for his wife.

  Word got to the chief the next day, and he ordered everything returned. No recriminations, no arrests, no questions asked. Just return the damn stuff. Late that night, car after car drove by to drop off piles of stolen clothes.

  The looting never made the papers, and the department buried it as it buried other things it didn’t want known. The chief and most of us uniforms treated the heist as one of those rare events, like winning the trifecta on three nags. If the story were true, I viewed it as a spontaneous act. Not one to be proud of, to be sure, but not one to fuss over, either. When there’s money lying on the table, even the honest can’t always resist snatching a little. Especially on o
ur pay.

  Watching Zingano and Jackson was different. These were cops going about their work as professional as the paperhangers, sandbaggers, jackrollers, stickup men, and dips pulling jolts at Cañon City. They were doing it arrogantly, with little fear of being caught. If a citizen called dispatch, and cops arrived, Zingano and Jackson would give some bullshit tale that they happened to be in the neighborhood and spotted the break-in. The burglar fled, leaving behind the burglary tools. Hell, who would suspect the head of the police union?

  And they’d done enough of these burglaries to buy themselves five fancy laundromats, nice homes, nice cars, and apparently plenty of money to squander on gambling.

  And Benedict Greene may well have been one of them.

  With the safe in the trunk, they tossed in their burglary tools and slammed the trunk shut. Only it wouldn’t shut.

  “Shit!” echoed Zingano’s voice. The safe was too big. After moments brainstorming, they tied the lid almost shut with the strap they’d used to drag the safe out of the store. They piled into the cruiser, which now sagged under the weight, and chugged up Lawrence. They turned the corner at 26th, presumably ducking down the back alley to pick up Haynes.

  I didn’t attempt to follow. I suspected where they were going.

  Ten minutes later, I pulled into my old spot on Santa Fe by union hall. I actually arrived ahead of them. The patrol car turned into the alley two minutes later. This time, instead of stopping by the alley door they’d exited earlier, they continued on and turned into an alley running behind the building and I lost sight of them.

  I hesitated, took a deep breath, exited my car, and sprinted across the street. I quietly eased down the alley until I could peek around the corner into the second alley. Halfway down, deep in shadows, sat the prowl car and the dim movement and grunts of four men struggling with the heavy safe. They muscled it into a saggy, single-car garage.

  Once they disappeared inside, I slithered my way along the alley, hugging the edges. I stopped inside a deep doorway fifteen yards from the garage, not daring to venture closer.

  Muffled laughter came from the garage, followed by the muted though distinct thwack of a sledgehammer repeatedly smashing against metal.

  I recalled reading a few weeks back that the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department recovered safes from two six-month-old unsolved Denver burglaries. The safes were sitting under twenty-five feet of water in an abandoned mine shaft twenty miles from Aspen. Would this safe soon rest at the bottom of a similar shaft?

  A few minutes later, a side door opened and the two uniformed men came out.

  “They’ll be another half an hour getting that sucker peeled,” said Burke. “That old lady’s got one fucking safe.”

  The other man chuckled uneasily. “It’s late, would you drop me off at home, Pat?” he said. “My wife won’t be happy.”

  I stifled a gasp at the sound of the voice.

  “No problem,” said Burke.

  The man opened the front passenger door, the weak interior light illuminating his face. I’d been so wrong about the second uniform, the one I guessed they’d left on guard behind the Blair store. He wasn’t Alan Haynes. He was a man I knew only too well.

  Moroni Perdue.

  “What’s eatin’ you, Joe?” asked Perdue as we cruised Arapahoe thirty minutes into our shift. “You ain’t said two words since we left the station.”

  “Nothin’. Tired, that’s all. Stick to your aliens.”

  “You do look tired,” he conceded.

  Yeah, you get that way when you’re up half the fucking night watching you and your fuckhead buddies knock over an old lady’s life savings. I didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night. Just sat in my kitchen getting smashed.

  My mood had darkened even more when Sgt. Hawkins reported the break-in at roll call. A hysterical Alma Blair called in the theft early that morning. Her life savings—gone. Tap your street sources, Hawkins admonished everyone. Find the assholes who did this.

  During our first coffee break, I kept stirring my coffee without drinking it, just as Benedict had the night he died.

  I couldn’t look Perdue in the face. I was too enraged. Enraged at his cruelty, at his betrayal of his uniform, at his betrayal of me.

  And enraged at myself, for I saw some of me in him.

  After I’d drunk several beers, I’d lain awake in my bedroom until dawn light creeped in around the edges of the heavy black shades designed to allow me to sleep after late shifts. My mind replayed the image of Perdue standing beside the prowl car outside the garage. The image of a common thief, a dark rider, a burglar in blue. No better than the fucking ball-breakers we arrested every day.

  Or maybe much worse. If Zingano or one of his crew killed Benedict to eliminate a potential rat, was Perdue an accessory?

  When the rookie and I partnered two years ago, I told Perdue he’d become a good cop if I stayed out of his way. I was tainted goods, he was not.

  He’d proved me wrong. Very wrong.

  It was my fault for starting him on the road to corruption. I was Perdue’s first partner after he came out of the Academy. I introduced him to his first juice, his first free dinner, his first cut-rate suit—like an uncle introducing his favorite nephew to his first woman. Small favors shop owners bestowed on us for keeping the peace and keeping them safe. No big deal. Fair trade between the vulnerable and their protectors. Supplemental pay, we church-poor cops called it.

  Perdue balked at first. He and Benedict coulda been choirboys together in the church of truly honest cops. But I persuaded him he’d be an outcast on the force if he didn’t take a little graft. Go along to get along. That’s what I learned as a rookie from my partner. Wisdom passed down from cop to cop, father to son, an unwritten code.

  But petty graft was one thing, breaking and entering and bustin’ safes was another. Robbing old ladies—that was an outright crime, a fucking felony!

  Perdue waved over the waitress and ordered another piece of lemon meringue pie displayed under a glass dome. You’d think after what he and his fellow burglars had committed, he wouldn’t have an appetite. She asked if I wanted anything and I mumbled no and kept stirring my coffee.

  I should have suspected Perdue was hooked up with Zingano. Looking back, little hints took on new meaning. Clues that made no sense or didn’t register at the time. Like the night I went to the police union meeting at our hall and observed a hushed exchange between Perdue and Zingano. The same night I’d observed the suspicious activity in the alley. Or when Perdue mentioned working for Morals before volunteering to partner with me to get back out on the street. Morals—where Zingano and Wes Jackson worked.

  Now I understood why Perdue came to my defense the night Decker and Marek ambushed me over Lou Sheppard’s “exposé.” Sure, Perdue was my partner and partners do that for each other. But he’d done more than that. He’d pushed back on the whole notion of dark riders, got in big Decker’s face to drop the talk. It wasn’t in defense of me, however, it was to protect his own ass and Zingano and the rest of their crew.

  But what angered me as much as anything was the realization that Moroni Perdue had not partnered with me because he wanted a change of scenery from Morals. Zingano had dispatched him as a spy.

  The final betrayal.

  Zingano, possibly with the complicity of Sgt. Hawkins, got Perdue assigned as my partner to learn what I knew or didn’t know about Benedict’s murder and his connections to Zingano’s crew, what occurred at the pawnshop that night, and to learn if I was poking around on my own as I did with the Seth Rawlins case. Perdue’s incessant questions about Benedict did not stem from being a motormouth asking insensitive questions. Zingano had orchestrated those questions.

  Everything I’d said or done in front of Perdue had been duly reported back to Zingano.

  Including my visit to Hector Diaz.

  We finished our coffee break and hit the road. Perdue didn’t bug me about my private life the rest of the evening, slipping inste
ad into one of his monologues on alien aircraft.

  I stifled my desire to smash him in the face, scream what the hell was he thinking? How the hell did he sleep at night?

  Now the question was, what the hell was I going to do?

  Chapter 25

  Saturday, after making sure I wasn’t being tailed, I met Paula and Olivia for lunch at Bobby’s, a sleek, shiny, brightly lit diner on Broadway whose exterior neon sign sputtered as if gasping its last breath. Bobby’s was our favorite diner, when we could afford to eat out, which was usually after I’d hit up some after-hours joint for a ten spot and felt like Daddy Warbucks. Paula and I would always order the blue-plate special and pretend we were sitting in the dining car of the California Zephyr.

  The three of us settled in a sticky green vinyl booth at the far end of the diner. Olivia sat next to me on a red booster seat and scribbled crayons on a paper placemat. The waitress, with the look of someone whose last tip came during the Hoover administration, pulled out a pencil buried deep in her thick hair and asked what she could get us folks. We ordered Cokes and the blue-plate special—chicken-fried steak. For Olivia, we ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, though Paula pointedly noted after the waitress left that Olivia had not been eating well since they’d left home.

  In the booth next to us, a vinegar-faced fat man flipped through the jukebox selector at the end of his booth. He dropped in a nickel and moments later Bing Crosby began singing A Marshmallow World over the drawl of the waitress barking out our order to the fry cook.

  I leaned my head over and snuggled against Olivia’s head until she giggled. Our Cokes arrived in big red plastic glasses and we sipped at them like any ordinary couple. I asked Paula how they were doing at her friend’s home. Okay, she said. I sensed her wanting to berate me again for putting the family in danger. But our daughter’s presence and the crowded diner prevented her. A chipped glass ashtray sat in the middle of the table between us. We both eyed it, wanting a smoke, but not with Olivia next to us.