by Bruce Most
Jackson jerked his head up and said, “Hey, we had nuthin’ to do with his—”
“Shut up! Homicide would also love to be tipped off that Hector Diaz fenced for you and became a liability after he was hauled in for Benedict’s death. When homicide hears all that, they’ll take a hard look at you two for their murders.”
Zingano scowled. “We didn’t kill those guys. The dicks can’t prove anything.”
I looked steadily at him. “They can if they want to.”
The defiance drained out of his eyes and he fell silent.
“Now keep your traps shut, got it?” I said. “And don’t get any ideas of coming after me once you’re out on bail. If something happens to me, a packet of information goes to Lou Sheppard at the News.”
I picked up the pry bar and the sledgehammer and backed out of the room. “Stay away from the door, fellas. I got the guns, remember.”
“Stryker, you muthafucker,” said Jackson.
“Count to one hundred, fellas, before you get up,” I said. “If you come through the door you’ll be shot.”
I shut the door and closed the slide bolt. For good measure, I tipped one of the heavy gaming tables against the door. I could hear them rush the locked door.
“Back off!” I yelled. The room fell silent.
I carried their weapons and the pry bar and sledge through the outer gaming room door. I ran the slide bar back through the double eyelets, then wedged one end of the pry bar between the bolt and the base. I left their guns and sledgehammer by the door, climbed the stairs, and walked outside to the patrol car.
“Jesus, it’s about time you guys got outa there,” said Perdue, stepping out of the patrol car. He looked past me. “Where’re the others?”
“Detained,” I said. “Get in the car and get the hell outa here.”
“Wait a minute! We can’t just—”
“They’re gonna be detained a long time.”
Perdue glanced at the rear entrance of the restaurant and then at me. Fear flooded his face. “Ah, Christ, Joe, you didn’t—”
“Get us the fuck outa here, Moroni, before I change my mind and stick you down there with them!”
“Oh, my god!” he said, and we hauled ass.
We drove back to our precinct, Perdue shaking the entire way. “Find a pay phone,” I instructed.
“Joe, you ain’t gonna call—”
“Shut up, Moroni. I’m giving you a break you don’t deserve. You said you needed to protect me. Now I’m protecting your ass.”
We found a phone booth on Blake. Across the street was a small grocery store. I got out and crossed the street, glanced up and down the empty block, and kicked in the front door. I returned to our vehicle and told Perdue to report a break-in and request backup.
“What the hell are you—”
“It’s our alibi.”
While he called dispatch, I went to the phone booth and called Luther Bock at the home number he’d reluctantly given me.
“Yeah?” he answered with that resigned voice of a cop who knows he’s not going to get any more sleep for the night.
“The heist is in progress,” I said through my handkerchief. “At The Tuscany, on twenty-third. You know it?”
“Yeah. Who—”
“There are at least two cops cracking the safe. The owner runs a high-stakes gambling operation in the basement.”
“Stryker with ’em?”
“Dunno, except they’re cops. Just get your butt over there before they leave. You got people you trust?”
“Yeah.”
“Get ’em, but stay off the radio. It’s being monitored by lookouts.”
“You said you had evidence—”
“All the evidence you need is at The Tuscany.”
I made a second call to Lou Sheppard. Two calls, actually, before I tracked him down sleeping in an interrogation room at police headquarters.
“You want your dirty cop story, Sheppard, grab your camera and head for The Tuscany,” I said through my disguised voice. “Two dirty cops are locked in the basement. They busted into the safe.”
“Who the hell is this?”
“You move fast enough you’ll get there before Bock gets his pants on.”
Normally I wouldn’t need to call Lou to alert him to a crime in progress. The guy slept with a police scanner under his pillow. But I’d instructed Bock to stay off the radio. And I wanted to ensure that Lou got there in time to take pictures of Zingano and Jackson being hauled out of the building in cuffs. With their pictures on the front page, there would be no way the department could bury this one.
“Joe? Is that you?” asked Sheppard.
“Don’t tell any of the cops at headquarters where you’re going or why. Somebody might bust them out before you get there.”
“Who are the guys at the—”
I hung up and returned to the patrol car. Perdue’s forehead sank against the steering wheel. “Jesus, what the hell have you done, Joe? Dominic will kill me,” he moaned. “He’ll kill both of us.”
“Not if you listen to what I tell you to do.”
A siren wailed in the distance. We got out of the car and Perdue stared at me over the hood. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
And because I’m trying to save my ass.
“Dominic will make you wish like hell you hadn’t. He’s got a lot of power and—”
“Shut up, friend. You talk too damn much. You never can hear yourself think.”
Chapter 31
Lou Sheppard’s photograph of Dominic Zingano and Wes Jackson being marched out of The Tuscany in handcuffs sprawled across the tabloid front page of the Rocky. Below the picture, a headline screamed Cops Caught in Burglary and a subhead whispered Tip of the Iceberg?
Jackson walked with his head down, his cuffed hands shielding his face. Big Z snarled at the camera while Detective Luther Bock led him by the arm, his mouth twisted in a frown. Most readers probably assumed the frown reflected the detective’s disillusionment that fellow cops would stoop so low into criminal activity.
His frown, I suspected, was because he wasn’t leading me.
The Rocky ran three more pictures inside. One showed the open safe in The Tuscany’s basement, with the two canvas bags and the electric saw in the foreground. Another showed the gambling den. The last photo showed Zingano being booked into city jail.
I had to smile at that one. I’d taken two bad guys off the streets. Burglars for sure, and maybe Benedict’s killers. Yet as much as I detested them, I found it disheartening to see the pictures and the headlines. I’d done what I needed to do, what was right. But the sight of common criminals in blue uniforms made me hang my head in shame.
Even with my conflicted emotions, however, I had bigger worries. There remained the risk the two cops—particularly Jackson who operated at a near constant boil—would ignore my warning and try to exact revenge. Zingano already proved he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, despite my orders.
Sheppard quoted him claiming their arrests were a “bum rap instigated to destroy the police union.” He swore he and Jackson were checking on assignments involving off-duty cops working for Zingano Security when they spotted a burglary in progress at The Tuscany. The thieves turned the tables on them and locked them in the room.
Though to his credit, the union boss made no comment as to the identity of the “real burglars,” and he didn’t drop my name or Perdue’s. He offered no explanation for why the thieves left behind thirty-nine grand in cash along with their burglary tools, why the two cops were in uniform when they weren’t on duty, or why their personal cars were parked miles away at union hall.
Sheppard was no doubt gloating at his scoop. He’d been the only reporter or photographer at the scene. The Denver Post was caught flat-footed, a coup that always delighted Lou. But he probably suspected the tip came from me, and sooner or later he would come knocking on my door with uncomfortable questions.
The phone rang and I set down the paper. It was Paula. She’d heard the news and wondered if it was finally safe for her and Olivia to return home. “Did one of those men admit to threatening us?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They were just arrested.”
“It must be one of them, right? Who else would it be?”
As excited as I was at the prospect of my family returning, I remained hesitant. Yes, Zingano or Jackson may well have made the threatening call. Zingano had denied it to my face, but that meant little. Yet their going along with my burglary plan still gave me pause on that count.
I couldn’t rule out a random cop like Decker, or one of Benedict’s “we.” Yet if the caller was another cop, there no longer would be a reason to carry out his threat. With the arrests, the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. My silence would be irrelevant. Still, I hesitated. Another potential caller, not connected to the department, was tickling the back of my mind.
“Olivia really misses you,” Paula said, leaving out that she missed me too.
“I miss you both.” I closed my eyes and paused. “But let’s wait just a little longer.”
“Why?”
“To be on the safe side until investigators talk to them more extensively. I’ll see if Detective Bock can wring it out of them.”
A long silence hung on the other end of the phone. Finally, “Then Olivia and I have to move. I can’t impose on Alice anymore.”
My heart leaped into my throat. “Where will you go?”
“For now, a motel. But not for long.”
I could hear Nebraska in her voice.
Another long silence. Finally, she said, “How did you know, Joe?”
“Know what?”
“You said at the park the other day that something would happen soon that would resolve everything. You wouldn’t tell me what it was. Is it the burglary?”
“We’ll know soon.”
“They’ll kill us,” Moroni Perdue moaned in the patrol car later that day. “They’ll hunt us down and torture us and cut us up in little pieces and—”
“Did they do that to Benedict?”
Perdue jerked his head toward me. “Greene? Why would they kill him? He didn’t betray them. Not like you did. Like they think I did. Jesus, what were you thinking?” He moaned again.
“You said Wes Jackson thought they needed to do something about Benedict after he and Zingano had a falling out.”
“Not kill him!”
“Benedict was a cop with a conscience, regardless of what he did for you guys,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I believed that. “When he quit, he became a liability. You get rid of liabilities.”
Perdue shook his head in long painful sweeps. “Dominic . . . Dominic wouldn’t have done that. Not kill him. He’s been on edge ever since Benedict was murdered. We all have. None of us wanted a murdered cop bringing attention to us.”
Maybe, I thought as I lit a cig, though a live Benedict also risked bringing attention. Still, it struck me that something was wrong with the scenario of Zingano as killer. For one thing, if he or Jackson murdered Benedict, why ask me that night about the radio in the alley? Why bring up the idea of dirty-cop burglary at all? Moreover, Benedict purposefully went to the pawnshop that night. He wasn’t surprised to find the door jimmied open. He’d expected someone to be inside, someone he trusted. He would never have entered if he thought Zingano or Jackson was waiting inside to kill him. He wouldn’t have casually walked out with a radio and then walked back in.
Perdue lit a cig with shaky hands and blew smoke out the window. He stared into the bleakness of Curtis Park, empty except for two bums sleeping in the grass. “You shoulda let me go down with them, Joe. I’d be better off in jail than I am here.”
“If Zingano comes after anyone, friend, he’ll come after me, not you. I told him you knew nothing about my double cross.”
Perdue turned toward me. “Why? Why protect me?”
I blew a stream of smoke out my window. “Sometimes I don’t know why. You deserved to get caught with them. Jesus, burglarizing old ladies. Spying on me.”
“Joe, I—”
“But I owe you, too. You watched my back in the midst of all that Rawlins madness. You put your life and career on the line for me. And to be honest, I blame myself for starting you down this path of corruption. The petty bribes I pushed you to take when you were a rookie. So you get this break. One time. We’re even now.”
“Thanks, Joe. I—”
“Shut up.”
Perdue sulked and smoked through his cigarette.
I flicked my cig out the window and said, “I got a plan to keep Big Z off our backs.”
“What?” he said, hope in his voice.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
“I hope you’re right. If you don’t, we’re dead.”
Chapter 32
Lou Sheppard was waiting at the district station when I finished Monday roll call.
“Christ, Lou, I told you to never meet me here,” I said as I yanked him aside. “Not in front of other cops. They already think I’m your stoolie. Now after Zingano’s arrest you do this?”
“You won’t answer your phone.”
He was right about that. “I can’t talk right now. I’m on duty.” I headed for my vehicle.
Sheppard followed. “Come on, Joe. The police department’s trying to bury this story. You know as well as I do there are more dirty cops than these two.”
He was cranking out stories daily in the Rocky, clearly pushing to broaden the burglars in blue theme beyond Zingano and Jackson. He cited his previous piece alleging multiple crimes committed by Denver-area cops. He quoted a city councilman demanding a grand jury investigation. He tried provoking the department with a piece on the union’s conflicts with department management, playing up the union boss’s insistence that his arrest was a frame-up designed to destroy the union. The department refused to take the bait. Police Chief Christopher Hamilton proclaimed that two corrupt cops did not make a scandal.
“Denver has one of the finest police departments in the nation,” Hamilton asserted in one of Lou’s stories. “However, within any group of 750 employees it is inevitable a bad apple or two exists. We are deeply saddened and disappointed at the reprehensible behavior of two of our own, especially in light of the fact they are officers in the police union. However, despite previous inflammatory news reports suggesting widespread corruption within the Denver Police Department, nothing at this point indicates that this burglary is anything other than an isolated incident involving the two suspects.”
I stopped at the edge of the car pool. “You can’t follow me in here, Lou. It’s off limits.”
He scoffed. “Nothing’s off limits to me around here.” He grew serious. “That was you who called me the other night and tipped me off, wasn’t it?”
“You’re hearing voices, Lou.”
“Bock said he got the same muffled anonymous call that night. Plus one in advance of the burglary. The caller claimed to be a ‘good citizen.’”
“We can always use good citizens.”
Sheppard shook his head. “What good citizen risks his neck locking two crooked, armed cops down in The Tuscany basement? Zingano and Jackson sure as shit didn’t lock themselves in there. Which begs a further question of how this good citizen came to know in advance they were pulling the job and just tip off the cops ahead of time.”
“Why don’t you be grateful you got the tip you did, Lou. Helluva coup being there for the arrests. Front-page spread.”
“There are rumors of a third dark rider involved, Joe. Know anything about that?”
“Still trading in rumors?”
“Somebody drove thos
e two and their burglary tools to the restaurant, and it wasn’t a cabbie. Which means at least one other dirty cop was in on it.”
“Couldn’t have been a very dirty cop if he locked the two of them inside with the money.”
Sheppard stared hard at me. “Okay, let’s say our third dirty cop was really our ‘good citizen’ looking to put away bad cops. Somebody with a hard-on for these two. For reasons I’m not clear about.”
I shrugged. “Talk to Zingano.”
“They’ve quit talking. I know clam shells that talk more.”
That was good. For the moment, Jackson and the union boss was heeding my instructions. Earlier in the day, they’d gone through arraignment, where both pled not guilty and Zingano ranted again that it was an frame-up orchestrated by the police department, until the judge told him to shut his trap. Both made bail and were cut loose.
“I gotta go,” I said.
Lou glanced around. “By the way, where’s your partner?”
“He called in sick.”
Convenient, I thought as I checked out a prowl car. I’d be patrolling alone tonight. Sgt. Hawkins had said no one was available to ride with me. I searched his face, looking for signs Zingano arranged this to set me up. Hawkins didn’t give away anything, but nonetheless, I planned to be extra alert.
My shift proved uneventful: A bar fight, a stolen bicycle, an old-timer complaining that his neighbor in the apartment next to him was making too much noise. I’d been there before. He and his neighbor, another old-timer, had been waging war between their apartments for a quarter century. You’d think one of them would have the sense to move or kill his neighbor, but they seemed to relish the battle.
I enjoyed patrolling alone, despite its risks. No droning on by Perdue. Time to ponder my next move. An idea began to form. Better to confront Zingano on my terms, rather than wait around to be ambushed.