Chasers (6 page)

“You got the collar and a letter from borough command, no doubt, for a bust that size,” the beefy young cop said. “What’d the dog get from all that action?”

“Grilled skirt steak and a chew toy,” Ramoni said, leaning down and giving Buttercup a soft pat on the head. “And she was as happy as a pig in slop to get it, especially since skirt steak is her favorite meal on the whole planet.”

“Other than maybe a drug dealer’s thigh,” the bartender said with a full nicotine laugh.

The tall man’s heavy steps brought Buttercup to full attention, her head still resting against the tenement wall, her eyes staring down at the dark green cement floor, following the shadow as it made its way toward the door of apartment 4F. Steve Ramoni lowered himself to the floor, eye level with Buttercup. He gave a quick glance down the hall, spotted the dealer, decked out in tight jeans and a red shirt loud enough to belt out a tune. He had a .9 millimeter handgun in each hand and a gold shield hanging on a chain around his neck. He glanced across at Buttercup, gave her a soft nudge with his shoulder, and threw her a wide smile. The dog tilted her head, leaned it over, and licked the right side of his face.

“Just a few seconds more,” Ramoni whispered to Buttercup. “Soon as that door swings open, you move and go. Me and Frankie will be right behind. And remember, no bark—just bite.”

Ramoni looked away and heard the lock snaps and the chains being unleashed from the inside of apartment 4F. He saw the tall man tense, resting his hand against his lower spine, feeling for the handle grip on a.357 revolver. He heard the cheap wood door creak and saw a thin shaft of light slip out of the opening, the stale odor of low-end grass seeping through. He looked at Buttercup and nodded. The bullmastiff rose to her feet, turned the tight corner, and charged down the narrow hallway.

A cop primed to nail another bust.

9

Boomer was on his third lap around the Central Park running track, enjoying the heat of the morning sun warm on his back and neck. He gazed out at the city’s landscape through a chain-link fence, ignoring the sharp pain shooting up and down his right leg like a pinball in a machine. It was part of a physical fitness ritual he had adhered to since the afternoon of his first day at the Police Academy. That morning, the young cadets were given a speech by a silver-haired retired cop with tree-trunk biceps and a chest that looked as if it were chiseled from stone. His name was Vince Dowd, and even Boomer, with his inexperienced ears, was quick to understand that he was in the presence of a department legend, a gold-shield homicide detective with more than twenty years of active service and enough medals and commendations to fill a U-Haul. Dowd spoke in a clear voice, his body language matching the power of his words. He gave a talk that filled Boomer simultaneously with passion and dread, as he took in a speech that was cupboard-crammed with the dangers faced by an unprepared cop on the streets. One of the pure essentials preached by Detective Dowd was always to be prepared for any given situation at any given time. That meant physically as well as mentally. “An out-of-shape cop might as well stay home and pop a cold beer,” Boomer recalled Dowd telling them. “Save the medical examiner and the body-bag boys time and trouble, because if he hits the streets like that he’ll be found dead on those streets. You go out there looking like you’re not ready for a tussle, then count on being taken out. That’s the clear and simple of it. You don’t care, they will take the dare.”

Boomer dedicated himself to cop work.

He maintained a physical workout routine that rivaled that of a professional athlete. In addition to the daily five-mile rain-snow-or-shine runs, he lifted weights four days a week; took boxing and martial-arts classes; meditated and practiced yoga; and ate only one meal a day (chicken, fish, or pasta in a plain red sauce, with a vegetable side dish). When it came to the mental part of the job, Boomer’s stance was even more aggressive. He read all the books dealing with the history and intricacies of organized crime, from as-told-to clip-and-paste bios to sociological studies and page-turner novels. He studied weapons and tactics, spending hours in three-credit night classes at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice or at mind-numbing Police Department–sponsored weekend seminars. He watched documentaries that dealt with police work and even took lessons from the shoot-’em-ups he paid to see in movie theaters, figuring he could learn much about what not to do and maybe even pick up a few usable tips on the edgy attitude that was sure to come his way from the street skells he would be going against face-to-face.

“Keep it in the back of your mind and never lose it,” Detective Dowd told Boomer late one night as the two sat in a back booth of an empty downtown diner, each drinking more than his fair share of bad coffee. “Nine out of ten, hands to the ground, a wanna-be gangster picks up his street tics from what he’s seen either on TV or in the movies. The lingo, the body bops, the tough hood-in-the-hood stance all come out of some movie you need to have seen. Give you an example.
The Godfather
hit theaters sometime in the early 1970s. Monster hit. Everybody from me and you to the corner pimp paid or swayed their way in to see it. Within a month of the movie earning money, there was a gang in Detroit and a second one in Brooklyn calling themselves ‘The Godfathers.’ Another gang, Hispanic crew up in the Bronx, tagged their group ‘Sonny’s Boys.’ They’re not rocket launchers, is all I’m trying to get across to you. They’re crooks. Beat them at their own game and you’ll always come out at the long end of the stick.”

Boomer made it his business to know his business.

He learned to separate the neighborhood players both by routine and skill sets. The drug business didn’t begin its day until late afternoon, when the runners and dealers took to the streets, which left the morning free to the numbers action, car boosters looking for a quick sale, and payback send-offs. Most of the organized mob crews kept to a standard schedule. The Italians did their daily business inside social clubs, with the windows either heavily shaded or painted black. On cool spring or fall days, they preferred to sit outside, gathered around small tables large enough to hold espresso cups and sambuca bottles. The Hispanic gangs mingled at the local bodegas, while black outfits spread their action inside the neon lights of after-hours night spots, booming background music blasting out any attempt at a wiretap. In those early years, as Boomer rose up the PD ranks—from beat patrol in Harlem to plains-clothes work in Brooklyn and undercover stings in Queens, until he hit the main event and was pinned with a detective’s tin, rotating between homicide and narcotics—it seemed a simple task to decipher good from bad. The arrival of crack cocaine, coupled with the emergence of street gangs and the influx of ruthless gangsters from Colombia and Russia, forced the criminal leagues to toss out the rule books and ply their trade free of any of the time-honored traditions. What had once been so clear and organized that an aggressive cop could follow ongoing criminal activity with a flow chart was now a chaotic crime scene, and that left the terrain wide open for new crews to enter the fray and dominate the street action, amassing fortunes in less time than it took to buy a Manhattan co-op. As the dollars mounted, so did the dead bodies, leaving behind ravaged and ruined families and a city that would never again be the same. The Wild West had arrived in New York, and it gave no indication of leaving anytime soon.

Boomer slowed his run to a fast walk, body washed down in sweat, aches and pains slapping at his legs and lungs, his body rebelling somewhat against a daily habit it was no longer fully equipped to handle. He leaned against a rusty fence, breathing heavy and gazing up at a cloudless sky.

“I keep telling you the treadmill would be a better idea.” Dead-Eye was standing next to him, two cold protein shakes in his hands, his sweatshirt drenched through with sweat. “You go at your own pace and stop when you feel the need. Keep going at it this way, one day or the next you’re bound to fall flat.”

“Remember Augie Petrocelli? That undercover working out of the two-eight?” Boomer asked, taking one of the shakes from Dead-Eye. “Took to a street chase like he was in the middle of a gold-medal run?”

Dead-Eye sipped his drink and nodded. “Worked with him on a few jobs back when I was on the Black Liberation Task Force. Good cop, even better when there was some heat coming his way. What about him?”

“He retired about five, maybe six years ago,” Boomer said. “Took a large chunk of his savings and borrowed against his pension and invested in a gym upstate, less than a mile from his house.”

“I can just tell this is not going to be a happily-ever-after tale,” Dead-Eye said.

“Bet your ass it’s not,” Boomer said, finishing off the protein shake with one long swallow. “In less than a year’s time, he was flat broke—on the balls of his ass, fighting three court cases, and there was a lien on his pension. All because of that damn gym he threw his money at.”

“And this has what to do with you going into one and using a treadmill?” Dead-Eye asked.

“The reason Augie found himself in such a hole is that one of the regulars in the gym sued his ass,” Boomer said. “Did a scream-and-shout that his right leg was all fucked-up because the treadmills in the place weren’t up to standards. Got himself one of those let-my-heart-bleed-for-you outfits to argue his case and a bent-eared judge to believe it, and there you have the sad tale.”

“That the case, feel free to scratch it off your to-do list,” Dead-Eye said. “It was only a throw-out idea on my part, nothing more.”

Boomer and Dead-Eye moved off the running track and slow-walked up a steep hill, the shade from the surrounding trees cooling the sweat on their backs and necks. They were both still on the safe side of forty, but they moved with the gait and groans of older men. Two ex-cops who had suffered too many wounds in too short a period of time. Boomer cleared the hill and sat on a park bench facing the touch-the-cloud coops that lined Central Park West, his hands resting flat on his legs. Dead-Eye stood, stretching out the kinks in his lower back, and looked down at his friend. “Don’t grow shy on me now, Boom,” he said with a hint of a smile.

Boomer returned the smile and leaned against the wooden slats of the bench. “I’m going to make a play against the restaurant gunners, soon as I pin down who they are and who pays them,” he said, the words, as always, spoken with a calm and resolute confidence. “And the rest of their crews and the bosses who put in their orders. Every single one of them. They go down until I go down.”

“Ballpark me a number,” Dead-Eye said. “How many we talking about here? Total?”

“I haven’t put the final layout together yet,” Boomer said. “But from what I’ve been able to pick up so far, if we look the South Americans’ way, then we’re staring at three full crews, about one to one hundred and fifty members in each, every one with tons of washed cash and warehouses stashed with ammo. If it’s the Russians, then double the numbers all around.”

“How many on your side of the table?” Dead-Eye asked, already knowing the answer—and knowing that it would have little impact on Boomer’s decision. Boomer had turned his back on reason and was about to run full steam now into a battle that seemed less a full-scale war than a final stand. “And let’s not count your ass for the moment.”

“I’m not asking you in on this, Dead-Eye,” Boomer said with a slow shake of his head. “I can’t. Not again, and not this time. You got a wife who loves it when you walk through your front door, and a kid that wants you at all his graduations. If I had either one of those, I might even take a step back from all this myself.”

“Let’s save that you-got-too-much-to-live-for bullshit for when we’re both so fuckin’ old we can’t remember our names,” Dead-Eye said, stepping in closer to Boomer. “And if dying is the endgame of this plan you can do it a lot faster and a lot less painfully than by going up against an army of cocaine cowboys. And you have to know, sure as I’m standing here, that there is zero chance of me watching this war from behind a glass door.”

“We got lucky the last time, there’s no doubt,” Boomer said. “And we’ve been lucky our entire run, both on the job and off, wounds and all. But luck can turn on you with a vengeance, leave you standing with an empty gun and your back flat against a wall. And even if it doesn’t break, we still don’t stand much of a chance against any one of these crews. I don’t know how this will all play out or how much of a dent we’ll be able to put into this band of fuckers before it’s our turn to fall, but I don’t see us riding off into the sunset. Not on this one. You need to give that some serious thought before you jump in with me, that’s all I ask.”

“Then why do it at all?” Dead-Eye asked, a sad weight to his words. “On the one hand, it won’t ease the pain of losing somebody who owned your heart. On the other, we’re looking across at drug dealers, living inside a two-bullet-deductible world. They’re on short time. These crews will all taste the drop, Boom, and soon. It just won’t be our bullets that take them down.”

“It’s what we do, Dead-Eye,” Boomer said. He stood up, and the two men started a slow walk up a path that would lead them out of the park. “And it’s who we are. And deep down, whether we cop to it or not, it’s all we’ve ever lived for. It’s what keeps us alive. At least it does me.”

They walked in a comfortable silence for several minutes, the grinding noise of a big city coming to life in the distance. They watched a young couple holding hands and walking a puppy in the tall grass and a middle-aged rummy stretching out near a bench, gearing up to begin yet another day. A man in jogging tights and a heavy sweatshirt brushed past them, making a beeline for the track and a long morning run.

“You have any sort of plan in mind?” Dead-Eye asked as they stepped out of the shade of the park and into the pedestrian traffic of Central Park West. “Or you just counting on pulling a Helen Keller and walking into this blind?”

Boomer looked at Dead-Eye and smiled. “I
always
have a plan,” he said. “And this is one you’re going to love. It’s a real killer.”