Joel Goldman - Shakedown

“You’ll always have to be careful,” I told her. “Staying straight and sober is like working without a net.”

“Except I’ve got a net. You,” she said, and kissed my cheek.

Wendy more or less lived alone, the less being Colby Hudson, one of the agents on my squad. I wasn’t surprised when she got involved with him. Kids repeat more of their parents’ mistakes than they avoid, sometimes seeking them out. It was enough to make me shake.

Five seconds and the latest shaking stopped. I timed it. No one noticed. No one said “what the hell was that”? Ben Yates didn’t get out of his warm bed in the middle of the thunderstorm to shove a claim for disability in front of me, telling me where to sign and saying that he was sorry I missed my full pension by a lousy five years.

I checked my computer monitor. The Winston brothers hadn’t noticed, either. DeMarcus Winston was taking inventory, bags of crack spread out on the card table Marcellus used as a desk. A TV so old it had a rabbit-ears antenna sat in one corner, an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer keeping Rondell from helping his brother.

Using the arrow keys on the computer, I zoomed out, adjusting the focus on the camera. I picked up the image from the TV and the trail of smoke rising from the joint Rondell held between his lips.

The storm intensified, playing hell with the transmission, filling the audio with static when an explosion of thunder and lightning rocked the neighborhood, causing the lights to?icker on and off in the crack house. When the lights came back on, Rondell was staring at himself on the TV screen where Buffy had been a moment before. The electrically charged air had scrambled the signal from the camera, causing the TV to pick it up as a live broadcast.

Rondell stubbed out his joint, stepped closer to the TV, and motioned DeMarcus to join him. I adjusted the camera to give me a wide view of them as they watched themselves on the TV, waving like kids playing a game in a mirror, watching as they waved back at themselves, their faces scrunched, mystified. My face was as twisted as my gut. They’d lost a rerun. I was about to lose a case.

I had enough evidence to nail Marcellus, but I didn’t have what I really wanted-the identity of his supplier and a line on his money. Watching the Winston brothers watch themselves, I realized that Marcellus would be in the wind the instant he discovered the camera. I hated to shut the operation down, but I had no choice. Maybe I could persuade Marcellus to roll over.

I had a SWAT team on standby. I picked up my cell phone to call Troy Clark, the team leader, and send them in when Rondell threw a blanket over the television, his voice now sharp and clear.

“Ain’t no motherfuckin’ vampire killer gonna spy on us.”

“Which one of you the vampire?” Marcellus asked, stepping into the picture.

I wasn’t breathing, but I wasn’t shaking. I punched Troy’s speed dial.

DeMarcus explained, pointing to the television. “We on the box. Rondell covered it up so’s nobody can see what we doin.”

Troy answered on the first ring. “You aren’t going to believe this,” I told him.

Marcellus pulled the blanket off the television, jostling the rabbit-ears antenna enough to restore Buffy just as the credits rolled.

“Yo, dogs,” Marcellus said, “just count the shit; don’t be smokin’ it, too.”

I started breathing and shaking. Troy interrupted both.

“Believe what, Jack?”

“Nothing,” I managed, the shakes adding a quick stutter to my voice. “Call you later.”

I hung up the phone as the lights in the house went out again. There was no thunder or lightning this time, just Marcellus shouting “what the fuck?” the answer coming in a burst of gunfire. I called Troy back as I ran for my car, the sounds of additional gunfire echoing behind me.

Latrell found the utility box on the side of Marcellus’s house,?ipped the switch cutting off the electricity, and vaulted the porch rail, the tired wooden planks sagging under his weight. The gun in one hand, he yanked open the front door. He was invisible in the dark, though he could easily see inside the house, the goggles painting everyone in a green haze. The Winston brothers, shaking the television like it was a vending machine that had eaten their quarters, ignored him; Marcellus shouted “what the fuck?” like it mattered.

Latrell assumed the firing position, just as he did on the range. Marcellus and the Winston brothers were nothing more than targets hanging from a wire. He pulled the trigger again and again and again, the inside of the house glowing with gunfire.

He saw the bodies where they’d fallen, Marcellus on his back in the middle of the room, the Winston brothers piled against one another in the corner next to the television. Latrell knelt on the?oor, collecting his spent shells, sliding them into his pocket.

He cocked his head at the sound of the whimpering child upstairs suddenly gone silent, imagining Jalise covering his mouth with her hand. Though she had always left Latrell alone and the boy had never even chased a ball into his yard, Marcellus had ruined them. If he let them live, Jalise would end up like his momma, her boy growing up like Latrell. That would be wrong. Things had to be put right.

Latrell rose, slipping on the bloody?oor, catching himself against the stair rail. He took the steps one at a time. There was no need to hurry. It was happening exactly as he imagined it would. He found them hiding in a closet.

Afterward, he went out the back door, standing on the concrete patio, the rain in his eyes. Blinking, he looked down at his feet. His galoshes were splattered with blood, the coppery smell all over him. He peeled them off, turned them inside out, stuffing one on each hip inside his belt.

Latrell held his hands up, squinting. They were steady. He put one hand on his chest, his heart barely registering.

All he wanted to do was go home, until he saw Oleta Phillips standing beneath a tree on the side of Marcellus’s backyard, staring at him through the driving rain. The tree’s limbs drooped in surrender to the summer’s drought, yellowed leaves scattered around the trunk. Her thin dress was soaked and matted against her bony frame, arms hanging at her sides, one hand clutching a wad of cash.

He didn’t know whether she’d seen him go inside Marcellus’s house, but she’d seen him come out and that was all that mattered. She didn’t move as he approached her.

“Thank you,” she said.

Latrell didn’t know what to say. He studied Oleta’s face, seeing her, then his mother, then Jalise, then all of them. He raised his hands to her throat, tightening his grip, feeling the bones in her neck crumble, twenty-dollar bills dropping from her hand, mixing with the dead leaves.

Police cars, lights?ashing, had formed a barricade at each end of Marcellus’s block by the time I arrived. Overhead, a helicopter swept the neighborhood with a spotlight. The SWAT team had taken up position on either side of the crack house. I?ashed my badge at a KCK police sergeant who let me through the line. Every house except Marcellus’s was lit up, people watching from covered porches, some standing in the rain. Troy Clark emerged from the shadows on one side of the house.

“What do we got?” I asked him.

Troy had grown up in Quindaro and?irted with gangs until his grandmother set him straight, telling him he was too strong and too smart to die young for some fool weaker and dumber than he was. In his late thirties, pushing six feet and chiseled, he was tough, stubborn, and ambitious, a combination that could make you dead or make you famous.

Troy wasn’t afraid of death, and he didn’t care about being famous. What he cared about was my job, the SAC’s job, and the director’s job, all of which he made clear he intended to have before he was through. He didn’t hesitate to second-guess me and was right more often than I cared to admit. I didn’t like him, but I respected him even though his stubborn streak occasionally blossomed into an outbreak of hysterical blindness.