William Landay - Mission Flats

‘We’ll tell them it was, whattayacallit, “heat of passion.”’

‘Artie, Andrew Lowery won’t give two shits about heat of passion. Neither will the jury. They’ll string us up. Anyway, it wasn’t heat of passion; we waited more than a week. Guess what? That’s called first-degree murder, my friend. That’s life without parole. You want to go to Walpole for life? Is that what you want? You got a wife, you got two kids. How you gonna go to Walpole for life?’

Trudell doesn’t answer.

‘You’ve got to pull yourself together, big man, you hear me? Pull your shit together. We didn’t murder anyone.’

‘I didn’t murder anyone,’ Trudell corrects him.

Gittens glares.

‘I was just standing there. You were the one with the gun.’

Gittens glares.

‘I’m just saying, Martin. I didn’t do anything.’

Gittens glares.

Trudell retreats again. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘Look, Artie, don’t talk like that. That’s the wrong way to think. We’ve got to stick together on this.’

No response.

‘Artie, just promise me you won’t do anything until you talk to me, alright? Can you give me your word on that? Can you promise me you won’t say anything to Franny or anyone else until we talk again? That’s all I ask. Can you give me your word on that?’

Trudell shakes his head no then shakes his head yes. ‘Yeah. I guess. But not forever, Martin, you hear me? This can’t go on forever. I can’t do it. I’m coming apart here.’

Gittens studies Trudell’s great elephantine head, then nods in sympathy. ‘Alright, big man. You just hang in there, alright? We’ll figure something out. Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Give me some time to figure something out.’

‘Did he come to you, Franny?’

‘Yeah, he came to me.’

‘And?’

‘He told me the whole thing, just like I’m telling you. Told me he was a murderer, and what should he do? I-’ Franny’s pudgy fingers worked his cheeks. ‘I wasn’t sure. I needed time to think about it. You don’t just roll out of bed and indict a cop for murder. I told Artie he did the right thing coming to me and all. But deep down I wasn’t sure he did the right thing. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any of it. See, Artie was right: He was a murderer. We could have prosecuted him, sure. So here was this friend coming to me for help, and what was I gonna do? I didn’t know. I said I’d figure out the best way to handle it and get back to him but he should get himself a lawyer too. In the end, it was going to be up to the DA, Lowery, whether to indict the both of them or just Gittens. It was Lowery’s call. You could cut Artie a deal maybe, but they were both up there on that bridge. I didn’t know what to do.’

His eyes fell back to that picture on the desk.

‘I hesitated.’

Artie Trudell has a sense something is wrong. A mounting uneasiness about this raid. He can’t point to anything specific. There’s nothing obviously out of-place. The investigation, the warrant, the adrenaline rush as the team waits outside the red door — he and Julio Vega have gone through fifty doors like this one, maybe a hundred, maybe more. By now — August 17, 1987, 2:26 AM. — the crack wars have been raging through the Flats for so long, raids like this have become a fact of life. Even the shadowy presence of Harold Braxton and his violent crew is not the source of Trudell’s unease. Trudell has hit the Mission Posse before, after all. In the Flats, everyone hits the Mission Posse. Besides, Braxton is a businessman. He won’t fight to protect this place. He won’t leave any of his prized goons in the apartment to defend it. Braxton will sacrifice it and move on. That’s how it works with these Posse stashpads: The cops cut off an arm, another grows; they cut off a leg, another grows. On and on, forever and ever, amen. No, it is not the usual dangers that have Artie Trudell on edge tonight. It is something inchoate and inarticulable. The sort of nameless foreboding that causes people to refuse to board airplanes or to listen for footsteps. Something in the air.

Maybe it is everything else. Maybe it is the same static that is in Trudell’s head every day now, the background noise that has come to obscure every other thought: Frank Fasulo, gephyrophobia, the Sagamore Bridge. MURDERER. Of course Gittens will find a way out of all that. Gittens is still helping him out, helping him keep up appearances. It was Gittens, after all, who set up this raid by feeding Trudell and Vega the tip from Raul. Hasn’t it always been Gittens who nurtured Trudell’s career ever since he and Vega came to Narcotics? Hasn’t Gittens always been able to find a way out?…

Stop! Trudell has to silence the torrent of thoughts. For the next ten minutes, he has to block all that out. After the raid he can go back to dwelling on Frank Fasulo, but right now there is only room for one thought — get through that door and get home alive. This is the moment of supreme danger for any cop, and Artie Trudell knows it. Static could get him killed. Or is that what Artie wants?

It is probably just the heat that is troubling the big policeman. The air is viscous. It is hard to breathe this stuff. Even the walls are damp. Trudell wasn’t built for this kind of heat. His clothes are soggy with sweat. His face is sweaty. His balls are sweaty. The palms of his hands. Sweat is running down the crack of his ass. Let’s just get this over, he thinks. Let’s just get it over and get back to the station where there’s air conditioning.

He and Vega are standing on opposite sides of the door frame, backs to the wall. Vega nods toward the red door and gives Trudell a look: Bad door, Artie man. Bad juju.

Trudell musters a smile. He used to be the carefree one, Trudell was. The big kid. The big kidder. Now he summons up a little of the old playfulness to smile and flex his biceps at his partner. No problem, JV. They haven’t built a door strong enough.

The cops on the raid team are getting restless. It is dangerous sitting around out here. They need to go or call it off. They can’t just sit here with their dicks in their hands. Trudell can sense their itchiness. Everyone there knows he and Vega have never led a raid before. Everyone is watching to see what sort of leaders these two will be.

Vega gives the nod.

Trudell steps in front of the door, hoists the black battering ram off his forearm and grasps the two handles. The concrete-filled waterpipe is unbelievably heavy, even for Trudell. It looks like a torpedo that he is about to load into the back of a cannon.

Vega counts down: five fingers, four fingers, three fingers, two fingers — on one, he points at Trudell.

Boom!

The battering ram shakes the door. The hallway reverberates.

‘Come on, big man,’ Vega mutters.

Boom!

There is sweat dripping off Trudell’s face but he does not have a free hand to wipe it. It runs into his eyes. It stings a little. He breathes deep. Work on one spot! Keep hitting the same spot till it gives way! He finds a point on the red door, about shoulder level. Trudell focuses on that spot — where a crack has begun to open- one more blow right there- a crack- and on the opposite side of the door, the same crack- inside the apartment, the same little fissure in the wood- and that is precisely where Martin Gittens stands with a rifle — a pump-action Mossberg 500 shotgun — the barrel just inches from the red door.

Gittens is wearing dainty white cotton gloves, jeweler’s gloves, to avoid marring the fingerprints that are already on the gun. These are Braxton’s fingerprints, of course; the gun was seized nine months before. Gittens will have to pump the gun between rounds. That means he will have one shot, maybe two. Then he’ll have to bug out.