TONY SAT IN the passenger seat, his body humming with excitement. “Your department issues you guys trucks to drive?”
“No, this is my truck.” I didn’t want to tell him how cheap the SO was when it came to cars. His question also made me decide to pick up the cars the FBI had offered us, as soon as we finished out the day. There wasn’t any reason to drive our own vehicles.
Tony said, “That getup you got on is really cool. I bet you can go anywhere wearing that. I’m going to ask my sergeant if I can do the same thing.”
I didn’t want to tell him to wait until he had some time under his belt as a detective. If you penetrated too far, too fast undercover and didn’t know how to handle yourself when you got there, it was usually too late, and the street ate you.
I only nodded and looked up in the rearview. In the car right behind us, Ned and Mike sat in the white Camry, neither of them speaking. Mike stayed right on my butt, giving me the Blue Angel treatment: a patrolman kind of move. I turned right onto Waterman, still headed north. I asked, “So how long have you been with the Sheriff’s Department?”
“Five years.”
“You made detective pretty quick, then.”
“Little better than average for time in grade. How about you?”
“Been with the department about five years, two with the violent crimes team.”
“Very nice. I’d give my left nut to work a team like that.” He pointed. “Your turn’s coming up right here, make a left.”
I knew the route having memorized it from the map.
Tony said, “I know this area, and if it’s the apartment complex I’m thinking of, it’s a derelict, with no one living in it.”
“Ah man, you could’ve said something earlier … no, sorry, I’m wrong. We need to check it either way.”
“Couple of months back, might’ve been three or four, I went there on a call for service, a 415 domestic. The guy there said most of the apartments were vacant. The owner just didn’t rent them out again after somebody moved out. He wants to renovate so he can charge more. Like I said, though, that was months back. Here. Take a left right here, on Wall. That’s it, about halfway down there, on the right, that big white and light blue two-story apartment.”
I pulled to the curb. “We’ll walk in from here.”
“All right by me.”
We got out. Ned and Mike parked behind us. Mike reached back in and pulled out a shotgun. He racked one in the chamber and held it down by his leg to be less conspicuous. On the sidewalk, I said to Mike, “That’s the target location, and it’s a two-story. The apartment we’re looking for is number 213. It’ll be one of those on that top row. Since you have the gauge, you stay outside and watch the windows, in case our boy, if he’s in there, decides to jump.”
Mike nodded, and with his free hand, took his aviator sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on as we continued to move.
A few pedestrians walked on the sidewalks on both sides of the street, and watched us. A couple of cars drove by and slowed to peep the intruders in their neighborhood.
Two houses away, a machinelike noise echoed off the neighborhood house fronts, and a white chalky powder billowed into the air over our target apartment building.
We left the sidewalk and stayed on the cracked concrete walk leading to the complex. Without a word, I looked at Mike and pointed to the long row of apartments on the second story. He nodded and took cover by a tree in the parkway.
We had to move fast now. People would be talking and passing the word. A white guy—Mike, standing by a tree on the street with a blower—couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than the law come-a-knockin’.
The noise grew louder as we entered the quad area of the semi-defunct Sycamore Arms Apartments. Three painters, dressed in white and wearing industrial-grade breathing masks, used a sandblaster to take the paint off the stucco walls inside the quad. The dust obscured everything, the same as a light fog. Chain-link fencing surrounded a pool now filled with dirt and weeds tangled around an overturned kid’s tricycle. The grit and dust immediately invaded my nose and mouth and lungs. I suppressed a cough and headed for the exterior steps that led up to the cantilevered walkway on the second floor. A door opened next to us and out stepped a black gang member tattooed and dressed in blue, representing the Crips. He didn’t look surprised. He looked angry.
Ned automatically grabbed him, put him on the wall, and patted him down. We couldn’t leave anyone on our flank. Ned knew that and hung back. Tony stayed with me as we ascended the stairs. Two more gang members came out of the apartment. Ned took a step back, hand on his gun in his holster, and pointed for them to grab the wall. He waved for us to keep going.
Halfway up the steps, I leaned out to look at the cantilevered walkway above us. A short male, black with a white slingshot tee shirt, black pants, and bare feet, stood outside an apartment farther down the long row of doors. The cord from an electric shaver snaked inside, and he continued shaving his gleaming and semibald pate.
His stature matched the Bogart Bandit’s description. Sort of. The same height anyway, but if it was him, he’d put on a few pounds, maybe twenty or thirty. He looked a lot rounder, fleshier than in his photo. His whole body was chubby, including his face. I wished I could see his chest, to confirm the tattoo of a woman’s naked breasts. My heart rate accelerated until it pulsed in my throat. I continued to move toward him, concealing my excitement, as I fought the urge to reach under my shirt, draw my weapon, and start yelling.
We made it up the stairs. I slowed and whispered to Tony, “Let me take the lead, you just back my play.”
“You got it, chief.”
The guy shaving his head kept his back to us, unaware of our presence. I hoped he stayed that way until we got right up on him. Ten apartments to go.
Seven.
Five.
He must’ve sensed something. His shoulders stiffened, and he stopped shaving. If this really was Deforest, he’d been hunted hard and heavy for two years, and his instincts had to be honed to a fine edge. He slowly turned, saw us, and smiled. He looked back to see how far he stood from the open apartment door, where, if he was the Bogart Bandit, he’d have his gun stashed, probably several.
I kept walking at the same speed, unperturbed, and nodded to him.
Three apartments to go.
He held my eyes trying to get a read on me and didn’t nod back. A bad sign.
Two.
We came up on him, and I said loud over the noise of the sandblaster, “Hey!”
“Can I hep you?”
When he said it, his gold-cap glinted in the top row of his teeth.
Confirmation.
This was the Bogart Bandit.
I looked at Tony to see if he’d caught on to this sudden change in our status, how the threat level increased from a casual contact to just short of going to guns against a violent felon. He hadn’t noticed.
I said to Raymond Desmond Deforest, “I’m with welfare and child protective services.” I pulled out my sheriff’s flat badge, flipped it open fast, and pulled it back so he didn’t have time to read it. “We need to count how many children you have in your apartment to verify entitlement.”
I didn’t want to fight him on the cantilevered walkway if he resisted. Someone might end up going over the rail. It happened once before when I worked with Wicks. A big biker named Shackleford went over—broke both arms and cracked his skull. He died four days later of a swollen brain. Blood and bone.
Deforest looked us up and down one more time, deciding whether a black guy dressed like a truck driver might actually work with CPS. He’d played it smart for two years. He’d been able to evade every effort to capture him. I didn’t think he’d fall for my ruse.
“A’ight, den, come on in.” He turned and took the two steps back to his open door, and entered.
I moved quickly to stay with him, Tony right on my butt.
Inside, as soon as our eyes adjusted, I found we’d made an awful mistake. Four more gang members sat in chairs and on the couch, all of them much bigger than Deforest. We were outnumbered and outgunned. That’s why Deforest had agreed to go in. He knew the odds would change in his favor.
A fifth gang member, behind us, closed the door, trapping us like a couple of rats.