Outside in a nondescript panel van, two police officers listen with headphones.
“Damn it,” says the first officer. “He’s been made.”
“Wait,” says the other. “This guy Danny is a slick operator. Let’s see what he does.”
High-tech equipment lines one side of the van’s interior, and the first officer adjusts a knob to try to hear the conversation better.
“I seem a bit off?” Danny asks.
“Yeah,” Mitch says, his gravelly voice particularly jumbled in the earphones. “Jumpy.”
“Jumpy?”
“Yeah,” Mitch says, getting frustrated now. “You gonna repeat everything I say?”
“Sorry,” Danny says.
“What I’m wondering is if the cops nabbed the cocaine you were selling, how is it that they didn’t nab you?”
The two cops look at each other.
“Get ready to call in the team,” the first one says. “I don’t want a dead informant on our hands.”
The detectives spent weeks putting this operation together. After they busted Danny Edwards, they convinced him that they wouldn’t charge him if he wore a wire and helped them bring down his supplier.
Danny Edwards is a little fish—they want the Big Kahuna.
The plan is simple: once Mitch shows Danny the drugs, Danny is supposed to say a code phrase. Then the police will come rushing in. The only other reason they would come rushing in would be if Danny seemed to be in danger. Danny’s a low-level hoodlum, but they don’t want his blood on their hands.
“I’m making the call,” the first officer says, picking up a walkie-talkie.
“Wait!” the second says, and they both go quiet as they listen.
“How is it that they didn’t nab me?” Danny whispers.
“I swear to God you better stop repeating everything I say.”
“Okay, okay,” Danny says. “Here’s what happened.”
Danny explains how he’s been keeping his supply of drugs at a construction site down the road from where he does most of his deals, not in his own home. The house is a skeleton of two-by-fours and plywood flooring. Just now, the roof is getting shingled and the walls are being covered in drywall. But the central air ducts are installed, and it’s a convenient place to keep a brick of coke hidden and dry.
“That part of the house has already been inspected, you see. No one looks in there.”
“Why don’t you just keep your coke at your own house like a normal drug dealer?” Mitch asks.
“Are you kidding?” Danny says. “My girlfriend would have a fit. I’d be sleeping on the street if she found out there were any drugs in the house.”
Danny goes on to explain that he was selling to a couple guys he hadn’t seen before. They were asking for more than he had on him. He should have known better, he admits, but he told them to wait and he’d be back in thirty minutes. He walked to the construction site without realizing he was being followed. Once he’d reached into the vent and pulled out the brick, two other guys came running from the corner of the house waving guns and badges.
Danny took off on foot and lost them when he hid in the rafters of another half-finished house at the construction site.
“I saw them grab the coke,” Danny says, “and then I snuck off.”
“And these cops don’t know who you are?” Mitch asks.
“No way, man. That’s why I walked to the construction site. They don’t have my plate number. They don’t know the car I drive. They saw my face, but I never ended up selling them anything. Even if they found out who I was, they couldn’t do anything. They’ve got nothing.”
The two police officers listen as the conversation in their headphones goes quiet for a moment.
“You were right,” says the first officer.
“Told you he was a slick operator.”
“That was such a convincing story he almost fooled me,” says the first cop.
“If I give you more,” they hear Mitch say, “are you going to be careful?”
“Thank you so much,” Danny says. “I’m so happy I could kiss a pig.”
“Did you hear that?” says the first police officer.
The other officer nods and barks into his walkie-talkie, “Move! Move! Move! The drug deal is going down!”