THAT SAME DAY
The feds dress better, have bigger budgets, and carry more weight inside a courtroom and with the public at large. Don’t believe me? Think about this: What scares you more, an RMP pulling you over on a traffic stop or an FBI agent ringing your doorbell? They tend to have years more education and can claim jurisdiction over any case a cop has been working.
None of this ever bothered me while I was on the job, and I enjoyed my time on joint task forces. From my way of thinking, we were all there to do the same job, and who got paid what or who got their suits from Brooks Brothers and who got them from Men’s Wearhouse made little difference to me. I was there for one reason only—to crack a case.
But cops, like anyone in any other profession you can think of, love to piss and moan. And when they do, there is no one—aside from a defense lawyer—with a bigger bull’s-eye on their back than a federal agent. Me and Pearl were having a drink one night with Gio Fernandez, one of the best undercovers we ever worked with, when he started regaling the packed bar with the story of his adventures with four FBI agents. “They called me in to help them execute a warrant,” Gio said. He was short, muscular, with a shaved head that gleamed under the bright lights of the bar. “I meet them up by Jo Jo’s—you know, the bar up on Lenox. I drive up in my beat-up Oldsmobile, wearing a Yankees long-sleeve T and a pair of Levi’s. These four suckers jump out of a black SUV with tinted windows, each one looking like they were there for a GQ photo shoot.”
“All under forty and in great shape, right?” Pearl asked.
“Exactly,” Gio said. “I mean, they looked like fuckin’ Tom Cruise, if he were four inches taller and a Protestant. Anyways, in place of a suit jacket, they’re each wearing a blue windbreaker with FBI written in large letters across the back. Then one of them pops the back lid of the SUV and pulls out four sledgehammers. Can you believe that shit? We have to go to the boss to voucher extra gas money while we’re on a stakeout, and these fuckers hand out sledgehammers like they’re working on a construction crew.”
“Why do you need a sledgehammer to execute a warrant?” I asked Gio. “Not to mention four of them.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking, standing there scratching my Puerto Rican ass and wondering what the hell these guys were planning,” Gio said. “Keep in mind, it’s not even six in the morning, nobody—and I mean nobody—on the street except for a couple of junkies on the nod, huddled in a corner. The feds walk over to me, hand me the warrant, and the leader of the pack asks, ‘How do you want to handle this?’ ”
Gio paused to take a long pull on a longneck bottle of beer. “I look at the warrant and turns out we’re standing right in front of the building. It had one of those glass doors. I suggest we just kick in the door and make the grab. Odds are the guy they want is sprawled out on a bed or a couch, sleeping off a drunk. ‘Just watch out for pit bulls,’ I told them. ‘You know how these fuckin’ dealers love those pits.’ ”
“Got a scar on my left leg to prove your point,” Pearl said.
“I’m about to head toward the door when the leader of the pack reaches out a hand, holds me in place, and hands me a sledgehammer. I was about to argue but figured, what the hell, ain’t my show, you know? I’m just along for the ride. So I take the sledgehammer and walk up to the door. Now, keep in mind, I don’t know jack shit about sledgehammers. I can barely hammer in a nail. Asking me to take down a door with a sledgehammer is asking for a boatload of trouble.”
“Did you bang on the door with it?” I asked.
“Better than that, Tank,” Gio said. “I stepped close to the door and got into my batting stance, crouching down like Derek Jeter. I pumped the sledge around a couple of times and then swung it hard as I could against the glass.”
“Hit a home run with that swing?” Pearl asked. “Or did you miss, like you do at our softball games?”
“I went for the fences, Pearl, when I should have been going for a single,” Gio said. “I swung the sledgehammer so hard, it flew from my hand and went right through the glass. I’m watching it fly through the air into the apartment, and where the fuck does it decide to land? Right square in the center of the suspect’s bed. There the guy is, sleeping with legs apart, a sledgehammer two inches from his package. That woke his ass up in a hurry.”
“That had to fuck him up,” I said.
“Here’s the best part,” Gio said. “The four feebs are standing around me, stunned. Then one of them says, ‘What did we just do?’ I looked at him and said, ‘We? Where you getting that “we” shit? What, you got a mouse in your pocket? All I see and all everybody popping eyes out of their windows sees is FBI. And that ain’t me, suckers. I ain’t wearing no windbreaker.’ ”
“And you did help them get the man they came to get,” I said. “They can’t deny that.”
“And I got to keep the sledgehammer,” Gio said. “All in all, not a bad way to start a new day.”