AS RAY followed in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson Whitaker, Manny Manning was going to battle stations for a raid on Joe Mears’s pad.
Paddy Hicks scared up vests and shotguns, enough for a full entry team. Butterman called Housing PD, telling them Narco would be on their turf, as was protocol. LeBlanc and Scanlon sat on Gibraltar Street in case Mears came or went.
Manny worked at his desk, drafting an entry plan for apartment 33 at 10 Gibraltar. Biff stayed with him, getting a crash course in warrant tactics. Caesar Raines swore that there was one way into the apartment—the front door—and one way from the front door to the back bedroom, where Mears slept: a narrow hallway ten steps long. Mears would have something like seven seconds to ready himself for the lead cop, who had to come at him through the bedroom door at the end of the hall. Manny tested this estimate in his head: two seconds to sledgehammer those sturdy steel Housing Authority doors, another second to enter, three more to cover the length of the hallway, one second in the doorway of the back bedroom to get the picture and react. If Mears comes up blasting, the first cop through the door risks at least a point-blank torso hit. Mears has a .25 or a sawed-off, the vest would save that first cop, good bet. Mears has a Magnum or a special load, no. Mears lucks out with any kind of face shot, that’s that. Mears nails the lead cop low, below the vest—which is likeliest, since Mears will be lying down or crouching—maybe the cop bleeds to death depending on the carry distance to the nearest ER, and if it’s snowing, and traffic.
“We call it ‘raid roulette,’” Manny told Biff.
Manny knew that poor people usually had only one door, and that drug dealers almost always slept in the bedroom farthest from that door. He preferred the one-door entry plans because Target would kill, die, or submit. In freak, streaky luck, despite a hundred raids and a dozen shootings in ten years as a narc, Manny had never lost a cop.
“You that lucky?” Biff asked him.
“It ain’t luck,” Manny said. “Ever had your place kicked in at dawn? Fucks you up. Be Target a minute. Your front door explodes. You got to wake up, figure out you’re being raided, by who, take cover, then you got to choose. If you fight, you got to find your gun, hope it’s loaded, find the safety, aim and pull, and you got to hit that first shot, because now I’m on you. I’ve seen targets come up with lamps in their hands, or clocks, or mops. I’ve seen them blow holes in the ceiling or the bed or themselves or their wives. I’ve seen them go through all of that, hit perfect chest-center shots, and get vest. Then it’s my turn.”
Manny himself had killed or wounded fourteen men in raid-related gunplay, and along the way taken five slugs in his vest, one through his forearm, another through his shin, one in each elbow, and buckshot in his hip.
By dawn, Manny’s team was assembled in the street over the hill from Gibraltar. Housing was on the radio saying they were in place on the roof outside Mears’s bedroom windows, in case he jumped for it. Paddy Hicks handed out vests, walkie-talkies, and shotguns. There was nothing left to do but gather around Manny and take a playing card, facedown, from a deck on the roof of Manny’s car, queens and jokers carefully removed in advance. Shecky kept the deck. He had it shuffled before every Narco warrant by Donna, the bosomy Triple Shamrock barmaid who thought Butterman a dreamboat. This was mandatory prewarrant ritual: whoever got the three of clubs would be the first man down the hallway, Target’s target. They chose the three of clubs as the fateful card because nobody ever wanted it, just as nobody wanted to be lead guy.
Other teams took volunteers or took turns, or sent the guys with no families in. Some bosses even punished men for minor infractions by sending them in first, a practice Manny deemed lower than low. Manny always said that the first guy in could only be picked by Lady Luck via Donna the barmaid. Manny was a thorough, careful field man who drilled his team incessantly on shooting rules, blocking out angles like a director rehearsing a play, eliminating the chance of a friendly-fire wounding. If Manny caught a cop deviating from the entry plan, he made the offender wear a hand-lettered sign, I CAN’T FOLLOW AN E-PLAN, for three days. If it happened again, that cop was gone. Men felt safe with Manny Manning. This draw-a-card voodoo was Manny’s sole concession to quirk, and most of the team secretly hated it. They would rather be ordered into a shooting than pick it for themselves from a deck of cards shuffled by a barmaid, especially a barmaid Nat Butterman had balled.
“Skip the cards this time,” Manny said. “I’m going in first. I got a score to settle with this bum.”
The narcs shifted uncomfortably in the street. Shecky, as always, spoke for them. “You can’t do that,” he said.
“Why the hell not? I say I’m going down the hall first.”
“And if you draw the three of clubs, you will go first,” Shecky said. “But we always pick a card.”
Manny glared at him. “I thought you hated picking cards.”
“Believe me, I do,” Shecky replied evenly. “I suppose every man here hates it. But we always pick cards even though we always hate to, and you can’t change it now.”
“Sure I can. I’m the fucking sergeant.”
“We don’t pick cards, we don’t go in,” Shecky said.
“Yeah,” Nat Butterman seconded.
LeBlanc, Scanlon, and Hicks nodded grimly at the pavement. Biff, about to do his first raid, nodded too, thinking nodding was part of the ritual.
So they picked cards. Biff, reaching across the car roof to the deck, drew from the middle: eight of hearts. Shecky picked next: ten of clubs. Paddy Hicks took the ten of hearts.
“That’s two tens in a row,” Butterman grumbled. “That bitch needs to shuffle better.” He drew the three of spades.
They went around the circle, then around the circle twice. Nobody spoke, nobody smoked. Housing was on the radio wondering where Narco was.
Biff drew. “What do I win?” he asked, showing everyone the three of clubs.
“Biff can’t go,” Manny said. “He’s never been on a raid before.”
The cops ignored him, giving their cards to Shecky and drifting off to their cars for the short drive to the designated setups around Mears’s building.
Manny was saying again, a little frantically, “Biff can’t go.”
Shecky took Manny’s cards and Biff’s cards, leaving him the three of clubs. “We reunite your card with the deck after the raid,” Shecky told Biff, then whispered in his ear, “That means we’re all gonna make it.” He patted the back of Biff’s head, a good-luck tap, then jumped in Scanlon’s car and rode off, leaving Manny and Biff alone on the empty street. Dawn streaked pink over the top of the housing projects.
“Now what?” Biff smirked. This was fun.
“Stay close to me,” Manny said.
SCANLON felled the door to Joe Mears’s apartment, two blows from a sledgehammer. He dove right, and felt Biff’s leg brush past him. Biff set sail for the back bedroom in the dim dawn light. Manny followed Biff down the hall screaming “Ahhhh,” scare tactics, kicking the first door he came to off its rotting hinges, an empty bathroom. The rest of the team rushed in behind. Butterman, Hicks, and a housing cop, loaned for the raid, took the other doors along the hall, throwing each open: a closet, empty; a bedroom, empty. Hollering Manny, waving his shotgun, stormed the empty kitchenette.
Biff, three of clubs safety-pinned to his chest like a bull’s-eye, sprinted through a living room, also empty. Biff heard rustling in the back bedroom, Mears’s bedroom, now three paces ahead of him, door closed. Biff rushed the noise inside the bedroom, shouting “Cops!” He tried to kick the door, but misjudged his momentum. His knee banged the knob.
Then Biff did an insane thing: he stood at the closed door for one full second. Manny was screaming. Butterman was screaming. Hicks was screaming. Biff was thinking, So this is what this feels like.
He opened the door by turning the knob. A white man was in the sheets.
“Freeze,” Biff shouted from the doorway, leveling his twelve-gauge. The white man dove across a night table. Biff let a shell fly, spraying the man with buckshot and mortally wounding a lamp. A lightbulb blew up. Biff, seeing blue stars from the flash, stepped into the bedroom. He heard movement behind him. He turned and was shoved by unseen hands, tumbling over the bed.
“Gun!” Cops were shouting someplace else in apartment 33. Biff found his feet. His face was dripping. With sweat? He blinked his eyes clear. There was blood on the floor and on the windowsill. The other man was gone, but he was wounded.
“Biff!” Manny cried from the hall.
“Out the window!” somebody yelled from the living room.
Manny arrived at Biff’s shoulder in the back bedroom, seeing him unhurt. Butterman and the Housing cop gawked helplessly out an open window, back bedroom now filling with narcs.
The Housing cop was on a walkie-talkie: “It’s Mears. He went out the bedroom window. He’s escaping across the annex roof.”
Housing was supposed to cover the roof.
“Goddam incompetent asswipes,” Butterman roared at the Housing cop.
Biff handed the cop an armful of raid gear and two-hand-vaulted out the window.
Manny screamed, “Biff, get the fuck back here!”
Biff landed hard on the roof below Mears’s bedroom window. Manny was shouting at him to wait for backup, but Biff found his feet and lit out after Mears.
Butterman and the Housing cop were at Manny’s elbow fighting for a walkie-talkie. Manny grabbed the radio from both of them and dispatched LeBlanc to the far end of the projects to cut off Mears and Biff. LeBlanc roger-copied the order as Biff hit the far end of the roof and disappeared down what Manny assumed was a fire escape. LeBlanc’s ETA was two minutes. Biff and Mears would be alone until then.
“Biff, get your ass back here, copy,” Manny sent over the radio. “Biff, copy.”
Biff and Mears were gone from the roof. Beyond the roof was a vacant lot, and beyond the vacant lot was a line of deserted factories. Manny thought it through: once Mears and Biff got into the factories, Mears could lie and hide, forcing a building-to-building hunt, or run for the docks, or cut inland through the neighborhood, swim a broad saltwater canal, and vanish into downtown Boston. Biff could let Mears go; that would be smart. Or he could follow him into what Manny considered nasty ambush country. Unless LeBlanc cut them off.
“Biff, copy,” Manny tried again. Waiting for Biff to reply, Manny looked at the walkie-talkie he had wrestled from the Housing cop and Butterman, who were still next to him. The three of them had four radios. Manny was hailing Biff on Biff’s radio.
LeBlanc called in. He had covered the lot which lay beyond the roof. Mears and Biff were gone.
“Secure this place,” Manny told Paddy Hicks. “Rest of you, let’s get to the cars and find them.”
Manny lost control of the show the moment he called Special Operations Division to request boats and dogs and more searchers. He was patched through to the duty boss, a lieutenant, and Manny took orders the rest of the morning. He briefed the lieutenant as best he could: botched warrant, the target at large, a single cop in pursuit on foot without a radio, whereabouts and status unknown. The lieutenant asked Manny what the fuck he thought he was doing, the first of many reprimands to come.
The morning dawned sunny but chilly, ten-knot wind from the harbor. Hapless Housing PD brought in their K-9 unit with two German sheps. Radio cars helped out, and Harbor Unit steamed the length of the docks and the Ship Channel, looking for Mears. BPD’s K-9s arrived, and took the deserted mills, starting at the waterfront, inching north. Housing’s dogs were still in the empty lot, baying whenever they saw their rivals from the BPD. Even Housing’s dogs were stupider than other dogs, Manny noticed. The BPD handlers started their pack with trace scents from the ransacked, shot-up bedroom in apartment 33, but Manny, who hunted ducks with mutts better than these, considered K-9s useless for finding anything except the strongest-smelling trails—fresh-fired guns, coke, wet blood—and the handlers were on the Special Ops Division frequency bitching that something in apartment 33 had messed up the dogs, blaming Narco for running a butcher shop. For all anybody knew, the German sheps were running around the deserted mills looking for the Housing dogs, who were in the apartment twenty minutes earlier, or for Manny, whom they’d sniffed on the way in, or for buried bones. Manny found his car, switched to Narcotics’ frequency, and told his units to call in.
The narcs were in separate cars, trawling from the north end of the neighborhood to the south, crossing and recrossing each other’s paths, like lacing up a boot. Manny found a pair of binoculars under his car seat and grimly scanned the uneven line of brick mill buildings.
Biff had now been out of radio contact for over an hour. Manny forced himself to think that there was some operational reason why Biff hadn’t called Central from a telephone. That was what the book said you should do. Chasing Mears, Biff couldn’t get to a phone booth, anywhere, to call in. Or perhaps Mears had turned on Biff somewhere in the abandoned mills, and, yes, perhaps Mears had taken Biff out, but hadn’t hurt him, not really. Manny pictured Mears punching Biff, knocking him out smartly, like in the westerns. Sure. Cruising up Navy Avenue, Manny couldn’t let himself imagine the alternative. From far away he heard: pop and pop.
Shecky’s voice, over the radio: “Leader, Leader. Shots fired. Copy.”
Manny: “This is Leader.” Manny scanned channels as the radio exploded: Housing, Special Ops, K-9, everybody sending gunshots.
Manny, back on Narco radio, sent again: “Shecky, Manny. Copy?”
Manny heard a distant burst: pop-pop-pop. He cut a wild U-turn on Navy and floored it, missing, just, a garbage truck that suddenly filled his windshield. The units lacing the boot with Shecky were closest to him, and they were hailing Shecky willy-nilly, radio discipline gone, sending over each other, sending over Shecky. Manny told everyone to clear the fucking air, took a deep breath, sent again: “Shecky, this is Manny. Where are you?”
The streets flashed by as his speedometer climbed, Manny driving with one hand, mike in the other. Manny chanced the intersection blindly, swerving around a streetcar and into a woman in a station wagon, her mouth making a memorable O. He bounced off her and down C Street, and floored it again. A siren started somewhere ahead, angry car horns everywhere behind.
“K-9 Leader, this is K-9 One,” Manny heard. The dog handlers were calling in, but why were they on Shecky’s frequency?
“This is Narco Leader,” Manny sent. “Copy me, K-9 One.” Manny was a block away from Shecky’s last location.
“We found them, Narco Leader,” K-9 responded, a dog snarling in the background.
The first thing Manny saw as he skidded up to the crowd of cops was Shecky saying something to a K-9 guy, who had let go of his dog to hold Shecky with both hands. Shecky bled in pulsing gushes from where his nose had been. He stopped talking and slumped in the kid’s hands.
The dogs and their handlers were in the alley. One of the handlers was telling the dogs to heel, another was shouting “Attack,” and a third was shouting, “Joe Mears, you’re under arrest—”
The dogs wheeled and bared teeth at Manny as he strode up. Manny saw Biff standing alone in the alley, cornered. Biff had his pistol in his hand and poked it like a stick at the crowd of cops. He was trying to speak but couldn’t.
Manny stepped in front of the cops. “Biff,” he said.
But Biff didn’t know him.
Manny took a step. He was ten feet from Biff. Behind him, the cops were redeploying. Dogs to the back. Men to the front, guns drawn.
“Get out of the way, Sergeant,” the SOD lieutenant said.
“He’s a cop,” Manny said without taking his eyes off Biff, who stood alone, his gun in two hands, the shooter’s stance. If Biff shot, they’d shoot, and Manny would get blasted from both sides. If Manny stepped out of the way, the lieutenant would tell his men to open up.
“Biff,” Manny said. “Put the gun down.”
“Biff,” Manny said. “They’ll shoot us both in about five seconds.”
“Biff,” Manny begged.
Something changed in Biff’s face. He seemed to hear Manny’s voice.
“The gun,” Manny said, holding out a hand.
Biff handed the pistol over, and Manny threw it against the wall, then grabbed Biff by both shoulders and held him. Biff was shaking. The three of clubs was still pinned to his coat.