Chapter 37: Leads
2 Hours Ago…
The City of Townsville. Central District. City Hall.
11 DEC 1988. 1754.
When I got the call to City Hall, I knew what to expect. Honor guard duty. Putting the uniform back on, putting on a good show, standing around looking good. They needed every honest cop a hundred block radius around City Hall, and if I was in it, they were scraping at the bottom of the well. Hell, Townsville's been scraping at the bottom of the well for over ten years, like a thirsty man out of a desert.
It meant time away from my investigations, from taking down the Amoeba Boys, and I'd been busy shaking coins out of their expendable soldiers. It was a waste of time, but duty was duty, especially when I was still paying back for my crimes years back.
I was positioned at the door opposite the City Hall entrance, next to another one of them from the old boy's club. Officer Jacobson, with a scar through his left eye from an old, deep wound. Crazy junkie attack from eight years ago. We call him 'Canvas' because of his other, less visible scars underneath the uniform.
"Looking good, old man," Jacobson greeted me when I got to my post.
"I think I'll look better after this," I said, and meant it. I prefer beating the shit out of half-crazed low-lives under the payroll of the Lombardi Family, whether or not they had all the answers.
"So you heard about who's coming?" Canvas asked while he was straightening his uniform, checking his police belt.
"No, I've been busy. Got a big fish to catch, and it isn't something I wait for," I said. I was hesitant to reveal the big surprise. I couldn't trust anyone these days. Not even the supposedly handpicked men of the Mayor.
"Heard that it's the USDO. Word in the office is they got something big going on, a secret weapon," Officer Jacobson said. He smelt exactly like what he was doing. Swimming in the sewers that was the office, drinking up rumors.
"USDO? Those monkeys in black and white?" I said. The feds – I had no quarrel with them, but those guys got nothing on the mobs. The USDO weren't the only feds who tried. The FBI, the CIA, even the global feds who were the UN had all tried to help. The mob, the families, the serial killers and rapists and gangbangers and robbers and cop-killers and thieves and cultists and did I mention the mob? They're still here. "Sure. What are they going to do? Sic a bunch of monkeys down on the ski masks?"
"That's all I got, Mullens. We'll see who's walking through our door," the Canvas said.
"It's not my door," I said, made it loud and clear. The city's crawling with two-faced men whose tongues waggle on both ends. I wasn't going to be one of them, not anymore. Politicians – it was the men on top whose weaknesses broke the dam on us. Mayor Wilford – people may love that old grandpa, but I knew better.
"Well, here they come," Canvas gave me a heads up. Awfully kind of him. "USDO's secret weapons."
The grand oak doors into City Hall yawned open, and in came the so-called 'secret weapons'.
Apparently, the USDO wasn't sending in monkeys to do their work. They were deploying midgets into the fray instead. And they were dressed like clowns or some weird shit from a Japanese serial. One in red, one in blue and one in green. They were accompanied by a SWAT chick and some mad scientist without the Einstein hair to match.
"What the hell is this?" I couldn't help but to utter. Here I was, busting my ass to clean up the city for citizens who didn't deserve it, against criminals who wouldn't ever go away, and the USDO had decided that Townsville needed a circus. It was almost a sacrilege.
"Keep your voice down. They're coming this way," Jacobson whispered to me. I was a closed zipper after that. I didn't need any kind of flak for my current case; the case to end all cases. After speaking to some hot chick in red who represented the USDO and a tuxedo man, the midgets began coming my way. And wouldn't you know it? SWAT chick and Victor Frankenstein were left behind.
"You're going to have to hand over your weapons, lassies," I said to the one in red SWAT gear. She, or he, had a stupid bow attached to his or her helmet, as if she didn't look stupid enough. They were all armed with only compact pistols. It was as if they were trying hard to disappoint me. And after thirty years on the force, it's hard for me to feel disappointed. But here I was.
"What weapons?" the red midget spoke. A girl. I looked closer. Turned out, she was no midget. No, it was far worse than that. She was literally a girl. A little girl who looked like she should be riding a pony in the city circus instead of being decked out in what looked like kevlar armor on steroids and getting pimped by a shady agency like the USDO.
"Erm- Those pistols in your holsters? On your vest?" I said. Couldn't help give her the tone. The kind of tone I'd give to rookie cops who were likely in the force because the selection was slim. "Do you know what pistols are? Do I have to spell it out for you?"
"He meant this, Blossom!" another of the tri-colored joker girls exclaimed, unbuttoning her holster with difficulty and pulling out the compact pistol from it. But she was doing it all wrong, clumsy as well, the way a drug junkie would do it and end up accidentally shooting his friend.
"Hey, watch it!" I yelled. This second girl in green SWAT gear was just staring at me in confusion, like she had never handled a firearm before, hadn't even been on the firing range for a single day.
"What?" she asked. That had just confirmed it. She was entirely ignorant of gun safety rules. The USDO had just brought in three little kindergartners for some reason, and they didn't look like they could even handle a toy gun, much less the real thing. God help Townsville and the Mayor. Except he won't.
"Don't point that thing at me, you dolt! Don't you know that guns are dangerous?" I scolded the girl in green, feeling my masculinity shrink just by being around them. I was already starting to feel like a kindergarten teacher, rather than a copper. Perhaps I'd become something in between, like a kindergarten cop. Thank God the tri-colored kids were USDO, not TPD, and certainly not my business. I could only hope that they wouldn't be in my way as I work my way up the mafiaso food web.
"Oh, fine. Here you go, mister policeman," the girl in green said like a brat, as if I was the one in the wrong.
"God damn dolt," I muttered under my breath as I snatched her little pistol quickly, and it certainly wasn't a term of endearment I'd mumbled. I'd barely met the green-geared girl, and she'd already endangered my life.
The red girl and the blue girl (who hadn't spoken yet) did the same thing, but with wiser deftness, shifting their guns by holding them by the barrels instead.
"And that, missy, is how you do it. You should be more like your reddish girl friend, greeny," I added after collecting their weapons, and I'd made sure to sound as marginalizing as I could. I don't take kindly to having the muzzle of a gun pointed at me, as a few hundred fuckers found out the hard way. The green girl then threw a hateful look at the red girl with the stupid bow on her helmet. That was the only time when I saw how different those little girls were.
Their eyes were humming with a kind of faint glow, visible because of the shadow cast on them by the kiddy-colored USDO helmets they wore. Then there was that green-eyed girl. Something about the way she looked at her girl friend. Let's just say that it wasn't the kind of look you'd expect on a girl. Well, a normal girl anyway. Had the USDO done something to her? It took a while for me to match the jade jewels on her visage to the others I'd seen, and suffice it to say, the look she'd gave her girl friend was the kind you'd find on the streets, and I wasn't talking about the streets of the idyllic American Dream suburbs.
When it was all over and I'd remained standing despite the USDO secret weapons' sheer incompetence, the girls in gear walked through the door.
"Can't believe the Mayor's agreeing with this kiddy nonsense," I couldn't help but to say it. It was way beyond the crazy shit I'd seen in this city. Homicide, purse-snatching, robberies - those were like brushing your teeth or eating cereal in the morning. A crazy serial killer who'd pose his dead victims in a BDSM scene I can handle, but three completely untrained kids sent to fight crime by a federal agency? Sheer lunacy. Even more so than those crazy cultists running rampant in the peripheries and dark corners of Townsville.
"Yeah, I know right? Townsville's going to the nuthouse if it isn't there already," Canvas said. Seemed that we were in agreement for once. Hallelujah.
When the circus show was over, I'd gladly returned to my trench coat and leather shoes. The timing couldn't be better. It was over an hour into the night, when the low-lives and freakshows, nocturnal as they were, came out to hunt and play. But they weren't the only animals that were nocturnal. They weren't the only animals to hunt and play at night.
I should know. I used to be one of them.
Years ago, I'd gone deep undercover, let myself be swallowed up by the whale that was the Townsville criminal underground. The only problem was, it wasn't exactly an operation sanctioned by my captain. I had taken the initiative, and not entirely for the best of reasons. I was legitimately undercover for the most part. But two decades of honest police work had taken its toll. I had something of a crisis of faith. Sure, I'd burnt down more than my fair share of wolf dens, put over a hundred behind bars (most of whom didn't stay behind the psychopath zoo for long), even received medals and awards for it… But I was my family was still dirt poor. Happy, but dirt poor. I had to explore the other side, know about what prospects lay there. It was a procrastination of decisions to the highest order.
I'd sunk roots alongside gangsters and drug pushers alike, cut deals with them. At the same time, I'd arrested the right people - their competition and criminals who'd fallen out with the wrong people - to stay out of the gaze of the ratters, internal affairs, mob enforcers and street thugs alike.
Long story short, I'd decided to cut my new friends loose. The world of bling-blings bought from drug and prostitution money just wasn't for me. I had a daughter and a wife, and buying them dresses and jewellery with the sweat off the back of prostitutes, some way too young, just didn't have a good ring to it. My new friends didn't take too kindly to it. They'd confessed to my deep involvement with them, right down to the minute details, and the devil's in the details, especially when it involved the fact that I had to do certain things to get in with them. Certain things like tampering with evidences linking them to crimes, making selective arrests, enforcing and running for them. And those were the less damning things. Here's a hint: the girls of the house didn't like that I had to do things to said prostitutes, some way too young, to prove my loyalty.
The court cases took a whole year to peter out. I'd won that battle, mainly because of my reputation and intention to expose the rings I got myself in, but that was only one battle. The domestic front was a catastrophe. The wife left me, and the daughter grew to hate me, even after she joined up with the blues and saw for herself how murky things could get. I don't blame them.
After the City Hall bullshit, I drove into the tenement area. Alone. My partner was no good. I'd left him to do his own dirty work. A soldier of the Lombardi Family I tortured for three days had finally squealed and revealed his Capo's activities. They were involved in some sort of new drug operation. Something 'better' than cocaine. Apparently, the new drug was so potent and potentially profitable that it was kept under wraps. They refer to it as 'His Secret'. Street name unknown, probably because it was too new. My money's on the certainty that it was short form for something else, something only a chemist or a biologist would know.
The tenement area was barely habitable by civilized terms. Roadblocks were set up around it 24/7, but the drugsters had long circumvented it with their own underground railroad for cocaine slaves in the sewers that it was merely an inconvenience. The police precincts there weren't so much as maintaining a civil society as operating like castles, sending out blue knights to raid the surroundings for the seemingly endless supply of drugs and illegal prostitutes and shipments. The sheer number of criminals around them kept their activities down. An uneasy status quo was struck, and no one's winning.
When I was at the roadblock, I was warned about entering the Tenement area. I'd heard it too many times. I went full speed ahead regardless. I stopped a block away from an apartment, rundown even by tenement standards, and suited up for war. Vest, shotgun, a large revolver, a spare pistol. Flashbangs. A knife. The license to kill, the perfect place to snuff out cockroaches like drug runners. In a place as bad as this, the death of low-lives were often overlooked. I didn't need a warrant. The drugs weren't the priority.
I'd spent over twenty years of police action in a hell hole known as Townsville. I'd seen fellow honest cops fall during the early days, in the resurgence of crime, when they couldn't handle the kind of heat outside issuing parking tickets and telling off jaywalkers. You'd think that I should have used the backdoor.
Nope. I'd decided to knock from the front. It was the in thing with hardcores like me these days, and it wasn't for show. The backdoor was more heavily guarded. I went in cold at first, crossing the street with a hoody bought off a bum. Went up to the guards, spouting all-out street slang, claiming to be looking for a restock on my shelf of cocaine for my 'hoes'. Being one of them years ago helped.
There were only two of them at the front entrance. When one of them turned his back, I stuck a knife in him, then rushed the other. The 21-foot rule won out. The other guard couldn't even pull his pistol out, couldn't even scream, when I put my knife through his throat.
Before I went in, I greeted the receptionists in the lobby area with a flashbang. They didn't give me a warm welcome, so I demonstrated to them how it was done with my shotgun. In the chaos that resulted, with men shouting as they were coming down to tango, I found an empty elevator shaft and took it up instead. What can I say? I guess I got lazy.
Mob protocol usually puts the Capo on the top floor. He was the brains, not the muscle, and so he wasn't always expected to fight. There was something about symbolism too. A man's dome was on top of the body, so it should be, at least according to the Lombardi Family, that he should be on top of a Family front.
I climbed my way to the third level, halfway to top floor. By now, most of the muscle had filtered downstairs, like white blood cells in an autoimmune body. But there was a minority of them who were a little smarter, and as I landed on the landing of the third-floor lift, two of them took me by surprise, firing rounds from their street-grade pistols at me. I drew mine and fired. We all drew blood.
I felt the needle jab in my left upper arm. Another had cracked the kevlar on my chest, nothing else underneath. I was lucky. Those two Lombardi soldiers weren't. I'd made sure they felt nothing when I shot them in the face.
I ascended the stairs. Two more were coming down. I fired more rounds to send them tumbling. Fourth floor. No more cockroaches there. The fifth floor was livelier. Sparks were flying when I tried to cross to the stairs leading further up. Taking cover just behind the doorless entrance to the fifth floor, I let off more rounds blindly, saw who I was dealing with this time. Some half-naked under-aged punk-girl, shooting a revolver alongside a pinstriped soldier, who didn't look much older than her, perhaps just breaking into the big 20.
I didn't discriminate. Unhooking my second flashbang, I threw it in and waited. I unslung my shotgun to fire pellets, something they'd have more difficulty negotiating around. For a brief moment, I saw blood all over the girl and her boyfriend. I took off after that. The regrets would have to come later, when I had the painkiller ready at the bottom of a bottle.
Sixth floor. The doors were locked. I picked it open with my shotgun after reloading it. Bullets smashed through it the moment I did, grazing my cheek. I took cover as more were turning the wooden doors into a modern art impression. When it all stopped, I faced my back to the wall and did a horse kick to open one of the Swiss cheese. More shots were fired. They had been waiting for me all along, hoping that I'd assume they'd run out.
I went in, shotgun blazing, after that. I dropped a mobster to the Capo's left, then another to his right. Some of the pellets had clipped the low-level mafiaso leader in the arm, almost like retribution, almost as if there's such a thing as the divine. He went down, had probably never tasted pain for a while. I slung my shotgun and pulled my revolver on him. He didn't dare move.
"Fuck is this shit? What the fuck d'you think your' doing'?" the Capo demanded, like he was the freakin' king of the city. "You think you can come in here and just-" I booted him in the ribs before he could flap his lips any further, a payback for the bruise that was likely forming on mine. Before he could recover, I gave him the boot again in the face. He was out after that. Before I exit the stage, I saw syringes on his desk. I had nearly lost all hope of stealing a sample of 'His Secret'. After swiping them, I turned my attention back to the Capo.
Taking him with a fireman's lift, I exited the floor through the window, on the fire escape. I was long gone before the Capo's gangsters knew to look for their under-underboss. I grunted as I worked my way down, the bullet in my left arm starting to smart even with the adrenaline pumping in my veins.
It was all in a day's work, but there was more ahead. Making the mob captain talk, for instance. The higher they climb, the less they were willing to talk.
It should prove to be a fun and interesting challenge.
