Kirk
I didn’t seem to be making any headway in this case. I really thought we were on to something when Sanchez and I rolled up on Leon Copeland at Nina Thomas’s apartment. But both of our sources have been telling us that Leon hasn’t been a player in this game in years. I really wasn’t all that surprised by that though. Leon and Mike Black were good friends those days, and he did seem to drop off the grid about the time that Black killed just about every other dealer in the area. Black made a deal with Chilly and setup what became know as the dead zone, where Black permitted nobody to sell drugs. Maybe Leon still respected the dead zone on the strength of his relationship with Black, so we had nothing. Then we caught a break.
I was at my desk, reviewing what little I had on the case, when an officer walked up. “Hey, Kirk, you know an asshole named Timothy Thompson?”
“I know a lot of assholes,” I said and keep reading my file.
“This one says he talked to you and Sanchez the other night.”
Now he had my attention. “What about him?”
“He got popped trying to sell to an undercover today. Instead of lawyerin’ up, he said he would only talk to you and Sanchez. You want to talk to him?”
“Shit, yeah.” I called Sanchez and told him to meet me down there.
When Sanchez got there, I filled him in and we went in. “I was startin’ to think y’all didn’t wanna talk to me,” Thompson said.
“What would make you think that?” Sanchez said and pulled up a chair next to him.
I grabbed a chair, pulled it up to his other side, and sat down. “We’re here; but now I wanna know what a small-timer like you could possibly wanna talk about?”
“I want outta here, that’s what I wanna talk about,” Thompson said.
“Tell me something I don’t know and I’ll consider it,” Sanchez said.
“The night Big K and them got shot, somebody got through our security.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a cop.”
“I’m listening,” Sanchez said.
“The reason we stayed outta y’alls way is that we had lookouts everywhere. If a cop car or anything that even looked like an unmarked car came our way, we’d shut down until they was gone. But this mutha fucka rolled up and walked up on us, made his buy quietly, and walked off. But instead of leaving, he steps to Kenyatta. They beefed for a while and then he leaves.”
“How you know he was a cop? And if he was a cop, how come none of you assholes are in jail?”
“After he left, I asked Kenyatta what was up with that. She said he was a cop tryin’ to shake her down.”
“You get a good look at the guy?” I asked. “This cop.”
“I ain’t tryin’ to incriminate myself, but I was as close to him as I am to you right now.”
“What was he driving?” Sanchez asked.
“Midnight blue Camaro.” I looked at Sanchez and I could tell he knew something by the look on his face.
“Can you pick him out if you saw him again?” Sanchez asked.
“I saw him today when they busted me. I started to talk to him, but I figured he didn’t have no juice.” Thompson looked at Sanchez then he looked at me. “So can we do somethin’ here or do I need to call my lawyer?”
“I’ll see what we can do,” Sanchez said and bounced up. He headed for the door.
“What’s that mean?” Thompson wanted to know.
“It means you sit here and you don’t talk to anybody,” I said and followed Sanchez out of the room.
I knew that Sanchez knew exactly who Thompson was talking about and was on his way to go after him. The fact that he was in on an uncover operation meant that it was one of Sanchez’s men.
I had to hurry to catch up with him. “Slow down, Gene, and talk to me,” I said and Sanchez kept walking. “You know who he’s talkin’ about?”
“It’s one of my men: Nelson Brown. Drives a blue Camaro.”
“So where you going?”
“I’m going to tear him a new asshole, that’s where I’m going, Kirk.”
“Slow down, Gene, and let’s talk about this,” I said and got in front of him.
“What?”
“All we got now is the word of a scumbag drug dealer tryin’ to make a deal to get out and sell some more drugs. Let’s check this out a little and if he comes up dirty, I’ll hold him while you tear him a new asshole.”
Sanchez finally exhaled. “Okay.”
Sanchez and I discretely dug into Brown’s life; his finances and the luds from his phone, just like we would any other criminal. The picture that was being painted by the information we found, made one thing crystal clear: Brown was dirty. But I wanted more before we confronted him, so I suggested that we follow him. We lost him in traffic the first day, but the second, Brown led us right to what I was looking for.
“Get a picture,” I said and Sanchez got out his camera.
That next morning, Sanchez called Brown into his office. Before he got there, I made Sanchez promise to take it slow. “Don’t let that famous Latin temper of yours blow this.”
“I’m cool,” Sanchez said as Brown walked in.
“You wanted to see me, lieutenant?”
“Yeah, come in and close the door,” Sanchez said.
“Detective,” Brown said to acknowledge my presence in the room.
I just nodded my head and took another sip of my coffee.
“How’s the car running?”
“Like a dream, lieutenant. It’s worth every penny of that fat note I pay for it every month,” Brown said.
“Kids doing good in school?” Sanchez asked, and I was surprised that he was actually taking it slow. Normally, Gene was the kind of guy that would have called him a dirty cop and asked for his gun and shield as soon as Brown walked in the door.
“They’re doing great.”
“I remember when my kids were that age; wanting something all the time because the other kids had it. I used to have to tell them all the time that they didn’t know what their parents were doing to get all that stuff.”
“It is tough, but me and Kathy, we get by,” Brown said cautiously.
“I know it must be tough paying that fat car note and keeping three kids in private school,” Sanchez said and the look on Brown’s face told the story. “Mount Holy Oak, that place ain’t cheap.”
“What’s going on here, lieutenant?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Kenyatta Damson,” Sanchez said.
“The vic from the other night; what about her?”
“How much did you ask her for?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brown said and squirmed in his chair.
“Well maybe you’d like to tell me what you were doing with Bryce Tyler, and what you had to talk about for an hour?” Sanchez said and I dropped the pictures of him and Bryce Tyler in front of him.
“I need your gun and your shield,” Sanchez said and held out his hand.
I guess Brown knew he was done and quietly gave it up. Then he started talking about a deal where he could walk out of this without going to jail. “The deal is that you give up every dirty cop in the building,” Sanchez said.
At that point, he asked to have a PBA rep present. When the rep got there, Brown told us what he was doing and then he rolled on no less then seventeen cops who were taking payoffs from the same drug dealers they were supposed to be arresting. “So what happened with Kenyatta Damson?”
“She’d been payin’ us off for years. She used to sell for Lorenzo Copeland, the one that killed McDill.”
“Was McDill dirty?” Sanchez asked.
“He got me started. That’s why he was fuckin’ with Copeland that day. He approached Copeland after we flipped Bryce Tyler, but Copeland was an arrogant fuck and wouldn’t play ball. After he went down, I found out that she was back up and running in the same spot, and I approached her. I told her that if she didn’t want to suffer the same fate as Copeland then she would pay.”
“What happened that night? Why’d you go see her?” Sanchez asked.
“I told her the price was going up,” Brown said.
“You fucks always get greedy,” I said in disgust.
“But she refused to pay.”
“That why you had her killed?” I asked.
“I didn’t know he was gonna kill her.”
“Who?”
“Bryce Tyler.” Brown said. “Anytime somebody didn’t want to pay, we’d send Bryce around and he’d convince them that it was in their best interest to pay.”
“What happened then? Dead dealers don’t pay,” I said.
“He said that it was personal.”
“That what you were talking about?”
“Yeah, I told him that he had fucked up and that he needed to lay low for a while ’cause you were putting pressure on us to close this one.”
“How do we find him?” Sanchez asked.