Street Justice (22 page)

“I don’t know what you stumbled into but it has to be big. You two were still on site when Agent McCadney was already on the phone with me. It was too quick for him to hear it through official channels, review the incident and decide to follow up, which means someone called him and told him to apply the pressure. Who watches the watchers, right?”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Adrian commiserated.

“Anyway, this is what I could get. It is limited by the fact I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself and that we have very little on this crew which is why you were on this case to begin with. Officially I have told you two to stay away from this. I will assign you to some busy work tomorrow. I can’t justify paying Steve’s enormous fees to support you in busy work…”

“Enormous fees, how much does he make?” Adrian suddenly burst out.

“That’s classified, but more than I can pay him to push papers with you.”

Adrian took the phone from his ear and looked at Steve and said, “How much do you make?”

Steve’s head was bent, reading the papers. He moved only his eyes and said, “It’s classified.” Then looked back down to his papers.

Sam either did not hear Adrian or ignored him and continued. “…but you should be able to do that work in your sleep, or at least enough of it to make it look like you’re following my orders. What you do with the rest of your time is up to you.”

“And what about Steve?”

“You should know by now I can’t control that man. Ask him yourself but make it clear I can’t pay him.”

“Fair enough, thank you Captain.”

“Sure thing. But let me be clear, if anyone finds that file, or you reference it, or someone sees you with it, or anything else, I will claim I lost it and you must have found it. Or depending on how bad the situation is I may say you stole it.”

“I understand. If it is bad enough you need to claim I stole it, my career will be torched anyway so you might as well pile on,” Adrian smiled. He knew Sam could lose his job and pension by giving him the file and did anyway. He sure was not going to let it get out and if he did, Sam should do whatever he needed to do to distance himself from it.

“Glad we understand each other. Now go get ‘em,” Sam said.

“Yes, sir.” Adrian hung up the phone and looked over at Steve. He waited for Steve to look up. When, after a minute, he did not look up, Adrian cleared his throat and said, “That was Sam.”

Not moving, Steve said, “I gathered that.”

“Don’t you want to know what he had to say?”

“I’m guessing he said he is denying any knowledge of this file. I’m also guessing he is giving you some sort of coverage so you can continue this case.”

Adrian stared at Steve with his brow crinkled together. After a ten second pause he replied, “Yes, that’s basically what he said.”

“Excellent, so can we get back to what we were doing?” Steve still reading.

In a lighter tone, one meant to convey that Adrian had caught Steve not knowing everything, he said, “He also said…”

Steve cut him off, “He also said he can’t pay me because we’re not working on this case so if I am going to continue to work on this case it will be for free.”

Adrian paused for another few seconds, then conceded, “Yes.”

“Well, since I am still here, reading these files, knowing what I know, what conclusions can you draw?” Finally, Steve raised his eyes to Adrian.

Adrian was at a loss of words but stammered out, “Um, yeah, good.” Steve went back to looking over the sheets and Adrian glanced around the room as if looking for someone else. No one other than Steve was there. Finally Adrian put his head back down and started reading again.

Three hours later, Steve and Adrian having each read their halves, then switching and reading the other’s half, Steve got up and got yet another beer. “We’re running low.”

“I had a twelve pack in there,” Adrian said. He did not drink much himself but Steve ended up in his apartment enough that he now kept what he felt was a large supply.

Steve pulled his head out of the refrigerator and said, “So I should have said we were low when I walked in?” A large grin spread across his face.

One corner of Adrian’s mouth pulled down, “No. I’d tell you that you’ve had enough but I know you won’t listen, besides, if it works for you what do I care. All I am saying is I’m not buying anymore.” Steve laid the corner of his beer on the edge of the counter and struck the top. The cap popped off and Steve caught it before it could hit the floor. “Where is the bottle opener?” Adrian asked.

“Over there,” Steve indicated with his chin while he took a long pull of the beer. Finished he continued, “It was all the way across the room.”

“So you destroy my counters?”

Steve looked down at the edge of the counter. Rubbing it, he scrunched his brow and said, “It’s fine.”

Adrian did not looked convinced but he did not say anything. He looked back at his screen and said, “Come look at this.”

Steve rounded the end of the counter and headed over to stand behind Adrian. He looked down at Adrian’s screen. The screen showed a blue screen, divided by white dash marks and covered with white text. “What is this? A web site from the early 90s? Prodigy looks advanced compared to this.”

Adrian smiled and nodded his head, “Prodigy, way to go. I’m impressed. But no, this is a modern site, or at least an up-to-date site.”

“I haven’t seen anything on the web look like that recently.”

“Of course not, you surf the web. The web is only part of the internet. The tip of the iceberg, the Disney, family friendly part.”

“I have seen some things that are distinctly not,” Steve stressed the word ‘not’, “family friendly.”

Steve chuckled, fair enough, but what I meant was that while most people surf the web, the web is only a small fraction of the internet. Most of the illegal things are not done on it. Some are, don’t get me wrong, but most are not. Think of the internet as a city, and the World Wide Web is the streets. Most people drive around the streets and say, ‘I’ve seen the city.” A few people get car jacked, but most of the crime is happening in-between the streets, around the streets, under and over the streets.”

Steve thought about it, “That is still a horrible looking site” was his only reply.

“Fair enough, but let’s look at what the ugly site is telling us,” he pointed at a message on the screen, “This is a thread that discusses new methods of getting around wire taps. It used to be, burner phones were safe, or at least mostly safe. But it is getting easier and easier to get judges to let police tap people, now phones and high tech devices can listen in to any phone in the area, so they are not nearly as safe. So the discussion is about how to effectively communicate now, without tipping off the police.”

“So, how are they doing it?” Steve asked.

“Usually either jamming the signal which is tough because you have to target the receiver which means you have to tip the police off that you know they are there, or they are going low-tech and using runners again, but that’s not the point. The point is, if we follow this thread, we find a few users from this area…”

“How do we know they are from this area?” Steve asked.

“Two reasons, one they aren’t smart enough to effectively mask their IP addresses, they are using crappy proxies. Basically leaving bread crumbs. Second, they have made several references to places and local slang. Not a lot, not, ‘Hey, we run the corner at King Street and 6
th
’ but enough description that as they build up we have been able to identify them as from here.”

“So, let me get this straight. You’re using the internet but more than the internet. You find some bad guys who are all trying to stay anonymous, you trace back their location using a Hansel and Gretel technique, to find guys in our city you think are related to our guy, is that right?” Steve asked.

“Not exactly but close enough.”

“So that’s what you do, yet you were making fun of my car. I think we have an uncool guy here, and it ain’t me.”

“Well, we all have our skillset. You get drunk better than anyone else, I find baddies online.”

“Humph, well I never,” Steve fake pouted, then finished his beer and headed to the fridge to get another one. “So what are our next steps?”

“Our next steps are to understand how they are communicating, tap that, then get some dirt on Will. Once we can do that, since it won’t be legally admissible, we will confront him with it and see if we can get him to give up his suppliers or at least send us in the right direction. Lest we forget, our original goal was not him, but his suppliers.”

Steve stood frozen for a moment thinking. Then he waved his beer can in the air and said, “Well, I don’t think you need me for any of this, I’ll go get some more beer.” With that he sauntered out of the apartment not waiting for confirmation or rebuttal from Adrian.

“…and that boys is the gist of it,” Russ concluded. His small dwelling filled with eight people; Mario, Jeff, Johnny, Alex, Kit, Will, Nate and himself. The paratroopers that the living room seemed to be clones. They were all at least six feet tall, looked forged out of iron and wearing black tactical pants, tight t-shirts and combat boots. They had arrived early and Russ had just finished telling them the story from start to finish. He had started with him looking for a job but it did not seem to matter to the troopers. They continued to be bored through the story about how Bryon had introduced Jeff to Mario and himself. They perked up at Russ mentioning Eric and they all became anxious when he had mentioned the money they had made. Once he explained how they had three keys, the troopers were too excited to really listen to their failed attempt to resell the product.

“So I am guessing you asked up here to secure you a corner and provide protection,” Johnny conjectured. Johnny was a wiry man whose slim build made him seem taller than he was. While thin, he had taunt rope-like muscles without an ounce of fat.

Alex was as muscular and the shortest of the group. His eyes constantly darted around, scanning his environment. Will was good looking, with medium length, straight dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Kip and Nate were both large men, both well over six feet with muscles built from hard work rather than in a gym. Kip had a hawkish nose while Nate nearly constantly smiled with bright teeth that would make most movie stars jealous.

“Yeah, basically,” Russ said.

“And you have three kilos?” Johnny asked.

“Yup.”

“And you need this done now?”

“The clock is ticking.”

“Well, when you started this story, I figured it was something along those lines and I was thinking we go 50-50, half for your crew, half for mine,” Johnny explained. Russ nodded his head. Johnny continued, “But now that I hear the whole story, I’m thinking we all need to be equal partners, we take the money, split it eight ways after we pay off, each man gets his split.”

“So we move from a 50-50 split to a 65-35 split in your favor?” Jeff objected.

“It’s actually sixty two and a half not sixty five but yeah.”

Jeff looked over at Russ, “You OK with this?”

Russ smiled, glanced at Mario, then at Johnny, then back to Jeff, “Well, I wouldn’t have necessarily talked about everything in front of people but yeah, I think we’re good.”

“What do you mean we’re good? That shift is thousands of dollars.” 

“I know, but we can’t do it without them.”

“So maybe we should increase the amount,” Johnny offered.

Russ never broke eye contact with Jeff and said, “We could always sell this stuff at break-even point. Even our customers who have blow would by this quality of product at that price, but it doesn’t take into account that there is risk involved which we should be compensated for. But then again, there are extremes to both sides of everything.” Turning to Johnny, he said, “I’m fine with sixty two and a half for your team, but let me say, what we want is protection and an outlet that can move the quantity of product we need moved. You cover all your expenses and/or cover anyone else you feel you need to add. We keep our portion, we sell and we supply product.”

Johnny’s head bobbed up and down then he said, “Yeah, I think that sounds fair, I mean we’ll want to check out a corner or two, but if they are anything like the ones in LA, they shouldn’t be too hard to take. Other than that your deal sounds fair.” Turning to the other four troopers he said, “Let’s go look around downtown, see if we can find a corner with some traffic that we can kick the little kids off of.”

The group left with a collection of affirmative noises. Once gone, Mario looked at Russ and said, “Think we’ll be able to control them?”

Russ shook his head, “Not really, but I am hoping if we keep hold of the supply we can simply stop the drugs which will stop the money and they will wander off.”

“Here’s to positive thinking,” Mario said.

              Steve and Adrian were back in a car. This time they were staking out the corner of 3rd Avenue and South Horton Street, watching the train tracks. Steve sat behind the wheel of the 1971 Dodge Coronet Station Wagon. Adrian had made the usual disparaging comments when Steve picked him up and was unimpressed with the resto-mods Steve had explained on the way to their stakeout spot.