Blue Street
Lester “Bad Dog” Jones leaned
against the junction of door and wall at
Bad Dog would have preferred the moniker to be Big Dog but his five-foot-five stature prevented it though he could still live up to his reputation as the Bad Dog. Thirty-two years of age, Bad Dog had all ready ‘pulled a dozen in stir.’ If he had been convicted of all his offenses, they would have added up to more than eight-hundred years in the joint, but Bad Dog had only been tagged for possession with intent to sell and one case of attempted murder that his lawyer had plea bargained down to aggravated assault. Bad Dog was not about to take another fall, to spend the remainder of his natural life as a permanent guest of the taxpayers; hence the lookouts up and down the street, while Domino stood at curb-side to steer the buyers up the steps where Bad Dog was holding several ounces of rocks, coke and smack, along with a bankroll of more than $2,500 in his pocket and a Colt Commander .38 revolver in his waistband at the small of his back.
Bad Dog was not just any dumb street pusher. He knew that most of his peers opted for the nine millimeter with it’s larger magazine and greater number of rounds than his six-shooter. He also knew that the automatic left spent shell casings whenever it was used and shell casings frequently have fingerprints on them. Since his prints were on record with the state, ‘the man’ would have no trouble identifying him. Bad Dog was simply taking precautions.
The button earphone of a FSR radio snaked up inside Bad Dog’s windbreaker, giving him the appearance of the DEA or federal agents he wished to avoid. If Bad Dog heard either of his lookouts scream “Daylight!” in his ear, he would disappear inside the cinder-block apartment building and quickly dispose of his stash behind a previously prepared ventilator in the wall.
Bad Dog expected to gross over five large this day and would net a tidy sum after paying off his help.
* *
*
Terry Petersen surveyed his beat
while on foot patrol along
“Help! Help!
Stop….” he heard, followed by a woman’s scream.
The voice came to Petersen from
behind while he stood on the corner of
Terry was an excellent sprinter. He jogged four miles each evening to keep in shape, but he was also weighed down with fourteen pounds of regulation gear; nightstick, handy-talkie, cuffs, mace, nine millimeter pistol with two extra clips, regulation cap and shoes. He hadn’t a prayer of catching the punk tens years younger, sprinting away in $100 running shoes.
After two blocks and as many
alleys, Terry gave up the chase. He
headed back to the victim to get her version of the story. Turning on
* *
*
The maroon Volvo stopped twenty yards down the street. A blonde behind the wheel kept her seat as the two buyers got out of the car and headed in the direction of Domino, who would steer them to Bad Dog and his pockets stuffed with goodies. Bad Dog eyed them both. He’d dealt with them before, uptown Yuppies who weekly drove downtown to spend a geecil on ‘recreational drugs’ for their weekend parties. Bad Dog relaxed, these guys were ‘dependable’ and would never fuck with their supplier.
Domino braced them, doing the dappity-do-hand-jive that Whitey expects from black punks, while touching them in a friendly way designed to detect weapons or wires but still appear friendly and innocent. He steered them to Bad Dog.
For the next 80 seconds Bad Dog laughed and joked with his buyers. They inquired what was available and how much. Bad Dog quoted a ridiculously high price then said, “…but for my regular customers, you can have it for half. One large and you’ll be flying all next week.”
The buyers agreed and the taller of the two Yuppies pulled a money clip from his pocket just as Officer Terry Petersen opened the door behind Bad Dog. For scant moments, Bad Dog, Terry, and the two buyers stared in surprise. Bad Dog reacted first and reached for his mojo but Officer Petersen was faster. Just as in any cheap black and white flick, the marshal stuck his gun in the villain’s guts and pulled the trigger twice.
Bad Dog went flying backward, arms flailing to his side and rolled down the short flight of steps, his revolver flying into the street and skidding on the asphalt. Domino and the rooftop lookouts disappeared faster than cigarette smoke. The Yuppie buyers turned and began to run while Terry just stared down at the corpse at the foot of the stairs. Blood began to puddle, darker than the strawberry syrup on the banana splits at Baskin Robbins. It looked like a mixture of strawberry and chocolate as it oozed onto the concrete and ‘step on a crack – break your mother’s back’ stress relief points. As the voluntary muscles of the fresh corpse relaxed, a brown stain grew on the seat of his pants. If Terry had been able to see the man’s crotch from the front, he would also have seen the spreading urine as the man’s bladder voided it self.
Terry had never fired his weapon on the street before and this was the first body he had encountered other than at the scene of a traffic accident. This was also the first human being whose life he had snuffed out in the milliseconds it takes to squeeze a trigger. He swallowed hard to avoid vomiting on the steps and fought down a rising tide of guilt.
The shorter of the two Yuppies reached down to the asphalt and scooped up Bad Dog’s piece, stuffing it in his pocket with barely a break in stride. Yuppie #1 and Yuppie #2 arrived at the Volvo in a dead heat and scrambled into the back seat. “Drive! Get out of here! Fast!” one of them shouted at the blonde. She needed no urging and the tires smoked and squealed as the sedan swerved into traffic and headed for the nearest freeway on-ramp. Officer Petersen was still too frozen to catch a glimpse of the license plate.
It surprised Terry how quickly the street cleared of onlookers, loiterers and pedestrians. How quickly the street was swept clean of potential witnesses to the violence that had just taken place. A moment ago there had been no less than fifty civilians within view, now there was only the dead man he’d killed to keep him company. The citizens of Terry Petersen’s blue street didn’t want to get involved, afraid they would be caught in the immediate violence or tracked down later and retribution exacted if they gave testimony to the police.
He transferred the nine-millimeter automatic to his left hand so he could squeeze the microphone of the handy-talkie clipped to his left shoulder with his right. “Dispatch, this is Charlie-two-two. Officer needs assistance,” he said in a grieving monotone. There was a squishing sound as Dispatch broke squelch with a reply.
“Two-two, send your traffic.”
“I’m in the 3600 block on
“Roger, two-two. Are you hurt?”
“Nothing that a change of underwear won’t fix. The man tried to pull a gun on me and I had to put him down.” Not shoot him, not kill him, and not blow him away. Just, put him down, like you would an injured dog or horse. Coldly removed from the deed he had just perpetrated, Petersen gave only the necessary information required.
“Be advised, two-two, Motors three-six and three-eight responding. Adam 18 and 23 are in your vicinity and will be on scene immediately. Hold what ya’ got, Petersen, watch your back. The watch commander and Eye-A will arrive shortly.”
Terry sent a “Roger, Wilco,” and leaned against the building with his back against the wall and his gun arm drooped at his side.
‘Shit! With any officer involved shooting the law requires an investigation. They would ream him good for certain. But it was a good shoot, wasn’t it? It was clearly self-defense. Either him or the black man lying on the sidewalk in a puddle of blood, urine and feces, right?’
The two motorcycle units appeared
from nowhere, sort of like appearing from thin air as Scotty beamed them down
from the
Terry reviewed again and again what he had seen and how he would describe the incident. He had gone over it maybe a dozen times when the first black and white pulled to the curb. Officer’s Mitchell and Espinosa got out and stepped over the corpse as they approached him. A second black and white blocked the curb lane between the two motorcycle cops and left it’s emergency lights flashing.
“Jesus, Terry! What the fuck happened?” the first officer from the car asked.
“I was chasing a purse snatcher three blocks over, Frank,” he said to Officer Mitchell. I was coming back to interview the victim and decided to cut through this apartment building. When I opened the door from the inside, the man down there got spooked and pulled his piece on me. I had no choice… none whatever!”
“Why did he take you on, Terry?”
“I’ll tell you,” Espinosa said from the sidewalk where he had been examining the body. “There’s a shit-pot full of soggy cash in his pocket, and enough pharmaceuticals in his jacket to supply a small country. He’s got one of them FRS radios under his coat too. I’d say it’s obvious he was dealing and Terry was unlucky enough to blunder into him, but lucky enough to get off the first shot.”
“Okay, Terry,” Frank Mitchell said reassuringly. “Seems like a righteous shoot to me. The shooting review board will clear you in no time, at most a day, or two days, and a suspension with pay. You can take Michelle to the beach and soak up some rays. Sound good?”
“Don’t speak too quickly,” Espinosa said in a stage whisper. “I haven’t found a gun.”
“Oh, Christ!” Mitchell swore. “Hey, you bike-jockeys,” he called to the two motorcycle officers. “Either of you guys seen a piece anywhere on the block?”
Humpty and
Dumpty looked at their feet and glanced around a few times before shrugging and
displaying their empty palms.
“Don’t
sweat it, Terry,” Officer Espinosa said as he climbed the steps. He whispered so low only Terry and Mitchell
could hear him. “I got a throwaway under
the seat in the unit. It’s a twenty-two
with the numbers filed off and there’s no ballistic record of it anywhere, so
it’s clean. We’ll just put it in the
vic’s hand so as to get his prints on it, and it’s gonna be smooth sailing,
pardner.”
“Jaime,”
Petersen pronounced it ‘Hy-mee’, “I can’t rig the evidence. Not only is that illegal but when they find
the real gun I’ll be sunk!” Terry exclaimed.
“I don’t
want to spoil your day, rookie, but they ain’t never gonna find any gun,” Frank
Mitchell said. “By now some street punk
has that gun under his mattress or buried inside an old coffee can. Internal Affairs is gonna come down on you
like white on rice and you better start looking after your self! Go get the throw-away, Jaime.”
“No!” Terry
said. “This was a righteous
shooting. I didn’t have any other
choice. I believe in the system and I’ll
take my chances.”
“Fuck,
Terry! The only chance you’ve got is to
come up with a gun or the shoo flies are gonna bury you!”
“No!” Terry
remained adamant.
The
throwaway remained under Espinosa’s car seat as Sergeant Ballard, the Watch
Commander, pulled up in a black and white with his driver. A blue Ford sedan braked to a halt right
beside them and two men in suits got out.
Sergeant Ballard flipped a wave at the taller of the two suits. “Hi ya, Jim.
Give me a second to talk to my man and then you can have him.”
“Right,
Zeke. Tell him his best course of action
is to come clean.”
“Is your
wife clean now?” Ezekiel Ballard quipped back.
“Shit! You mean the health office ain’t notified you
yet? Why do you think I been balling
Gloria over on
The two men
let out a guffaw, neither taking the other serious as they bantered.
Ballard
stepped over the pile of human trash on the sidewalk giving it only a brief
glance. ‘So, Bad Dog Jones has finally
gotten his comeuppance? Good riddance to
bad cess,’ Ballard thought. Mitchell and
Espinosa gave way so Ballard could step up to Petersen. “Can’t say you’re real happy to see me now,
Petersen, but I’m one of the few friends you’ve got. Now tell me what happened here and don’t
leave anything out.”
Terry told
his story again and left out nothing.
“Zeke, I
told him we could drop a piece for him, but he wouldn’t go for it,” Espinosa
whispered.
“I’m not
surprised,” Ballard said. “Petersen is
fresh out of the academy and hasn’t yet learned that the foot soldier on the
blue street sometimes has to bend the rules.
I won’t say I encourage you to throw the manual out the window,
Petersen, but the rules don’t always protect those who deserve it.
“Fer’
instance, you do know that you may be required to help Internal Affairs collect
evidence against you, don’t you?” Terry
could barely nod, of course he knew all the rules, but he had never imagined he
would be caught up in something like this.
“You can be required to testify against yourself, there’s no Fifth
Amendment guarantees for a police officer.
If you don’t, you will be suspended and your actions will be held
against you. In short, you are guilty in
the eyes of the police force until you can prove that you are innocent.”
“I fired to
protect myself, sergeant,” Terry said blankly, the seriousness of his situation
gradually beginning to dawn on him.
“I just
hope you haven’t protected yourself off the force and into a five by nine cell,
Petersen. Now, I’m gonna turn you over
to the shoo flies. Just tell them ‘No
comment’ until your PBA lawyer is there to represent you. You’re not an accomplished liar and Internal
Affairs will have you confessing to shooting Bad Dog inside of five minutes. Hell, you’ll probably confess to the
assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King also, even though you weren’t born
when they got theirs. You’re too
innocent, Peterson. The innocent die
young.”
“Wait a
moment,” Terry said. “I just remembered,
there were two guys with the dead guy. I
guess they were buyers… they were white and not from around here. As soon as the shooting began, they ran to a
maroon Volvo and made a quick getaway.
I’m sure one of them must have seen what happened.”
“You better
hope we can find them and hope they can help you, Petersen. I know that scum lying on the sidewalk and
the world is better off without him, believe me. He’s got a dozen arrests but only two
convictions. He should have been put
away a dozen times before, but we couldn’t dig up enough evidence to interest
the DA in prosecuting.
“On the
other hand, this is an election year and nothing is guaranteed to get a
politician more votes than to show he’s tough on crooked cops who take the law
into their own hands. You may just go to
prison for making society a better place to live.”
“Okay,
Zeke,” the tall man in the suit said.
“You’ve had your time. We want to
get this officer downtown and take his statement so we can clear this up ASAP. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a
little paranoid standing out on this street over a black corpse while the sun
is shining on my lily white skin.”
“Yeah,
yeah, Jim,” Zeke Ballard said with a wave of his hand. “I’ve ordered Officer Petersen not to say
anything until his PBA representative is there.
You won’t go given him the third degree just for following my orders,
will you?”
“Zeke, we
threw away the rubber hoses with the last administration. All we want is the truth. If we can clear your boy, we’ll clear
him. You can trust me on that.”
“But what
if you can’t clear him, Jim? We’ve got a
DA who’s anxious to get elected to a fourth term. He’s sure to want to take home a trophy in
this game.”
“Zeke,” Jim
Harris reassured his old friend, “if I can clear him, I will, I swear that on
Patty’s tits!” he said and raised his right hand to illustrate his point.
Sergeant
Ballard turned to Petersen one last time.
“Jim will do right by you, Petersen.
I know that. His wife’s got the
finest tits in this state, and so big they’ve got their own zip code. But he has a boss also, and his boss is the
DA’s right hand man when it comes to investigating the force. So do as I tell you. Don’t say nothing without your
mouthpiece. Understand?”
Terry
Petersen stood tall and sucked in his gut.
“Right, Sergeant. Clear,
Sergeant.”
“And knock
off that crap, Petersen. You ain’t in
the academy no more.”
Terry
Petersen could only exhibit a worried expression on his face. He wondered if he would still have a job next
week? He wondered who would be plonking
his girlfriend, Michelle, next year if he couldn’t successfully put this behind
him?
Hell, he
wondered if he would be out of jail tomorrow?