Tasker nodded thoughtfully. “I didn’t look at it like that, but it’s too late. I already committed.”
“You do more shit like that and you will be committed.”
Tasker smiled and headed out the door.
Derrick Sutter sat in the rear of the group of fifteen Miami police officers. He was helping out Vice on one of their giant combined operations-first they’d hit a bunch of search warrants, then execute arrest warrants for local people who had been videotaped selling crack to undercover cops over the past three months. Sutter liked hanging out with some of the troops, but he didn’t like the “big net” theory of scooping everyone up at once. He knew it had to be done, but sometimes it looked like it was put on more for show than for trying to clean up a neighborhood.
The whole assignment was a big change from his work with Bill Tasker over at FDLE. This was lots of action for little return. No one really cared what happened once you cleared these guys off the street. The cases he’d worked with Tasker had some impact. That was obvious from the way everyone got so bent out of shape when things didn’t work out right.
Sutter looked around the group as the sun set into twilight. This was a good time, because they usually caught the dealers at their houses and sometimes picked up extra buyers who were on their way home from work. Each cop wore a simple black Miami Police T-shirt under his black ballistic vest and jeans or black fatigues, depending on which unit they worked on a regular basis. The narcotics guys liked to look tough, so they wore fatigues. Sutter, officially assigned to crimes/person, or what was commonly called robbery, just wore plain jeans. Tonight he actually had on running shoes. He liked a little rubber between his feet and some of the nasty floors of the buildings in the area. His Bruno Magli knockoffs had awfully thin soles.
The big sergeant with the kind of rough complexion you got from acne as a kid finished his briefing, saying, “We got six cops on each site. If people run, it’s up to you. If you think you can grab them easy, do it. We don’t have enough manpower to have a whole squad chase one rabbit.” He looked over the group to make sure everyone was paying attention. “We got a couple of guys sitting at each location. We’re hitting three of the eight apartments over on Sixth Court. Two downstairs and one up. That’s where the shit will happen.” He went over more details and assignments, then sent them off to meet a block away from their assigned locations.
Sutter was one of the cops going to the notorious apartment on Sixth Court. Everyone knew the building. Seemed like half the drug sales and a third of the shootings in the whole city occurred at that run-down concrete-block apartment house.
After a quick gear check at the rally point, Sutter found himself in the lead car with three Vice cops he knew from the substation. They were going to enter the downstairs apartment at the far end of the building. They slowed as they approached the address and let one car stop first so that the cops assigned to the apartment upstairs had a little time to climb the crumbling cement stairs.
“Now,” said the driver, as he listened for a signal on the radio. In one motion, all four of the cops opened the doors just as the car stopped and popped out into the small lot in front of the apartments. Two more cops, who had been sitting in a car across the street, joined them as they approached the door to the apartment, each man drawing his sidearm. Sutter held the barrel of his Glock toward the ground until they were at the door. He could hear the team upstairs start to bang on the door and yell, “Police! Search warrant!” The first man on his team repeated the same phrase as he pounded on the door and immediately tried the door handle. It turned, but the door was caught by a chain when he tried to open it. Inside, the sounds of people moving started to grow. The first man raised his long leg and kicked the door wide open, then stepped to the side as the other cops poured into the first room.
Sutter was the second cop in the door and saw that two women were already being held at gunpoint by the cop who had come in first. Sutter and the others immediately flowed into the next small room, the whole time shouting, “Police! Down! Police! Get down!” Their shouts were mingled with the cry of a woman and the shouted obscenities of several men inside. The combination of the noise and the musty smell of crack and cigarette smoke made Sutter’s head spin slightly as he tried to focus on any threats in his field of vision.
Sutter, his Glock still in front of him, headed down the hallway just as he saw a dark figure dart toward the rear window and dive straight out the screenless opening. Sutter took two quick steps and peered out to see the man running with a small gray package in his hand.
“Shit, I got a runner. I’m going,” he yelled over his shoulder. As he climbed through the window, he heard the cop behind him say, “Not more than two blocks.”
Sutter grunted in acknowledgment as he hit the ground and went to one knee, then was up and closing the distance on the fleeing man in a matter of seconds. He wasn’t going to yell and let this asshole know he was chasing him. When the time was right, he’d say something. Sutter noticed the guy’s hands were already empty. That package was somewhere close.
The man ran west through a couple of yards and a parking lot until he was out on Seventh Avenue, the main north-south artery in this section of town. He looked like he was slowing down, until he turned his head and saw Sutter still loping toward him. Then the afterburners kicked in and he flew across the four busy lanes of traffic without looking. Sutter was right behind him. Just as he was about to make the curb, a low-rider Dodge screeched its brakes and knocked the running man onto the sidewalk. He landed with a grunt, his hand spreading a blood jelly across the rough concrete.
Sutter was about to ridicule the man for getting what he deserved when the same Dodge, still moving, swerved slightly and hit Sutter, throwing him onto the trunk of a stopped Chevy.
“Motherfucker,” said Sutter, sliding back onto his feet from the trunk. Before he could yell at the Dodge’s driver, he realized his man was up and running, although this time with a slight limp, north on the sidewalk. Sutter started after him.
After a block, the man darted into the Church’s Fried Chicken.
Sutter drew his pistol as he approached the restaurant and rushed in the door. Everyone stared at him, and one small girl just pointed toward the swinging door to the kitchen. Sutter pushed through it.
The man, yammering loudly in Spanish, held a five-inch paring knife to the throat of a young female Church’s manager. She was silent as tears ran down her face.
But as soon as Sutter raised his pistol and took aim at the man’s face, he dropped the knife and backed away with his hands up. The manager rushed from the kitchen.
Sutter advanced on the man, saying, “Get on the ground, now.” He repeated it, but the man started circling the large food preparations table with a giant pan of fried chicken legs on it. Sutter stopped and so did the man, his hands still in the air. Sutter took a step and so did he.
Then the man edged back toward the swinging door, reached down and grabbed several chicken legs and started flinging them at Sutter, who dodged two and flinched at another, until he remembered they were only chicken legs. He took two fast steps, surprising the man with his speed, and swung his pistol in a short arc, clipping the man in the head.
The man fell to one knee, dazed, as Sutter holstered his pistol, drew some handcuffs, grabbed the man by the arm and spun him down in one motion, then cuffed him cleanly with his hands behind his back.
Sutter leaned in close to the man’s face and yelled, “You’re under arrest.” He kneed him in the side and added, “Asshole.”