guy’s coming over from the door… he’s a big mean-looking sonofabitch… he’s giving the crackhead the evil eye… Now he’s bending over behind the skinny guy’s chair. The skinny guy’s putting both hands behind his back… and now I can’t see their hands at all.”
“Pick up their goddamned hands, Nestor! Pick ’em up!”
How the fuck’s he supposed to do that? Thank God, the skinny guy brings both hands around in front of him. “He’s handing the guy something, Sarge—”
“Handing him what?! Handing him what?!”
“He’s handing him this little cube thing, Sarge, wrapped in a little piece a Bounty paper towel. Looks like a rock to me.”
“You sure? What makes you think it’s Bounty?”
“I’m sure, Sarge. It’s the JenaStrahls. I know Bounty. How the hell did americanos ever get along in America before Bounty?”
“Fuck Bounty, Nestor! Where’s the goddamned little thing now?”
“The head’s stuffing it down into his pants pocket… He’s starting to walk away, Sarge. He’s heading back to the rear of the lot. You should see him. He’s got some baaaad locomotor problems.”
“So it’s a buy—right? The whole thing.”
“I saw Abraham Lincoln’s bushy eyebrows, Sarge.”
“All right,” said the Sergeant. “We’re gonna need three cars.”
The Sergeant got on the Department radio and called their CST captain and asked him to dispatch three cars, unmarked, two officers per car, same setup as the Sergeant and Nestor’s in the Ford Assist. One unit would drive by the dope house and park in a driveway between two houses nearby, and more than likely use a sun reflector disguise the same way the Sergeant and Nestor had been doing it. A second unit would drive into the alley behind the house to cover the rear—and see if they could spot the head who walked like he had a stroke and just made a buy at the house. A third unit would pull up on the other side—right behind the Sergeant and Nestor. The Sergeant and Nestor would be leading the raid. They would arrive right in front of the house as near to the porch and the two rhinestone-studded cucarachas as possible. All eight cops would hop out of the cars with the badges gleaming on their chests and the holsters fully visible on their belts in a show of force calculated to dissuade anyone with armed resistance on his mind.
At this point, the cucarachas with the body piercings and jacklegged gaits became less amusing… Nestor would have sworn he could actually feel the adrenaline rising from above his kidneys and revving his heart up into the racing mode. If CST undercovers had spent a few days making buys at the place and scoping it out, a SWAT team would have probably been called in. But this looked like too rinky-dink a dope store to have to crank things up that high. That wasn’t precisely how Nestor looked at it, however, and probably not the Sergeant, either. After all, the Sergeant was no fool. Where there was dope, there was a good chance there were guns… and the two of them would be going in first… At this very moment, Nestor couldn’t help remembering something an astronaut had said in a documentary on TV: “Before every mission I told myself, ‘I’m gonna die doing this. I’m gonna die this time. But I’m dying for something bigger than myself. I’m about to die for my country, for my people, and for a righteous God.’ I always believed—and I still believe—that there is a righteous God and that we, we in America, are part of his righteous plan for the world. And so I, who am about to die, am determined to die honorably, fearing only one thing: not living up to, not dying for, the purpose for which God put me on this earth.” Nestor loved those lines and believed in their wisdom and remembered them in every moment of police work that involved danger… Did you do that before the ever-judging eyes of a righteous God… or was it the eyes of an americano sergeant? Now, be honest.
Nestor still had the binoculars focused on the two black guys with the rhinestone ears. What was it—this place where dirt-bags like them lived? Overtown… trash everywhere. The buildings were small, and many were missing… burned down, demolished, or maybe they just fell down from lack of upkeep… wouldn’t be a surprise. And everywhere there was a vacant lot you had… trash… not piles of trash… after all, piles of trash might suggest that someone was coming