“Yeah. I think so, too.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Well, I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Okay,” she said. “See you tonight?”
“Sure. I’ll come by.”
“Okay.”
There was the moment again. That small window of opportunity that I always let fly by. Not this time, though.
“Rebecca?”
“Yeah?”
“I…”
“I know, Connor. I know.”
“You know?”
“Yes. I’ll see you tonight. You can tell me in person, if you want.” Her voice had softened. “I’ll see you then.”
“See you,” I whispered, and she hung up.
I put the receiver back on the hook and realized I was smiling.
I’m going to take my ten-day rip without filing an appeal.
I’m going to take Rebecca to Vegas.
Maybe I’ll come back.
Maybe I won’t.
Maybe after I tell her that I love her face to face, we’ll decide this shithole town can kiss our asses and we’ll just go somewhere else and get a fresh start.
Maybe.
I just don’t know yet.
Glen Bates
From the Roof
“See that one there?” Bates said, which struck Romeo McClaren as ridiculous since both of them were looking through binoculars.
“Which one?”
“The one with the short hair, right next to the guy in the blue shirt with the wild-ass afro. See him?”
Romeo adjusted the focus of his binocs. The hot noon sun blared down on them and he sweated heavily underneath his dark, crisp uniform. “Guy in the FUBU sweatshirt?”
“Yeah, the yellow one.”
“I see him.”
“That,” Bates told him, “is Antoine Ballard. He’s been down on The Block since he was nine.”
Romeo lowered his glasses and looked over at Bates. The older, white officer leaned on the brick ledge with his elbows and peered down at the street. The gray at this temples and the slight paunch in his mid-section spoke to his age, but his shoulders were broad and his forearms were thick with corded muscle. Romeo had seen him in action twice since being assigned to the training officer. Bates was a tough old bastard.
“Nine? Jesus.”
Bates shook his head. “Jesus didn’t have nothing to do with it, but Antoine’s mother did.” He lowered his glasses and turned his gaze toward Romeo. A toothpick dangled from one corner of his mouth. “She was crack whore back in the early nineties. She was down here all the time, either getting crack or working to get money for crack. Whenever she came calling, she brought Antoine along.”
Romeo shook his head in disgust. “Poor kid.” He thought of his little brother, who was eleven. He couldn’t imagine Kevan down on the drug-infested Block, but of course he was a late-in-life baby and their Moms pretty much spoiled the kid. Hell, Romeo did, too.
“At nine, maybe it was ‘poor kid,’” Bates said. “But Antoine learned quick. He ran errands for the guys slinging dope and pretty soon they realized that if a kid was holding when the cops showed up, they might not even search him.”
“And if they did, no kid is going to get serious time, anyway,” Romeo added.
Bates nodded. “That’s right. But we figured out he was holding for them and he got popped for possession at ten and was introduced to the juvenile system.”
“How’d he get caught?”
“Coupla guys saw it from up here on the roof.”
“You?”
Bates shrugged.
Romeo shook his head in disbelief. “How is it that this here nest never got burned?”
Bates smiled, stretching out the small, jagged scar on his chin. “They don’t ever believe us. I’ve flat out told them I saw them from up on the roof through binoculars. I’ve even testified to it in court. They don’t believe it, though. They just think I’m lying.”
Romeo bridled a little at the word ‘they,’ and wondered, not for the first time, what Bates was thinking when he said it. Having a white training officer was something he knew he’d have to get accustomed to, since there were only half a dozen black cops on the entire River City Police Department. That’s the way it was everywhere in the lily white Pacific Northwest and Romeo was used to it. It didn’t bother him much, unless someone said something like ‘they’ and he got to thinking about it.
He raised his binoculars to his eyes again and watched Antoine and the wild-afroed associate. He tried to imagine the twenty-year old in the FUBU shirt and sagging, oversized jeans as a ten year old victim and couldn’t.
“He looks like a player now,” Romeo said.
“He thinks so,” Bates said. “And I suppose he is. He worked his way up the food chain. Still, he’s too stupid or maybe too greedy to get someone else to sell the shit. He just stands on the corner himself, taking all the risk.”
“Maybe he should take some business classes over at the community college,” Romeo joked weakly. “Learn how to maximize profits.”
“I think he’s got that part down.”
Romeo watched for a while longer. Antoine stood on the corner, leaning casually against the stop sign. His demeanor was more than calm; it was lazy. The wild-afroed kid with him paced back and forth, moving his body in dance rhythm to music Romeo couldn’t hear.
The two police officers watched in silence for a while. Romeo wondered how much longer the surveillance would last. Their shift was half over already, and all they’d done was eat breakfast and come up to the roof. He wanted to get back into the patrol car and chase after some bad guys. He was barely out of the academy and the thrill he felt every time he slid behind the wheel of the police cruiser was like nothing he’d experienced before. Sitting on a rooftop watching drug-dealers through binoculars wasn’t quite the same.
A car pulled to the curb next to Antoine and he ambled over and leaned in. There was a brief discussion and a quick exchange. Romeo was surprised at how fast the hand movements were.
“That’s it, right?” he asked Bates. “Now we can arrest him?”
The silence that came from Bates caused Romeo to lower his binoculars again and look over at the training officer. Bates stared at him with the expression of a frustrated teacher.
“Arrest him for what?” he asked the Rookie after a long moment.
“Dealing dope,” Romeo said.
“What’s your probable cause?”
Romeo gave him a confused look. “You said he was a dope dealer, right?”
Bates nodded.
“Convicted, too?”
“Twice, but never as an adult.”
Romeo shrugged. “Still, there’s history there. And we just watched him make a deal down on The Block, which everyone knows is where the drug trade is in this city.”
Bates didn’t answer, only continued to stare at him. Romeo fidgeted and licked his lips.
“That’s it?” Bates finally asked.
Romeo nodded.
Bates shook his head. “Sorry, son, that dog don’t hunt.”
Romeo clenched his jaw at the word ‘son,’ but said nothing.
“First off,” Bates said, “how do you know it was a drug transaction? Did you actually see the drugs? He could have sold that guy a recipe for brownies.”
In spite of himself, Romeo smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Bates demanded, a slight edge to his voice.
Romeo chuckled. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
“Thinking what?”
“That if he were selling brownies, they were probably the special kind with a little chronic baked right in.”
Bates didn’t laugh and he narrowed his eyes. “Second,” he continued, “if you make an arrest off of supposing it was drugs he sold and then you search him and find the drugs, any defense attorney worth a damn will get it thrown out.”
“Why?”
“Fruit of the poisonous tree,” Bates told him. “You didn’t learn that in the Academy?”
Romeo nodded, a little dejected. “Yeah, we did.”
Bates twirled his index finger. “Go on. What is it?”
Romeo sighed and recited, “If we enter someplace without legal standing and then we find evidence there, the evidence is not admissible because the search was not proper.”