Other LAPD officers joined the group staring at Robby. Some pointed at him.
OSS and GET started to break up and head for their cars when a string of unmarked cars slid into the parking area. Unmarked with tinted windows. The way they rolled in told it all, the elite Violent Crimes Team. They pulled up in adjoining parking slots and stopped in unison, one after the other as if they had choreographed the maneuver. The men were the same from the other night at Mr. Cho’s. Mack, in Levi’s, t-shirt, his shoulder holster with a large-framed automatic, got out and swaggered over, not with the rest, but over to Robby who stood alone, not taking his eyes off of me, waiting. When he came in range, Robby made a quick-step over to Mack and with one hand grabbed him behind the neck and escorted him away from the others, away from their ears. Mack hunched his thick shoulders and knew better than to resist, even though Robby was no match for him. Mack, if he put his mind to it, could break off Robby’s arms one at a time and beat him senseless.
The throng of LAPD officers watched with an unusual intensity.
Mack finally had enough and shrugged Robby off. They were far enough away. Their words, though loud, were still indiscernible.
The urge to hop in Robby’s unmarked car with the Crip still in the back was almost too strong to suppress.
Robby pulled back to strike Mack. Mack brought his arm up to block. Robby stopped himself before he let the genie out of the bottle, one he could never put back. Not with all the LAPD witnesses. Robby and Mack both took some deep breaths and calmed down. More words were exchanged, Mack doing most of the listening. Then they turned, looked at me, and smiled.
Time to go. I turned to get in Robby’s car, make a wild dash for it, but had waited too long. My attention had been focused on Robby while the other members of the Violent Crimes Team casually, instinctively, deployed in easy striking range. They crowded all around, their arms folded across their chests, leaning up against both sides of the car where I stood.
Robby shook Mack’s hand. They both walked over, their path right by the LAPD officers who had just started to disband now that all the action was over. They stopped to take a close look at Robby. After Robby passed, they moved on, talking in low whispers, shaking their heads.
Robby stopped in front of me, his eyes angry. He didn’t take them off of me as Mack came around and took the crook out of the backseat, took the cuffs off, and let him go. The other members without prompting went back to their cars, got in, and left.
Robby and I were alone in the vacant parking lot. He continued to stare.
“What?” I said.
“This what you learn in the joint? How to fuck over your friend? A friend who has gone out of his way to help you?”
His words hurt. I wanted to throw my ace, the fact that his real motivation was to find the kids I had stashed, that he was working with the FBI, and if successful, he’d put me away for the rest of my life. Tell him to kiss my black ass. Instead, I stood and gave back his stare.
He shook his head. “The bitch didn’t know a thing, did she? You fed me a woof cookie that I gobbled up and went off half-cocked, without covering her because I trusted the information.”
I said nothing.
“You let her get away.”
I walked from the car, leaving him, waiting for him to draw a blackjack or a gun. Come up on me fast, jack me in the head, take me in. Give me the BMF treatment, get me to talk, tell him what he really wanted to know, where the kids were. But that was the point of this whole charade. I knew where they were, and they didn’t, and nothing they could do to me could make me tell him. Robby, more than anyone else, knew that. I didn’t know how they had gotten on to me, but somehow they had.
I’d made a slip somewhere along the way and I think I knew where. When they ran all the information in the computer, my name came up. Along with what I had done to my grandson’s father, the crime that put me on the criminal path was also the last piece to the puzzle. The crime that put me in prison was the key. A blind man could’ve figured it out. They were only guessing, that’s why they surveilled the market where I worked. All the countersurveillance I had done, the codes, and cutouts I’d put in play that Marie thought was pure paranoia had been exactly what had kept her and me and Dad out of the can. But, most important, it kept the kids safe a little longer.
Robby didn’t come after me as I walked across the parking lot. He had simply put me back into play. He’d given the Violent Crimes Team a head start to get set up, ready to follow me. He had also forgiven Mack for his little transgression, coming over to Chantal’s apartment. Worst of all, Robby had just unchained Mack. For a brief second I wondered if the whole thing wasn’t all a setup. I looked up in the air, trying to see the cherry-red light of a helicopter and heard the careful footfalls as Robby slowly followed. He said, “I sent the team out to find her, told ’em do whatcha gotta do.” Another BMF idiom that meant they were free to do what was necessary in order to make the streets safe, which included deadly force with impunity.
I stopped, wanting to turn, walk back, and beat his face in. Instead, I couldn’t look at him. I said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
He said, “That it’s on?”
“That’s right.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. You forget, I taught you everything you know.”
I turned, the reflection in his eyes a strange yellow in the sodium vapor light of the parking lot. “Did you teach me to put contraband cigarettes filled with rock cocaine behind my ear and act like an out-of-control madman in front of an allied agency that will surely call Internal Affairs to report a dope-smoking lieutenant? When IA calls you in for the interview, give them my name, I’ll give them a statement and character reference.”
His hand jerked up to his ear as his eyes went wide with shock. He’d forgotten about it.
I walked away.
Chapter Thirty
I walked down Wilmington, wondering just how much they knew about the operation, “the life of Bruno,” post Soledad Prison. I thought about hot-prowling their office. They’d have a situation board up with photos, maps, and bullets of information in order to see at a glance, “who was who in the zoo.” Intelligence was power, and at the moment, I was powerless. I shifted my thoughts to the problem at hand. First things first. I had to lose them and be sure they stayed lost. Then I had to think about Chocolate, get to her before they did. I had the edge there. They’d believe her a coked-out street whore with nowhere to go. They didn’t know about all the money I’d given her. She’d be laying her head in a nice warm motel in South Gate with an eight ball of rock and a bottle of sweet wine.
I sat on a bus bench and waited for the bus that now roared down the street not thirty seconds away. I didn’t look for the net thrown up all around. The bus pulled over and stopped. I got up when the door hissed opened, stepped inside, the door closed. The part of the team on foot would be scrambling for their cars while the mobile units jockeyed their cars in a position to tail. The bus picked up speed. The black woman at the wheel of the bus with a pie-pan face, overflowing her seat on all sides, said, “Sit down.”