back and forth, pops and screams dying in the background.
And as the good burnt smell of gunpowder filled the car, and Merrilee screeched over the speakers in full ghetto bass, Anthony
DiRisio burst into laughter, and leaned forward, beating the wheel like a jockey whipping his horse to death.
13. Slam Dunk
Cruz had woken from a dream of fire. She’d wanted to slip back to sleep, and had tried a cop version of counting sheep, trying
to remember as much as she could of various arrest sheets. Street tags and priors were easy, but height, weight, addresses,
those were tricky.
She’d gotten up to the gangbanger from yesterday’s shooting – eighteen years old, two priors for assault, known affiliation
with the Latin Saints, street name Ratón
,
a Crenwood address that was probably his mother’s – when she gave up. She wasn’t any closer to sleep, just more depressed.
After a while it got hard to think of bangers as people. One went down, another was always ready to step up. Shorties recruited
out of junior high, a ghetto assembly line. Each model younger and nastier than the last.
She rolled out of bed, pulled on sweats and socks. Darkness pressed the glass to the east, and the skyline blazed to the south.
Might as well do some work, make up for the time she’d spent yesterday talking to Jason Palmer. As she booted the computer,
Cat jumped purring into her lap. She scratched his ears, then sighed, opened the topmost of a stack of manila folders, and
started typing.
The Gang Intelligence Unit was the CIA of the CPD, their mandate to track the gangs, their members, alliances, and rivalries.
Information came in a hundred different ways: street interviews, graffiti, suspects that flipped on friends for a lighter
sentence, arrest photos, tips from confidential informants. When combined, the information was invaluable not only for closing
cases, but also guiding decisions on beat-car rotation, preemptive arrests, even bud getary discretion. Gang Intel was a special
unit, a plum assignment, and she’d worked her ass off to be the first woman to make it.
The only problem was that instead of gathering info, she’d been saddled with inputting it.
It hadn’t started that way. For the first ten months she and Galway had ridden hard, leading the south side in the development
of CIs and the amount of useful tips. Even the boy’s club had started to accord her a certain grudging respect.
Then the thing with Donlan last year, and it all went to shit.
How everyone came to know, she wasn’t sure. But it started with jokes – condoms left on her desk, advice columns about interoffice
affairs tacked to the bulletin board. Then some clever prankster had called IAD and suggested her position had to do with
favoritism. Total bullshit that they had no choice but to investigate. And it hadn’t helped when she found out who the prankster
was and took him apart in the boxing ring. So now here she sat, on a ‘temporary
assignment’ any secretary could have handled, inputting data other cops collected.
It was the kind of job meant to suck, and it did. But knowing that there were a lot of people who wouldn’t shed tears if she
quit gave her the strength to stay. Besides, lemonade from lemons. She now knew more about what was happening in Crenwood
than anyone. Every tip, every scuffle, every murder, if it had gang overtones, she knew about it. Like a spider in the center
of a web, aware of any twitch. The strands ran out in all directions, and every now and then she felt she could see the larger
pattern.
It helped a little to think that way. But only a little.
When her phone rang, she answered without looking at the caller ID. ‘Morning, partner.’
‘Rise and shine,’ Galway said. ‘There’s bad guys need busting, and huevos rancheros that need eating. You up for breakfast?’
‘Can’t.’
‘Hot date?’
She sighed. ‘Donlan called last night to schedule
And as the good burnt smell of gunpowder filled the car, and Merrilee screeched over the speakers in full ghetto bass, Anthony
DiRisio burst into laughter, and leaned forward, beating the wheel like a jockey whipping his horse to death.
13. Slam Dunk
Cruz had woken from a dream of fire. She’d wanted to slip back to sleep, and had tried a cop version of counting sheep, trying
to remember as much as she could of various arrest sheets. Street tags and priors were easy, but height, weight, addresses,
those were tricky.
She’d gotten up to the gangbanger from yesterday’s shooting – eighteen years old, two priors for assault, known affiliation
with the Latin Saints, street name Ratón
,
a Crenwood address that was probably his mother’s – when she gave up. She wasn’t any closer to sleep, just more depressed.
After a while it got hard to think of bangers as people. One went down, another was always ready to step up. Shorties recruited
out of junior high, a ghetto assembly line. Each model younger and nastier than the last.
She rolled out of bed, pulled on sweats and socks. Darkness pressed the glass to the east, and the skyline blazed to the south.
Might as well do some work, make up for the time she’d spent yesterday talking to Jason Palmer. As she booted the computer,
Cat jumped purring into her lap. She scratched his ears, then sighed, opened the topmost of a stack of manila folders, and
started typing.
The Gang Intelligence Unit was the CIA of the CPD, their mandate to track the gangs, their members, alliances, and rivalries.
Information came in a hundred different ways: street interviews, graffiti, suspects that flipped on friends for a lighter
sentence, arrest photos, tips from confidential informants. When combined, the information was invaluable not only for closing
cases, but also guiding decisions on beat-car rotation, preemptive arrests, even bud getary discretion. Gang Intel was a special
unit, a plum assignment, and she’d worked her ass off to be the first woman to make it.
The only problem was that instead of gathering info, she’d been saddled with inputting it.
It hadn’t started that way. For the first ten months she and Galway had ridden hard, leading the south side in the development
of CIs and the amount of useful tips. Even the boy’s club had started to accord her a certain grudging respect.
Then the thing with Donlan last year, and it all went to shit.
How everyone came to know, she wasn’t sure. But it started with jokes – condoms left on her desk, advice columns about interoffice
affairs tacked to the bulletin board. Then some clever prankster had called IAD and suggested her position had to do with
favoritism. Total bullshit that they had no choice but to investigate. And it hadn’t helped when she found out who the prankster
was and took him apart in the boxing ring. So now here she sat, on a ‘temporary
assignment’ any secretary could have handled, inputting data other cops collected.
It was the kind of job meant to suck, and it did. But knowing that there were a lot of people who wouldn’t shed tears if she
quit gave her the strength to stay. Besides, lemonade from lemons. She now knew more about what was happening in Crenwood
than anyone. Every tip, every scuffle, every murder, if it had gang overtones, she knew about it. Like a spider in the center
of a web, aware of any twitch. The strands ran out in all directions, and every now and then she felt she could see the larger
pattern.
It helped a little to think that way. But only a little.
When her phone rang, she answered without looking at the caller ID. ‘Morning, partner.’
‘Rise and shine,’ Galway said. ‘There’s bad guys need busting, and huevos rancheros that need eating. You up for breakfast?’
‘Can’t.’
‘Hot date?’
She sighed. ‘Donlan called last night to schedule
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