The Assailant by James Patrick Hunt Page A

things up on the screen and make calls from his cell phone, and still drive all the while. Hastings sat in the passenger seat. Within a few minutes of communicatingwith the screen and dispatch on the radio, Detective Escobar decided that Roland Gent was likely to be at a certain address in North County.
    Hastings said, “You think we’ll need backup?”
    â€œYou don’t know Roland, do you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe’s a shitbird. I remember when I used to do code enforcement, we ran into him then. That was a couple of years ago.”
    â€œCode enforcement?”
    â€œYeah. Metro do that?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œYou know, to shut down crackhouses. You go into a crackhouse, it’s hard to prove a criminal case of intent to distribute. Nobody knows anything. Lot of these guys, they’re living in grandma’s house. She comes from a different generation. A better one. Now, grandpa’s dead and buried, and grandma has all these grandkids and great-grandkids, teenagers without jobs or education, and they’re all living in the house. Not just them, but their friends.” Escobar shrugged. It was a common dilemma. He said, “Violent, fucked up, trouble. Grandma, there’s not much she can do about it. She can’t control them. The neighbors, they want these places shut down. So, code enforcement teams up with county police and we’d go in and say,
Ma’am, you’ve got about a dozen beds or mattresses in your basement
.
That’s too many people. A violation of county ordinance
. We threaten to shut down the house.”
    â€œCondemn it,” Hastings said.
    â€œYeah, but it never goes that far. Once grandma gets notice of the violation, she moves the turds out. In fact, she’s
relieved
we’re doing it.”
    â€œRight,” Hastings said.
    â€œ ’Cause now she can blame the police for pushing them out. She can tell ’em,
Look, it’s not my fault
.
It’s the police
. And then they move out and she’s relieved and the neighbors are relieved. It’s a very effective program.”
    â€œAnd the guys go set up a crackhouse somewhere else.”
    Escobar shrugged again. “Yeah. Probably. But not in that neighborhood. You ever work narcotics?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt’s a people-moving business. You’re not going to end the war on drugs, you just need to
move
it. And people want it moved, George. They want it away from them. And it’s not just the white communities that feel that way.”
    â€œYeah, I know.”
    â€œAnyway,” Escobar said, “I remember we went to one house, and we were just talking to the owner and there’s really not any conflict about it. She lets us in to examine the home and everything’s going fine, and then we come out and there were about a dozen people on the front lawn. Oh, shit. What the fuck is this about? And there’s Roland Gent at the front of the pack. He’s in front of his boys now, and he wants to show off. Jack off. He was pointing to us, saying, ‘What’s your name? What’s your badge number?’ That sort of shit. And we told him he needed to step away.”
    â€œDid he?”
    â€œOh yeah. He was just a big mouth.”
    â€œAnything bad happen?”
    â€œNo. We faced him and the rest of them backed off.”
    â€œDid you call for backup?”
    â€œNo,” Escobar said. “We probably should have, though.”
    â€¢
    Escobar called for a backup this time, and it got there at about the same time they did. Two uniformed county deputies in a radio car. Escobar introduced them to the homicide detective from St. Louis metro. They agreed that the uniformed patrol officers would do a perimeter search of the front and back of the premises but remain outside for the time being.
    The house was a one-story ranch style with a two-car garage. One of the patrol officers came from the