Small Mercies

27

The headquarters for the Global Liberian Liberation Front sit inside a former synagogue on Dudley Street in a section of Roxbury that looks like the ash heap of the Urban American Dream. The three leaders of the GLLF sport horn-rimmed glasses and tower-of-power Afros, black turtlenecks and checked pants, matching Vandykes and airs of intellectual pretension, but Bobby knows all their reading matter was encountered first in a prison library. Whether the GLLF ventured into drug dealing as a means to finance a “higher end,” or the “higher end” was conceived as a cover for the drug dealing, is irrelevant. They’re fucking drug dealers, first and foremost.

The guys and girls who work under the main leadership are representative of the truth of the organization and rumored to be the ones who gave them the more authentic gang-sounding nickname, the Moorlocks. They’re kids, mostly, who don’t go in for turtlenecks or Vandykes or horn-rimmed glasses. They wear black leather car coats and wide-brimmed hats and shoes with three-inch heels. They deal drugs all over Roxbury, Mattapan, and Jamaica Plain, and they fuck up anyone who gets in their way. They’re cowboys (and cowgirls) who don’t give a shit. This recklessness makes them dangerous but, conversely, predictable if anyone decides to take a real run at them.

Vincent, who watches way too many movies and reads Guns & Ammo the way other guys read Hustler, wants to stage a pseudo-paramilitary raid on the GLLF building. Just go in there blasting and call it a plan. Several of the major weapons companies have been sending urban police departments amped-up military-grade weapons for years. New law enforcement philosophies coming out of L.A. and New York have begun to advocate for special teams of combat-ready police cells. In L.A., the first of these has been given a name, SWAT, and they took on the Black Panthers and the SLA in sustained firefights that armchair John Waynes love to believe put the order back in law and order. In reality, Bobby knows, those gunfights led to limited results, a shitload of property damage, and a new micro-generation of substandard cops who think they can compensate for bad instincts, poor people skills, and limited intelligence with high-powered weaponry.

One day, Bobby knows, the Vincents of the department will get a chance to prove their theories correct or not. Whether they’re proved right or wrong, the genie will be out of the bottle, and it will be probably hard, if not impossible, to put it back in. Until that day, though, Bobby outranks Vincent. He comes up with a plan for Operation Moorlock that involves a team in Narcotics while an ad hoc group of detectives from across Division handles surveillance on GLLF headquarters to make sure no one goes unaccounted for until Operation Moorlock has its shit locked down tight.

Thursday morning, after Bobby gets all he needs from Narcotics, he and Vincent and two other detectives, Colson and Ray, knock on the front door of the GLLF and are welcomed inside by Rufus Burwell. The other two who take up the masthead, Ozzie Howard and Simeon Shepherd, are waiting in a large study that has only a few books on the shelves and smells of incense and pot.

“We’re here for the guns,” Bobby says once they’re all seated.

Rufus strokes his Vandyke like he watched too many Charlie Chan movies as a kid. “We have no guns.”

“Yeah, you do,” Bobby says. “Look, we can go back and forth and then drag you down to the station and lose your booking slips for a few days while we toss the shit out of this place and any other places you’re associated with. We can go that route. Or you can just give up the guns that Brian Shea and Marty Butler gave you and tell us why they gave them to you, and we’ll never speak of it again. You won’t do a night in jail, you won’t get charged with anything.”

Rufus, Ozzie, and Simeon exchange smug, lazy looks before Rufus turns back to Bobby. “I remain unconvinced of your sincerity or, frankly, your power.”

“Okay.” Bobby reaches into his pocket. He removes the booking photos of Rufus’s nephew, Ozzie’s girlfriend, and a yellow-eyed kid rumored to be Simeon’s boyfriend. He lays the photos down amid the coke dust on the coffee table. “Those were taken half an hour ago. We’ve got every single one of them dead to rights on narcotics trafficking. Not possession, Rufus. Not possession with intent, Ozzie. Not intent to distribute, Simeon. Straight-up, good, old-fashioned, made-in-America motherfucking trafficking. That’s a nickel each hard time before we even consider their priors. So you want to spend the rest of this decade visiting your nearest and dearest in prison? Keep telling me you got no guns.”

Rufus and the other two share a few looks.

“They’re in the basement,” Rufus says.

While Vincent, Colson, and Ray go to the basement with Ozzie and Simeon, Bobby has a chat with Rufus.

“What were you supposed to use the guns for?”

“We still in the realm of no pending charges, Detective?”

“We are.”

“You wouldn’t be the first cop to break his word.”

“Be the first time I broke mine, though. Rufus, I knew you back when you were running numbers for Red Tyler. I ever do you the wrong way?”

Rufus says, “Always a first time.”

Bobby already owns this asshole for sitting on a box of illegal automatic rifles, and Rufus thinks Bobby needs more to send a black man with a record up the river?

“What,” Bobby says very slowly, “were the guns for?”

Rufus sees something in Bobby’s gaze that speeds up his answer. “They want us to shoot up the high school.”

“Which high school?”

“South Boston High School.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.” Rufus chews a hangnail for a bit. “Said to shoot some white kids if we’re of the mind.”

“Were you gonna do it?”

“Ain’t answering that, Detective.”

“And what were they gonna pay you?”

“Two kilos Mexican brown.”

“And who was it who hired you for this job?”

Rufus snorts. “Gonna pretend you didn’t even ask.”

“I can apply plenty of pressure to get my answer.”

“You go right ahead, Detective. I’d rather die, go to Walpole for ten, you name it. I ain’t saying shit about it.”

“We witnessed one of his employees hand you the weapons.”

“And that employee, what’s he say about who he works for?”

Bobby says nothing.

Rufus says, “Uh-huh.”

Colson, Ray, and Vincent come back up the stairs, each carrying an M16.

“Those them?”

“Yup,” Vincent says. “Serial numbers filed off, fully automatic. What were they supposed to use them for?”

“To start a race war,” Bobby says, his eyes on Rufus, who tries not to look ashamed.

“Shit,” Vincent says, “if we ain’t already in a race war, what the fuck are we in?”