The Reformed

16

Sam hated cop bars. It wasn’t personal. He just preferred a bar where you could get something more than a domestic beer and a shot of Jack Daniel’s. And then there was the issue of the kind of women who frequented cop bars. Not that Sam kept up on all the latest hairstyles for the fairer sex, but he was pretty sure that teased and crimped hair bleached to the point of translucence was not being shown anywhere near the runways these days. And yet sitting along the bar at Cuffs were three women whose hair looked to be conducting electricity. They weren’t bad to look at otherwise, but Sam just didn’t care for women who smelled of Budweiser and Jack Daniel’s and whose hair had a separate area code.

Sam could have lived without hearing “Magic Carpet Ride” for the rest of his natural-born days, too, but it seemed to be on heavy rotation on Cuffs’ jukebox, having already played three times in the past hour while he waited for his friend Ross Angel to show up. Ross wasn’t exactly a cop; he was a meter maid. Or, as his business card said, PARKING ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, which meant he had a badge and access to the systems Sam periodically needed access for, as well. Sam didn’t know Ross well-he’d been introduced to him by another friend, this one at the DMV, after Ross had a small problem with a loan shark over some gambling debts. It wasn’t a huge debt-$500-but the shark was starting to make threats, and Ross couldn’t very well call the cops. So Sam did what he could to help the poor bastard-which, in this case, just meant that Sam dug deep and paid off the shark. Now Ross owed him a periodic favor, one low enough on the totem pole that Ross could be of any use at all, which meant Sam mostly used him to help parking tickets disappear. Still, he felt pretty confident Ross could come through on something a bit larger, like the identity of the cop who drove the cruiser Fi spotted. But now Sam was worried, since Ross had chosen to meet at Cuffs, which meant his judgment had to be impaired.

The jukebox spit out the opening strains of “Back in Black”-easily the fifth AC/DC song played in the past hour, too-just as Ross finally entered the bar. Sam waved his bottle of Bud Light at him, and Ross sidled over the long way, making sure to pause by the bar for quick conversation with the ladies before sitting down.

“You a regular here?” Sam asked.

“No, no,” Ross said. “They got trivia here every Tuesday, so I come in for that periodically. And on Wednesdays and Fridays they got half-priced wings, so I tend to drop by then, if I’m around. And Mondays they got a pretty chill DJ. Saturday and Sunday, if they got a game on, I might drop by. But that’s it.”

Meter maids, Sam thought, spent so much of their lives accounting for time that, apparently, they just didn’t have a good sense of it in their personal lives. Either that or Ross was just a strange, strange man.

“Any luck with my errand?” Sam asked.

Ross put a finger over his lips and then looked over both of his shoulders. Because nothing conveys secrecy better than shushing someone and then looking over your shoulder. “You know where we are?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, “you picked the place.”

“I thought if we were here, no one would think it was suspicious that we were together.”

Oddly, Ross’ explanation actually made a bit of sense, but was also entirely senseless. “Listen,” Sam said, “top secret mission here, Ross. Lives are at stake. Communists could be landing on our shores at any moment. So, do you have a name for that plate or not?”

Ross reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to Sam. “You didn’t get this from me.” It was as if everything Ross said was cribbed from a bad crime novel. It didn’t surprise Sam. He suspected Ross had a lot of free time to read. “Unless there’s a commendation coming. If there’s some hero shit going down, it would be fine if you mentioned me. Just trying to get a leg up in the force, you know?”

“I know,” Sam said. “If we get before the Hall of Justice with this, I’ll recommend you immediately be made an honorary Superfriend.”

Sam unfolded the paper and saw the cop’s name: Pedro “Peter” Prieto. A pretty common Cuban name. He had to hope that Ross’ own latent desire to be a detective got the better of him and caused him to do some legwork.

“What do you know about this guy?”

“He writes off a lot of minor tickets,” Ross said. “He’s what we call a neighborhood guy. Everyone he grew up with comes to his house when they have a fix-it ticket or a parking ticket. Just one of those things.”

Just one of those things. Of course, if you happened to be wanted for some larger crime and got a fix-it ticket, it would help to have someone there to write it off. “What’s his beat?”

“Little Havana, mostly. I don’t know much about him except for his daily logs I pulled. He does some traffic pickups over by the Orange Bowl, too. We don’t exactly hang out. Cops and Parking Enforcement aren’t on the same feed line, but I see him here and there and he’s come to me with a couple favors over the years. You’d be surprised how much a ticket for an illegally lowered car can be, seeing as they mount up. That’s one thing I’ve never understood. Lowering your car. Why do that?”

“To look cool,” Sam said.

“Really?”

Sam wanted to say, “No, they do it to look like assholes,” but decided against it. Let the poor man live in blissful ignorance. “This Prieto,” he said, “how old is he?”

“Thirty? Thirty-five? Why?”

“Helping out neighborhood guys, that’s something you do when you’re not sure you want to be a cop long term. But get into your thirties? That’s your career. Why jeopardize that for some kid on the streets?”

“Maybe he’s cultivating confidential informants?”

Sam was going to guess that Ross watched a lot of Law amp; Order. Who ever called a snitch a confidential informant? “He’s not working major crimes, is he?” Sam said.

“No,” Ross said, “more like stolen bicycles and petty robbery. Pick up a hooker every now and then. That would be my guess. I see him on the street, he’s just rollin’ most of the time. You know, I’m trying to get into the police academy. Did I tell you that before?”

“No,” Sam said.

“I just want to be a cop that no one has any issues with, right? Like, just a good person.”

Interesting.

“Any rumors about him being gang affiliated?” Sam said.

“Everyone who grew up in Little Havana is gang affiliated in one way or another,” he said. “But he’s with the good guys now.”

“If that’s true,” Sam said, “why didn’t you have some moral objection giving me his information?” Sam hated to play hardball with Ross, but he felt like the meter maid wasn’t giving the full story. That was the downside of dealing with sources: Sometimes they just don’t want to give up what they know.

Ross drummed his fingers on the table. “Sweet Home Alabama” started on the jukebox and for a couple minutes Ross seemed to get lost in the music, but Sam was pretty sure he was trying to figure out how to say something he didn’t want to say. “You know what’s crazy?” Ross said. “Neil Young and the guys in Skynyrd? They were actually good friends. So everyone hears this song and thinks the guys in Skynyrd hate him for all that ‘Southern Man, don’t need him ’round’ shit, but it’s not true.”

“Really?” Sam said, thinking, Okay, now what?

“Yeah,” Ross said. “It was just hype. Something to sell records.”

“I guess sometimes that’s the case,” Sam said. “Things aren’t what they appear.”

Ross drummed his fingers again and then stopped and looked around the bar one more time. “The thing is,” Ross said, “people in Miami, you know, everyone has a past. So I had a friend of mine in the juvenile division just run a search on Pedro Prieto, you know, see if anything popped, because I’m thinking if you wanted his information for something, it must be some bad news. And, you know, you helped with that problem and I can’t repay you enough. You know, that was some Donnie Brasco stuff you did.”

Every meter maid wanted to be a cop, Sam knew, and every cop kind of wanted to be either a hitman or a mafia don, so when Sam paid off the shark, he went back and told Ross he went all the way to the top of Miami’s biggest crime family and informed him that Ross was a protected guy and to lay off. It was the kind of stupid story someone would believe only when they didn’t want to possibly imagine the path of least resistance-in this case, paying off the debt-but it also served their relationship well. Big Bad Sam knew mob bosses! In this case, though, that reputation meant Ross ended up sticking his own neck out. It was more admirable than Sam could have imagined.

“He’s been involved in some shady things,” Sam said. “Let’s just say he’s part of the problem in the United States today.” Ross’ eyes got wide for a moment, and Sam could almost hear Ross screaming Conspiracy! in his mind. “Let’s just say, he’s no friend to the hardworking, lunch-pail Americans I think we both look up to.”

Ross nodded in agreement, though Sam suspected Ross ate most of his lunches at Chick-fil-A.

“Well,” Ross said, “listen to this. When he was thirteen, he got picked up for running drugs for the Latin Emperors. Just minor stuff. A little weed. Misdemeanor stuff. He went to college, passed all his exams, and Miami PD, you know, they want guys who know the law of the land. But knowing how serious this might be, in light of your involvement, I poked back on some fix-it tickets and a few parking jobs in the last couple months and found a lot of crooked guys there, Sam.”

That was a good piece of information… but also so juicy Sam had to make sure Ross understood it wasn’t something he could pass onto anyone else, no matter how many times they made him listen to “Magic Carpet Ride” as torture.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Sam said. “Most of these guys, Ross, they just want to feel respected and tough. It’s not enough that they are the law of the land, my friend, they want people to need them, too. It’s a sign of narcissism. But you know what? It’s human. I’m sure it’s all a big misunderstanding.” He paused and let that sink into Ross’ mind. He pondered, adding, “These are not the droids you’re looking for” into the conversation, just to give it a little context, but felt like Ross might not grasp the allusion. “Anyway,” Sam continued, “this helps with what I’m looking into. Just a hit-and-run case. One of those things that sticks in my craw, you understand, makes me distrust my fellow man.”

Ross looked relieved. “That’s good,” he said. “Because, you know, we have a code of silence and, well, I feel weird breaking it. But a hit-and-run, that’s low down.”

“Meter maids have a code of silence?” Sam said.

“Law enforcement in general,” he said. “You got a badge. You keep your mouth closed.”

“That’s good to know,” Sam said, but didn’t bother to inform him that not only had he talked, but so had his guy in juvie, too. Maybe it was a code of occasional silence. He pocketed the piece of paper and stood up to leave. It was getting late in the afternoon, and that meant more cops, more women with teased hair and more Steppenwolf on the hi-fi, as it were.

“You don’t wanna stick around? See if maybe we can get a few of these ladies to dance?”

“Next time,” Sam said.

“And, Sam, just hypothetically,” Ross said. “If I happened to run into trouble with someone in the gambling trade again, would you be amenable to my calling you for some advice?”

“Here’s my advice,” Sam said. “Stop betting on sports.”

“It was strictly hypothetical,” Ross said.

“Good luck on the academy,” Sam said, and then walked outside, certain he’d be hearing from him as soon as football season started again. He made a mental note to put aside a few hundred dollars just in case, of course, he needed to help his friend.

Though, the more Sam thought about it, the more he thought that maybe the best way to help Ross would be to give him an in on some actual police work. If things worked out, maybe he’d be able to do just that.

Normally, Sam preferred to do his own legwork so that he could get a definitive answer to his questions. Depending on people like Ross always ended with more ancillary work than he really wanted to handle because of the nature of the source. He trusted Ross. Was sure Ross had given him nothing but the straight dope, but even still, old Sam liked to depend on his eyes for things.

So after he left the bar, Sam drove down to one of his favorite spots in Little Havana-a restaurant called Ozzie’s that sold the absolute best plantains north of Cuba-and enjoyed a leisurely meal outside, to see what the police presence was like. There were a few squad cars that came through periodically, which wasn’t unusual for the area, but none of them were Prieto’s. Ozzie’s was considered a neutral spot, on account of the food and the fact that Ozzie himself was still behind the counter, eighty years old and known to be one of the sweetest men alive. Well, sweet provided you didn’t make him pull his sawed-off shotgun from beneath the counter. His restaurant was given the ultimate respect: There wasn’t a single tag on the outside walls, nothing even on the sidewalk.

If something jumped off at Ozzie’s, it was usually some tourist making a complaint about his pork chop or some such thing. Ozzie didn’t care much for people complaining about his food, and that included the grave offense of asking for salt. But gangs? No. They liked his food, too, and Sam could even remember an occasion when he’d dined at the counter between a Crip and a Blood who had both decided to make the drive in for some lunch, and found themselves separated only by an ex-Navy SEAL. Sweet, really.

If Peter Prieto was what he appeared to be, he’d be the first responder to any Latin Emperor situation here on hallowed ground. So, after his meal, Sam walked back to his car and made a call to 911. “There’s about fifteen Latin Emperors getting ready to storm Ozzie’s in Little Havana. Yeah. I’m sure. I just saw them out front with guns and everything. Heard one of them say it was time Ozzie got his for giving his mama congestive heart failure. My name? Aldrich Rosenberg.”

Sam closed his phone, pulled out the SIM card and replaced it with another, and then sat back, swallowed a Tums-thanks to Ozzie’s spice predilection-and waited for the sirens to begin wailing.

Four minutes later, a cruiser came screeching down the block but with no siren. Sam sat up and took notice. The car came to a halt in front of Ozzie’s, and Sam made note of the car number and plate, and then when Peter Prieto hopped out, he wasn’t all that surprised. Tall and lean, Prieto moved like a cat when he stepped from the car, all coiled energy and spring-he was looking for something, anything, but also seemed nervous. He didn’t pull out his gun and he didn’t even bother to go inside Ozzie’s. He just swept the area quickly, checked the ground a couple of times and, presumably, upon seeing nothing amiss, immediately got back into his car and pulled away from the curb.

Sam followed him around the block and watched as the cop parked his car beside a FedEx truck idling beside a CVS pharmacy, but with an easy view of Ozzie’s. Sam parked in the same lot and pretended to be very busy with the machinations of his phone, but really was just watching to see what Prieto was seeing.

It wasn’t until three more cop cars pulled up, sirens blaring, that Prieto finally backed up his cruiser and drove away. Sam had a pretty good idea what was going to happen next, so he kept his vigil in the parking lot. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Prieto’s cruiser came screeching around the corner, siren blaring.

You sneaky bastard, Sam thought. He opened his phone and called Michael. “Mikey,” he said, “we have ourselves a company cop.”