Fat Tuesday(8)

The sons of bitches scattered quicker than roaches when the lights went on. Cops were made to look like fools. After each failed raid, the division was forced back to square one, and the painstaking procedure of rooting out the suppliers started all over again.

Having worked Narcotics for years, Burke knew the drill. He knew to expect setbacks and delays. He knew it took months to build a case.

He knew the undercover guys had to cultivate relationships and that these matters took time and patience. He knew the odds against success were overwhelming, and that even when they did succeed, the rewards were few.

But knowing all that and accepting it were miles apart.

Patience wasn't one of Burke's virtues. Frankly, he didn't even look upon patience as a virtue. In his opinion, time equated failure.

Because for every day it took to do his job right and to collect enough solid evidence for the D.A. to build a case around, kids by the dozens were yielding to the allure of neighborhood dealers. Or a yuppie stoned on a designer drug plowed the hood of his BMW into a vanload of senior citizens on an excursion. Another few crack babies were born.

A teenager's heart burst from over use. Someone else OD'd and died a wretched death.

But because the only alternative was complete surrender, he and the officers in his division kept at it. Painstakingly they built their cases. But each time they thought they were there, each time they thought that the next bust would be the mother of all busts, each time they thought they'd catch the bastards red-handed and nail their asses good, something got f*cked up.

There was a traitor within the Narcotics Division of the N.O.P.D.

Had to be. There was no other explanation for why the dealers were always a step ahead of them. It had happened too many times to be attributed to coincidence or karma or bad breaks or rotten luck or the devil's handiwork. Someone in the department was working on the side of the bad guys.

God help the bastard when Burke Basile discovered his identity, because it was that cop's betrayal that had turned Nancy Stuart into a widow and had left her two young boys fatherless.

Burke had begged Kev not to go barging in before the van got there with the rest of the squad, equipped with rams, gas masks, and automatic weapons. The two of them had arrived a few minutes ahead of it, the arrest warrants in Basile's pocket. But Kev, frustrated over yet another failed raid, had lost his Irish temper. He had charged the building through the open overhead door. Burke had heard a hail of gunfire, seen the flashes, smelled the gunpowder.

Then screams.

For damn sure, someone was down.

Frantic, Burke had called out to Kev.

Silence.

The longer he waited for Kev to answer, the more anxious he became.

"Jesus, Jesus, no, no," he prayed."Kev, answer me, you goddamn mick!"

Then a man came lurching through the open, black maw of the warehouse door. It was dark, Burke couldn't see why he was walking with such an awkward gait, but his gun was drawn and aimed at Burke. Burke shouted for him to drop the weapon, but he kept coming. Again, Burke shouted for him to drop the weapon and put his hands on his head.

The man fired the pistol twice.

Burke fired only once.

But once was enough. Kev was dead before Bardo dropped his body to the ground.

As Burke raced toward the friend he'd mistakenly killed, he heard Bardo's laugh echoing off the metal walls of the warehouse. He hadn't learned it was Bardo until he was captured by the backup unit arriving in time to see him running through an alley behind the warehouse.

There were flecks of Kev's blood and flesh and brains and bone on the face of the repeat offender, but his three-piece Armani suit hadn't even been spattered. He'd walked away clean, literally and figuratively.

The weapon he'd fired was never produced. In those few intervening minutes, Bardo had successfully disposed of it, refuting Basile's claim that Bardo had fired a weapon.

Nor was it ever explained to the court what business Bardo was conducting in the drug lab with Toot Jenkins. Pinkie Duvall argued that Bardo's presence in the lab was irrelevant to what had transpired and that it might only serve to prejudice the jury against his client.

No shit, Einstein, Burke remembered thinking. It was supposed to preJudice the Jury against Bardo.

On that question, the judge had ruled in the defendant's favor. No mystery there. Duvall contributed heavily to the elections of judges.

The candidates with the most money backing their campaigns usually won, and then went soft on the lawyers who helped put them on the bench.

Duvall had most of them in his pocket.

And that wasn't the only dirty pool Pinkie Duvall played. Wayne Bardo had been in that warehouse that night conducting business for his boss, Pinkie Duvall.

It was an accepted fact throughout the division, although never proved, that Duvall was the primo operator they'd been after for years. He had more connections to drug trafficking than whores did to herpes.

Every trail led to him, but ended just short of contact. There was no solid proof against him, but Burke knew the son of a bitch was a player.

A big-time player.

Yet, here he was, living it up in his fancy house, celebrating Kevin Stuart's death with a big, blow-out party.

Movement at one of the rear doors interrupted Burke's bitter reflections. He shrank farther back into the foliage so as not to be seen by the woman who made her way along a path to a gazebo.