Lowball

The Big Bleed
Part Five

Operation RE-PO Wheels commenced far too early the next morning. That is, three A.M. Which figured: Jamal had left the planning to Sheeba. She was a big fan of special operations stories, where the raids always took place in the middle of the night, when the target was likely asleep or otherwise weakened. And the streets were emptier.

They gathered in their ops center, joined by a young FBI agent Jamal had never seen, a nat named Gunn-surely fodder for a million jokes (“Is your first name ‘Lone’?”)-who was a little pudgy, pale, and clearly from the accounting side of the Bureau.

“We’ll have your unit and two of ours,” he said, pointing to locations on the streets bracketing their target’s residence. He smiled. “If Wheels rolls, we’ll be ready for him.” Gunn was also, as Jamal soon realized, one of the annoying compulsive punsters.

Sheeba had reverted to Big Sister mode, had brought coffee for all of them. Of course, she had probably stopped off at a Dunkin’ Donuts to upload a dozen for herself.

Jamal took a sip, and regretted it. The coffee was nasty. They did have several key operational details to get straight before they got too close to their target.

Nevertheless, Sheeba’s briefing was, well, brief: name, images of Wheels. Rap sheet vitals, mostly suggesting he wouldn’t be armed. “How could he be?” Gunn said. “He hasn’t got arms.”

Sheeba had a question. “What about Fort Freak? Do we bring them in?”

“Speaking of knuckleheads,” Gunn said.

Jamal quite agreed that Fort Freak was a collection of knuckleheads, but so was every other police department he’d worked with at SCARE. And, to be fair, not everyone at Fort Freak was equally useless: Francis Black had actually made this raid happen. “Actually, we should have.”

“Doubt they’ll be able to do much at three A.M.,” Sheeba said.

“Or at any A.M.,” Gunn said.

“I have to let Franny know,” Jamal said. “Let me text him.”

“He won’t appreciate it at this hour.”

“He’ll be even more unhappy finding out we staged a raid in his precinct after it’s done.”

They finished up the basics: address, type of building, the likelihood that Wheels lived on the ground floor (“Thank God for small favors,” Sheeba said). Rules of engagement. Where Wheels would be taken-the federal lockup on Rikers-and by whom (Jamal with the FBI team).

Gunn had already departed when Jamal asked, “How do we haul him in?”

“What do you mean?” Sheeba said. “We will have the wagon-”

“The guy is literally the size of a truck.”

“I will, ah, remind them the moment we’re done here.”

“Yeah,” Jamal said, “remind them to bring a flatbed and chains. Tell them to think King Kong.”

Jamal and Sheeba grabbed their vests and weapons. As they were leaving, Jamal noted that one of the computers was live, Skyping. “Big husband is watching?”

“He’s interested.”

That was a surprise. Sheeba had been so skeptical of Wheels’s value as a target that Jamal assumed that Billy Ray felt the same way. Maybe not.

Or maybe he was just afraid of having his team screw up.

Jamal had spent considerable time traveling into, out of, and around Manhattan wondering who lived in its buildings. The fancy Upper East Side towers held no mysteries, obviously: the rich, often the foreign rich. Upper West Side, yuppies, families, more diversity.

One thing they had in common? No jokers.

But everywhere else … the East Side near the FDR, Eighth Avenue and Fifty-second … in all those grim brick buildings with their tiny metal entrances, those windows above the awnings, the places where the smells of food from the restaurants below had to be overwhelming …

And in the worst places. The old tenements on the Lower East Side and TriBeCa and SoHo and Jokertown. Worker storage units, obviously, but Jamal had no idea what the workers looked like.

Well, tonight he would.

The Explorer glided down narrow streets wet and shiny enough for a Ridley Scott commercial. There were few inhabitants to be seen … the master of one all-night news kiosk, a skinny man who looked to be homeless who was nevertheless sweeping the sidewalk in front of a closed Le Pain Quotidien, an amazingly tall tranny hooker leaning against a door, a three-legged joker hobbling God knew where.…

None of them spoke for several minutes, not until the Explorer made the turn from Grand onto Ludlow. “Okay,” Sheeba said, “we’ve got our warrants.”

The phone buzzed in its dashboard mount. “FBI is on station.” Sheeba pulled the Explorer to a spot in front of a fire hydrant, the only open one on either side of Ludlow Street. That moment, at least, felt like a movie production-

“Do we have to wear the jackets?” Jamal said. The last item they had to don were blue Windbreakers with the word SCARE written on the backs in huge yellow letters.

“Yes. That was the one thing Billy made me promise: wear the jackets!”

Wheels’s building was a typical tenement, pre-World War II, six stories tall, decayed, soot-covered. “How many jokers you figure you’ll find here?” Jamal heard himself ask. “And just how the hell are we supposed to get around back?”

Sheeba held up an iPad with an illuminated street map: it showed a narrow alley to the south of the actual address that ran to a courtyard of sorts in the back. It was so narrow that it wasn’t visible from half a block away.

The alley was SCARE’s route. The FBI would hit the front door. The backup team would stand off to the north, ready to move laterally, should Wheels slip the leash.

Sheeba closed the iPad and left it in the car. “Showtime,” she said. “Isn’t that what they say in Hollywood, Jamal?”

“We say ‘action.’”

But the reminder was apt. He had not been able to shake the feeling that this was a movie … except that on movie sets, things moved slowly and deliberately. It wasn’t unusual to spend six hours rigging and rehearsing a single stunt.

Now they were just walking quickly up a dark Jokertown street at three A.M. Up ahead, Jamal could see the three FBI agents approaching from the opposite direction.

Sheeba had her hand to her earpiece. “Turning into the alley,” she said quietly.

And they did.

“Tight quarters,” Jamal said. The alley was so narrow that Jamal felt as though he could have touched the walls merely by spreading his arms.

Sheeba was thinking the same. “How the hell does Wheels get in and out?”

“He sucks in his gut,” Jamal said.

In the courtyard, forty feet away, the edge of an ancient garage door-the kind that opened like a vertical accordion, not a roll-up-glimmered in the yellow light from apartment windows. As they got closer, about to turn the corner, Jamal and the others could see a second door next to the first, and a single floor of truly ancient rooms above both. It was quiet enough that they could hear their shoes scraping on the broken pavement. No music. Then, a voice from around front: “Open up! FBI!” And the sound of a door being forced.

Still no response in the courtyard. “Which one is he in?” Jamal asked.

“One way to find out,” Sheeba said, striding toward the first.

A siren started grinding from somewhere out on Ludlow. In seconds, it was a full howl. Sheeba stepped back, trying to talk loud enough to be heard by the FBI, but not so loud that she spooked Wheels. “What’s going on?”

She listened. Then shook her head in disgust. “Fire station!”

Sure enough, a fire unit, siren blasting, cherries flashing, rolled south to north down Ludlow, rousing the neighborhood. Windows lit up in the apartment building, and much worse, in the garage unit. The right-hand garage door opened and-with no warning rev of an engine, and no lights-a vehicle emerged. It skewed into a right turn in the small courtyard, then executed a left into the alley.

Sheeba was in the courtyard and managed to skip out of the way. She held on to her radio, screaming, “He’s in the wind!” Jamal started chasing the vehicle down the alley.

Reaching the street, Wheels pulled up short, obviously wanting to be sure he wasn’t rushing into traffic. The hesitation allowed Jamal to jump for the truck bed.

Which, as it turned out, was like trying to mount a wild horse.

It was … alive, sweaty human flesh. Nothing to grab on to-and the smell! Like a locker room mixed with oil-stained garage. All Jamal could think to do was shout, “FBI! You’re under arrest!” (He had enough presence of mind to know that SCARE would mean nothing.)

All this warning did was spur Wheels to motion. The joker managed to turn on four appendages, like a show horse in an arena, aiming left, facing directly at Gunn and his FBI partners.

Who had to dodge behind parking meters and between cars as Wheels picked his way down the sidewalk. Being flung from side to side, Jamal stretched his arms and legs, bracing himself against the “walls” of the “bed.” Then Wheels hit the street and began a sickening rock-and-roll motion as he gained speed. Jamal could only think, the son of a bitch is getting away-!

But up ahead, a black Escalade pulled into the street, a blocking move by the second FBI team. “Give it up, man! We’ve got you!” Wheels didn’t hear or didn’t understand. He slewed into an impossible turn and tipped his right side toward the front of the Escalade. The joker managed to avoid hitting the FBI vehicle. Not so Jamal, who was flung into its grille. As he felt himself getting airborne, he dug his nails into Wheels’s “bed,” the equivalent of scratching a man’s back.

The last sound Jamal heard before slamming into the Escalade was Wheels’s anguished cry. Jamal bounced onto the street, landing on his side. He felt as though he’d been punched at the same time someone twisted his arm and kicked him in the leg.

There was no bounceback. Just Jamal Norwood half conscious, in horrifying pain.