The Rat Squad: Stanley Bentworth mysteries, #4

By Al Stevens

When homicide detective Stanley Bentworth fires his weapon in the line of duty for the first time, he kills a youth from the projects. The tragic event pulls at his conscience, and he deals with Internal Affairs (the “rat squad”), a city psychiatrist, and outraged citizens.

On administrative duty pending the investigation, he infiltrates Narcotics to ferret out corrupt cops. But the Lieutenant sends him undercover on the street to ferret out an enigmatic drug kingpin, and Stanley must do battle with the rat squad, dirty cops, outraged citizens, and gangbangers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mockingbird Songs & Stories
• Release date: Jun 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781498953672

Book preview

The Rat Squad

by Al Stevens

This is a work of fiction, and the people in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is coincidental.

The Rat Squad, copyright 2014 by Al Stevens. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law), without written permission from the author.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to:

Steven Bergeron for proofreading and suggesting many corrections

Judy Stevens, whose patience and assistance always help to make my work possible

Dedication

To the memory of Rabbit Simmons. He’s not dead, but I remember him.

Books by Al Stevens

Diabetics Behaving Badly

On the Street Where You Die (Stanley Bentworth mysteries: Book 1)

A Dead Ringer (Stanley Bentworth mysteries: Book 2)

Clueless (Stanley Bentworth mysteries: Book 3)

The Rat Squad (Stanley Bentworth mysteries: Book 4)

White Collar Murders (Stanley Bentworth mysteries: Book 5)

Fugitive Warrant (Stanley Bentworth mysteries: Book 6)

Hooker Stalker Killer Pimp (Stanley Bentworth mysteries: Book 7)

War of the Singularity

Annie Somewhere

The Shadow on the Grassy Knoll

Confessions of a Cat Burglar (free book, referenced in A Dead Ringer)

Off the Wall Stories

Golden Eagle’s Final Flight (with Ron Skipper)

Ventriloquism: Art, Craft, Profession

Politically Incorrect Scripts for Comedy Ventriloquists

Welcome to Programming

Teach Yourself C++ 7th Edition

…and many other computer programming and usage books.

Contents

Another Dead Dealer

Stakeout

Making Bones

The Rat Squad Investigates

Desk Jockey

Public Outcry

Press Conference

Flipping a Snitch

The Rev. Dr.Timothy Walters

Emily

Date with a Headshrinker

Reassignment

The Captain

The Narcotics Unit

Undercover Jane

Reunion

Roll Call

AA

A Rat Returns

Psyched

Ray's

The Client

The Drop

Team Jane

Rat Persistence

Captain's Orders

Marked Money

Therapy Tears

The Watchers and the Watched

AA Pipeline

Fester in the Hot Seat

Who is Orpheus?

Good Dude, Bad Dude

On the Carpet

Final session

Beat-Down

Pencil Deals

Promtion of a Rat

Orpheus Outed

A Hostage Situation

Orpheus Out

Unrequited

Return to Homicide

Recovering

1. Another Dead Dealer

Beta Peterson was shot dead. There he lay in front of us in an alley in the projects, face down in a pile of uncollected, rotting garbage. The crime scene crew was all over the alley, taking pictures, gathering scraps of evidence, trying to figure out what was evidence and what were only scraps of garbage. Several black-and-whites blocked the alley, blue lights flashing in the twilight mist and uniforms standing guard to keep the rubber-neckers on the public side of the crime scene tapes.

As usual, at first encounter on a murder scene, I had one overriding objective. Close the case: Identify the corpse and the killer, accumulate evidence, and arrest the perpetrator. That’s what drives me, what keeps me going, and it becomes an obsession from the moment I look down upon a newly dispatched victim until I red-line the case as closed on the homicide scoreboard.

You kill somebody in Delbert Falls, Maryland, you deal with me and my colleagues. My name is Stanley Bentworth, and I am a detective grade murder cop in the Homicide unit of a medium-sized town police department. Our beat is the whole city, a relatively small town with big-town trappings and problems, located midway between Baltimore and Philly, a prime location for crime. The bad guys from those metropolises have a way of spilling over into our small burg where pickings are adequate and the police force is not.

It was late August, and the early evening air just after sunset was still and hot. The garbage stank like several-day-old garbage does while flies buzzed around the stench and around our stiff. They dissipated when the techs turned him over and swarmed back when he was flipped and lay still again. The bullet had made its entry in the nape of his neck and hadn’t made its way out the front of his face, which meant his mama or whoever claimed him could have an open casket. Small consolation. One more young man shot down, one more grieving family, maybe a young wife with babies to care for alone now.

But, looking on the bright side, it was one less scumbag dealer on the street.

Besides hoping for a quick break on this case, I also wanted a drink. Two different wants. The colder a case, the less I give a shit. The longer I go without a drink, the more I want one. There’s probably some kind of diminishing returns logic in there somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.

My partner on this call was Sonny Calderaro, a thirty-something murder cop who had partnered with me before. I trust Sonny and know I can count on him. He can fight and shoot, two skills I’ve never mastered. The last fistfight I was in, I came in second place, and the only time I ever fired my weapon at a perp, I managed to hit an SUV in the ass. I feel safe with Sonny watching my back. There aren’t many I’d say that about.

Besides, all that slam-bam-shoot-em-up action is for other kinds of cops. I work with my brains instead of my puny brawn, or at least that’s what I tell anyone who asks, but I’m sure I’m the only one I ever impressed by saying that.

Back to the case at hand. I looked at the vic laying on his back now. He doesn’t look all that happy, I said to Sonny, who was checking the vic’s pockets. How long’s he been here?

Rigor hasn’t started.

The stiff isn’t stiff.

No lividity yet. He hasn’t been here long.

A dead body isn’t nice to look at, certainly not before the undertaker gets a pass at it. I’ve looked at a lot of stiffs in my line of work, and it’s always a hard look. They’re usually fresh when we first see them, often still warm to the touch, but definitely not pretty. Particularly when they repose in garbage.

It goes with the territory. Homicide cops get to look at a lot of fresh corpses. A while back I worked a serial killer case. All the victims were attractive young women. But once dead, they weren’t pretty.

Beta Peterson, from the looks of him, hadn’t been pretty when he was alive, but I didn’t think that’s what got him killed. The narc who helped us identify him said he was a known street dealer, and our first guess, with which the narcs agreed, was that some other dealer or user had permanently severed their professional ties.

Most street dealers wind up prematurely dead long before they reach prematurely gray or prematurely bald. You don’t see many old farts walking the streets in the projects. Premature death is an occupational hazard for purveyors of controlled substances in this part of town.

I don’t know why they call them controlled substances. They’re not controlled. They’re out of control. But that’s for Narcotics to deal with. I deal with the occasional killing, often a side effect of the illicit drug trade. On this evening that’s what I was doing, beginning an investigation into the untimely demise of Beta Peterson, former gangbanger and drug dealer, now dead meat sprawled among all the other garbage.

Tonight I wished I had a drink—did I already say that—but that’s what I wished every night. Most nights the wish came true. It’s why I had no current lady friend, the most recent having tossed me when I came home drunk and late one time too many.

It hadn’t been the first time my questionable behavior had hurt the sensitivities of a good woman. Her name was Emily, and she deserved better. I owed her an apology at the very least. But usually by the time it reaches this stage, it’s too late. So, like always, I buried myself in my work.

The perp—short for perpetrator in cop speak—had dispatched the vic—short for victim—with a small caliber round from behind. We caught the case when Narcotics called us. They’d had Beta Peterson under surveillance, and, instead of witnessing a buy, they’d found him recently departed in this alley, which was between two abandoned buildings a block from the corner where Beta conducted business. It happens from time to time that a business transaction on the street comes to an untimely end. The customer is not always right. That’s when they call us in, homicide being our purview.

With Beta’s body growing cold and bosses to keep happy, we interviewed all the onlookers to learn whether any of them had seen anything. All we got were shrugs, shakings of heads, and the ubiquitous I didn’t see nothin’, man. We left the remains to the crime scene crew and hit the streets, canvassed the neighborhood, and got the same resolute stonewall attitude. Citizens of the projects don’t trust cops, and they don’t like the consequences when their neighbors see them talking to one.

We were getting nowhere as usual. Same old, same old, I said to Sonny. They think if they clam up, the doer won’t mess with them. Did they ever think if maybe we actually caught the bastard, he couldn’t mess with them?

What’s going on down there? Sonny pointed to about half a block away where two guys were handing items back and forth.

Looks like free enterprise, I said. Let’s check it out. Might be some opportunity.

Sonny had just spotted a transaction going down on the street. Somebody was dealing out in the open, somebody else was buying, and normally we don’t care about that. We’re Homicide, and street dealers are problems for Narcotics.

There wasn’t a narc in sight. There’s never a narc when you need one.

So with no leads and no prospects and an illegal transaction underway before our very eyes, we saw an opportunity to mine a lead or two. Corner a lawbreaker and maybe he’ll sing.

This dealer was waiting to be busted, or so it seemed, nothing secretive about his modus operandi, everything in the out-of-doors in the remaining light of an early August evening. He was so busy counting his money, he didn’t see us come up on him. We flanked him by strolling down the street toward where the buy had taken place, ambling up alongside him, one on either side, and grabbing him abruptly by the arms and throwing him not too gently against a nearby wall.

What the fuck, man—

Shut up, I said, an example of using brains instead of brawn.

The frisk turned up enough crack to buy our new friend a stay at the county’s convenience. The distribution weight was probably good for a nickle behind the big walls depending on his priors. I’m no expert on drug penalties, but I did know that his current dilemma would be in our favor as a point of negotiation.

You out here trying to make a living? I said to the perp.

Yeah, man.

Put food on the table, a roof over your head?

You got it, dude. He struggled against our restraint but not too much.

Well, guess what, asshole. You won’t have to worry about that shit anymore. The state will provide for all your needs for the immediate future.

We had him by the balls, but he didn’t seem to realize it. Y’all dudes ain’t got no probable cause, he said, the side of his face pushed against the wall, his hands cuffed behind him, and his legs spread, as we relieved his tote bag of its product. Probable cause, indeed. Everybody’s a lawyer.

Detective Calderaro, I said, Did you see any of this shit fall out of this moke’s bag back there?

I certainly did, Detective Bentworth.

But man, came the whiny protest. "Check the list. I’m Sherlock. I’m untouchable."

I didn’t know what list he was blathering about. Consider yourself touched, Sherlock.

But man—

You haven’t lost your status, Sonny said. We aren’t narcs. Sonny seemed to know something about the list.

What you want from me?

It was time to negotiate, which is a snap when you hold all the cards. You help us, I said, we look the other way this time. You see an opportunity, you grab it. Sherlock was an opportunity for a lead on the Peterson case. A long shot but worth playing.

Help you with what, man?

Who did in your colleague, Beta Peterson?

He released an exasperated sigh. The shit I do to stay in business.

That’s how a detective enlists a confidential informant. Normally, a gangbanger won’t give a cop the time of day without incentive, so you get something on him and hold it over his head. If his information turns out bogus, you bust him on the original offense. You win either way. They know that, and they usually play ball. Call it injustice, if you will. Sure, a minor crime slides, but the bigger picture prevails. Ends, means.

That understood by all, our newly-recruited snitch flipped.

You want DC, man, he said.

Who?

I don’t know his real name. He’s DC out here.

Where’s he bed down?

Somewhere down near the motel. I ain’t sure exactly where. Why don’t you ask one of your narc friends. They know everything about everybody down here.

You’re quick to give him up. I asked. Not a close friend? Honor among thieves and all that.

Well, in the first place, the dude is a modengator.

A what? I was adding plenty to my street vocabulary today.

A modengator.

What the hell is a, what did you say? Modengator?

"Man, modengator is the worst handle you can hang on a dude. It’s a million motherfuckers."

I looked at Sonny. He nodded. Learn something new every day.

So you’re willing to give up this modengator that quick, I said. How’s that?

My advantage, man. You dudes take the heat off me, and I got me one less competitor on the street.

How do we know this DC is our man? I asked.

Sherlock shrugged as best he could with his hands cuffed behind his back. Because I saw him do it.

Great. An eye witness. Next best thing to a confession. How’d it go down? Sonny asked.

Take these fucking bracelets off, and I’ll sing you a tune.

I unlocked the cuffs and put them back in my belt pouch. Sherlock turned around to face us, rubbing his wrists and looking up and down the street, probably to see if anyone would observe him talking to cops. He lowered his voice. They went in the alley where Beta keeps his stash, he said. I heard the shot and then DC comes out carrying the whole kaboodle. He didn’t see me, and I kept it that way.

Why did DC shoot Beta?

Product. Territory. Competition. You got to protect your turf in this business.

Like you’re doing now? Protecting your turf against the modengator? I was liking this new word. Maybe I could use it the next time the brass chewed my ass for something.

He gave me a broad smile, which didn’t seem all that sincere. You beginning to catch on, man. You what they call a quick study.

And you’re what they call a snitch. You willing to testify?

Not on your mama’s feather duster, motherfucker. I go on that stand, and I last about a day out here.

What about now, Sherlock? Those dudes down there saw us toss you in the middle of a buy. How you going to explain us letting you go?

"I told you, man. I’m Sherlock the untouchable, and the homies know it. But that don’t include being no fucking courthouse canary."

Our fledgling reliable source had just given us probable cause for an arrest warrant on a dealer named DC, which we’d need once we identified him. We hoped tossing DC’s crib would turn up a smoking gun—literally, since our chances of getting Sherlock on the witness stand were somewhere less than zilch. The judge wouldn’t know that, however, and we wouldn’t tell him, so the warrant was as good as signed.

I only hoped the smoking gun wouldn’t get smoky from being fired at us.

2. Stakeout

We sat stretched out in the seats of an unmarked Focus, conducting yet another routine homicide stake-out in the projects, trying to stay awake and waiting for a perp. We took turns. I got the back seat this time and Sonny watched the street. The night air warmed us, and we kept the windows rolled down. Street sounds poured in: traffic rolling by, horns blowing at each other to get out of the way, rap music from an open window a few doors down, a dog barking somewhere in the distance, the constant chatter of street talk, sometimes a murmur, sometimes yelling, too close to be ignored, too far away to be understood.

I’d tried to call Emily several times, but she wasn’t picking up. I needed to make that apology if just to ease my guilt, but apparently I wouldn’t get that chance. It was time to look for a new lady acquaintance.

Sonny and I made small talk. Pro football preseason had just begun. Sonny is a Ravens fan. Not me. Call me unforgiving, but I haven’t rooted for Baltimore football since the Colts snuck out of town in the middle of the night to move to Indianapolis. I was seventeen when it happened and had felt betrayed at the time. So now I root for whatever team opposes the Ravens or the Indianapolis Colts, which makes for lively discussion in the wee small hours.

The argument eventually faded, as all such discussions do, and Sonny punched the FM radio’s tuner button several times, barely hovering on the roar that signifies top forty, and stopped on a talk show. Having identified Rush Limbaugh, he quickly started punching again and landed on an oldies station. Lionel Ritchie was crooning a ballad from the seventies. Is it only me, or do all his tunes sound like the same tune?

A call to Narcotics had identified our quarry to be one Denton Christopher Washington, aka DC, a small-time middleman dealer who sold to street pushers. The narcs had his address and where he usually dealt, which was on a corner a half block from our murder scene in the opposite direction from where Beta P had dealt in his former life as an alive person. They had been neighbors, so to speak.

The narcs had added one more piece of vital information to what we knew about DC. You should know that DC is on the untouchable list.

There it was again.

I’d knocked on the perp’s door earlier with two uniforms standing by while Sonny covered the fire escape in the back alley, but nobody was home. Now we were back in the car, twiddling our thumbs, listening to Lionel Ritchie, and waiting.

It seems like I spend most of my time sitting in cars, drinking coffee, listening to the radio, and waiting for something to happen. They’d have you believe a homicide detective leads an exciting life. Not so. Don’t believe the cop shows on TV. Shootouts, car chases, fist fights, and all that action, that’s only in fiction, the product of the imaginative minds of script writers. I get more excitement trying not to cut myself shaving. Like usual, tonight I was bored.

I prefer working stakeouts with Sonny. He carries no baggage into the partnership. A stakeout usually brings out the worst in detectives. They tell you their life story as if you were a shrink, a priest, and a marriage counselor all rolled into one. But not Sonny. If he has marital problems, money worries, a busted garbage disposal, or anything of the kind, I never hear about it. We talk about the job mostly when we aren’t disagreeing about the Ravens. I talk about women from time to time, but Sonny is terminally married and generally unimpressed by and uninterested in my frequent pursuits and infrequent conquests.

I had been married once. To a gold digger named Brenda who survived on her beauty. We didn’t break up because of my drinking; I began to hit it hard because of the breakup. And because she took my house, my car, and my 401-K. That’s the kind of stuff you hear about on a stakeout. I had always tried to keep my personal life off the job.

We sat this night in the unmarked Focus in an abandoned strip mall parking lot across from the Bartlett Motel one block off the Interstate. Motel was a misnomer for the Bartlett. No traveler in their right mind would stop there. The ride down the block from the Interstate would dissuade them. The streets were lined with abandoned buildings and strewn with stripped cars, discarded furniture, and trash everywhere, and were populated by the homeless, winos, drug dealers, pimps, hookers, gangbangers, all of which did not exactly induce