After three rings someone answered “Camden Police Department, how may I help you?” I almost hung up before I even began but said, “I would like to speak with Captain James O’Shea please.” I heard clicking and ringing again and then “Homicide, Reilly.” I repeated my request again “I would like to speak with Captain James O’Shea please.” Reilly on the other end asked “May I say who is calling?” This I wasn’t prepared for but decided to wing it “This is Lieutenant Michaels with the Richmond PD.” Reilly seemed to buy it and told me to hold, I again head a couple of clicks and then ringing. To my amazement O’Shea answered “Homicide Captain O’Shea.”
I had a lump in my throat, “Hello Captain O’Shea, how are you.”
O’Shea answered “I’m fine, who is calling please?”
Now it was time to play my hand, “Captain, we met once, when you were a Lieutenant, we had a brief conversation in your car over in the Camden warehouse district.”
There was a long pause, I could hear him breathing as he processed what I had said “Who is this?”
Now I had to make a move “You know who this is, I told you I hoped we would speak again under different circumstances. The truth is, I need your help and I think I can help you again. By the way, don’t bother trying to trace this call; this phone will be history very shortly.”
Again another long pause, I heard a door close “Are you fucking crazy, if I find you I’m going to break you fucking neck you cocksucker.”
This was the greeting I had expected, had he been nice to me I would have been suspicious “Calm down O’Shea, I never hurt you the last time, in fact I helped your career, now I want to help it again. This call has gone on long enough, I want to talk to you on a secure line, give me your cell number and I will contact you back. If you don’t give me the number you will never hear from me again.”
I waited and kept my fingers crossed. “You fucking murdering prick, I’m only give you this so I can find you and deal with your ass, 201-555-1212.”
I wrote the number down “Ok O’Shea, I’ll be back in touch.” I hung up, took the battery out of the phone and threw the phone and the battery in some bushes.
Back at the car I explained what I had done and what I hoped to gain. I might have made a monumental fuckup but it was a chance we had to take. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
We jumped back on I-95 and headed north.
Chapter 11
Detectives Thibodeaux, Greyfield, and Manning were back in the Homicide Division of the NOPD. They were making copies of the photos they had taken from Carr’s house. Detective Manning wasn’t technically not suppose to be here, but she convinced her Captain back at the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office that this could possibly help clear the Shuster murder, since his body was found in a Jefferson landfill it was their case. They needed to get the picture of the black man in front of the car salesman in Slidell, but no one felt like riding for an hour and one half. Since it was late in the afternoon and Greyfield’s young son had a baseball game, it was decided Thibodeaux and Manning would go to Slidell and see the witness. Greyfield could tell this was on Manning’s and Thibodeaux’s mind all day, he could see the way they looked at each other; sparks were flying.
Thibodeaux and Manning took Thibodeaux’s car and headed east on I-10 toward Slidell. Their destination was Norton’s Used Cars; a salesman by the name of William Benton had sold a purple Escalade to a black man using a phony ID. Thibodeaux was willing to bet that black man was the one in the picture with Jessie Carr. With evening traffic it took them an hour and forty minutes to reach Norton’s Used Cars. As they pulled up a tall lanky man wearing an ill fitting brown suit approached them. The flashed their badges at him before he could start his sales pitch. They explained what they wanted and told them they would need to speak with the salesman who had sold the Escalade, William Benton. The lanky man told them he was James Norton, the owner of the lot, and William Benton had died of a heart attack a week before. Thibodeaux and Manning looked at each other and just shook their heads. Norton explained that the Saint Tammany Sheriff has been out several time to see Benton about his sales practices. Norton was forced to fire Benton two weeks ago, just too much of a headache with all the cops visiting. Benton apparently had his wife and the cops hammering on him and couldn’t take the stress, that and the fact that he was two hundred pounds overweight did him in.
They thanked Norton and got back in their car, they were both hungry and decided to go to dinner before returning to New Orleans. They found an Outback Steak House just off the Interstate pulled into the lot and sat at the bar.
After ordering they were sitting at the bar and Thibodaux said, “If it wasn’t for shitty luck I would have no luck at all.” Manning looked at him “Hey look at the bright side; you met me because of this shitty case.” Thibodeaux nodded “Well, there is that, and I am glad we met.” Manning responded, “You know Ryan, I don’t normally just go to bed with a guy when I first meet him.” Thibodeaux smiled “I guessed that, but I am glad you decided to make an exception in my case.” Manning blushed “But there was just something I felt between us, I don’t know, something.” Ryan Thibodeaux was a man of few words and he had very few now. “Hey Cheryl, I felt it too, so I like you, I mean I really like you.” Manning smiled and looked down “If you want, we can make sure we still like each other again tonight.” With that they laughed; hurriedly ate dinner and headed to her place.
Chapter 12
It was just past 8:15 PM and we were just outside of Fredericksburg VA. We again stopped at a convenience store and purchased another cell. I called the number O’Shea had given me, he answered on the first ring. “This better be fuckin good.”
I had to smile, “Well its nice hearing your voice again.”
O’Shea was pissed, you could hear it in his voice, and I didn’t blame him. Last time we met I had a gun pointed at him and we had used his gun to kill a man. “Believe me, I didn’t really want to talk to you either, but I got a problem and helping me solve mine might help you.”
O’Shea might have been angry, but he was also intrigued. “Like I really give a fuck that you got a problem, you jammed me up asshole and now you want my help.”
I answered “Jammed you up, I’m the reason you got a promotion in case you didn’t know that, bringing down Perroni set your star in motion don’t give me that sad shit, you wanted him gone and so did I, that fucker threatened my family, and I don’t play that shit. By the fucking way, I wouldn’t have shot you and there was no fucking gun pointed at the back of your head, so on top of everything else, I’m a fucking liar.
O’Shea couldn’t help himself, he had to laugh “You cocksucker, you murdered, I have no idea how many men, and now you tell me you were threatened.”
I was getting pissed “If I was threatened I wouldn’t have done anything, that’s part of the game, but he threatened family, and that dog don’t hunt, you got that?”
O’Shea had calmed down “Yea, I got that, now what do you want?”
It was time to decide how to play this; I needed to get Guzman off our tails, but didn’t know if I could trust O’Shea. “Here is the deal, my team and I are out of the game; well at least we were. A few days ago we get paid a visit by two shooters; they had orders to put us all down, including family. They obviously didn’t succeed but we want out and can’t get out with them on our ass.”
O’Shea was now interested “So what am I suppose to do?”
I was in deep so just continued “The cocksucker that sent the shooters, his name is Guzman, I’m sure that name rings a bell. I want Guzman gone and I mean gone, as in never coming back.”
It took a minute for O’Shea to answer “Guzman, man you’re fucking with a heavy weight, every law enforcement agency in the country would love to can his ass. He moves a shitload of junk up here but has never been touched. Oh shit, it just hit me, the feds are rounding up every one of Guzman’s associates, seems they lost an undercover in the Guzman organizati
on. So Guzman sends a couple of goons to take you out, what happened to them, or should I ask?”
My turn to smile “Let’s just say the feds won’t be rounding them up for questioning.”
O’Shea answered, “Oh Jesus Christ, you killed them fuckers didn’t you? Did you ever meet anyone you never killed?”
I smiled as I answered “Well you still alive ain’t you?”
O’Shea had to laugh again “Well what the fuck am I suppose to do, Guzman can’t be touched by me or anyone else. The guy is bullet proof. He surrounds himself with firepower and has people who will take a fall for him if they get caught. No one will rat on him, because they don’t last long when they do.”
I really wasn’t sure what I wanted from him, “I intend to take Guzman out of the picture, what I need is information and room to move, that’s it. This conversation has gone on long enough, think about what I said. I will call you back sometime tomorrow. I never went after anyone that didn’t go after me first, that’s the truth.”
I hung up and just prayed I had done the right thing.
Chapter 13
After O’Shea hung up he sat down and ran the conversation back in his head. He knew Guzman was no one to mess with; he was a heavyweight among heavyweights. Word was, If he wanted you dead, you many as well pick your casket. But this crazy man he had just spoken to wanted to take Guzman on, that would be suicide. The more he thought about it the more he realized if anyone was capable of dealing with Guzman it was this guy. No one could touch Perroni, and this man had made it look easy. He actually believed him when he told him he wouldn’t have killed him, he couldn’t explain it, but felt it was true. But now he had to decide what to do. He could ignore him and he would just probably go away, he could hunt for him, but then what, even if he found him he would need to blow his own lie to put him behind bars, or, he could quietly help and with a little luck, maybe, just maybe, he would succeed.
Before he decided he needed more information. The caller had said Guzman’s goons were gone. Someone somewhere must have found a body or reported something. He logged into the National Crime Information Center. A search of Guzman’s known associates turned up a long list, many had already been questioned concerning the under cover’s death. They had all been released because there was nothing to hold them on.
Then he came to an interesting memo concerning two of Guzman’s hit men that were still being hunted. Seems these two were known to have arrived in New Orleans and were last accounted for in Mississippi. Neither they nor their rented car had been seen again. The two were Kevin Halsey and Raymond Frenchy Leblanc. An agent in the New Orleans FBI Office had put out a BOLO on them. If his suspicion was correct, the law was wasting time looking for them.
Chapter 14
The next morning Captain O’Shea placed a call to the New Orleans FBI Office. He was routed through several different people until he was finally picked up by Special Agent Rhonda Woodson.
Woodson answered, “Special Agent Woodson.”
O’Shea knew he had to tread lightly, he didn’t want the Feds crawling all over his department on a hunch he knew something about the under covers death. “Agent Woodson, this is Captain James O’Shea with the Camden PD, how are you today?”
Woodson seemed distracted but answered; “Fine Captain, what can I do for you today?”
Small talk was over time to get down to business, O’Shea said “Agent Woodson I see you are looking for two of Guzman’s guys, a Halsey and Leblanc. One of my guys had a snitch talking about two guys that were to take care of someone down south. They ran into a problem and wouldn’t be coming back. We are trying to run down some other information this snitch gave us and it would help validate him if we knew this story were true?”
Woodson perked up, maybe this snitch could get her the lead she was missing “We been looking hard at any connection Guzman might have had in this area, specifically Mississippi, and have come up with nothing. They had a drug channel from the North East to a known street gang down here, but a large portion of that gang was taken out. Not sure who by, but assumed a rival gang. What else did your snitch say about this?”
O’Shea had to be careful, she sounded too interested “He was feeding us a bunch of stuff, but this was all he knew, that two goons wouldn’t be making the return trip from down south.”
Woodson responded “I would believe it normally, but I have been told that Halsey and Leblanc were the two top guys, Guzman sent them to do all the big jobs. If someone punched their ticket they either made a bad mistake or ran into someone nastier than them. I find it hard to believe they made a mistake. Everything we know of them tells us they were top notch.”
O’Shea thought this over; he was convinced the man he had talked to was telling the truth. He was dealing with someone very dangerous. But who was this guy and why was Guzman hunting him down? “Well if what you say is true then I doubt our snitch knows anything, I suspect Halsey and Leblanc are laying low somewhere and will turn up eventually.”
Woodson though it over “Probably right, too much to hope for that these two are gone for good, that bad seed will sprout again. You get anything else from your guy?”
O’Shea had to end this quickly, “Naw, the snitch was looking to score some points and struck out; everything out of his mouth was probably bullshit.”
Woodson said “Wait, O’Shea, you the guy that took down that drug dealer, what was his name. Perroni, took him down all by yourself; congratulations on that, nice work.”
O’Shea thought oh crap, just what I need, “Well thank you Agent Woodson, and thanks for the information, sorry my snitches bullshit didn’t get us anywhere.”
Woodson chuckled “Hey, that’s what this job is all about, weeding out the bullshit, nice talking to you O’Shea.”
O’Shea thanked her and hung up. So the FBI had no idea where Halsey and Leblanc were, but did say they were Guzman’s top shooters. Wow, had they gotten careless or was this guy just that good?
Chapter 15
We had reached Newark NJ on I-95 around 4 PM. We checked into a small interstate motel using phony ID and paying cash. After settling down I took a short walk to another small convenience store and purchased another prepaid cell phone, cash of course.
I walked several blocks away from the store and any heavy traffic areas, no sense giving O’Shea something to work with. I made my call; O’Shea answered “What?”
I responded, “What, is that any way to greet an old friend, you could at least pretend to be cordial.”
O’Shea was apparently having a bad day “Fuck you and cordial, I made a couple of calls, now the FBI is looking for you, you prick. I’m gonna watch you get the needle for all this shit.”
I had to smile, he was babbling on and I knew it was all false bravado. ”Man you are in a bad fucking mood; did I catch you at a bad time?”
He began to calm down, “Look the phone call stuff is all bullshit, I’m getting nowhere with this shit. We need to meet in person.”
This didn’t really surprise me, and I was ready for it, “You know, that sounds like a great idea. I been wanting to see my old friend again. I’ll tell you what, I’ll buy you dinner tonight 8 PM, Whippany Dinner on State Route 10, you know it?”
O’Shea was shocked, “Umm, yes I know it, but ahh.”
I interrupted him “Hey, you the one suggested we meet, you got another idea of a place, too bad, I like the food at the Whippany. 8 PM, be there, I will be unarmed.” I hung up the phone, removed the battery and threw the phone and the battery away.
Chapter 16
I was sitting in a booth in the Whippany Diner at 7:49 PM when Captain James O’Shea walked in. He recognized me immediately, even though he had only seen me once and I had a gun pointing at him. I had a small earpiece in my ear on the side I hoped he wouldn’t notice. He sat across from me and for several minutes neither of us spoke.
I finally broke the ice “You looking good, looks like those Captains bars agree with you.”
r /> He didn’t smile when he answered “Fuck you, so now what, we are here and alone.”
I smiled and took out small piece of paper from my top pocket. I handed him the paper, there were three numbers written on it.
He looked at the paper, looked at me and asked “What the hell is this?”
I smiled at him “The top number is the license plate of the unmarked car you have parked at the jug handle of Route 10 and Algonquin Parkway. By the way, the cop in that car smokes too much and is littering the ground with his filters. The second number is the car you have stationed at the intersection of Route 10 and Parsippany Rd., that cop drinks too much coffee. He pissed in a cup twice and threw it out the window. Very bad habit; but the third number is the most interesting one. That red van parked in the diner lot with reflective windows, no doubt taking my picture. That van has been there for ninety minutes and no one ever exited it. But you know, I don’t care, as long as they get a picture of my best side.”
O’Shea had listened to me with his mouth open; it took him two minutes to compose himself enough to answer. “You are a careful man, but yet you sit here with me. I could cuff you right now and all that information would be useless to you.”
I nodded my head in agreement, “You’re right, but I don’t think you will, for a couple of reasons. I know the truth about Perroni, but no one would believe that, would they? I also don’t think you are wearing a wire for the same reason. You have those cars in place just in case things go south and also, to have me followed when I leave here. How am I doing so far?”
O’Shea nodded his head, “Go on.”
I smiled “Oh, and the woman and man in the booth at the end there” I indicated with my head “They already drank way to much coffee, and that bulge in the guys coat is way too obvious. The woman is very nice looking, she work for you or did you borrow her from Vice?”
He looked in the direction of the couple and just shook his head.
I smiled again “So far so good? Another reason is, I think you are interested in taking down Guzman. Maybe not the way I plan, but it would be a big feather in your cap to be part of removing him. Sure you hate me, but somewhere deep inside you want me to succeed.”