Broken Force Read online

  The four suspects checked in at the motel desk and returned to their car. They retrieved small overnight bags and headed for their room. The door to a first floor motel room further down along the row of accommodations opened then closed behind the three men and the woman. Light filtered through the slats of the vertical blinds that covered the windows. Leone got out of the Crown Vic and strode across the gravelly lot to the motel office. At the desk, he rang the bell for the clerk. When the clerk stepped out from the rear cubicle behind the check-in desk, Leone flashed his shield.

  “Those four people, the three Hispanic males and the woman, that just checked in. What’s the number of the room you gave them?”

  The clerk, balding and bespectacled, glanced at the detective’s shield. He said: “You’re NYPD, whattaya doin’ over here?”

  “They’re suspects in a serious crime. We tailed them from the city. We’re gonna call local back up. We just want a duplicate key to the room for when the Jersey cops get here.”

  “I don’t know…” the clerk hesitated.

  “Look, save a lot of wear and tear on your door. We want to open it nice and easy. We don’t want to startle the occupants and have a shoot-out do we?”

  “Well, no…”

  “Just give me duplicate and go back to your soap opera or whatever you were watching back there. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Maybe I should wait ‘til the Jersey fuzz gets here…”

  “Last time, pal, the key or we take the door off the hinges,” Leone snarled.

  The clerk fished in a drawer. “This is a master for all the rooms. I put that bunch into Room 114. It’s around to the left. Make sure you return it when you’re done.”

  “We’ll bring it back soon as we’re finished,” Leone said.

  He stepped through the office door and motioned to his three partners still in the car. When they assembled, Leone said, “Room 114” and pointed to the corner of the building where they had seen the four suspects enter. “I got a master key from the clerk.”

  At the door to the room, Leone slipped the key into the lock, unsnapped it with a firm twist and pushed the door open. All four detectives burst into the room with weapons drawn. “Freeze, suckers,” Slovik shouted.

  At the sound of the detective’s voice the people in the room sitting across from one another on the two beds stopped their hushed conversation. All but the woman jumped to their feet. One of the men made a lunge for an Aerolineas bag on the floor next to him. Slovik shoved the muzzle of his snub-nosed .38 in the man’s ear. “Don’t be stupid.”

  The slightly-built man straightened with careful movements and raised his hands.

  “Let’s toss the room,” Slovik said to his partners.

  The detectives lined all four up, hands pressed against the wall. Slovik picked up the airline bag and dumped the contents on a bed. A loaded .45 automatic slipped out along with a man’s shaving gear and spare underwear. Beamon, Zevin and Leone frisked the men. Slovik called out to them: “Don’t give this broad anything to squawk about, just handcuff her. We’ll get a female to search her later.” He stepped over to the woman who remained impassive as Zevin put her in handcuffs.

  Slovik said, “You comprende English, sister?”

  The woman nodded in the affirmative.

  He said: “You’re not packing any heat are you?

  The woman answered with a negative shake of her head.

  “Tell us now. We don’t want any mishaps later. You get my drift?”

  The woman nodded her elaborately coiffed head once again to indicate she understood but remained tight-lipped, staring at the striped wall paper in front of her.

  Zevin stood watch over the four while the other detectives emptied the remaining travel bags and rummaged through the contents for weapons and contraband.

  Slovik held up the .45. “Looks like this is the only gun.”

  Beamon said “Nothing else of any interest here.”

  Slovik said: “Willie, you and Andy take two of them in their car.” He tossed Beamon the keys to the Chevie retrieved from the nightstand. “Mike and I will take the other two. Keep an eye on these mopes while you’re driving Andy, even though they’re rear cuffed.”

  Slovik stuffed the spilled contents back into the overnight bags wherever they would fit. He grabbed them all by the handles, turned off the light and said: “Run them out to the cars, I’ll take the key back to the office. Let’s take them to the 10th Precinct where this tail started. We’ll make that the place of occurrence.”

  They all left the room with their prisoners in tow. Slovik opened the door to the motel office, tossed the master key on the desk and headed for the detectives’ vehicle. Two of the suspects sat in the back seat of the Crown Vic, each with his head bowed. Slovik started the car and turned toward Route 9W back to the Bridge and Manhattan.

  The two men in the back began to mutter to each other in Spanish. Mike Leone reached back and tapped the man nearest him on the head. “Shut up, no talking in the police car.”

  The man pulled his head back and looked out the window without a response. His companion stared out the opposite side. All the occupants maintained their silence during the drive to the stationhouse.

  When they arrived at the stationhouse on West 20th Street, Zevin and Beamon waited for them parked on a side street nearby. They marched their prisoners before the desk lieutenant. Slovik said, “We’re from the Narcotics Special Investigations Unit. We got four for a gun in a car, Lieu.”

  “How’d you find the gun?” the lieutenant asked.

  “They fit a description we got of people with a stash of drugs. No drugs, but the gun was on the floor of the car in plain sight.”

  The lieutenant cocked a quizzical eyebrow but said, “Take them up to the squad and process them. Where’s this gun?”

  Slovik produced the weapon, slide secured to rear and the breach open and empty, with the magazine separate. He handed the pistol to the desk officer butt first, and then the clip with the copper-jacketed ammunition. The lieutenant called his clerical man over and directed him to prepare a property voucher for the weapon as evidence.

  “You have a female, has she been searched?” he asked Slovik.

  Slovik exhibited a wolfish grin. “We wouldn’t do that, Lieu. We’ll need a policewoman for that. We’ll also need an interpreter, got any Spanish speaking cops around?”

  “We’ll scare somebody up. There’s got to be someone working tonight who speaks the language.”

  The detectives sat their prisoners at some remove from each other in the squad room and began to prepare the arrest paperwork. Slovik took the first of the male prisoners by the arm and walked him over to the waist-high table used to take prints. With a fingerprint card slipped into the bracket, the detective smeared the glass plate with a roller and a daub of fingerprint ink. The moment Slovik released the manacles from the man’s wrists the suspect reached for his trouser pocket slipped out a piece of paper and stuffed it into his mouth. The detective grabbed the man’s throat to prevent him from swallowing the paper. During the struggle, the prisoner tried to rip Slovik’s hand away. They crashed into a desk knocking the baskets loaded with files onto the floor. Beamon jumped up and seized the man in a head lock. Both he and Slovik pinned the thrashing man to the floor. Slovik pried the man’s mouth open and extracted the paper. Beamon dragged him to his feet, threw him into a chair and re-cuffed him.

  The other three detectives crowded around Slovik as he spread the saliva-wetted slip on a desk top. “Whaddya got?” Zevin asked.

  “It’s an address, an apartment building. It’s local, right here in the 10th precinct,” Slovik said.

  “Does it show an apartment number?” Leone asked.

  “Yeah, it does.” Slovik looked around at his three partners, a gleam of light dawned in his eyes. “You guys thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “This could be it,” Zevin said.

  “No kiddin’,” Slovik said. “That’s what
just flashed in my head.”

  “We gotta check this out ASAP,” Beamon murmured.

  At that moment, a policewoman from the precinct clerical staff walked into the squad room. “You guys need a prisoner searched?”

  “You’re just in time, darlin’,” Slovik told her. “We’re gonna stash this bunch in a cell. We got something else to check out. Give this dame a quick toss and get her into female detention for us will you?”

  He turned to the other three detectives, “Let’s take the men downstairs to the cells to hold them until we get back.”

  “How we gonna get that past the desk officer?” Leone asked.

  “I’ll tell him something important has popped up. We’ll be back quickly. It’s not like we’re gonna leave them overnight without finishing the paperwork. I’ll tell him how important this is.”

  On the way out the door, Slovik stopped at the desk. “We’re going out for a while, Lieu. There’s something else to check out right away. We’ll be back in a jif. All four are in cells for safekeeping ‘til we get back. Won’t take long.”

  “Don’t leave this paperwork hanging,” the lieutenant said. “I want this cleared up by the end of my tour/”

  “Not to worry, we’ll finish this up in no time.”

  The four detectives charged out the stationhouse door to their car and sped away to find the address written on the soggy piece of paper retrieved from the prisoner. The building that corresponded to the address on the paper, a shabby four story walk-up on 13th Street, had a glass front door outlined in filigreed iron. In the lobby, scattered debris littered the floor tiled in a mosaic pattern. The odor of dried urine pervaded the air. The four detectives trotted up the stairs to the second floor landing. Slovik pulled out the set of keys retrieved from the pocket of the man who tried to swallow the note. He tried every key on the ring in the door lock until one snapped it open. A second key released the door brace bar on the inside. Using his flashlight, Zevin fished around for a light switch in the tiny entrance hallway, and flipped it on. They fanned out to search the four-room apartment, started with the kitchen, worked their way through the sitting room with its worn out, threadbare furniture.

  Beamon called from one of the bedrooms, “Hey, fellas, come check this out.”

  The other three crowded into the room and looked over Willie’s shoulder while he held the closet door ajar. Kilogram-sized packages wrapped in plain brown paper and secured by packing tape crammed the otherwise empty closet.

  Zevin murmured. “Oh man, there’s got to be at least a hundred kilos in there.”

  “I think we just hit the mother lode,” Leone said.

  “This will be some seizure,” Slovik said, his voice subdued. He stared in awe at the enormity of their find. Even these men from the elite Special Investigations Unit of the Narcotics Division rarely saw an amount of drugs of this size in one place. “We gotta think how we’re gonna play this. Justifying this search is gonna take some figuring,” he continued.

  “Well, we got the perps in custody,” Leone said. “Why don’t we say they led us to it?”

  “Nah, no ADA is gonna buy that.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s do this, two of us sit on the dope while Andy and I book the prisoners for the gun rap. Then we find a Federal prosecutor in the morning. We ask him for a warrant based on our information. Then we go and “find” the stuff and voucher it. This is too big for a local DA. The Feds will love us that we got South Americans with this much junk. A seizure like this could lead to a smuggling ring if we play it right.”

  “Let’s count the packages to make sure how much we got first, before we start making claims we can’t justify,” Zevin suggested.

  They began to unpack the closet, making stacks of the kilos on the bedroom floor. When they had arranged ten neat piles of ten kilos each, the detectives stopped counting.

  “There’s five more here at the back of the closet,” Beamon said.

  Slovik emitted a soft whistle. ”With a seizure like this some of you guys could make grade out of this. Me, I’m already first grade, but the rest of you…”

  Slovik took one of the packages from the stack, carried it to the bed, opened a clasp knife and made a small incision in the wrapping paper and through the cellophane underneath. He tossed the car keys of their unmarked car to Leone. “Run down to the car and get my testing kit out of the trunk. Let’s make sure this stuff is the genuine article before we start making any claims we can’t justify.”

  Beamon called over from the closet, “The five at the back here are labeled differently for some reason.”

  “Bring one over here,” Reno said, “We’ll test them both, see what they are.”

  Leone left to get the chemical field kit. When he returned Slovik used a clean ash tray from the nightstand to drip the reagent onto a small sample of the powder from the first package labeled El Diablo, then tested the second one bearing the label Tia Juanita.

  Slovik’s eyes gleamed with excitement, “The first one is high grade heroin for sure. The second one is cocaine. One hundred and five keys will make a nice headline. ”

  A quiet murmur of approval rippled through the group.

  Chapter Three

  Head down and careful to avoid the oily patches of rain water, a tall, slender blond-haired girl hurried along the cracked and rutted sidewalk, a carry-all bag slung over her right shoulder. The beauticians’ school she attended at night now several blocks behind her, the girl made her way home on foot, having missed her ride when her friend with the car stayed behind to speak with the instructor. Narrowly spaced black, vertical iron bars of a fence bordered the walkway and encircled the grounds of the old hospital long ago abandoned. Ten feet high from pavement to spear shaped point, linked by horizontal connectors top and bottom, the fence appeared impregnable. Rank weeds and wild shrubbery protruded through the gaps and added to the forbidding aspect of the enclosure.

  Dismal puddles from a recent rainfall speckled the sidewalk that paralleled the fence. At a corner where the side street intersected with the main thoroughfare, an ornate iron gate hung by a lower hinge, the upper one rusted through and worked loose. The open gate gave access to a constant traffic of intruders who used the empty grounds as a clandestine lovers’ lane or a shadowy hiding place for trespassers. Addicts found a place to shoot up drugs and derelicts slept off their binges out of the prying eyes of the uniformed police that patrolled infrequently along the roadway, a moderately traveled avenue in Queens, New York.

  Passing the eerie and forbidding blackness that surrounded the hospital grounds always gave the girl shudders of apprehension. She lengthened her stride to put distance between her and the uncomfortable atmosphere. Her anxiety worsened when a dark figure seemed to move parallel to her just inside the fence. She brushed off her fear as a product of an overwrought imagination. When she neared the corner, the metal of the rusted hinge screeched and the canted edge of the heavy gate scraped against the concrete. Without looking back the girl began to run. From inside the fence, a man leapt into her path, caught her from behind and with his left hand clamped over her mouth, dragged her into the darkened hospital grounds. He tripped her backward onto the weed covered earth. Before she could scream he produced a snub-nosed pistol. He drove the muzzle of the gun into her throat under her chin and growled, “Make one sound and I pull the trigger. Now do as I say or I’ll kill you right here.”

  After what seemed for her an eternity later, she staggered to the gate hysterical, bruised and with her clothing disarrayed. A passing motorist saw her and braked to the curb to give assistance. After assessing her condition, he ran out into the roadway, flagged down the next car that would stop and made an urgent request that the driver get to the nearest phone and call the police. The sector car that responded summoned an ambulance that transported the victim to the nearby Jamaica Hospital emergency room for treatment. A team of detectives from the precinct squad met her there and began the delicate process of interviewing the badly traumatized y
oung woman.

  The woman described her attacker as a male white, in his late twenties to early thirties, with close cropped sandy hair, over six feet tall and muscular. The investigators became more keenly interested when she related that because of the short-barreled revolver he used to force her into submission, she had the impression that her attacker could have been a cop.

  The detectives arranged with her to meet them at the stationhouse a few days later, where they promised that they would have a female investigator on hand to assist with the photo identification process. A woman doctor completed the pelvic exam and obtained a vaginal swab sample for transmission to the Police Laboratory to test for the presence of semen and determine the blood type of the man who committed the crime.

  Days later, the victim sat in a room adjacent to the detectives’ squad area and paged through thousands of police ID photos of officers who approximated the description given by the young woman. Detective Clara O’Shea from the Police Commissioner’s Office, expert in the handling of crimes against women and children, sat with the victim and prepared to record the identity of anyone the victim selected from the photo arrays she examined. After two hours of trawling through hundreds of pictures the victim stopped at one photo. She looked up at the detective who had gently encouraged her through the agonizing process.

  “I’m sure this is the man who attacked me. I’ll never forget his face, especially the pock mark scars on his cheeks. I’m studying cosmetology at the Wilson School near where this happened. I’m quick to notice things like that,” she said.