“We’ve been dinged up before and we’re still here,” Lucas said.
Another cop: “Yeah, we looked you up. You do have a few dings.”
Yet another one: “If we give you names, you’ll be fucking with our sources.”
“We lie a lot,” Lucas said. “They won’t know it comes from you. In fact, they may be calling you for help.”
“Exactly what are you going to do?” the DEA agent asked.
Lucas told them.
Some of the narcs were skeptical and walked; others gave them names.
Like Tobin Cain’s.
Tobin Cain was known on the street as Foot-Long, not because of any personal measurement, but because he dealt his dope out of a back booth at a Subway franchise near downtown Miami. The Subway was located on a hot, shabby, black-tar street with weeds growing up through the cracks. Cain’s business was basically okay with the franchisee, because nothing boosted traffic like dopers with the munchies.
Cain liked the place for the free refills and the Wi-Fi; asloppy-fat black guy, he was sitting in a back booth, wearing an aqua-and-orange Miami Dolphins jersey and hat, the hat worn forward. He was poking at an iPad. The DEA agent, whose name was Ramon Herrera, and who smelled strongly of tobacco, pointed him out from behind the red-rock steps of a closed, life-battered Jesus the Savior Church, across the street from the Subway.
“Make sure you keep his hands where you can see them,” Herrera said. “He doesn’t carry a gun anymore, because of the felonies, but he still carries a screwdriver. Those can hurt, especially if he sticks it in your heart.”
“Will he have some dope on him?” Bob asked.
“He usually phones out to an assistant, but one reason I suggested Foot-Long is that he fired his guy last week. A kid named Dope.”
“Dope?”
“Sort of a giveaway, huh? He’d sit here on the church steps, where he could see Foot-Long. He kept the dope right here off the side of the steps, where we’re standing, in these weeds.” He kicked a weed, which ignored the attack. “Foot-Long would call him with the specs on what he wanted delivered. Heroin or meth or weed, and how much. Then, the way I heard it, Dope started clipping the meth and reselling it on his own.”
“That’s the kind of entrepreneurial enterprise that made this country great,” Bob said.
Herrera blinked, considered the comment, shrugged. “Anyway, the word is that Foot-Long fired Dope and since there’s nobody else out here at the church, he’s probably sitting on some dope himself.”
“Any particular way we should handle this?” Lucas asked.
“The bathroom’s at the back. If he smells cop, he’s gonna getback there in a hurry and the door has a lock. He’ll shove it in the toilet and flush. I think the one of you who looks least like a cop...” He surveyed the two of them, then said, “Okay, you both look like cops. So, if I were you, one of you ought to go through the whole sandwich-ordering routine and by the time you get to the cash register, he might be a little less interested. Then get a table and sit down for a minute or two, take a couple bites, let him relax, and then rush him.”
Bob: “How about if I unbutton my shirt and let him see some skin, going in. A construction-worker vibe.”
“Could help,” Herrera said.
“Then let’s do that,” Bob said. “I’ve done it before.” He pulled the gun from his belt and handed it to Lucas. “Hold this for me. Better if I go without.”
Herrera: “Really?”
“Bob was an NCAA wrestling champ,” Lucas said.
“Third place,” Bob said. “If it comes to a fight, I’d rather not have a gun flying around. Lucas, I’d want you in there one second after I hit him.”
“Yup. Let’s set it up.”
Lucas got amarshal’s vest out of the Pathfinder and walked around the block to get sideways to the front door of the Subway, which was in an anonymous yellow-painted concrete block commercial building, with what looked like apartments on the second floor. Bob walked down the block out of sight from Foot-Long’s booth and Herrera stayed where he was, behind the church steps, standing in the weeds, where he could watch the action.
When Lucas was in position, he called Bob, who shambled into view from the Subway windows, bare-bellied with his open shirt. He paused across the street from the Subway and gave his belly a scratch, may have picked something out of his navel, smelled it, flicked it away, whatever it was, and crossed the street.
Inside the door, he carefully didn’t look at Foot-Long, but focused on the sandwich board, eventually ordering an Italian BMT, no mayonnaise. He continued shambling and scratching, got a cup for a Diet Coke, paid the cute Hispanic woman behind the cash register, shambled down the aisle to an empty booth with his back to Foot-Long, sat down, took a few bites of the sandwich, then pulled out his phone, called Lucas, and said, “Five seconds. Four, three...”
He went on one, pushing out of the booth, leaving the phone behind, charging down the aisle like a linebacker going after a quarterback and Foot-Long had only begun to scramble when Bob slammed into him, pinning him in the booth.
