“I’m with Rakeem Powell right now. We’re over at the East Capitol Dwellings. One of his snitches gave us something good. We might have located Mitchell Brand.”
“What’s the problem, then?” I asked.
“Rakeem called his lieutenant. The lou called the Jefe. Chief Pittman has half of D.C. on the way here now.”
I think I actually saw red at that moment. “It’s still my goddamn case. Pittman didn’t contact me.”
“That’s why I’m calling you, sugar. Better burn on over here.”
I met Sampson at the East Capitol Dwellings housing project. According to the snitch, Brand was holed up there. East Capitol Dwellings are what I’ve heard called a “subsidized human warehouse.” Actually, the project looks like a failed prison. Cold, white cinder-block fences surround bunkerlike buildings. It’s thoroughly depressing and not atypical of housing in much of Southeast. The poor people who live here do the best they can under the circumstances.
“This has gotten out of control, Alex,” Sampson complained once we were together in one of the dirt-patch yards separating the project buildings. “Way too much firepower here. Too many cooks in the kitchen. The chief of detectives strikes again.”
I looked around, shook my head, and cursed under my breath. It was a goddamn zoo. I saw SWAT personnel and several homicide detectives. Plus the usual neighborhood looky-loos. Mitchell Brand. Jesus. Could he possibly be the Mastermind?
I quickly put on a Kevlar vest. I checked my Glock. Then I went and talked to the chief of detectives. I reminded Pittman that this was my case, and he couldn’t argue with that. I could tell he was surprised that I was at the scene, though.
“I’ll take it from here,” I said.
“We’ve got Brand all set up. Just don’t fuck it up,” Pittman finally snarled, then walked away from me.
Chapter 71
SENIOR AGENT JAMES WALSH arrived on the scene after I did. No Betsey Cavalierre, though. I went up to Walsh. He and I had gotten friendly over the past couple of weeks, but he seemed distant tonight. He didn’t like what was going on here, either. He’d been called late, too.
“Where’s Senior Agent Cavalierre?” I asked.
“She had a couple days off. I think she’s visiting a friend in Maryland. You know this Mitchell Brand?” he asked.
“I know enough about him. He’ll probably be heavily armed if he’s up there. He apparently has a new girlfriend named Theresa Lopez. She lives in the project. Lopez has three kids. I know her by sight.”
“That’s really great,” Walsh said, and shook his head, rolled his eyes. “Three kids, their mommy, and an armed bank-robbing suspect.”
“You got it. Welcome to D.C., Agent Walsh. Anyway, Brand could have been part of the team that struck MetroHartford. He could be the Mastermind. We have to go get him.”
I met with the raid team at an OP, an observation point, in a nearby building. The OP was a studio apartment used by Metro narcotics detectives assigned to the East Capitol Dwellings project. I had been in the apartment a few times before. This was my neighborhood.
A team of eight of us would go into the sixth-floor apartment to take down Mitchell Brand. Eight was more than enough; there’s only safety in numbers up to a point.
As the team checked weapons and put on Kevlars, I stared out onto the streets. Sodium-vapor streetlights created a yellow fuzziness down below. What a bad scene. Even with this much police presence in the neighborhood, the drug game continued. Nothing could stop it. I watched a brazen team of lookouts and steerers selling crack on the far corner, beyond the projects. An addict approached, quick-stepping, his head down. A local foolio, a familiar sight to me. I turned away from the drug deal as if it weren’t happening.
I began to talk to the team. “Mitchell Brand is wanted for questioning in the robbery of a Union Trust in Falls Church. He could definitely be our link to whoever is behind the robberies. This is the best suspect we’ve come up with so far. He could be the Mastermind.
“As best we can tell, Brand is up in the girlfriend’s apartment. She’s a new honey for him. Detective Sampson will pass around a standard layout for a one-bedroom in the building. You should know that inside the one-bedroom we may find Brand, his girlfriend, and her three children, aged two to six.”
I turned to Agent Walsh. Two of his agents were part of the go team. He had nothing to add, but he told his men, “The Washington police will act as the primary at the apartment. We will be backup in the hallway and going into the girlfriend’s apartment. That’s about it,” he said.
“Okay, let’s move out,” I said. “Everybody use extreme care. Everything we know about Brand says he’s dangerous and will be heavily armed.”
“He was Special Forces, Army,” John Sampson added. “How’s that for whipped cream on shit?”
Chapter 72
ARMED AND DANGEROUS — it is a common enough catchphrase, but with real meaning to police officers.
We entered Building Three single file through the dingy, underlit basement, then we hurriedly marched up several flights of stairs toward the sixth floor. The stairway was dirty and stained the color of bad teeth. There might have been a serious fire in the building at one time. Heavy soot caked the walls, the floor, and even the metal banister. Could the Mastermind be hiding up here? Was he a black man? That seemed unthinkable to the FBI. Why?
Suddenly, we surprised a pair of pathetic, bone-thin crackheads lighting up on the fourth-floor stairwell. We had our guns out, and they stared at us bug-eyed, afraid to be there, afraid to move.