Narc – Part five – The Snitch

We don’t call them “Snitches” anymore.

That term seemed to be reserved for cheesy cop shows and old 1950s gangster movies. A lot of outfits like to call them “Informants” or “Intelligence Assets.” But when you get right down to it, and Informant by any other name is still a Snitch.

At DST, we used a more civilized term. We called them “Sources.” Sources of what? Well, intelligence for one. Who was doing what and how much. A really good source would work for us and help us to purchase drugs or make the introduction.

Now, here’s the problem with a Source. Most of them were in trouble up to their eyeballs because the military does random uranalysis testing. How that works is everyone gets up for PT. But instead of going outside to do pushups, the soldier is directed to the bathroom to fill a specimen cup. The entire thing is very controlled and time consuming.

A few weeks later is when the fun starts. A long printout shows up on the company commander’s desk. He or she will review it, spot a few names that have been highlighted and then shake their heads. The soldier with the highlighted name is found to have come up hot for say marijuana or cocaine usage. A first-time offender might find themselves (depending on their chain of command) receiving an Article 15 or they may find themselves involuntarily separated from the service (in short, they’re fired) and if they’re lucky they’ll have a discharge at least worth the paper it’s printed on.

And that’s also where we come in. We get reports of each soldier that came up hot as well and we wanted to talk with each and every one of them. The idea was to play “let’s make a deal.” Help us take the pusher down and we’d make a recommendation to their CO for leniency. Sometimes the guy came aboard and played ball, and it worked fine for everyone. Sometimes, a CO being less than impressed with the soldier threw the book at him or her. Then there were those who told us to run up the alley and yell “Fish.”

But that’s not how I got this guy.

I sat in the interview room and studied the young soldier across from me. He seemed ill at ease because the interview room wasn’t supposed to be a pleasant place to be. It was an inner room, with no windows. It was painted gray sometime in the last fifty years and had a one-way mirror stretching across one wall. If I hadn’t been sitting in it and using it, I’d have thought it was poor set design from a old cop show.

But here I was.

The soldier that sat across from me was named Michael. To be truthful, I was less than impressed by his physical appearance. When someone mentioned a man of color who was soldier, I always thought of the artillery guys. Despite the automation and lifts, they still had to handle shell and a lots of them. That resulted in men who looked like pro bodybuilders.

But not this guy. For openers, if he wasn’t tall. If he stood 5 ft 5 that was too tall. A little rotund, and he had hair. A lot of black guys I knew kept their hair very short.

There was one other thing that didn’t impress me. He’d brought his First Sergeant (sometimes abbreviated 1SG or just referred to as “Top.”) with him. I was about to find out the man was there for a reason.

The 1SG handed me a folder.

“Please,” I said. “Have a chair.”

As I sat, I thought this was a little odd. This potential source hadn’t come to us through a hot piss test. His company called and made an appointment for him to come and see us. So, this was either going to be very good or very bad.

When they arrived, I’d met them and introduced myself to the two soldiers. Like the agents had with me when I was being interviewed for this job, I then went through the drama of checking their IDs and then gave Michael a quick pat down search. While I didn’t expect to find anything, you never, ever pass up the chance to mess with a criminal’s mind.

With the two of them seated across from me in the interview room, I opened the file the 1SG had given me. It contained a copy of a handwritten, detailed confession. None of what was written there concerned me as an Undercover Narcotics Investigator. What did was that Michael was setting in front of me and was willing to help me.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Michael, you admitted to the theft of almost five thousand dollars’ worth of goods from your fellow soldiers?” That by itself could put him away for a while.

“Yes,” Michael said.

It surprised me that he was taking responsibility for his actions. The list was broken down and itemized and included stereos, tapes, knick-knacks and so on. Most anyone would have tried to lie their way out of the mess they’d dug for themselves.

But maybe that why he was sitting in front of me. He’d taken ownership of what he did wrong. That spoke volumes and maybe there was something impressive about him after all.

Or maybe he was just trying to save himself. There was always that.

“And that your Top tells me you guys are playing ‘let’s make a deal.’ “

His 1SG answered that question. “That’s right. How this works is he brings us part of the money from his pay. That covers what was stolen and we filter it down to the soldiers or pay it back to the Army if a claim was already made.”

“That’s nice, but that doesn’t explain why we’re talking.”

Michael coughed and his eyes lowered as if ashamed to admit what he was about to say. “I got hooked,” he said.

And there was my answer.

“And you stole to support your habit?”

He nodded.

“What are we looking at?” I asked.

“Grass. Acid. Coke. A little heroin.”

The soldier didn’t have a monkey on his back. He had King Kong. And he was trying to get away from it or so he said.

“Funny you never got caught on a piss test.”

“That’s another story,” he admitted. And I’d love to hear it.

“First Sergeant, this is part of his penance, isn’t it.”

“It is. What happened is Thompson came to us with a problem. We’ve had a number of barracks thefts, and he admitted to being the one who did them. We asked why and the magic word is drugs. He was willing to help take down some of the local pushers. He’s also in rehab.”

So, he was saving his own skin. I thought it was rather nice that his commander was willing to work with him.

“Why?” I asked because a lot of times these deals came apart.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Michael said. “And it’s not that.”

“No,” his 1SG said. “It isn’t. You see, Michael here is a follower of Jesus. So’s the CO and me. He came to us, confessed his failings. He had an idea of how to redeem himself and we’ll give him a shot at it.”

I didn’t understand. A person claims to be a follower of Christ, and they fell for it. I wasn’t a follower yet and didn’t have a clue about the transforming power of God. I thought they were being rather naive and stupid about this.

But it did impress me a little. The First Sergeant was whiter than I was, and I assumed so was the CO. Maybe there was something to this Christianity stuff!

The problem however with someone being a source is you’re basically dealing with a criminal. You don’t trust a criminal. But I would have to trust him, but only to a point. You could almost always count on one of them messing you up good. He was destined to be a career criminal, I thought.

I never thought I’d one day regard him as a friend.

“So, what persuaded you to do this?” I think my tone told him I believed his conversion about as much as believed I could reach the moon on a kite.

Michael nodded. “My Granny.”

“Oh?” I had a Granny, and I knew some of those old timers had a weird radar that clued them in on things. When Michael started talking, I thought that’s what had happened.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I went home on leave, and I went over to visit her. The minute I walked through the door, she took one look at me and said, ‘Boy, what are you doing?'”

“She knew?”

“She knew. She started listing what I was doing and she even mentioned dates. I asked her how she knew?” he said. “She said God told her.”

It would be years before I had the spiritual teachings to really understand what he was saying. Only in movies had I ever heard of the Holy Spirit whispering things in people’s ears. Being the cynical person I am, I blew it off and put that right up there alongside the Force from Star Wars.

I would one day realize I was very wrong, and that woman must have spent almost every waking moment with God. And God, like he did for Joseph and Daniel, told her things. Secret things.

“And she told you what you had to do?”

“She did. She told me I had to go to my CO and confess my wrong doings. And that I had to pay back what I’d stolen and make amends,” he said.

Really?

He got quiet for a second and then said, “Granny said that our ancestors had come here as slaves, and we got that yoke off us. Only now, I’d put the yoke back on and sold myself to a master that would make sure I died in prison and broken. How dare I do that to me, her, and every black person in America.”

I nodded. It didn’t matter if I understood or even believed him at that time. What was important was I had a young man of color who could get us into dope houses we couldn’t. But even while I thought that, I went, Jesus I got to meet this woman!

“First Sergeant. What conditions do you have on him.”

“He has to produce. That means at least one or two buys a month. He’s subject to a piss test whenever we choose. Fail any of that and he’ll have a change of address he doesn’t want.”

Leavenworth was a little dramatic. More likely he’d end up in the stockade and then up the road at USACA (US Army Correctional Activity). That was the Army’s answer to medium security prisons. A lot of dopeheads ended up there.

“Top, I need to talk to this young man, and I can’t let you know the contents of the discussion.”

“I understand,” he said and got up to leave. “You do good,” he warned his young soldier. I buzzed one of the girls up front to let the 1SG out.

As soon as he was gone, I said, “Okay, talk to me?”

“What do you need to know?”

“Here’s the problem. Our team right now is bunch of white guys. We’ve been making some inroads into drugs in the white community, but the black side of the equation is a shut door we just can’t get opened.”

“And you think I can?”

“I know you can. So, let’s start simple. What could you go out and buy, say tomorrow night?”

He smiled. “You guys getting any heroin?” he asked. I’d soon see he already knew the answer.

That was one thing we hadn’t managed to get in the white establishments we’d worked. Coke was easy. Acid was easy. So was weed. But H (slang name)? No way. For whatever reason, the pushers we were working shied away from it.

“That would be awesome. We’ve tried, but our sources just don’t deal in it.”

“Good reason, too,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Heroin is very unforgiving. People have been known to die because of it.”

I knew that, but he went on, “Had a cousin that died that way. It killed him so fast; he was found with the needle still in his arm.” He shook his head sadly. “I guess Granny never got hold of him or he just didn’t listen.”

“They don’t want to kill people?”

“No. they don’t want to get caught,” he explained as if to a child. “If someone they sold H to died, there would be an investigation that might lead the cops to their doorsteps.”

“But you say it’s in the black community?”

“It is.”

“But wouldn’t a black dealer be afraid of the same sceanrio?”

He laughed like I’d told him a rather bad Dad Joke. “Be serious. Who cares about one less person of color”

I wondered why he’d say such a thing. Were there places where the death of human being with a different skin color could influence if the police went looking for his killer or not?

Justice was supposed to be blind. I’d always assumed it was also color blind.

I shook my head and then tipped my hand a little. “You need to understand something about me. Treating someone differently because of the color of their skin is alien to me. I just don’t get it.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

“Maybe because I have bloodlines that go back to almost every people on the face of the Earth.” I paused to let it sink in. “To hate one would be to hate myself.”

“You’ve got black?”

I nodded. “The first Franklin on record in my family tree was half Cherokee and half black.”

“Wow,” he said after a second. I guess he hadn’t thought that he’d ever actually run into a living, breathing end product of the Melting Pot that made America. Or at least someone who recognized and admitted it.

“Didn’t your ancestors get sent out on the Trail of Tears?” It surprised me he knew something of that event.

“No, that was mostly the Cherokee in Georgia that happened to. Besides, by the time it occurred, my people were the whitest people in the Carolinas,” I said. Then I changed the subject. “So, let’s talk about scoring some Heroin. What do we need to do?”

He told me an address. “It’s not the biggest operation but it should prove I’m sincere. I can get in without issue.”

“How about me?” I asked.

“I can ask. You’re Hispanic?”

“Yes.” When most people think Hispanic in the America’s, they think of Spaniards that had intermixed with the Native Americans in Mexico creating a unique look. My ancestors had arrived in the mid 1800s which in genetic terms made me almost fresh off the boat from Spain. I certainly look it.

“Fine. I’ll call you Lopez.” And my undercover persona was born. I needed to get a military ID card that reflected that name.

“When?” I asked.

“Tomarrow night soon enough?”

“I’ll set it up,” I said. “Now, let’s take care of some paperwork.”

Half an hour later, Michael could have been the subject of the song, Secret Agent Man. Any reference to his name was gone. In our system, he was now a number and nothing more. The only people who knew his name was us.

“I’ll pick you up at the King Fieldhouse at 8 PM?” I said.

His company was almost right across the street from CID and that meant my face might be known in the area. The field house was within walking distance but far enough away that it lowered the probability I’d be recognized.

“I’ll be there.”

I escorted him out.

I didn’t doubt he’d be at the field house waiting for me.