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  I didn’t breathe a word of dissent to this “plan” but knew it was madness. The Lake Avenue crowd was a large and dangerous one to be messing with under any circumstances—and we were deliberately going to swoop in to incite the guys who hung around there, armed only with wooden clubs and baseball bats. We would be vastly outnumbered, and we had no idea how the crowd would react. Only one of us—Swanick—would be carrying a firearm.

  I couldn’t believe that someone as level-headed as Rick would even think of such a thing. It was a true barometer of how really charismatic Coutu was. If anyone else had suggested a plan like this, they would have been laughed at. How flawed and wild was this scheme? My mind was racing. What if we jump out and get shot? What if Swanick crashes his car and doesn’t get there when he’s supposed to? What if the scattering undercover officers walk into a group of hood rats who want to have some fun with the Caucasian outsiders? What if I really have to hit someone with the tree branch and wind up facing an internal affairs investigation? What if we hit someone with our vehicles when we drive into the crowd, or if an undercover or two suddenly go missing?

  There was no doubt that Rick’s plan would convince even the most jaded street dealer to believe we were street thugs, not cops. Cops follow rules, and they run operations that give them a clear tactical advantage. They don’t send in a half dozen guys with clubs to threaten three hundred hardened street thugs. Only a crazy-assed bunch of drugged-up criminal white boys act like that.

  There was another major risk factor, too: we knew that the area we were headed to was teeming with Five Percenters, a street gang with a noted history of violent assault and murder, and little regard for handgun laws. Five Percenters were often under 18 and didn’t fear the legal system. If you got shot down here, the first suspects were the Five Percenters. And if one of them carried a piece, he was a dangerous hombre.

  The Five Percenters group was formed in Harlem by Clarence Smith, aka “the Father,” or “Clarence 13X,” in 1963. Asbury Park’s African-American youth had been targeted by the gang, and anyone who elected not to join was guaranteed a daily beat-down. The gang had a bizarre philosophy, and some of us wondered why anyone would buy in. Still, the threat of certain retribution kept the group’s numbers up. The gang made serious cash through the drug trade, and its members were a dangerous force to be reckoned with. In the crowd we intended to threaten, I was sure there would be at least 20 or so Five Percenters.

  It was about 4 p.m. that June day when we launched our operation and headed toward Lake Avenue. The sun was sinking, but the temperature was still about 90, and everyone in Asbury Park seemed to be outside in an effort to beat the heat and humidity. I was driving a ratty, old two-door Ford Thunderbird, with Tom Perez, an undercover from the prosecutor’s office, riding shotgun. Like some other military veterans, I had been a serious student of Sun Tzu’s classic book, The Art of War. Coutu’s punitive expedition, or at least the charade of it, violated every tenant of the Chinese general’s rules of engagement. Those who ignore the art of war usually pay for it dearly. This was in my head during the breakneck ride with Perez that afternoon.

  The corner of Lake and Ridge Avenues was swarming with people when we arrived, with dozens of locals hanging around the fried chicken place and a handful of other stores nearby. All three of our cars screeched to a stop in the heart of the strip. Some corner-dwellers had to jump out of the way to avoid getting hit.

  We all got out of our vehicles, absolutely skied on pure adrenaline. Wielding clubs, we demanded to know who’d ripped off our buddy. The crowd parted and we briefly held the upper hand. But it didn’t take long for the street toughs to realize that we were vastly outnumbered, and some serious smack talk started to come back at us.

  As I waded into the group to see who was talking shit, a man of about 50 years old, wearing a white button-down short-sleeved shirt, quietly walked up to me. He cocked his head to one side and said, “You white boys is crazy, but you gonna be dead soon if you don’t get out. Someone be comin’ for you right now, ya hear?” He chuckled to himself, turned, and disappeared into the crowd.

  My gut told me that this guy was serious and I had better watch my back. It was also clear that our ruse was working: we weren’t cops to these cats, but invading thugs. We were in deep, perhaps too deep. One thing was certain: there would be no witnesses here to whatever level of violence was headed our way.

  I didn’t have time to react before I spotted Swanick’s unmarked sedan racing up the flat, two-lane street and braking to a stop at the corner, just a few yards away from me. Perez melted into the crowd. The other UCs piled into two cars and sped away. Swanick had a freebie here, a person he could jack up to the delight of the many bystanders: me.

  Stone-faced, the detective grabbed me and shoved me up against a painted cement-block wall outside a barbershop, punching me repeatedly and leaving me with bruised ribs and a bloody lip. Then he pushed me face-down onto the pavement and ordered me to stay spread-eagled there, which I did. I cursed at him as he tossed the inside of my Thunderbird on the pretense of looking for drugs.

  The detective walked back to me and yanked me up onto my feet. Staring at me, and still showing no sign that we knew each other, he threatened to take me down if he ever saw me again. He shoved me into the driver’s seat and ordered me out of town.

  I swung a quick right turn off Lake Avenue onto Ridge Avenue, only to find it choked with cars.

  A black male, wearing a white T-shirt and about 19 years of age, approached my car. He was average in size and had shaved his unusually round head. His demeanor was casual, and I knew that I had seen him, or at least a picture of him, somewhere. I just couldn’t recall the circumstances.

  “You still looking for something?” he asked.

  “Yeah, jump in,” I said, watching as he opened the passenger side door, pulled the passenger seatback forward and hopped into the back of the Thunderbird, where he wouldn’t be seen. His decision to sit behind me provided him with a huge tactical advantage and put me in immediate danger. I had no idea if he was armed, and I immediately started wondering if I’d just allowed a hitter from the Five Percenters to get into my car. I couldn’t see his hands from my position, and I tried to recall if I’d seen any telltale bulges under his shirt. Suddenly, everything I said and did became critical to my survival.

  A cold shiver traveled up my spine. Because of the adrenaline rush I was on, I’d made a catastrophic tactical error by allowing a potential assassin to get behind me. I pictured him pulling out a blade and carving me up. I certainly wasn’t a cop to him. I was some lowlife who was likely carrying cash. My thoughts ran wild. I had to be able to document every move I made for the police report that I’d be filling out—if I survived. This was no time to panic. I had never seen this guy before. But for some reason, I got the sense that he liked me, or at least was willing to take my buy money. Maybe he’d seen Swanick trying to reshape my face and rib cage and decided we had something in common.

  Still wondering about my passenger’s intentions, I looked down the street and observed a man and woman walking toward me, between the parked cars along Ridge. The woman was pushing a baby carriage with a young child in it. The dude was very muscular and tough-looking, in his mid- to late 20s, with a comb pushed into his long, bushy hair. He was wearing blue jeans and a sleeveless white undershirt.

  Without missing a step, he reached under the baby carriage, pulled out a large-caliber pistol and walked toward my car. Standing next to the driver’s door, no more than three feet away, he pointed the gun at my chest. Nearby, the baby started to cry. Still seated and unable to react, I tried to maintain my composure.

  “The fuck you doing here. I don’t fucking know you,” he said.

  Keeping my hands where he could see them, I said, “I came to do business. I am here for the summer. You do me, you can take me off, but if you want to do business I am here for a couple of months more.”r />
  This guy was solid with the weapon. He wasn’t a shaker. When an untested street thug pulls a pistol on you, he is jerky and usually loud. They try to intimidate, and yelling helps them calm their own fears. But this guy wasn’t like that.

  I wondered if this could be the guy the old man was trying to warn me about. This shooter was considering his options and trying to decide if he should pull the trigger. I was clearly in serious danger and had no apparent backup. I was alone. It would have been profoundly easy for him to shoot me and escape. Even if there was a witness other than the woman pushing the baby carriage, no one in this neighborhood would ever finger this guy.

  My no-name passenger got out of the car’s back seat and walked around to the driver’s-side window. He put one hand on the rearview mirror and leaned in through the open window. “You motherfuckers really is crazy, you know that? Can’t believe you ain’t been capped yet.” Then he walked off to talk with the shooter.

  They were too far away for me to hear their conversation, but I didn’t dare move a muscle. I could see that my back-seat passenger didn’t have a gun under his T-shirt. But I couldn’t tell if he was carrying a knife or not. One thing was clear: I was deeply relieved to have him out of my car. I swore to myself that I would try to avoid a repeat of that scenario.

  Nodding to the teen with the shaved, round head, the dealer said, “He say you looking for a quarter. You got cash to show me?”

  I pulled out a rolled wad.

  The dealer weighed his options for what felt like an endless period of time. All I could do was sit still and maintain a distant look. Without a word, he lowered the gun and then put it back in the stroller. He seemed not to notice the baby, who continued to cry. The woman paid no attention to the child, either.

  “Can I get a quarter ounce, or an eightball at least?” I asked the man with the stroller.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  I watched as the shooter walked to the other side of the street and disappeared. While I waited for him to come back, I tried to figure why this other cat seemed so familiar. Because of the round shape of his head, I tagged him “Cannonball Head.”

  Seconds later, the gunman came back with a plastic baggie full of white powder—what looked like a solid quarter-ounce of coke. We briefly negotiated the price, and I gave him cash. He turned around and walked down the street, his girlfriend pushing the stroller behind him.

  Cannonball Head had little to say, other than to tell me to look for him the next time around. “Be careful with that shit, boy,” he said mockingly.

  I sat silent for a few seconds, deeply thankful that I had survived. I also tried to memorize what the two men looked like and how they were dressed. I knew I had reports to write and mug shots to review. I wanted to make 100 percent sure that I correctly identified the men who were responsible—and ensure that the court case was solid. I also knew that there’d be a defense attorney looking to embarrass me on the witness stand.

  I thought back to Rick Coutu’s plan and how things had gone down. One thing was certain: the plan had worked but had morphed in its own direction. That was the thing about UC work. No matter what plan someone crafted beforehand, the bad guys on the street seemed to have a habit of changing things up. UC work was all about dealing with unexpected situations. It was a great scene for adrenalin junkies—for a while. Later, I’d realize that the stress from encounters like that takes its toll on a person. If the physical encounters don’t kill you, the emotional stress will.

  My UC partner, Tom Perez, appeared out of nowhere and jumped into my vehicle. I wondered how long he’d been nearby and if he’d watched what had just gone down with Cannonball Head. I said little as we drove back to an industrial park about a mile away for a prearranged meeting with Rick and the other UCs.

  I wanted to do a field test on the powder I’d bought from the gunman. All undercovers carry in their surveillance vehicles small test kits designed to evaluate product in the field—to reveal if a drug is real or counterfeit—and, if it is real, its relative potency. The cocaine test kits were about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. Each one contained two small capsules of chemicals and a thick plastic bag for mixing the suspected drug and the chemicals. When the chemical comes into contact with high-grade cocaine, the mixture turns a deep blue.

  With Perez looking over my shoulder, I took a small amount of the powder I’d bought on the street and placed it into the test kit, carefully breaking open the glass-like capsules one at a time. The mixture immediately turned cobalt blue. This meant to me that the gunman was a solid cocaine dealer.

  We had succeeded in our mission, and miraculously no one on either side had got hurt. The target I’d made the buy from could be taken down at any time: he was a real player, and there was no informant to protect. By then, it was late on a Friday afternoon. We had the weekend off, and the case work would resume on Monday morning. Though it sounds strange, task force members rarely worked weekends, since that meant overtime, which the brass wanted to avoid.

  Monday morning, back in our headquarters at the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, I walked past a “Top 10 Most Wanted” poster and immediately realized why Cannonball Head had looked familiar. His face was on it: he was wanted for murder, as a hit-man for the Five Percent street gang. During our encounter, I’d known that I was in serious danger, but it wasn’t until that moment in the hallway that I realized how close I’d come to death. I had been lucky as shit.

  Cannonball Head became our top priority, and all efforts were focused on bringing him in. The one solid connection we had, and the man who could potentially lead us to Cannonball, was the guy I’d bought the coke from, the man who’d hidden the gun in the stroller. We decided to take him down immediately.

  Based on my information, the MCNTF obtained an arrest warrant for the dealer, whom we’d now identified as a guy named Jerome Minter. To protect the identities of the task force members, local police were asked to pick him up, take him to the Monmouth County jail for processing and then bring him to the task force’s headquarters for questioning.

  A uniformed officer walked Minter into an interrogation room containing two chairs and a desk, and handcuffed him to a steel rail that was bolted to the wall.

  “Fuck you, you goddamned fucking asshole,” he shouted as I walked in the door.

  “You don’t have to like me,” I told him. “But you should hear me out. After that, I walk.”

  His look softened slightly but he said nothing.

  “You see your charge sheet? See anything about a piece being shoved into my face? See anything about endangering a minor by putting a piece in a stroller?

  “No, you don’t,” I continued. “You just see the drug charge that you and I know is legit. I could burn you on the piece. But to do that I would have to fuck over your woman. I take this up with DYFS [New Jersey’s Department of Youth and Family Services], they’ll take your woman’s kid away. But you don’t see that charge, do you? You know why? Because I may be the one fucking person in your fucked world who gives a fuck about that kid. Now let’s get this straight. I forget, forever, all the shit about the piece, the kid and his mom. And you give me Cannonball Head’s location. No one will know you gave him up. You have my word. He set you up with me anyway. How the fuck you want to play it?”

  Minter looked at me from the corner of his eye and sat silently, considering my offer. Then he gave me what I needed. There was no further conversation between us. But his eyes silently telegraphed two words: “Thank you.”

  Outside the interrogation room, I passed on the location to the prosecutor’s office, which handled Cannonball Head’s takedown. It felt good to get the killer off the street.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BLOWING THE SHOT

  The Monmouth County Narcotics Task Force operated out of a nondescript three-story office building down the street from the massive Superior Court building i
n Freehold. Our sprawling offices—nothing more than cubicles for each investigator, separated by rows of chest-high dividers, were on the second floor and directly below the County Prosecutor’s offices.

  One afternoon in June, Tom Perez, Rick Coutu and I were working on some paperwork when the receptionist walked in and said there was a white guy out front named Mike Hanson who claimed to have information about an African-American drug dealer in Asbury Park. Perez asked the receptionist to bring him upstairs.

  It sounds odd to have someone walk in off the street and offer up information about a drug dealer. But the truth was that it happened on a fairly consistent basis. Sometimes you’d see someone trying to offer up information on criminal activity as a way to get a reduced sentence or obtain a “get out of jail free” card in some unrelated court case. Other times, guys would find themselves in a dispute and try to rat the other individuals out.

  While the receptionist walked Hanson upstairs, one of the detectives ran a quick computer check on him for “wants and warrants.” He came up clean. Tom met privately with Hanson and quickly decided that this guy had the potential to become a serious informant. He brought him back to where Coutu and I, along with a couple of the other guys, were working.

  Hanson introduced himself to the four of us and shook our hands; there was no bravado in his tone or mannerisms. Judging from his clothes and the multiple tattoos on both arms, Hanson was a hard-core biker. Wearing jeans, black T-shirt and construction boots, he stood about six foot one and weighed about 180 to 190 pounds. He had long, thick brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard.