Page 50 of Operation: Valiant Angel

Five minutes later, the door opened. “Yeah, no fuck,” Gustavo called back into the store, his back and the black backpack sticking out the door. He laughed with whoever was within the building. Wilson and Lambchop both heard two sets of male voices laughing. Still facing inward, he took another half step out the door. “Just don’t sell it before I get back.” He was still laughing as he stepped all the way out of the building as he pulled the door shut. It was at that moment that he saw Wilson as his head was turned in that direction. “What are you fucking doing there?”

“I’m not the one you need to worry about,” Wilson said. “It’s him.” He pointed to the other side of the door, where Lambchop was now reaching for him. It only took two seconds for the two men to have Gustavo pinned to the ground. Wilson secured hishands in zip ties behind his back as Lambchop put tape over his mouth before the man had a chance to scream out or struggle.

They lifted him to his feet and dragged him over to the car Lambchop drove, a silver twenty fifteen Subaru Forester that had seen better days but blended into this neighborhood well. They laid him on the floor of the backseat, his feet in the air kicking, his body wriggling.

“That looks uncomfortable, my friend,” Wilson said to him. “But you chose that position.” He closed the back door and positioned himself in the front passenger seat.

Lambchop drove to a slightly better part of town where the DEA had a house set up as their base of operations. With a phone call to Espinoza, they pulled up to the residence and the garage door rolled open. They drove in. After the door was closed, they pulled Gustavo from the back seat. He wasn’t any more cooperative than he’d been. They sat him on a bench facing Espinoza, holding him in place. Espinoza went behind him and unzipped the backpack. He pulled out the football size lump of pills that could be anything in shrink wrap.

Wearing plastic gloves, Espinoza slit the wrap with a knife and pulled out one pill. He dropped it into a test solution and shook it. It tested positive for fentanyl. “This is a lot of money right here,” Espinoza said to him, holding up the package of pills. “Your boss isn’t going to be happy you lost it.”

Gustavo mumbled something behind the tape that was still over his mouth.

Espinoza nodded to Wilson. Wilson pulled the tape off.

“You don’t know who you’re fucking with, motherfucker. You’re dead, all of you are fucking dead!”

“No, you will be when your organization hears how you cooperated with the DEA,” Espinoza said. He pulled the chain from inside his shirt that his badge dangled from and let it fall on the outside of his shirt.

Gustavo’s eyes went wide. Evidently, he hadn’t figured out these guys were the cops, must have thought they were some other crew moving in on their territory. It must have been the fact that they hadn’t identified themselves as cops or read him his rights.

“You have a choice,” Lambchop said. “Cooperate and get a deal or be tossed back out onto the streets with thanks in a very public way.”

“Yeah, we’ll all be wearing our badges and be thanking you and wishing you well,” Wilson added. “We may even throw out the locations and people we know about.”

“You can’t do that. And this arrest won’t stick. You didn’t say you were cops, didn’t read me my rights,” Gustavo said.

“Oh, you’re not being arrested,” Espinoza said. “My friends just gave a friend a lift here and we’re just having a conversation.”

Wilson patted his shoulder, which he still held, holding Gustavo in place. “That’s right. It was so nice of you to offer up your drugs to us. You shouldn’t have. It’s bound to get you into a lot of trouble with your homies.”

Gustavo let out a long string of curses. He was fucked, and he knew he was.

“So, we know about the stash house off Copper and Pennsylvania, of course the one across from the pawn shop, and we’re pretty sure that place is being supplied from a warehouse over on the north side, just off Second and Slate,” Espinoza said.

Wilson was surprised by this new location. Espinoza and his team had been busy.

“But we’re greedy. We also want to get the part of your crew supplying that warehouse, need the date and time the next shipment will be coming in there,” Espinoza said.

“Fuck you, man! You’re not getting shit from me!”

“That’s unfortunate,” Espinoza said. “Isn’t it, gentlemen?” he asked, his gaze sweeping over Lambchop and Wilson.

“Yes, very unfortunate,” Lambchop agreed. “I had hopes for you.”

“We thought you were the smartest of the guys, Gustavo. We could have made this offer to Angelo, but thought you were smarter than he is,” Wilson said.

“I ain’t no fucking snitch,” Gustavo said.

“Won’t matter to your boss if you snitched or not. You’ll still be executed,” Lambchop said.

“We’ve seen it a hundred times. Those motherfuckers assume you’re guilty if you’ve talked to cops,” Espinoza said.

“Very unfortunate,” Wilson said. “No matter what, this isn’t going to end well for you.”

Gustavo’s gaze darted between the three men. It was almost as though Wilson could see the steam rising from his head like in a cartoon as his brain worked overtime, trying to figure a way out of this. “What deal?”

Lambchop patted his shoulder. “Now that’s being smart.”

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