Page 81 of Whatever You Need

Logan’s phone beeped.“We got him. We got the son of a bitch! The judge just issued the warrant. The cell towers picked up a signal from his mother’s house in Germantown.”

Miguel Perez was the leader of the Los Diablos street gang that took over a good portion of Hunting Park. Perez was no angel. He was wanted for storming into a known drug house and killing three people, including a woman who was five months pregnant. His rivals, a group called the Schuylkill Rangers, were peddling their own poison, which on most days was heroin and sometimes fentanyl. Depending on the demand in the streets. We were also trying to connect him to the warehouse fire from Nicetown last month.

Perez was a firebug, using arson for a tool for extortion, intimidation, and murder. He and Benny Castro did a short stint at the same lock-up before he was sent up to Muncy, an interesting tidbit that we stumbled upon during our investigation. This little game of cat and mouse was getting old, and I was sick of him being one step ahead. I was ready to get him off the streets.

Logan shot me a pointed glance as the images pinged to our screens. It was a photo of two young kids, sitting on a park bench. They didn’t look older than fifteen as they both drank a 40 from a brown paper bag. Even with his disheveled appearance, I recognized Benny’s tattoo on his left arm. Miguel Perez was the kid next to him, laughing and patting him on the back.

“Looks like we have our connection between these two dirtbags,” I said, staring down at the picture. Miguel had been a thorn in my side for the past nine months, and it was time to end this.

“Has the area been evacuated?” I asked Logan.

“All clear.”

“Let’s roll.”

I wanted to get there before anyone else did. This was my homicide case. I’ve spent months chasing down leads. And the victims’ families, no matter how tainted their loved one’s life choices were, they deserved justice. If anyone was going to get the satisfaction of taking him down, it was going to be me.

By the time we pulled up to his mother’s neighborhood, it was dark outside. The house sat on a street with only one working streetlight. The rest had their bulbs shot out by thugs who preferred to do their work in the dark. I swept the area, searching for anything that might feel off. The only thing that stood out was the white Cadillac parked in front of the garage.

“SWAT is on the way,” Logan said, as he typed the license plate into his computer. A prickle of unease traveled down my spine. I ran my hand along the steering wheel, hoping I was just being paranoid, but something didn’t feel right. The neighborhood was quiet. Too quiet. I took a minute to assess my surroundings, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

I cranked the door open and stepped onto a fresh patch of snow. We kept our heads down as we walked along the side of the house, trying to stay out of sight. There wasn’t any movement from the inside of the house, but my gut told me we were walking into a trap. I didn’t have time to think or hesitate, so I kept on moving. The area was going to be surrounded in a matter of minutes, and I didn’t want any possibility of him slipping through our fingers.

I glanced at Logan out of the corner of my eye as we both focused on not making any noise while our boots moved along the gravel driveway. I drew my gun out of my holster, hoping like fuck I didn’t have to use it. My job was to protect and serve, and I intended to uphold my oath. Innocent lives were lost because of the poison these low life drug dealers peddled on the streets. They destroyed these once middle-class communities with their selfish greed. Like an insect infestation, these gangs took over stores and businesses one by one, running good people out of the neighborhoods. Those who stayed were extorted for cash payment for “protection” from rival gangs. And if the business owners couldn’t pay in cash, they were more than willing to torture their family members and their children to collect in other ways. These were bad people.

I looked over my shoulder, seeing movement on the end of the street. I gave Logan a nod, letting him know that SWAT had arrived. We circled the house and secured all points of entry, eliminating any chance of him escaping. Once the perimeter was established, I gave my men a nod and banged on the door.

The dog next store started barking and a few flood lights from surrounding houses came on. And that’s when all hell broke loose. The door swung open and before I could even react, Perez’s gun was aimed at my chest and bullets started flying.

“Get down.” Logan shoved me sideways right before our men stormed the house. They wrestled Perez and a handful of his crew to the ground as bullets continued to spray out into the neighborhood through the front window. Glass shattered; footsteps pounded as a haze of gun smoke clouded the air.

“Fuck,” I shouted out in pain and held on to my left shoulder. While the vest protected my chest, the fucker got a quick shot that struck me where the vest had stopped. My vision started to blur with an intense pain like I’d never felt before in my arm. He fucking hit me. Blood leaked from the wound in my shoulder as I tried to crawl along the floor.

Logan stripped his jacket off and added pressure to the wound.

Captain Jenkins kneeled down on his knees to get a better look. “Hang on. Ambulance is on the way. There is a lot of blood there… just keep applying pressure and don’t let him close his fucking eyes.”

Logan hissed out a breath through his nose, and I painfully lifted my head to see what had his face going so pale. Shit! His hands were covered in blood. My blood.

“Marco.” I felt a slap to my face. “We’re going to get you to the hospital, but you need to stay with us.” My eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. They weren’t going to stay open for much longer. “It’s going to be okay,” he said right before everything went black.

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