American Gangster

Far ahead he spotted the pickup truck. That wasn’t great, but any closer and the guy might have seen or heard the commotion Richie had just made. Anyway, Richie had lost time to make up for: he gunned the engine, flew through a red light and glanced nervously at his rearview mirror where cars that had just missed him were almost colliding themselves.

The truck took a right turn, still way up ahead, and Richie barreled through another red light, took the corner and kept the truck in his sight — a couple car lengths ahead, now.

Several blocks later, Richie pulled the cab up to a yellow-painted curb as the mechanic, already parked, got out and went into a pizza parlor with windows as greasy as the pizza probably was. The detective got out, crossed the street, walked past the restaurant, trying to get a good look inside without breaking stride.

Then, from around the nearest corner, coming right at him, strode a quartet in dark leather coats, like a modernized pack of gestapo thugs, big guys with dark sleek slicked-back hair. He could also make out, beneath the heavy, expensive coats, the silk ties and dark, tailored suits and Italian loafers; Rolexes gleamed on their wrists. They might have been top Mafiosi, only they were cops. The so-called Princes of the City.

Special Investigations Unit guys — he had heard of them, and seen them around, or anyway one of them: the big guy in front with the Zapata mustache, that was Detective Trupo, though Trupo wouldn’t know him from Adam. These guys — much feared and often admired by other cops, both sides of the river — were known for two things: unlimited authority and outrageous corruption.

Richie ducked into the nearest alley, just as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were riding into the restaurant. In the alley he found a grimy basement window down into the kitchen that gave him a view on a tableau that made his guts tighten...

Trupo and the other SIU detectives burst in, guns in hand. The mechanic and a white guy in chef’s attire were in the midst of doing business, a metal food-prep table home to a meal of stacked money packets and a pile of blue cellophane baggies. Trupo supervised while one of his men slapped the mechanic and chef around, and then another detective gathered the money, stuffing it into a black bag, and the final detective slid the dope packets into another bag.The mechanic, who was a bruiser himself, started to protest, and Trupo slapped him with his automatic, a nine millimeter that opened a red gash on the black cheek.

No arrests were made. They just strode out of the kitchen, as abruptly as they’d appeared, the four lawmen departing with no suspects, just two black bags, one filled with dope, and the other with money courtesy of the taxpayers of the state of New Jersey. And Richie.