Free Badge of Evil by Bill Stanton

outta bed, get dressed and shit, and meet him at an apartment on One Hundred Forty-Eighth Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. It was an unusual situation. Let’s just say one of our sales managers seemed to be having a little problem with his bookkeeping, and we had a large shipment coming in that the motherfucker was supposed to be responsible for. So Church wanted us to pay him a little visit and make sure, you know, his spreadsheets were in order.”
    As Supreme talked, Lucy frantically took notes. She noticed that every once in a while the former drug dealer would lose the attitude and the edgy street argot and sound a lot smarter and more sophisticated than maybe he wanted to. Even though he lived in a Beaux Arts mansion, the whole gangsta thing was critical, she figured, to who he was and everything he was about.
    Lucy didn’t say anything while Supreme told his story, except to quietly utter an occasional “right,” just to make sure he knew she was listening. A. J. had always told her to stay out of the way once someone gets rolling. “Let the momentum work. Allow your subject to unload whatever it is they need to unload. Do not interrupt,” he’d tell her over and over. “Too many reporters want to hear themselves talk. They want their subject to like them or they want to show how smart they are. This is not about you. Save your questions until later. Even when a subject stops talking, don’t say anything for a few minutes. Silence makes people uncomfortable, and their instinct is to keep talking to fill up the space. And sometimes that’s when they let their guard down and give you the best stuff.”
    â€œSo we’re in this apartment, which we used for an ‘office,’ ” Supreme said, actually making air quotes with his two hands around the word “office.” He did it in such an exaggerated way that Lucy knew he was teasing her, making fun, she guessed, of what he considered an overused, twentysomething-white-girl gesture. He smiled at her in a surprisingly gentle way and she couldn’t help but smile back.
    â€œThere was some serious fuckin’ weight in that room and a substantial amount of cash too. We were explaining the importance of accurate accounting to this ignorant motherfucker who worked for us when the five-oh showed up. No knock, no shouted identification from the hallway, no nothin’, man. Two fuckin’ uniforms, patrolmen of all goddamned things, came through the door with their guns drawn. I’m tellin’ you, it was no joke. There was enough rock and pure coke in that room to send some niggas away for life, know what I’m sayin’? And the whole thing was supposedly some stupid-ass screwup. A fuckin’ mistake,” Supreme said in disbelief, as if the incident had just happened.
    â€œThe cops said they were responding to a domestic-disturbance call. Some drunk-ass fool was waving a piece at his old lady, scarin’ her and threatening to cap her ass or some shit. The cops were supposed to hit apartment 504. But these two shining examples of New York’s finest musta been dyslexic or something, because the backward-ass motherfuckers came bustin’ into 405, which was our place.”
    While Supreme’s shock and indignation were sincere, it was all Lucy could do to keep from exploding with laughter. The absurdity of the situation and Supreme’s description of the cops were almost too much for her.
    â€œSo as I’m sure you can understand,” he continued, “we were in a severely compromised position. Totally fucked, actually. But somebody musta been lookin’ down on our asses. Hey, Ira,” Supreme said, interrupting the story. “Ask Marta to bring us some iced tea or somethin’, okay? Iced tea okay?” he asked Lucy.
    â€œAh, sure. That’d be great.”
    â€œSee, Kevin was one complicated nigga,” Supreme continued. “He was an