Free Pipe Dream by Solomon Jones

frustrating, so painful, that you will not want your badge by the time it’s over. I will see to it that Internal Affairs gets you for everything from wiping your ass the wrong way to jerking off in the shower. Is that understood?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Good,” Nelson said. “Now, why the hell haven’t these guys been apprehended? What’d they do, disappear into thin air?”
    “Well, sir, I think—”
    “I don’t care what you think, mister!” Nelson said. “Think about apprehending those suspects before we’re all out of a job.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I want you to understand something, Ramirez,” Nelson said. “I want you to understand that I think you’re a hell of a detective. That’s why I’m putting the entire East and Northwest divisions at your disposal for this investigation. But even though I think you could probably handle this thing yourself, myself and Captain Sheldon are going to personally supervise everything that goes on here.
    “We’re going back to headquarters to pick up a mobile communications unit,” Nelson said, putting a fancy name on what amounted to a trailer with some electronic equipment inside. “We’re going to set it up right outside this house, you’ll report directly to us with requests for any resources you need, and we’ll find these guys within the next twenty-four hours. Because if we don’t, if we’re depicted in the press as a bunch of incompetents who were outsmarted by pipers . . .”
    Nelson paused in an effort to calm himself.
    “If we don’t find them,” Nelson said, “and I mean yesterday, then God help us all.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    As Ramirez watched the commissioner and the captain walk back to their car for the ride back to headquarters, he realized that he wasn’t terribly eager to work with either of them. He had the feeling there would be too many chiefs and not enough Indians. He knew he could handle it, though. It wouldn’t kill him. It was what he didn’t know that could kill him.

 
    Chapter 5
    C larisse broke out a six-pack, and they all had a cold one. It helped them to feel the high every time they took a hit, instead of smoking cap after cap and feeling nothing. But even with the beer, none of them felt the way they thought they should, because the first good hit of crack is often the last one. That’s one of the reasons that people get strung out. They get caught up in the cycle of trying to get one more hit like the very first one. But they never do.
    “You ain’t got no forties up in here, Clarisse?” Leroy said, pushing his screen back to the other end of his straight to scrape the residue from the caps he’d smoked up to the top of the screens.
    “No, I don’t have any forties, Leroy,” Clarisse said, shaking her head.
    “ ‘Ain’t got no,’ ” she said to herself, mocking him. “Somebody call the English police.”
    “I wish it was only the English police,” Leroy said.
    “What are you talking about?” Clarisse said.
    Leroy looked at Black, who jumped in quickly.
    “Why don’t you ever push your straight, Clarisse?” he said, changing the subject and wishing that Leroy would stop saying stupid stuff.
    “For what?” she said, going over to the radio and turning on KYW News Radio. “By the time I do all that, I could just get somebody to go and get me some more.”
    “Yeah, but you missin’ the best part o’ the hit,” Black said. “Let me show you.”
    Black reached for the straight shooter he had given her.
    “I don’t think so,” she said, pulling the glass tube away.
    For a moment, Black was offended. But after he thought about it, he couldn’t blame her for not trusting him. Crack isn’t a social drug, like weed, where everybody can get high from a single joint. And it isn’t like beer, where people drink it and get happy. No, crack is a lot different from anything else people use to get high. Very rarely is it fun to smoke. Usually, the high is scary, and the people who smoke it are