Dutch (25 page)

But more than how he did it, everyone wanted to know where he had gone.

The question was very simple.

Where was Dutch?

F
uck all y’all!” was Dutch’s emphatic verdict on the entire courtroom, and the Charlies stood ready to impose his sentence.
Bullets filled the unsuspecting courtroom. Dutch pulled out the twin forty-calibers strapped under the defense table and fired
into the face of the bailiff to his right as he reached for his service revolver. The second bailiff was spun off his feet
by a Charlie in the front row. People leaped and ducked but to no avail because there was nowhere to hide.

Gripping both pistols like death’s sickles, ready to claim his next victim, Dutch cut the judge down with a shot to the chest.
“Guilty, muthafucka! Guilty!” Dutch laughed, firing a second shot that exploded the judge’s head like a melon. “Gavel that,
pussy!”

Anthony Jacobs felt the muzzle at the back of his head, and before he could even pray, lead filled his thoughts.

The jury was mercilessly sprayed with a barrage of gunfire by four Charlies. All the while, Dutch searched the frenzied rows
looking for Frank Sorbonno. He found him crouched under a row at the rear of the courtroom. Dutch smiled down on him.

“Frankie Bonno! It’s the black Al Capone, muhfucka!” Dutch quipped as he aimed the muzzle at his bald dome. “Happy Valentine’s
Day, sweetheart!”

“Dutch please! I—”

Bonno’s cowardly plea was silenced by six hollow-point messengers of death.

Meanwhile, courthouse officers had begun to converge on the room. Shots flew through the door, killing two Charlies, while
Dutch and six other Charlies made their way to the exit and out the door.

Three more Charlies, positioned in the rear of the building, were exchanging fire with several officers, clearing the way
for Dutch and his team.

“Dutch, this way, baby,” one of the Charlies beckoned before her lungs filled with blood from a gunshot in the back. She fell,
silenced forever, as Dutch and the others made it to the stairs.

Outside, police and ambulances had arrived.

One of the ambulances, however, arrived with two Charlies dressed as EMT workers and was conveniently parked adjacent to the
rear of the courthouse.

With eyes alert to the police and all their activity, Craze cautiously emerged from behind a Dumpster and opened the back
door.

To the average eye, the ambulance didn’t appear out of place. The melee had panicked everyone, and no one knew what to expect
next . . . Certainly not an ambulance escape.

“The basement!” Dutch ordered the remaining three Charlies with him. “Make sure my man is compensated for his assistance.”
He smirked, then shot out the rear door and hopped into the ambulance.

Craze looked at his longtime friend, relieved that he had made it, then screamed at the Charlie in the driver’s seat, “Fuck
you waitin’ for, tomorrow? Drive!” She flipped on the siren and sped off. As the ambulance turned the corner, Detective Smalls
and his partner, Detective Meritti, skidded up and jumped out of their car ready for war.

“Where is Dutch?” Smalls demanded, but he became distracted when Detective Meritti entered the courthouse behind him. Smalls
could tell by the look on his partner’s face that he was the bearer of bad news. Smalls had been dealing with the press throughout
the ordeal, keeping them informed of what was going on. But he had postponed leaking any information concerning Dutch until
the chief of police got back to him. And today Meritti was the chief’s messenger.

“What’s the world coming to, eh?” Meritti asked in his Brooklyn Italian accent. “First 9/11, now this?” He scanned the crime
scene in disbelief. “This is the beginning of anarchism.”

Smalls agreed. “So?” he inquired, studying Meritti’s blue eyes.

Meritti sat down and lit a Winston. “I can see the headlines now. ‘Gangster Kills Judge and Jury and Escapes,’ ” he bitterly
remarked with a flourish, tapping the ashes from his cigarette. “Do you know what kind of message that would send?” Meritti
continued his rant. “Every fuckin’ nut with a gun and half a heart will think he can do the same thing!”

Smalls nodded. “No courtroom in America will be safe. The next thing you know, people will be shooting DAs and judges in the
street!”

“And rioting in county jails to bust out the kingpins,” Meritti added in a tone of disgust.

Smalls knew where Meritti was going with the conversation. “I take it the chief feels the same way?” Smalls asked, already
knowing he did.

Meritti nodded, watching his partner of six years, knowing what the chief was asking of him. He knew Smalls didn’t like to
lie. To Meritti, Smalls had always been an annoyingly honest detective.

“If I go out there and tell those people that James is dead… if we cover up his escape and it gets out…”

“It won’t get out,” Meritti said, cutting him off.

“But if it does?”

“It won’t.”

Smalls saw the logic in the decision.

Even though Dutch had committed a heinous act, if the world thought he was dead, potential copycats would think twice because
Dutch didn’t survive. But to Smalls, a lie was still a lie.

However, if the truth was told, Dutch would become a legend—the gangster’s hero, the outlaw who blasted his way to freedom.
No, Smalls’s heart decided the truth couldn’t be told—yet. Not until James was firmly in his grasp. For the sake of justice
everywhere, the truth had to be concealed.

Smalls rose slowly, feeling the full weight of his fifty-four years in his arthritic knees.

“Okay, let’s go meet the press,” he said, smiling at Meritti weakly.

Meritti took one last look at the room and wondered aloud, “But
how
did he do it? There are metal detectors on every floor, even right outside this door, and he smuggled in a fuckin’ arsenal?
How?”

Smalls looked at Meritti with steel in his eyes. “I don’t know. But I promise you, I will find out.”

With that, they left the courtroom.

H
ey, Lance, come here, look,” whispered Jeremy, standing in an alleyway pointing to a window in what appeared to be an apartment
row home on the 2500 block of Somerset Street in North Philadelphia.

“What, I don’t see nothing?” whispered Lance back to him.

“The window—it’s cracked. It’s not shut all the way, right there. You see it?” asked Jeremy as he pointed to the window. His
keen vision surpassed that of Lance, who was nearsighted and unable to see far when he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

“You sure they in there?” Lance asked, trying to figure out what the next move should be as an alley cat jumped out of a tree
next to him, scaring the living daylights out of him. “Nigga, I know you not laughing,” he said to Jeremy, who couldn’t help
himself.

“You shoulda seen your face… Naw, for real though, I’m telling you, I followed them all day. They’re in there.” He shook his
head, showing no signs of uncertainty in his voice. “I watched them go in there with two duffel bags. They went in and they
haven’t come out, neither one of them. And them duffel bags they had were chunky, real chunky. They holding a lot of money
or a lot of coke. Damn, they holding.”

Many different thoughts rushed around in Lance’s head, the first one being how much money and how much coke their competition
was holding in the house. Right now, more than ever, he needed a come up. A strong come up and he knew in his heart that this
was it.

“You sure it’s just the two of them in there?” Lance asked again, his heart starting to beat a little faster as the adrenaline
rushed through his veins.

“Man, I’m telling you. We can take these jokers. They caught off guard. They won’t even see us coming. We got one chance,
Lance, just one, and this is it.”

Lance needed to play the whole scene out in his head. He wanted no stone to be left unturned. There could be no mistakes,
no mishaps, no fuck-ups. Jeremy might be right—this just might be his one and only chance or better yet his golden opportunity
to come up. Times were hard and the only nigga in the city moving weight was Simon Shuller. Simon Shuller had been getting
money for years. Everyone knew it too. Not only was he the largest drug dealer in Philadelphia, he had to be the police as
well. There was no way he could run drugs, dope, and numbers year after year and not be in jail by now. But he wasn’t in jail
and Simon Shuller, police or not, was the man with the golden hand in the city, the big kahuna with all the money, and those
two unknown suspects inside the row home on Somerset were his runners. Truth was they could have left the door wide open,
’cause anybody crazy enough to mess with anything belonging to Simon Shuller had to be plum out of their minds.

“Man, I must be crazy listening to you,” said Lance, looking at Jeremy.

“Shit, you crazy if you don’t, my friend. I’m telling you, we might not ever get this chance in life again. We could sneak
in, take what we came for, and sneak right back out.”

Lance thought for a minute longer.
Maybe Jeremy is right, we sneak in, take what we came for, and sneak back out. How hard could that be?

“Okay, come on, let’s do the damn thing,” Lance commanded, feeling nothing but heart.

“That’s what I’m talking about, baby boy. Don’t worry, I got this caper all figured out already. Come on, let’s get the car
and park it close enough to make our getaway.”

Up on the fire escape, Lance looked at Jeremy, who was silently cracking the window open. He turned and waved his hand for
his friend to come on. He climbed through the window and into what might once have been a bathroom. Jeremy turned again, to
find Lance on the fire escape climbing through the window behind him.

“What the fuck died in this motherfucker?” whispered Lance, as a foul stench filled his nostrils.

“Shh, come on,” said Jeremy as he embraced his nine-millimeter and peeked around the corner of the doorway, looking like he
belonged on the force.

What the fuck do this nigga think he doing?

“Whah, why you looking at me like that?”

“Nigga, you ain’t no god damn Barnaby Jones and shit. What is you doing?”

“I’m trying to make sure the coast is clear, man—let me do what I do,” said Jeremy, a tad bit annoyed.

What with their whispering back and forth, neither of them heard the footsteps coming down the hallway. Not until the footsteps
were right on them and the bathroom door came flying open.

“What the fuck? Y’all niggas lost?” said a tall, brown-skinned fellow, wearing a Phillies jacket and Phillies baseball cap.

At first he thought they might’ve been crackheads, but then he saw the shiny chrome steel and knew differently.

“Shut the fuck up, before I kill you in this motherfucker,” said Jeremy, quickly maneuvering his gun and pointing it straight
at his victim’s head. “Come on, let’s go.”

Jeremy held the man on his left side, close to his body. He held his gun in his right hand up to the man’s head as they began
walking back down the hallway. They heard another guy call out from the living room.

“Yo, Ponch, we need more vials. You gonna have to run down to the—”

His sentence was cut short as he saw his man, Poncho, being led by Jeremy and Lance through the doorway with a gun pointed
at his head.

“Don’t even think about it, Shorty,” said Lance, pointing his gun at the guy sitting at the table stuffing tiny vials with
two hits of crack.

“What the fuck?”

“Nigga, you know what it is. Bag that shit up, put it back in the duffel bag and don’t nobody got to get hurt.”

The man at the table, Nard, quickly surveyed everything that was going on.
These dudes ain’t wearing no masks. That can only mean one thing.
And even though Jeremy and Lance’s intention wasn’t to kill, just rob, Nard felt otherwise and being a true thoroughbred
for Simon Shuller, he’d rather die fighting than give them niggas a dime, even if the coke wasn’t his. Some things in life
were just more important, and his reputation for being a “real nigga” was one of them. Nard was a youngster with mad heart,
and for the dough, he had love. For the streets, he had respect, and for a principle about some bullshit, he would fight tooth
and nail. He slithered his arm, without a glance, under the table. Right where he had put it earlier was a tiny .22, a piece
of duct tape keeping it suspended upside down.
Mmm hmm, we gonna see now, motherfucker.
Nice and smooth and just enough to do damage, he was ready, ready to pop off. Quickly, his fingers fondled the cold steel,
until his grasp was tight. Nard came from under the table so fast, no one saw it coming, not even Poncho. He shot Lance one
time in the chest, the bullet piercing his heart. Lance dropped to the floor holding his chest with one hand and his gun in
the other, the bullet moving inside him. He looked up at Jeremy, gasping for breath and collapsing in a red pool of blood.

“Let him go, motherfucker!” shouted Nard.

“Nard, take this, nigga. Take him. I know you can, baby boy, take him,” Poncho yelled.

“Shut up, shut the fuck up,” said Jeremy, now nervous, as his man was gasping for air, gurgling blood, and reaching for him
to help him.

“Let him go, let him go. Let him go and I’ll let you live,” said Nard, meaning every word he spoke, but trying to be calm
as he talked Jeremy into letting his man go.

“Nigga, give me what the fuck I came for or both you motherfuckers is gonna die,” said Jeremy, with lots of heart, pushing
the gun harder into the side of Poncho’s head. He looked down on the floor. Lance was dead.
Oh, my god, he killed him, he killed Lance.

“Motherfucker, I ain’t giving you shit. Let him go!” Nard yelled again.