Roses Are Red

could have been part of the team that struck MetroHartford. He could be the Mastermind. We have to go get him.”
    I met with the raid team at an OP, an observation point, in a nearby building. The OP was a studio apartment used by Metro narcotics detectives assigned to the East Capitol Dwellings project. I had been in the apartment a few times before. This was my neighborhood.
    A team of eight of us would go into the sixth-floor apartment to take down Mitchell Brand. Eight was more than enough; there’s only safety in numbers up to a point.
    As the team checked weapons and put on Kevlars, I stared out onto the streets. Sodium-vapor streetlights created a yellow fuzziness down below. What a bad scene. Even with this much police presence in the neighborhood, the drug game continued. Nothing could stop it. I watched a brazen team of lookouts and steerers selling crack on the far corner, beyond the projects. An addict approached, quick-stepping, his head down. A local foolio, a familiar sight to me. I turned away from the drug deal as if it weren’t happening.
    I began to talk to the team. “Mitchell Brand is wanted for questioning in the robbery of a Union Trust in Falls Church. He could definitely be our link to whoever is behind the robberies. This is the best suspect we’ve come up with so far. He
could
be the Mastermind.
    “As best we can tell, Brand is up in the girlfriend’s apartment. She’s a new honey for him. Detective Sampson will pass around a standard layout for a one-bedroom in the building. You should know that inside the one-bedroom we may find Brand, his girlfriend, and her three children, aged two to six.”
    I turned to Agent Walsh. Two of his agents were part of the go team. He had nothing to add, but he told his men, “The Washington police will act as the primary at the apartment. We will be backup in the hallway and going into the girlfriend’s apartment. That’s about it,” he said.
    “Okay, let’s move out,” I said. “Everybody use extreme care. Everything we know about Brand says he’s dangerous and will be heavily armed.”
    “He was Special Forces, Army,” John Sampson added. “How’s that for whipped cream on shit?”

Chapter 72
    ARMED AND DANGEROUS — it is a common enough catchphrase, but with real meaning to police officers.
    We entered Building Three single file through the dingy, underlit basement, then we hurriedly marched up several flights of stairs toward the sixth floor. The stairway was dirty and stained the color of bad teeth. There might have been a serious fire in the building at one time. Heavy soot caked the walls, the floor, and even the metal banister. Could the Mastermind be hiding up here? Was he a black man? That seemed unthinkable to the FBI. Why?
    Suddenly, we surprised a pair of pathetic, bone-thin crackheads lighting up on the fourth-floor stairwell. We had our guns out, and they stared at us bug-eyed, afraid to be there, afraid to move.
    “We didn’t do nothin’ to nobody,” one of the men finally said in a scratchy gargle. He looked well past forty but was probably only in his twenties.
    “As you were,” I said in a low voice. I sternly pointed a finger at them. “Not even a whisper.”
    The paranoid junkies must have thought that we were coming for them. The two crackheads couldn’t believe it when we hurried right past them. I heard Sampson say, “Get the fuck out of here. It’s your
last
lucky day.”
    I could hear infants crying and small children shouting, the babble of several TV sets, and jazz and hip-hop and salsa music leaking through the thin walls. My stomach was knotted up. Moving in on Brand in a crowded building was a very bad deal, but everybody wanted results now. Brand
was
an excellent suspect.
    Sampson lightly touched my shoulder. “I’ll go in with Rakeem,” he said. “You
follow,
sugar. Don’t argue with me.”
    I frowned but nodded. Sampson and Rakeem Powell were the best marksmen we had. They were careful and smart and experienced, but this was a tough, scary bust.
Armed and dangerous.
Anything could happen now.
    I turned to a detective who held a heavy metal ram with two hands. It looked like a small, blunt missile. “Take the door right the hell down, officer. I’m not asking you to knock first.”
    I looked back at the lineup of tense and anxious men behind me. I held up one fist. “We’re going on four,” I said.
    I gestured with my fingers — one — two — three!
    The battering ram hit the