AANTF, Passing of a Brother

I got news that a former partner passed away on Saturday.  I saw him two weeks ago and he told me he was terminal. I intended to call him today to see if he was up for a visit. There was a time when he saw me more often then his wife and family.  We moved to different assignments and priorities shifted back to family.  With retirement it was a telephone call every couple of months. We got together once a quarter to drink a couple of beers.  Maybe twice a year we’d meet up with other broke down narcs and have dinner.  He seemed comfortable with the situation that he now found himself in.  He was happy with his wife and so proud of his two sons.

I can’t leave it without one war story.  John and I were working undercover. He was the lead.  He had a talent for undercover. According to the informant, this female horse trainer named George Anne was moving large quantities of methamphetamine.  John and his alter ego the evil Kris Gentry met her and they talked some business, but not much. She had recently shed a boyfriend and was in the market for a new one and John (Kris Gentry) would do just fine.

From that point forward I was with Kris Gentry every step of the way, in order to protect his virtue,cover officer and chaperone. There was a forth party involved another female whose name escapes me. It became obvious that this woman, I’ll call her Safir was the source of the speed.  While she watched the transactions,  she never took part in the negotiations, touched the dope or money. So while we had a case on George Anne we didn’t have one on Safir.

The informant was wrong, George Anne was a user selling dope to Kris for her own purposes and Safir didn’t trust Kris as far as she could throw him.

We decided to make one last run at George Anne in order to get a delivery on Safir. We went back to the office and laid out our plan to the boss.  As soon as we informed the boss that George Anne  was not the target of the century, he cut off funds. No more deals.  We got a hundred dollars a piece enough to drink on, but not buy dope.

The next day Kris Gentry had a new plan. Since Safir didn’t like Kris and we didn’t have any money to buy dope.  Kris was staying out at the ranch.  But his trusty sidekick “Charlie” was coming into San Antonio to run errands. Did George Anne need any hay? George Anne always needed hay.

So at 10:30 that morning feigning a hangover and blowing beery breath in her face I was banging on George Anne’s door asking her where she wanted her hay.  I then worked up a sweat unloading 19 bales of hay from my half ton pickup.

Thirsty work, I soon found myself in the kitchen drinking a beer and complaining that Kris Gentry was a slave driver. I’d already driven a hundred miles from the ranch in and now I had to go to Waco and then cut across back to Tarpley. Hungover, no sleep, can you help a fella out? And Safir did, she handed me half a gram of methamphetamine, no additional charge.

Thank you Kindly ma’am.  John and I got a three fer that morning.  1. We’re probably the only narcotics officers in Bexar County that ever made a drug purchase with hay. 2. We followed the boss’s orders and still made him look stupid. (we could have listed the money spent on the hay as money spent on dope, in which case we would have gone against orders, however we listed the money as a consumable undercover expense complete with receipt, and therefore not charged as a dope expenditure) 3. We stutter stepped an experienced crook, put her off her plan and made a clean hand to hand delivery.

This all happened in another time.  We were younger, reckless and driven. Twelve hour days were normal, sixteen not unusual, and twenty-four hours straight at least once a month.  We worked hard and we played hard.  It was high speed, high stress and no quarter given to crooks or fellow officers. You gotta learn to carry your own ruck. We were taking off bad guys, every case a felony. It was important work. It was the most fun we could have with our clothes on.

The only people that noticed were our families mostly by noting our absence; in bed, at the dinner table, at soccer tryouts and PTA events. I had a dog who waited for me at home, I can’t judge was it worth it?

Rest easy John