Lethal Rage by Brent Pilkey Page A

didn’t bother to comment; his disbelief was plain.
    â€œTaftmore seems a bit of a jerk,” Jack commented, draining the last of his pop.
    â€œNice change of subject. Real subtle.” Sy held up a forestalling hand. “All right, I believe you. You’re not interested in her at all.” He picked a piece of tobacco from his teeth and flicked it away. “Taft’s all right. He can be an annoying prick at times, but he’s solid when there’s work to be done. Rick wouldn’t have him in the unit otherwise.”
    â€œYou ever work in Major Crime?”
    â€œFew times. I was there when Rick brought Kris in. Helped train her, too.”
    â€œWhy’d you leave?”
    Sy smiled. “Her tits were too distracting.”
    Jack laughed. “You know they’re not real, right? Anyone with body fat that low can’t have tits like that.”
    â€œPartner, when they look that good, it doesn’t matter if she was born with them or bought them.”
    Further discussion was cut off when Mason and his crew came out, all of them wearing their vests with POLICE across the chest and back in big white letters. Tank carried the key — a steel battering ram with four handles so two people could swing it — slung casually over his shoulder like a baseball bat.
    Sy dropped the stub of his cigarillo and crushed it underfoot. “Well, grasshopper, let’s get it done, shall we?”
    Regent Park. A sprawling housing project divided into north and south by Dundas Street. A warren of townhouses, low-rise and high-rise apartment buildings, walkways and parking lots. South Regent had the high-rises; the northern buildings, greater in number, never climbed above six floors. A cesspool of drugs, violence and dead-end lives, Regent Park was an unfortunate mix of good, honest people and low-lifes.
    North Regent was bisected by a service road — a glorified, over-wide sidewalk — running east and west through the complex. The two police cars carrying the entry team sped along the walkway and Sy pulled up sharply behind the unmarked car at the southeast entrance to 259 Sumach. The MCU team was already making for the door and Jack and Sy quickly joined them.
    As they passed through the stairwell to the main hall, Jack could hear feet pounding up the stairs. So much for a quiet approach. No doubt word was flying through the building: cops were here and they had a ram with them. Someone’s door was about to be punched.
    Mason heard the runners as well and motioned for his team to hustle as quietly as possible. There was still the chance they could take the apartment unaware. The entry team hurried along a hall painted in what Sy called “off-white, off-yellow, off-government-cheap.”
    They reached the apartment door: so far, so good. Sy and Mason framed the door, shotguns at the ready. Kris was behind Mason; Jack was behind Kris. His back was to the lobby entrance, a small wasteland of discarded cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers and dried puddles of urine. The halls weren’t air-conditioned and the heat had baked the entrance into a fetid desert.
    The faint sounds of a TV game show murmured behind the closed door. The rest of the building was surprisingly quiet, as if it were a living thing waiting expectantly to see if this sickness, this area of rot, would be successfully cut from its body.
    Behind Jack, the front door of the low-rise opened, the broken lock clicking ominously in the stagnant air. Jack twisted to face the lobby, his Glock pointed at the floor. The team froze, a collective entity with Jack now as its head, waiting to see who stepped into view. A dealer coming for a pickup would be disastrous; a shouted warning could be the difference between a by-the-numbers entry and a gunfight. Jack readied himself to knock whoever came through the lobby senseless.
    He blinked sweat from his eyes. What was taking the guy so long? He could hear someone moving