All Wrapped Up?

The wedding was beautiful....It was held on the rooftop bar and grill of Mulberry Street...A popular outdoor jazz spot in the city....

Sissy, Carol Redding, Sharon and I sat in an SUV across the street with tinted windows...We had the ballroom floor wired for video and sound so we could see the entire event...

 "This wedding is so beautiful." said Sissy...

"It is...Did you see the bridesmaids gowns?" laughed Sharon....

"One thing I can say about Mister Brooklyn Decker...He knows how to throw a party...."laughed Carol Redding...

''With his money...I'd expect nothing less for his daughter..." I said...

It had been an interesting day....The Deputy of Operations had demanded we not sit on those indictments any longer....So early in the morning...

The FBI, and the DEA...

 and plain clothes officers from Vice and Narcotics, led by Duke, Angie, Tyriq, Carlotta,Jimmy, Sirena and Hop...

Led a series of raids that had us arresting 102 drug suspects, all associates of Jimmy Bishop....We caught most of them before they woke up or as they were getting up...They were so shocked that they were being arrested and at the mountain of information we had on them that they didn't know what to do....

News broke of us finding the warehouse...Where 47 bodies were found....The bodies of young men, all leaders of independent drug crews who vanished over a period of months...Some missing for as long as six months....All frozen solid in cakes of ice and preserved nicely in the basement of a meat packing joint that Jimmy Bishop had bought last year....We also found the last of his stash of Heroin and Cocaine..We made an additional 48 arrests there.

That and the announcement that we had two suspects in custody, Basil Templeton and Charlene Brown, suspected of all 47 murders was news to everyone's ears....We had essentially broke the back of Jimmy Bishop's hold on a neighborhood and put him out of business..His Barber shops and Steak and Hoagie shops were closed and seized...Along with several SUV's and cars....

We dragged the riverfront and found four more bodies or what was left of the remains of four witnesses who were going to testify against Charlene Brown in four unrelated murders....

Among the 47 dead, found in the warehouse was "Flea", the murderer, Tyriq, Carlotta and Jimmy were searching for

and the Confidential informant, Jason Tyson ,that Angie and Duke had been using and who gave us an in into Jimmy Bishop's organization...

All in all, our task force had completed it's mission...Knocked Jimmy Bishop out of power...He was wanted for Murder and RICO charges...and was nowhere to be found...

Hazel and her team were busy loading bodies onto M.E. vans...

"Oh my god...We might have to borrow some vans from Camden....So many bodies...Doc Gibbons is going to have a fit."she sighed...

II-

Brooklyn Decker was a tall man, urbane, handsome...Dressed immacculately....No criminal record and an attorney and businessman who owned an Importing business....A perfect front to bring in drugs...He had several government contracts and was well connected....

Hop was actually on the floor of the wedding...

 "No sign of Bishop here.." he reported to us via phone....

''What about his number two, Rod Kyber?" I asked.

"No sign of him either..."said Jimmy...

''We tipped our hand prematurely...We could have arrested those clowns and hit that warehouse at anytime..Decker won't go anywhere near Bishop now...not with all of this stuff on the news...His associates busted, warehouse hit...two associates charged with the biggest mass murder in the city's history...This was all about money...All the overtime and the usage of the safehouse.The Deputy of Operations said to wrap it up...If we had the indictments...Make the arrests and hit the Warehouse....Politics...I liked it better when I was on the street."said Sissy.

"Girl, who you tellin?  I know..I know...That's okay..we'll get Decker another day, another way...I still have a hand to play and look at the good side."said Carol...

"Good side?" asked Sharon...

"Yes...You guys took down a dangerous Kingpin ,who held a whole section of the city in his grip and you cleared 56 unsolved murders...No mean feat..." she said..

 ''We did didn't we? And this task force can be disbanded and we can all go home.."laughed Sissy...

 "Here, here.." I said.

Still, there was no sign of Jimmy Bishop.....My wife called...

''Papi,We are at Jimmy Bishop's condo....No sign of him at all..." said Carlotta...

" We have three uniforms with us...The place looks normal....Like he hasn't been here for a couple of days...and get this...His BMW is parked out front...with the keys in them and his wallet in the glove compartment.."said Tyriq....

Another call came in....It was Duke...

''Hey..We went to Bishop's fiance's house...She said she hasn't seen him since this morning..."said Duke..

"She's hysterical...She's all dressed up, They were supposed to attend that wedding...She said he was very excited about going...And he was supposed to have picked her up hours ago...but he never showed up.."said Angie...

I turned to Sissy,Carol and Sharon...

"I don't like this...Carlotta and Rico are at his condo...His car is there with the keys and his wallet in the glove compartment...No sign of him and Angie and Duke are at his girlfriend's house..She said he was supposed to pick her up hours ago to attend this wedding and he never showed...This is bad." I said.

"It means he is either in the wind...Or he's dead!"said Sissy...

"We got another call coming in...It's Sirena..." said Sharon...

"Hey guys...I found Bishop...He's at the Merriot ,downtown...He's DEAD!"she said.


III-

"Dead?? What happened??" asked Sharon...

"He appears to have been shot twice in the head...Killer must have used a silencer...Because none of the hotel guests heard anything...I've got guys checking the cameras to see when he entered here and who with."said Sirena...

Hazel got on the phone...

"Body temp and lividity says he was killed no more than about three to four hours ago..." she said.

"And that's how Mr. Decker cleans up..He leaves no loose ends...Nothing to bring anybody back to him...This guy met with him and was prepared to buy a large sum of product from him...He also probably knew who the new represenative is...He was too hot to trust....He probably heard about the arrests and the indictments for murder and other things and decided that Mr. Bishop...the would be king was too hot,too much of a liability to be alive..."said Carol.

''And Decker has the perfect alibi...He's been here at this wedding all day...and we've seen him.."said Sissy..

"He's not going to personally get his hands dirty...He had someone else do this...Where is his boy Rod Khyber?" I asked.

"You can look for him, but you won't find him...He's long gone...He too is too slick to ever get caught up in something like this..We'll get Decker...Don't worry...We just won't get him today...That's all." said Carol.

"Let's just take the win..."said Sissy...

''One day Mr. Decker....One day...you'll have your day of reckoning.."I said.

At The Marriot...Sirena and Hazel watched as the body of the man who would be king, Jimmy Bishop was wheeled out of his hotel room..

"They all want to be king and they all wind up the same way...dead or locked up...So tragic."said Hazel...

"But for them...At least they get to be King...I guess in the end...that's all that matters.." said Sirena..


EPILOUGE-

Charlene "Charlie" Brown was convicted of 55 counts of First Degree Murder...Making her the most prolific killer we had ever captured...She was sentenced to Life with no possibility of Parole and sent to a women's Super Max prison out West..

Basil Templeton was convicted of 48 counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

With the death of Jimmy Bishop and the incarceration of 102 of his cronies and associates....The neighborhoods he had such a strong grip on seemed to breath a sigh of relief..You could see it in the way people talked and went about their daily lives now...the fear was gone...They felt free as if they had been released from a prison...

 Within a week...We found a man, identified as Julien Drex....hanging in an apartment in Mt.Airy....we found a gun with his prints on them that matched the ballisitcs of the gun used to kill Jimmy Bishop...Sirena and Hop and Sharon had caught him on one of the hotel's cameras entering with Jimmy Bishop early in the morning...and leaving alone minutes later...

 Hazel was at the scene.....She found a carefully worded suicide note....twenty thousand in cash...and the murder weapon....

"Looks like your case is all wrapped up for you..nice and neat....This looks like a suicide...but I can't be for sure...It could have been staged.." was all she would say...She wrote it up as suspicious...

One bright spring day a few weeks later, Carlotta and I went walking around that neighborhood, when a familliar face called her..

"Detective??? Aren't you Detective Wallace...who was investigating my son's disapearence?" came the voice of Mrs. Bowers...The mother of Norman "Flea" Bowers...

"Yes I am...and this is my husband.." she said..

The lady smiled...

"Ohhhhhhhhh you went and got yo self a brother....Alright now chica...I aint mad at you girl." she laughed...

Carlotta smiled...

"I just wanted to say thank you....and I'm sorry I gave you and your partners a hard time...Thank you for finding my son's body so that I could funeralize him properly and thank you for gettin all those thugs off our streets, especially that damn Jimmy Bishop....It's so much better around here with him gone..."she said and hugged Carlotta...

 "We were just doing our jobs mam.."said Carlotta with a shy smile...

"And jobs well done...Thank you soo much." she said as she walked away....

Carlotta looked at me...

"And it's time like that, that makes what I do worthwhile.."she said in all seriousness...

I pulled her into a side street and kissed her passionately.......

"I want to thank you for being so damn hot."I said..

We continued to kiss and Carlotta smiled..

"You're welcome papi....always..." she said...She removed my hand from under her dress...

''Papi, you're so naughty...we are in public ."she said laughing as we continued to kiss passionately on the side street..