To continue my last post on state of mind or psy-ops while working undercover, here's a tale from the streets of getting into an opponent's head and staying alive. Remember, what you're doing out there may not be real, but you're portraying it as reality so the other side believes it.
Snake (his street name) was a state agent working a large river town known for its criminal past. That evening, he was setting up to do a buy-bust on a cocaine dealer we'll call Sammy Di Luna, a real hardcore street criminal. Snake needed a money man to guard his flash roll, so he invited me in on the deal. All I would probably have to do was sit in the car across the street from the dealer's house until the go-down. Surveillance was made up of local police detectives I hadn't worked with before this deal. They were supposed to set up a couple of blocks away as back up. Everything ready, Snake went into the house, while I waited in the undercover car with my 9mm automatic in one hand and a .357 revolver in the other. All was well.
Ten minutes later, Snake was back to the car. He told me that Di Luna had called a runner to bring a pound of coke to the back door at the side of the house. When the back porch light went off, then Snake was supposed to go back in the house to see what he was buying. He also warned me that standing just inside the kitchen door frame, Di Luna had an AR-15 with the sears filed down so it would operate as an automatic assault rifle. Stuff like that is always comforting to know.
Pretty soon, we observed someone appear at the side door, then leave. The back porch light went off. Snake went inside to see the goods. I got on the concealed radio and warned the surveillance cops about the altered rifle. But then those guys were already aware of Di Luna's rep for violence.
When Snake returned to the car, he said the coke was there. Time for the go-down. I got on the radio and told surveillance to hit the house. In the meantime, to get a head start, Snake and I got out of the car. Di Luna now showed at his front window watching us, so I flashed the money over the top of the vehicle to allay any suspicions on his part. Apparently satisfied, Di Luna left the window and closed the front curtains. Snake and I headed across the sidewalk, up the cement steps, across the short front lawn and onto the front porch.
Surveillance arrived and took up positions. Turned out, they weren't keen on hitting houses containing violent felons. They positioned themselves behind trees and cement objects well away from the door, leaving Snake and I as sole occupants of the porch to make any entry. Not the type of gung-ho cops I was used to working with. By this time, Di Luna looked out the window to see what was taking so long to give him his money. He quickly locked his front door.
It wasn't any time to delay entry and give Di Luna opportunity to flush the coke. Snake held the screen door open while I started kicking at the door and hollering FEDERAL AGENTS at the top of my lungs. Damn door was solid oak. Took several kicks to crack it open. By now, Di Luna had retreated to the back of the house, probably where his rifle was located. I finally stepped into his living room with a big pistol in each hand and bellowed that he was under arrest. Don't know if his mind got frozen by all the loud noises, he thought the situation out and decided to go with the live-to-fight-another-day philosophy or if he firmly believed he had suddenly met someone as crazy as he was even though he clearly had superior firepower. (I picked the last.) In any case, his head slowly appeared around the kitchen doorway. He peered into the living room, then his empty hands showed. Shaking his head, he surrendered.
Snake and I cuffed him, took him down to the police station and into the processing room, a small enclosure with one door and no windows. After fingerprinting Di Luna, Snake let me know he wanted to have a conversation with the prisoner to make sure his informant didn't get harmed later. I stepped back and those two had their conversation, but it didn't go well. Snake looked at me, so I figured to give it a try. Using short words and direct speech, I made it plain that the informant was to come to no harm. Di Luna smiled and said, "Yeah, well what about...?" and he brought up the name of an informant used by the city cops in this same river town against a motorcycle gang president, but who was killed later in a different state while working for another agency. In his own sly way, Di Luna was trying to tell us something we didn't want to hear.
I tried a different tack. Using the speech that Don Corleone used in the Godfather to let his enemies know that as part of the truce he was bringing his youngest son home and would not accept any accidents, even lightning or being shot by a cop, I told Di Luna we too weren't accepting anything that even looked like an accident. Same reply from this hard core criminal still being sly.
Last resort, I took off my long-sleeve denim shirt and bullet proof vest. (In those days, the vests did not protect the wearer from rifle bullets, so it wouldn't have done me much good in Di Luna's living room anyway.) Then I handed my pistol to Snake and asked him to wait outside. At that point, Di Luna let us both know he understood what we were saying. This time he was serious, the slyness was gone.
How far would I have gone? Not far. We weren't and aren't allowed to beat up prisoners. Worst case scenario, I'd have had to come up with some kind of snappy retort that movie heroes have screenwriters for and then found an excuse for not following through on an implied threat. What the hell, I had two things going for me on the way in. One, people in the past have told me I have hard eyes. It's a look that unsettles some people, criminals included. Two, I'd already bluffed out Di Luna in his own living room. Figured I had the mental edge to do it one more time. Call it a second round of psy-ops. I'm not a tough guy, I merely projected that image once upon a time period in my life.
There's probably some of you out there wondering now if maybe Sammy Di Luna wasn't as tough as his reputation led others to believe and that's why he backed down. Maybe he was hard on the outside and all soft jelly when it came to actual blood letting. So, here's the rest of the story as I got it from detectives years later.
Shortly after Di Luna served his time and got out, he and his old partner in the cocaine trade were playing pool in a dirt floor bar in that same river town. They had a few beers and walked out into the parking lot with Di Luna's arm around the shoulders of his old friend. Turned out Di Luna had been holding a grudge for his old partner having brought Snake into the fold even though his partner was not the informant. Whipping out a long-blade folding knife, Di Luna cut his old partner's throat and bleed him out in the parking lot.
Hey, on second thought, maybe I just got lucky on using a quick psy-ops concept on that crazy guy in his own living room, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. In any case, the winners get to tell the story in their own way and go home at night. The losers, well they usually get to walk around muttering to themselves in a confined space.
Ride easy until next time.
Showing posts with label streets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label streets. Show all posts
30 August 2013
22 January 2013
Location, Location, Location
I was at a house-warming party a few days ago when I was confronted by someone who had read my book, "The Thirteenth Child". He had had a few drinks and wanted to correct me on a bit of geography in a particular scene. "You can't walk from the railroad tracks to the bay," he assured me. "No street runs from the tracks all the way to the bay."
First of all, let me go on the record as being both surprised and pleased that this fellow had read my book. "So this is the guy..." I thought. I had been hoping to meet him and shake his hand. But, he wasn't in the mood for handshaking, he wanted an explanation. How could I be so stupid?
"Well," says I, "it's not this town, it's 'Wessex Township'--I made it up."
Now he gives me a look from under his eyebrows--oh yeah? "Then how come the main street is called Mechanic Street just like here?"
I took another sip of my drink. I was kind of enjoying this. "It isn't," I corrected the Guy Who Had Read My Book, "It's Mercantile." Hah!
He kind of deflated a little at that. "Oh...I guess I read that wrong." He avoided me the rest of the evening.
That'll teach him to read my book.
But it didn't escape me that a fellow citizen had recognized what he thought was home in my book's setting. In all fairness, the location of the book was very closely modeled on the town I (and he) live in. In fact, I had a lot of fun recreating my little bit of heaven into a setting for dark and horrible things. And it saddened me when my editor demanded I thin out the dense forest of words describing it. Even so, my former fan had seen exactly what I wanted; after all, if he hadn't, I would have failed an important litmus test in creating the location. The only reason I didn't make it my own town (as I explained to the disappointed man) was that I would have then been tied too tightly to the actual geography, and I didn't want that kind of restriction. Though I was drawing heavily from reality, I was at the same time creating someplace completely unique.
Location certainly plays a huge role in literature. Sometimes it's almost another character: a supporting actor without dialogue. Read Janice Law's "Fires Of London" if you want an example. Brilliantly done descriptions of London during the Blitz; never labored or lengthy (But this is only one example of brilliance in Janice's novel--there are many, many others. If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to do so.). Novel-length fiction allows writers a large canvas on which to paint their scenes and settings; short fiction generally requires a few deft strokes to evoke atmosphere and location. Both disciplines are demanding.
I've always enjoyed certain authors for their ability to evoke time and place, Graham Greene being one of my favorites. He traveled the world in his lifetime and spent a great deal of time in foreign lands; seldom as a tourist. His novels certainly reflect this. Had anyone written a major work on Haiti prior to "The Comedians"? Who knew of Viet Nam before the "The Quiet American"? I could go on, but you get the point.
Location is sometimes a destination, sometimes home. Every character has to either live somewhere, or be someplace else. Where he or she is located is often a key part of the plot. Even the journey to arrive at someplace must become a setting in a story.
Even as I write this, a comment by Eve Fisher on a post by R.T. Lawton (also excellent at foreign and exotic locales) mentions Cecelia Holland, reminding me of another author gifted at creating a sense of place. In her case, however, the places are seldom, if ever, within her lifetime, and therefore experience. She is one of the best of those writers who pen the bewilderingly labeled "Historical Fictions". Her novels have recreated settings in medieval Mongolia (thus providing the connection to R.T.'s blog about the Mongolian New Year observance), England on the fateful eve of the Battle of Hastings, and the Iceland of two feuding brothers at the close of the Viking era. No easy feat these things. Not only must she convince us of the verisimilitude of the land she has invited us into, but she must also convincingly portray a time, and a people, that she could only know through research. When I think of the Man Who Read My Book's objection over the placement of a single street in a fictional town, I quail at the prospect of attempting what Cecelia Holland and Janice Law have both accomplished in their various works. Even Graham Greene always wrote in contemporary terms.
Have any of you reading this ever placed a story in a locale that you have never visited or lived in? Though I have been fortunate in my life to have traveled a great deal, I will admit to having practiced this in a story or two. But, I won't say which ones. So far, I've never been caught at it. In my defense, I did do a heck of a lot of research prior to attempting them. But in the overwhelming number of cases, my stories don't stray far from the towns, states, and countries of which I have, at least some, personal knowledge.
Robert Ghirardi, another favorite writer of mine adept at evocative description, said in an interview (and I'm taking the liberty to paraphrase here as I can't locate the article) that modern authors are too bound by what they have personally experienced. He was referring to the strictures placed upon the imagination in this age of near-instant knowledge through the internet and its children. Any deviation from what is generally known can be instantly fact-checked, making fiction writers cautious to stray too much from what they either personally know or can confirm. The only safe way to do that is delve into the realm of fantasy, which it seems, more and more authors are doing. It is also one of the fastest-growing genres in terms of readership, which might be a result of the dearth of truly "exotic" locales in our steadily shrinking world.
Be that as it may, location, exotic or prosaic, provides the canvas upon which we paint our stories, and our success at doing so is as important to our characters as it is to our readers. Would we accept Hamlet as a gloomy Jamaican? Wouldn't Sherlock Holmes have been a very different person as a product of 1880's Mexico?
Finally on the subject of location, I have an upcoming story in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine called, "Murder Town," that is set in the Yucatan. I'm not going to tell you whether I've been there, or based the setting solely on research--I'll leave that up to you to decide. Either way, I hope I got it right.
First of all, let me go on the record as being both surprised and pleased that this fellow had read my book. "So this is the guy..." I thought. I had been hoping to meet him and shake his hand. But, he wasn't in the mood for handshaking, he wanted an explanation. How could I be so stupid?
"Well," says I, "it's not this town, it's 'Wessex Township'--I made it up."
Now he gives me a look from under his eyebrows--oh yeah? "Then how come the main street is called Mechanic Street just like here?"
I took another sip of my drink. I was kind of enjoying this. "It isn't," I corrected the Guy Who Had Read My Book, "It's Mercantile." Hah!
He kind of deflated a little at that. "Oh...I guess I read that wrong." He avoided me the rest of the evening.
That'll teach him to read my book.
But it didn't escape me that a fellow citizen had recognized what he thought was home in my book's setting. In all fairness, the location of the book was very closely modeled on the town I (and he) live in. In fact, I had a lot of fun recreating my little bit of heaven into a setting for dark and horrible things. And it saddened me when my editor demanded I thin out the dense forest of words describing it. Even so, my former fan had seen exactly what I wanted; after all, if he hadn't, I would have failed an important litmus test in creating the location. The only reason I didn't make it my own town (as I explained to the disappointed man) was that I would have then been tied too tightly to the actual geography, and I didn't want that kind of restriction. Though I was drawing heavily from reality, I was at the same time creating someplace completely unique.
Location certainly plays a huge role in literature. Sometimes it's almost another character: a supporting actor without dialogue. Read Janice Law's "Fires Of London" if you want an example. Brilliantly done descriptions of London during the Blitz; never labored or lengthy (But this is only one example of brilliance in Janice's novel--there are many, many others. If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to do so.). Novel-length fiction allows writers a large canvas on which to paint their scenes and settings; short fiction generally requires a few deft strokes to evoke atmosphere and location. Both disciplines are demanding.
I've always enjoyed certain authors for their ability to evoke time and place, Graham Greene being one of my favorites. He traveled the world in his lifetime and spent a great deal of time in foreign lands; seldom as a tourist. His novels certainly reflect this. Had anyone written a major work on Haiti prior to "The Comedians"? Who knew of Viet Nam before the "The Quiet American"? I could go on, but you get the point.
Location is sometimes a destination, sometimes home. Every character has to either live somewhere, or be someplace else. Where he or she is located is often a key part of the plot. Even the journey to arrive at someplace must become a setting in a story.
Even as I write this, a comment by Eve Fisher on a post by R.T. Lawton (also excellent at foreign and exotic locales) mentions Cecelia Holland, reminding me of another author gifted at creating a sense of place. In her case, however, the places are seldom, if ever, within her lifetime, and therefore experience. She is one of the best of those writers who pen the bewilderingly labeled "Historical Fictions". Her novels have recreated settings in medieval Mongolia (thus providing the connection to R.T.'s blog about the Mongolian New Year observance), England on the fateful eve of the Battle of Hastings, and the Iceland of two feuding brothers at the close of the Viking era. No easy feat these things. Not only must she convince us of the verisimilitude of the land she has invited us into, but she must also convincingly portray a time, and a people, that she could only know through research. When I think of the Man Who Read My Book's objection over the placement of a single street in a fictional town, I quail at the prospect of attempting what Cecelia Holland and Janice Law have both accomplished in their various works. Even Graham Greene always wrote in contemporary terms.
Have any of you reading this ever placed a story in a locale that you have never visited or lived in? Though I have been fortunate in my life to have traveled a great deal, I will admit to having practiced this in a story or two. But, I won't say which ones. So far, I've never been caught at it. In my defense, I did do a heck of a lot of research prior to attempting them. But in the overwhelming number of cases, my stories don't stray far from the towns, states, and countries of which I have, at least some, personal knowledge.
Robert Ghirardi, another favorite writer of mine adept at evocative description, said in an interview (and I'm taking the liberty to paraphrase here as I can't locate the article) that modern authors are too bound by what they have personally experienced. He was referring to the strictures placed upon the imagination in this age of near-instant knowledge through the internet and its children. Any deviation from what is generally known can be instantly fact-checked, making fiction writers cautious to stray too much from what they either personally know or can confirm. The only safe way to do that is delve into the realm of fantasy, which it seems, more and more authors are doing. It is also one of the fastest-growing genres in terms of readership, which might be a result of the dearth of truly "exotic" locales in our steadily shrinking world.
Be that as it may, location, exotic or prosaic, provides the canvas upon which we paint our stories, and our success at doing so is as important to our characters as it is to our readers. Would we accept Hamlet as a gloomy Jamaican? Wouldn't Sherlock Holmes have been a very different person as a product of 1880's Mexico?
Finally on the subject of location, I have an upcoming story in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine called, "Murder Town," that is set in the Yucatan. I'm not going to tell you whether I've been there, or based the setting solely on research--I'll leave that up to you to decide. Either way, I hope I got it right.
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