The Story of Detective Ruxsberg & Detective Green

 

Chapter One

“Ruxs watch out for the - Oh shit!” Damn. Not another cyclist. Green floored his huge RAM2500, barreling around the corner of Marrietta Street, keeping a close eye on his partner as he chased down one of their informants. He couldn’t jump the curb, onto the sidewalk to cut off the chase there were too many pedestrians. Ruxs needed to get the bastard to turn off of the street into one of the many deserted alleys. Green divided his attention between maneuvering through the thick mid-afternoon traffic and not losing his partner. He roared the engine around a slow-assed Buick and flew through another red light, just lightly clipping the back end of a MARTA bus. Opps. Thought I cleared that. Fuck.

He saw Ruxs double his efforts, landing a hard slap to the informant’s shoulder that sent him flying into an old lady, knocking her bags out of her hand. Green thought Ruxs had him but the fucker shimmied out of his coat, taking off again, cutting in between an office building and a parking garage. Green couldn’t get over to cut down the small street with him. He gunned it, turning onto Cone Street. He’d cut him off at the other end. He blared his horn. Traffic was at a complete stop waiting on the light to turn. Fuck it. He cut the corner of the sidewalk, sending a metal trash can flying up into the air. At least there were no people on the sidewalk this time. He was almost to the exit of the alley when a he saw bright blue and red lights come up fast behind him and blast his siren. He ignored it, swerved over two lanes and put his front into the narrow opening of the alley. If their informant wouldn’t have had his head turned to check Rux’s closeness, he would’ve seen Green’s truck and avoided slamming into the front of it. That had to hurt.

Green was out of the truck, coming around the front end just as Ruxs was picking up their man and throwing him back against the hood.

“Do you have to do that? I mean there’s a dumpster right there.” Green frowned at his partner. “Look at that dent, man.”

“Shut up, Green.” Ruxs huffed.

Green smiled teasingly, he knew how much Ruxs hated chasing. He stood there with his arms crossed over his broad chest watching their informant, doubled over from the pain of hitting his truck and for running the last ten minutes.

The police tires squealed to a stop right next to Green’s back end. They both turned when the young cop jumped out, yelling at them to raise their hands above their heads. The cop finally got a good look at them and rolled his eyes, lowering his weapon. “Ruxs, Green, should’ve fuckin’ known.”

“What’s up Michaels.” Green shook the rookie’s hand. He was one of the few uniforms that actually liked the guys on their task force.

“What’cha guys got there?” Michaels’ eyebrows rose up in question when he looked at the disheveled junkie that was trying to ease around Green’s truck until Ruxs pushed him back against the side of the building.

“You better go, Michaels.” Green looked at him seriously. There was no way he was going to talk to their informant using their not so professional tactics around another officer.

Michaels blue eyes cast down as he fidgeted with his fingers. “Uhh. Yeah okay. Hey Green, did you get to talk to God about any openings he may have coming up on his task force soon.

Green suppressed his want to sigh. There was no way Micheals would make it on their task force. The guy was too nice and too easy going. He didn’t have a harsh or cruel bone in him. You had to have pretty tough skin to take what their Lieutenants dished out… daily.

Green could see his partner gearing up to say exactly what he’d been thinking but spoke up before he could crush the kid. “Not yet. I’ll talk to him real soon, okay.”

Michaels beamed a megawatt smile and actually skipped back to his squad car. Green knew Michaels was gay, but damn. He chuckled to himself and shook his head sadly as Michaels gave him a friendly wave and drove off. He was just like so many others gay officers on the Atlanta police force. Wanted to work for God and Day. 

“Why are you stringing him along? You know damn well he ain’t getting in.” Ruxs took off his black leather coat and tossed it inside the open passenger side window, after he’d handcuffed their informant to the dumpster. Neither of them were up for another chase.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll tell him. But he’s like a little puppy. I mean who can kick a puppy?” Green smiled at his partner who in turn gave him a look that said…

“What the fuck? Stop being an idiot. Tell the guy he ain’t got it and move on. Besides he’s always running errands for you and getting you coffee and shit. That’s fucked up to do that, man.”

Green opened his mouth in mock confusion. “I don’t ask him to do those things.”

“Can we talk about this later?”

Green shrugged. “Sure whatever,” turning his attention back to their informant. As soon as Green leveled his hard brown eyes on him, he immediately got defensive.

“I swear I don’t know nothing, Detective Green.” The man whined sadly.

“Whoa, whoa. I didn’t ask you a motherfuckin’ thing.” Green said back, calmly. “You lying to me already, Tommy?”

The man was shaking his head ‘no’ before Green could even finish. Ruxs stood by with a slight smile playing on his mouth as he watched him. Sometimes he felt like Ruxs loved this part a little too much, just sitting back and watching Green work. There only job was to secure suspects for their Lieutenants. Squeeze information out of people. Bring in whoever needed to be questioned. Arrest suspects. Basically they were God and Day’s muscle, and they were damn good at it.

Green squatted in front of their informant, eyeing him carefully. His dingy clothes were hanging off his straggly frame and his hair looked like it hadn’t been washed for days. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. The fucker was high. He wouldn’t be good for shit right now. “Tommy. Tommy listen to me. Why’d you feed us that bullshit about the meth lab in East Point?”

“I didn’t -”

“Shut the fuck up.” Green cut him off, his voice at that low frightening timbre he used on suspects. A voice that sounded like he was so pissed off, he was too mad to yell. “Yes, you did. You gave us some straight bullshit. There were no real players in there. We got two lousy fuckin’ bags. What the hell are we supposed to do with that?”

“I been in there myself. There be some highrollers in there, Detective Green. I swear it.”

Green stood slowly. “You’re still lying. Someone got to you. Who?”

“Nope. No one. I said I’d help you guys.”

Green was done. This guy had been flipped. He was no use to them now. “Well it was nice doing business with you Tommy. But your services are no longer needed.” Green stepped closer and draped his arm around Tommy’s neck. He pulled out his wallet and held his badge up with one hand and gave a thumbs up with the one around Tommy. “Smile.”

“What?”

As soon as Tommy turned his head back to Ruxs he snapped a picture of their pose with his cellphone. Green pushed Tommy away from him. “Now. We’ll print out a few of these and post them around East Point, all the way up Church Street. Let a few of the fellas see who Tommy’s been hanging with.”

“You guys trying to get me fuckin’ killed man?” Tommy yelled, pulling at the cuffs like they’d actually budge.

“I don’t give a damn.” Ruxs chimed in.

“Come on man. Don’t do this. I gave ya’ll good info. It ain’t my fault you guys fucked it up.” Tommy argued.

“Oh. So now we’re the fuck-ups. I see.” Green rubbed at his neatly trimmed goatee. “Let’s go tell God how he fucked up that bust.”

Ruxs quickly undid the cuffs and grabbed Tommy around his frail forearm. The man shook his head so hard, spittle landed on each of his cheeks. “No. No. No. Fuck no. I don’t. I don’t want to talk to God.” Tommy looked like he was about to shit on himself.

“I sure as fuck, not gonna’ give him your message. You said he fucked up, so let’s go tell him.” Green said casually. This was usually their trump card. No one wanted to talk to God or Day.

Ruxs was pulling Tommy to the truck, which took no effort at all.

“I didn’t say God fucked up. You know I didn’t. Okay, okay. Stop one second Detective Ruxsberg. I g-got a little s-something to tell you. I don’t know a whole l-lot, but I know a little something about a l-little bit.” He stuttered nervously, making very little sense.

Ruxs let go of Tommy’s arm sending him falling back to the ground.

“Ouch. Damnit.” Tommy rubbed at his wrist, glaring back up at Ruxs. He folded his legs Indian-style like he was on a damn Persian rug and not some filthy concrete. “There may be a pretty big shipment coming to the house on Cleveland Ave.”

“How big?” Green asked, now slightly intrigued.

“Big, man. I don’t know. Just f-fuckin’ huge, okay. Got everyone uneasy, ya’know’”.

“When?” Ruxs asked.

“Few weeks. Gonna be some foreigners coming with it. Chainz is up to some serious shit.”

“You sure?” Green asked.

“My girl works in one of the houses Chainz keeps in the back. She heard one of his big boys talking about it. They setting stuff up for it already.”

“In that shitty neighborhood. He’s going to bring some foreign contacts and that much weight to a rundown piece of shit house on Cleveland Ave.” Green said skeptically.

Ruxs shook his head. “That makes no damn sense.”

“Exactly.” The serious look Tommy gave them, said it all. He was telling the truth.