Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [1]
PART ONE
Ride-Along
1
San Francisco, California
“Pump two,” Leon said. “See it?”
“I see it,” Jamal Thomas replied.
It was just after sunset and the battered old Camry was parked down the block from the Arco station on Mission Street. Jamal squinted through the dirty windshield at a shiny gray Land Rover that had just pulled up to the pumps. The driver had climbed out and crossed to the minimart, wallet in hand. Arab, from the look of him. Not just the skin color but the arrogance, the strut. He reminded Jamal of the movies he’d seen on YouTube of blacks in the 1960s, flexing their new legal rights, amped up by the power of numbers, ready for payback after centuries of being second-class.
“Why that one?” Jamal asked. “Why not a Benz or a Beamer?”
Leon shot him a frown. “This ain’t about the car. It’s about—”
“I know what it’s about,” Jamal said. “But we might as well wait for a sweeter ride.”
Leon shook his head. Jamal continued to look out the window.
What this was about was Jamal and Leon trying to get the rest of the Sawyer Street crew to take Jamal seriously. Jamal was almost seventeen and even his brother, who was just three years older, still treated him like a wannabe. He’d spent two years selling apple jacks at school, but that wasn’t good enough for them. It was time to prove himself. Show them he had a pair that clanged.
Jamal’s hand was resting on his waistband, where he’d tucked the gun. Leon had given him a Glock 9mm for his birthday the week before, a bronze-colored beauty that came in a shipment smuggled from Vietnam, part of the old Ku gunrunning network. The weapon felt solid against Jamal’s belly—not the weight of it but the coiled power, the right it gave him to enforce his will on some rich boy or a chump who looked at him funny or a blonde he just wanted because he wanted that blonde.
“Like a terrorist, man,” Jamal said softly.
“What are you talkin’ about now?”
“I was just thinkin’ about how those guys feel when they know somethin’ big is going down while everybody else worries about their own shit. That’s got to be some heavy power trip.”
“Yeah, well, you only have to worry about that Land Rover and not some damn 9/11.”
“I’m on that,” Jamal said. “Just sayin’.”
Jamal was getting excited. Leon was right, but if power was the lesson of jacking a random car, he was ready to learn it.
They watched the Arab pump his gas, then get in and start the engine. The swarthy man fussed with the side-view mirror, adjusting it this way and that, then grabbed the wheel and rolled toward the exit.
Leon popped his transmission into gear, glanced at Jamal. “You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
Leon shifted his foot from the brake to the accelerator and eased after the Land Rover.
* * *
They followed the Rover straight to the Loin—the part of the city that had long ago given itself over to liquor stores and strip clubs, where anything and everything was bought and sold, twenty-four/seven.
Jamal wondered what a well-off Arab was doing down here. If he was looking for action, all he had to do was pick up the phone. He didn’t have to cruise through wine country. Maybe he had holdings here, invested some of that oil money in hookers and crack dealers.
An’ the government tells us businessmen are responsible for everything that’s wrong, he thought.
“Next red light,” Leon said.
Leon’s voice was soft, steady. It pumped Jamal up, like the gun. He wanted to impress his brother, win his respect.
A few seconds later the car came to a stop at Eddy and Larkin. The red light burned like the devil’s own eye, fueling Jamal’s own sudden, intense focus on the moment, the gun, the target—
“Go!”
Leon’s voice broke through the near-hypnotic state. Jamal didn’t think. He pushed open the door and jumped out, ripping the Glock from his waistband as he went, holding it against the driver’s window, shouting, “Out of the car!”
The light turned and Leon roared past them, the Camry’s tires shedding rubber. The