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62
Jason Knox sat in his unmarked cruiser in a parking lot closest to the pier and yacht club as the noonday sun began to turn up the heat on what had been a pretty mild morning. The lot was mostly filled, which was typical for a weekday when the Cleveland weather was such that it allowed local boaters and beachgoers to play hooky for the day.
His car was dark navy with black wheels that lacked any sort of decorative hubcaps and had a spotlight mounted to the driver side mirror. Jason always felt it was ironic that despite his car’s lack of camouflage, the people he was usually staking out never seemed to notice it.
Jason had been one of the first to park in the lot that morning, save for a few anglers who were looking to get an early start on Lake Erie’s famous walleye. He purposely had positioned his car so that he had a direct line of sight on the Pier Grille and Bait Shop that was located between the parking lot and the water.
The hybrid grille and bait shop serves concessions to hungry beachgoers, including Cleveland’s famous Honey Hut Ice Cream. For the anglers who dock their boats at the adjacent yacht club, the stand also has tackle and bait available for purchase.
There was an entirely different batch of clientele, as Jason had learned during his years on the force, which used the bait shop pavilion at Edgewater Park to buy and sell everything from drugs to prostitutes.
Over the years, the city of Cleveland not only acknowledged the problem at Edgewater but also took measures to clean it up. Uniformed Cleveland Metroparks rangers routinely patrolled the area, while undercover officers from the Cleveland police department conducted regular stings to help limit the flow of drugs and solicitation in and out of Edgewater Park.
As anyone in law enforcement in a situation similar to that of Edgewater’s would tell you, it’s a mess that’s easy to temporarily clean up, but one that will always come back. Once their current business model has been exposed and eliminated, criminals will usually have a new and improved one up and running shortly after their release from jail.
On this day, Jason was watching one such criminal in action doing just that. He knew the young man, known on the street as “Tick”, very well. When Jason was a uniformed officer he had locked Tick up for selling Adderall to college students outside the public library.
Timothy “Tick” Braun got his nickname from his mother at a young age for two reasons. First and foremost, he was tiny. Even as an adult he barely stood over five feet tall. The second was because he was constantly getting under her skin, and everyone else’s for that matter. She had kicked him out of the house at the age of 16 after his third stint in a juvenile detention facility, and he had been surviving on his own ever since.
His latest arrest for selling drugs to an undercover officer was thrown out of court due to the fact that the court found the arresting officer guilty of using excessive force. During the arrest, Tick tried to run once he realized he was caught. In the ensuing pursuit, the undercover officer tackled him and while restraining him ended up dislocating his elbow to the point that it required emergency surgery just to save his arm.
The officer, facing disciplinary action, chose to resign from the force. Tick, on the other hand, walked out of the courthouse a free man. He actually had managed to stay out of trouble, and for the most part, completely out of sight in the months since his release.
Word on the street, according to Jason’s sources in the narcotics division, was that Tick was out of the drug game altogether. Apparently, after his last arrest, Tick’s supplier told him that he would no longer be needing his services. He told him that he was too careless and had too much heat on him.
While that was likely the case, it didn’t explain why Tick had been hanging around Edgewater a lot in the recent weeks since Jason had been investigating the murders there. Jason figured that there must be a reason for Tick’s return to his old stomping grounds, and he had spent much of the past two days watching him from a distance.
For the most part, Tick sat at one of the many picnic tables located around the bait shop. Occasionally, Tick would purchase food from the stand, light up a cigarette, or simply stand and look out towards the lake.
Occasionally, Tick would be joined by another customer at his table. The picnic tables were pretty big, and the two would barely acknowledge each other. It appeared as if they would just share the same table for a few minutes. The other person, always a man, would finish his ice cream and then leave.
What Jason had realized yesterday during his surveillance was that each man that joined him at the picnic table would leave his empty ice cream container on the edge of the table instead of throwing it away. Tick would act like he didn’t see it, wait a few minutes for the breeze off the lake to knock the cup off of the table, and then jump up to keep the container from blowing away.
He did this every single time and each time he would pick the container up, look at it, and then dial someone on his cell phone before throwing the container in the nearby recycling bin. This last part made Jason laugh at the irony.
Like he gives a shit about the environment…
Each phone call Tick appeared to make would last no more than a couple minutes and then he would take another seat at his picnic table. This happened three more times yesterday afternoon as Jason watched before Tick called it a day and left just before 5 p.m.
Tick arrived on this day a little before eleven in the morning but had yet to have a visitor to the picnic table he was occupying. Jason was starting to get anxious, and the one part of the job he always detested the most was surveillance. Especially on a hot day.
The lunch rush was in full swing at the Pier Grille when Jason noticed a middle-aged man appear from the group of people waiting for service. The man, dressed in a shirt and tie, appeared as if he was taking a quick break from work to enjoy some ice cream. He took a few steps towards the picnic table area where Tick was seated, ice cream container in hand, and then paused to pull something out of his shirt pocket.
Jason pulled out his binoculars and could see that the man was writing something on the side of the Styrofoam pint with the pen that he had retrieved from his shirt pocket. He couldn’t make out what the man was writing, but Jason’s heart started to accelerate as he watched the man take a seat next to Tick.
Now we’re getting somewhere…
The man, who was tall and heavyset, wore the same type of short-sleeved dress shirt and tie combo that Jason’s high school science teacher wore every day to school.
This guy probably sells used cars or mattresses…
Tick barely acknowledged the man who had just joined him at the table as he lit up his third cigarette since arriving at Edgewater Park. A few minutes passed as Jason witnessed the man finish off the small pint of ice cream with little effort at all. The man nodded towards Tick as he stood up and left his empty Styrofoam cup near the edge of the table before walking back towards the parking lot.
Jason followed the man as he got into an early 90’s sedan and pulled away. Using the binoculars, Jason tried to get a read on the license plate number as he drove away. Instead, he realized that the car had “Dealer” plates on it.
I knew it!
Jason panned back towards Tick, who had just retrieved the man’s cup off the ground near his picnic table. He looked at the cup, dialed his cell phone, and talked for a minute before hanging up and throwing the cup in the recycling bin.
