A day in the Life of Drake Newman

THE DAY IN THE LIFE OF DRAKE NEWMEN

by Lester Grimpen

This all started one day at the 407th precinct police station, Sergeant O’Malley is sitting in his office, he is hefty, in his late 50s, somewhat balding, gray haired with a thick mustache. Lieutenant O’Neil, she’s tall, mid-30s with red hair, fair skin, and wearing a button-up shirt, skin-tight jeans, and running sneakers, she’s going through papers at her desk. Detective Brooks, he’s of average height and well built, early 40s, has blond hair that is almost white and is wearing a long button up shirt, tie, a suit jacket that matches with his pants and black runners, he’s looking at a file at his desk. Lazarus “Lars” Pitino, half Jamaican, half Porto Rican, late 20s, thin and lean, very light-skinned for someone of his type, in a hoodie, jeans ,and sneakers, he is making calls and taking notes at his desk and Officer Puttro and O’hare who are two beat cops are standing next to some file cabinets and talking to each other. Drake is tall, wide-shouldered, late 20s dark hair short and spiky and is walking in the halls with his red, white, and black biker jacket on and his usual attire of a shirt, jeans, and sneakers. 

He waves at some of the people in the hall and they wave back or say anything to him, soon Drake walks in from the hallway to his desk and sees everyone is sitting at theirs. “Hey, how is everybody!” Drake says as he comes up to his desk but they seem to be all too busy to look up at him. 

Drake goes over to the coffee maker and pours himself a cup and takes a sip, a wince of displeasure comes on Drake’s face “Gawd the coffee here is terrible.” “Then why don’t you buy a better coffee maker!” Lars grinned and there were a few chuckles from the others “Screw you Lars” Drake replied Lars’ eyes widened at Drake’s remark “Damn it Drake how many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that” “Cuz’ i know Hey-zus is taken!” Drake and Lars go at each other trying to hit the other and Brooks stops them from punching each other. 

Sergeant O’Malley comes out of his office tugging at his pants and belt and yells “Heads up everyone, I just got a call that they found that bastard Debbs, an informant tracked him down to an old brick house on east side” Drake clenches his fists “Windel” he said in a low voice between clenched teeth. Windel has been a thorn in Drakes side, a well known ‘Druggy turned drug dealer’ Windel ‘Diamond Dust’ Debbs. Windel was a druggy for most of his life; he would rob people, break into stores, banks, houses, and churches, and steal anything of worth to get his fix. 

At some point in his life, someone asked him if he had drugs on him. He said yes and that person gave him more money than he had spent on the drugs he had on him. This person was from the upscale part of the city.  

In his younger years, Drake and his friend James just got some food and snacks at a deli near their home after they told the cops that they saw a drug deal went down, Drake is with James outside the deli on a city block not far from their homes and were about to sit at an outside table, before they get a few steps from the deli door Windel is between two cars hiding with a gun, Windel jumps out and shoots at them gangster thug style, James pushes Drake as bullets from Windel’s gun come at them. 

After that Windel jumps into a car that pulls up next to him and it speeds off, Drake isn’t hurt but James is on the sidewalk in a pool of blood “James!…. JAMES!!! NO NO James” Drake is looking down at James as he says “Drake!”. 

Parked outside Windel’s hideout, Drake and O’Neil sit in the car across the street across from Windel’s hideout, they know that a drug deal is going down inside with other top drug dealers. 

It is quite evident that O’Neil is a little annoyed by the fidgety anxiousness of Drake sitting next to her “Drake! why the hell is your leg going up and down so damn much” she “GEEZ’ i’m sorry . . . just a bit wired is all” Drake says “Just why are we waiting here for anyway” “we’re waiting for them to come out to get being it’s much safer to do that than going in blind, we’ll let the swat teams do the dangerous work inside” Drake is silent for a moment and then turns to O’Neill “hey uh. . . . I need to use the restroom and there’s a shop down aways. . .is” “that’s fine but you’ll the fun if they come out” “yeah uh that’s ok, as long as we get them” and gets out of the unmarked car and walks some ways toward the shop but instead he sneakily walks across the street and walks down an alleyway next to the building, Brooks talks over the radio “HEY! JUST WHAT THE HELL IS DRAKE DOING” the sarge sees Drake on a screen in a van that he’s sitting in “Gawd damn IT DRAKE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” “he left his radio in the car sir” O’Neil calls out over the radio, at that same moment Drake knocks on the door that is located on the right side of the old decrepit two-story brick building, He unzips his jacket to show the two thugs that he’s a cop their eye widen with great surprise at seeing his badge, Drake charges in the small hallway and fights two thugs that are guarding the side door with punches, kicks, and elbow jabs, he ducks and dodges their punches, he slams one of their heads against the wall of the hallway. 

In his younger years he would often have to street fight as well a learn to fight from TV shows and movies, within a few minutes he easily beats them without attracting attention, both thugs lay on the floor knockout. 

He gets past these thugs with ease, he keeps his cool even though he’s very high on adrenaline at that present moment, as his eyes get used to the dimly lit hallway the smell of moist stale air is quite familiar to Drake when he goes into an old building that Windel uses as his hideouts, “I’m finally going to get you today Windel” he whispered to himself, he goes to the door on the other end of the hallway and puts his ear to the door and listens, and he kinda hears something but not sure what’s going on behind it. 

He checks to see if it’s locked as he turns the doorknob he finds its locked! he quickly thinks that maybe one of Windel’s thugs must have the key, he goes back to the thugs and searches them for a key, he checks the first thug and only finds a wad of cash, figuring that no one is around and the thug won’t need it when he’s in jail he puts the wad in his pants pocket, then he checks the other thug and without doing much of a search he finds the key, he goes back to the door and sees if the key opens the door, it fits and with a turn of the lock, he’s elated to know that the door is unlocked and he opens to door, he looks through the crack of the door and sees someone, it’s another thug that he sees and hopes the thug goes away, the thug doesn’t move, he waits a little more, the thug moves but not to far away from the door, he sees and hears something about the thug, to Drake it sound like the thug is on a call to someone, maybe his girlfriend or his mom so he opens the door some more to find that the thug is on the phone with someone, he needs to sneak by the thug, as careful as he can he steps into the hallway and as he is about to close the door a breeze of wind closes the door hard and the thug thinks it’s one of the guards going to the bathroom and tells him in Spanish where it is, he doesn’t know how to speak Spanish very well being that he never took a language class in high school but knows only one work of it and thanks the thug in Spanish, the thug with his back to Drake waves and goes back to talking on his phone, seeing no point on dealing with this thug Drake goes down the hall and to his right is the bathroom and to his left he sees a stairway up, he goes in the stairway and he finds that the stairs creak and crack with each step, this doesn’t go unnoticed and Drake can hear the patter of little feet and something jiggling, he gets noticed by a Chihuahua-pug mix of a dog at the top of the stairs and to him it’s an ugly looking dog with its eyes bulging grotesquely like they are about to pop out from its skull. 

The dog barks at him softly, a dog like that can’t bark too loudly, for not finding the dog an issue to deal with he walks by the dog and it follows him a ways but he scares it away, with the dog taken care of he can hear what could be someone talking in one of the rooms, there are three rooms and it seem like its coming from the first room he sees, he draws his gun, gets to the room that the drug deal with Windel is going on in and puts an ear to the door, and hears the voice of Windel in the room talking to the people in the room and he opens the door slightly then kicks it open, at that moment he take in all the detail of the room and the people in it, he finds that there is Windel standing there in a stained worn and frayed trench coat old stained gray shirt dark brown dirty pants pale skin slightly bald head with long greasy pale brown hair beady pale blue eyes and three other people sitting around a table with him, two are male and one female, with his badge in hand he yells out “POLICE!!  FREEZE!!” they are all surprised by the suddenness of Drakes entry into the room and than they all look annoyed to see him but don’t move, he doesn’t know who the three people are, but the could be high level drug bosses Luis Fernandez is closest to the door, Barbara Pakrez is the second closest to the door is all dolled out with overly done glossy hair horizontal slat sunglasses big hoop gold earrings loud colored makeup, eyebrow, nose, and lip piercings lots of gold chain necklaces puffy fur coat two sizes too small tank top shirt big bling bracelets and rings long neon colored nails a visible thong strap coming up over her waist under two sizes too small yoga pants that go up to the hip and high heel shoes that any girl would find it hard to walk in, Daniel Gill is near the window.

With Drakes witty tongue he comments on how he thinks windel is doing with other deals “i’m going to guess that the deal with your european friends didn’t fare out to well am i right Windel” Windel stairs at him blankly and comments on how the others look,”Jeez Windel, i thought you’d be making deals with much better people that these freaks” windel is not happy with the snarky remark from drake, the other three are very unhappy by what he said about them Luis sits there with a balled fist on the table and his nostrils flare as he breaths but they all say nothing, windel talks back to drake about the comments that he made about him and the people with him, he doesn’t ask about if he’s alone but asks how and why he’s there, drake says “I plan to take you and whoever your with in as well Windel”, one of the other people ask just how he plans on doing that, drake with a grin “there’s six swat teams outside ready to storm the building at any minute”, all of them with blank surprise looks on there faces are not happy to hear about what he just said, at that moment the sounds of the swat teams busting through the doors could be heard going on outside and inside the building, a flash-bang grenade comes crashing through the window the three drug bosses get up from their chairs and drake braces for the flash and explosion reverberates in the small room, he doesn’t recover from the blast in which gives time for Luis to draw his gun form behind him “Fuck this shit!” the foul mouth Luis yelled and is about shoot at drake, when drake sees this in time he moves out of the way but the Luis shoots him in the right shoulder but luckily for Drake the shot is not too badly of a hit, with quick feet he moves to left of the doorway as more shots are fired at him from Luis, wood splinters and sheetrock powder fly as he move down further along the wall to avoid the shoots that whizz by him and with his gun and without looking he shoots back around the doorway and hits Luis in the leg only wounding him, the other two don’t join in as to the affects of the flash bang still effects them plus the sound of Luis shooting his gun don’t help in the small room, Windel is affected as well, Luis goes down dew to the gunshot wound in his leg, then the flash bang effect wears off Barbara and Daniel start shooting at drake but shoot wildly, Windel ducks down with all this going on near him, an officer that was in on the SWAT raid comes up the stairs to help drake and he shoots into the room as well, the officer hits Barbara wounding her in the arm she’s hurt but still shoots at them, drake shoots back into the room and hits the wounded Luis in the neck and the wall is freckled with his blood as he topples to the floor and Luis slowly dies from his gunshot wound, Windel seeing Luis go down runs out of the room pasted Drake into the hall and jumps through the window that was next to the stairs and drake see him do that, as soon as that happens O’Neil comes up the stairs and shoots through the wall and her shots miss barbara but shower her with sheet rock dust sending her to crash over the table, drake runs pass the dog that is shaking by the wall in a puddle of it own pee and drake jumps out the window after Windel and lands on a exterior walkway and sees Windel going into a doorway and he goes after him, as soon as he goes in the doorway he sees a swat guy in the way “MOVE!!” he cries out and run by him to the corner of the hall, than as he goes around the corner he sees a door swinging closed and he runs to it to see a stairway and hearing someone going down it and he goes down as well to another door that is about to close Drake opens the door and finds himself in front of a huge thug standing in the hallway with a pistol in hand and the thug shoots at him and gets hit in the shoulder but the vest takes the hit and drake takes aim and shoots back killing the thug as he slumped to the floor and Drake continues to case Windel, As Drake runs in the hallway, he hears the sound of a heavy door opening. 

He looks around the corner to see a figure going through a doorway and the door slowly closing. He runs as fast as he can towards the door after Windel. As Drake goes through the doorway to the back alley, he looks back and forth and then sees Windel running to a corner by the street. 

At that moment Drake aims his gun; a flash of his friend’s face comes to his mind, “ You ain’t getting away today asshole” he tells himself and pulls the trigger. 

The report of the shot echoes in the ally, and the tinning sound of the shell casing hitting the ground after. 

In a few seconds he starts to walk toward the street, Windel is crawling on the sidewalk; his right leg is bleeding from being shot behind the knee. 

Drake walks up to him and steps on his right leg near the ankle, Windel lets out a scream of pain and agony. “And just where do you think your going Scumbag!!” “NEWMEN!! stand down” They chat, the other cops come. the result of the bust was the arrest of Two high-level drug cartel leaders, the arrest of Windel Debbs, the location and confiscation of 7 tractor-trailer loads of drugs, 19 major illegal weapons cashes, 14,000 illegal workers, 60 million dollars in cash seized, and the shutdown of the white raven drug syndicate.

 A few weeks later back at the precinct; after recovering from his non-fatal bullet wound Drake is walking in the halls with his red, white, and black biker jacket on and his usual attire of a shirt, jeans, and sneakers. 

He waves at some of the people in the hall but they don’t wave back or say anything to him, soon Drake walks in out from the hallway to his desk and sees everyone’s is a little flustered sitting at their decks. “Hey, how is everybody!” Drake says as he comes up to his desk and they all glare at him. 

Sergeant O’Malley comes out of his office tugging at his pants and belt and yells “DRAKE, MY OFFICE….RIGHT NOW!!!!!” he looks over to the sergeant and thinks to himself “Jeez…. what bug crawled up his ass” he walks to O’Malley’s office, as he steps inside he is told to shut the door and he closes it. 

O’Malley looks up at Drake “The Governor, The Mayor, The DA and the Commissioner are not too happy about this” “But we got him!” exclaimed Drake, “YOU SHOT HIM!!!!!” O’Malley yells. “You went in there when you weren’t told to move and almost screwed up the whole deal” O’Malley looking a little flustered. “Newmen, I know you have a history with this guy, and your an ok cop, BUT you got A HISTORY OF NOT FOLLOWING ORDERS!!!” Drake stairs at the sergeant intently. “So, me and the higher-ups have made a decision”. “and that is…” Drake with a raised eyebrow. “Newmen, your going on the police exchange program” said O’Malley. “So just where am I going than?” said drake.

“Japan!” O’Malley said.

“Japan!!!” with a pale expression on drakes face.

In the next few days Drake’s finds himself at the gate to go on a plane to Japan. “why the hell couldn’t it be Hawaii!” Drake exclaimed.