thing.  And that's what impressed Goff this morning as he watched from the van.  Here were ordinary folks, working stiffs,  trying to keep up the neighborhood, sweeping sidewalks, washing cars, never making eye-contact with the dealers.  The dealers might as well have been invisible. 

 A few hours after the top gun dropped off the first shipment, he came back to pick up the cash receipts and replenish inventory.  From the back seat, two guys stepped out with guns at the ready just like Brinks guards, and scanned the street while the money was counted, bagged, and sealed.  Apparently it tallied up.  These guys split and a few minutes later another car dropped off the next round of 60-packs.  “They always keep it separate,” says Goff.  “The drugs and the money are never together.”

Just like the Chrysler Corporation in a good year, this outfit was running three shifts a day, seven days a week.  By noon, Goff and his team had seen enough to bust practically everybody in sight.  He gave a shout over the radio and squad cars came screaming in from every angle, guys jumping out, guns all over the place, people running, handcuffs, faces on the pavement,  everybody on both sides swearing “Motherfucker-this” and “Motherfucker-that.”  They hauled ten kids off to the lockup, confiscated five automatics and a couple of Chinese AK-47s.  And they shut down the operation, at least for the rest of the day.  But Goff had no illusions that he'd made any permanent alteration here.  “You know you ain't gonna stop it,” he says.  “It's a game.”

It's a game, however, he can play with deadly skill. Unflappable, quick-witted and creative, Goff has all the essential ingredients of an undercover cop. Now in his mid-forties with over twenty years on the force, his close-cropped graying hair and trim salt-and-pepper beard frame the kind of small town good looks people trust at first glance.  Cops and robbers alike say Frank Goff is a man of his word.  He also reads the street better than most.  “A lot of these guys that are users, they ain't bad guys.  We see a lot of working guys, truck drivers and everything, people with jobs.  They're not robbing people to buy this $10