by Colin Conway
Hahn ran around his desk. “Garrett,” he called. “Garrett! Hey, now, I’m sorry.”
He stopped near the receptionist’s desk. She looked at them both with curiosity. Hahn smiled sheepishly at her.
“It’s okay, Jean. I got my wires crossed, is all. Off—I mean, Mister Garrett, would you step back into my office?”
Garrett ran his thumb under his nose, like a fighter preparing to enter the ring. “You asked me to meet with you today,” Garrett said. “Am I remembering that correctly?”
Hahn stared at him.
“Is that a hard question? I mean, if you forgot, you forgot. You can tell the truth, right?”
Hahn looked nervously around at the various assistants and the other council members. Several were looking in his direction. “Yes, yes, that’s what happened. I forgot. That’s it. I didn’t put it on my calendar. It wasn’t on my calendar, was it, Jean?”
Jean stared at Hahn for a moment then turned slowly to Garrett. She shook her head. “It wasn’t on his calendar.”
“See?” Hahn said, snapping his fingers. “The meeting wasn’t there. I apologize for my oversight, Mr. Garrett. Can we start over?”
Jean furrowed her brow as she watched the exchange.
Garrett smiled. “Since you apologized so nicely, Councilman, sure, let’s start over.”
Hahn’s face flattened, and he glanced to Jean. She quickly turned her attention back to her computer. The councilman spun on his heel and walked into his office. Garrett followed, closing the door behind him.
The councilman dropped heavily into his chair and rubbed his face several times. When he opened his eyes, he studied Garrett. “Thank you for not coming in uniform.”
“Small favors, right?”
“Now that you’ve kicked me in the balls, can we get this thing over with?”
“That’s up to you,” Garrett said, taking a seat. “Where’d we leave off on Saturday night?”
Hahn raised his hands in frustration. “You said she left a note.”
“Right, a note.” Garrett’s eyes narrowed as he thought. “About that. She didn’t leave a note.”
“What!” Hahn barked, leaning forward. He looked outside his office to see if anyone heard his outburst. When he faced Garrett, he lowered his voice. “I’ve been in a panic all weekend thinking that she left a note.” His face had completely reddened. “Why would you tell me such a thing?”
“I didn’t tell you she left a note. You just believed she did.”
“But you let me believe it. Why would you do that?”
“To show you how bad things really are.”
Hahn shook his head. “But you said—”
“What’s out there is just as bad.” Garrett opened his phone and showed him a picture. “That, councilman, is the letter Betty Rabe sent to the mayor accusing you of sexually assaulting her, but you already knew that letter existed, didn’t you?”
Hahn’s face slackened and the color slowly drained.
“You see what’s happening right now? The truth is slowly leaking out.”
The councilman bowed his head.
“Check this one out.” Garrett turned his phone to show Hahn another picture. “This one is Officer Gary Stone’s report regarding his interviews with both Betty Rabe and you. You’ll notice he handwrote it.”
“That son of a bitch wrote a report?”
“And a good one, too. I’ll credit him that.”
“Oh, God,” Hahn said. “I went down there and insulted him.”
“I know,” Garrett said with a chuckle. “He told me. Now, he’s working on a way to bring you down.”
Hahn’s eyes widened. “Oh God.”
Garrett smiled. “You really shouldn’t shit on Stoney. Especially since he’s here to keep an eye on you and the others.”
“The others?”
“Council members,” Garrett said, waving his finger in a circular motion as if to encompass the entire floor.
“What?”
“C’mon, man, you had to know that. It can’t come as a complete surprise. The mayor and Baumgartner set this thing up. They put him inside city hall under the guise of threat assessment, but he’s keeping a watch on what the council does. He reports directly to the chief and the mayor. You’ve seen it, right?”
Hahn squinted, thinking. “I think so. Yes.”
“Have you ever asked him to do something?”
“Yeah and the little turd refused, saying he works only for the chief.”
“He’s not stupid. He knows the rules of the game.”
“So I’m screwed, is what you’re saying. They’re going to use this Beth thing to take me down.”
“Maybe, but there’s a silver lining.”
“What’s that?”
“Me,” Garrett said, tapping his chest. “I’ll make it go away.”
“How’s that?”
“Stoney and me. We’re friends. I’ll get his copy of the report and destroy it. Then you’ll only have to worry about the mayor and the chief. I can tell you this much, the report isn’t in the system yet. That’s why he handwrote it.”
“What’s that mean, if it isn’t in the system?”
“They wanted it kept quiet for a reason. My guess, they want leverage over you. That’s why I’d keep it quiet.”
Hahn considered what Garrett said. “This isn’t an interview, is it?”
“Sure it is. I’m interviewing you and you’re interviewing me. We’re checking each other out to see if we can work together.”
“Work together?”
“You need someone on the inside, Councilman. Someone who can look out for your interests. Provide you with some protection at times like this.”
“What do you get out of this…this arrangement?”
“Plain and simple, you’ll owe me.”
“Owe you what?” Hahn’s voice was full of suspicion.
“That I don’t know yet, but my mom always told me I’d need friends in the right places. I’m going to start with you.”
“This sounds like you’re blackmailing me.”
“I’m helping you, Councilman. Are you too myopic to see that?”
“You know what they say, if it sounds too good to be true.”
“This isn’t too good, Denny. Trust me, I’m going to want favors and you’re going to pay up. But I’ll help you out of this jam.”
Councilman Hahn leaned back and clasped his hands together as if he was praying. Finally, he said. “What do we do now? Do we shake on it?”
“What you do now is come clean. You tell me every piece of dirt that Stone might find that can hurt you. I need to know how to keep you out of trouble.”
CHAPTER 42
Mayor Sikes studied Chief Baumgartner with a mixture of doubt and disdain. “So it’s a bunch of patrol officers running around causing havoc?”
Baumgartner clenched his jaw. He wondered if the mayor was really as dense as he sometimes seemed, or if it was a calculated act that he put on to gain some kind of advantage.
Like what? A medal in the Special Olympics?
“The only havoc they’ll be causing,” he told the mayor, “is in the lives of career criminals who are victimizing our citizens…your voters. If you still care about them now that you’re in your second term, that is.”
Sikes’s eyes narrowed. “Watch yourself, Bob. This isn’t a free-fire zone.”
Baumgartner ignored his warning. “My job is to do something about the crime in this city. That’s what you told me last week. This is what I’m doing. A well-supervised, directed patrol strike team, supplied with real-time criminal intelligence.”
“Jesus, don’t call it that.”
Baumgartner gave him a questioning look.
“Strike team,” Sikes repeated. “Don’t call it that. It sounds terrible.”
“We don’t have a name yet, but it won’t be strike team.”
“You shoul
d name it the Bad Idea Team. Every city I’ve seen do something like this ends up with a scandal.”
“No,” Baumgartner said. “Every time there’s been a scandal regarding a team like this, you’ve seen it.”
“You’re playing semantics now.”
“No, I’m not. The distinction is important. There are numerous agencies who employ some form of a team like this. You just don’t hear about them because they don’t make national news. I assure you, they’re making local news because they’re putting guns, drugs, and money on the table.”
“I thought you were targeting property crimes. Burglars, vehicle thieves, that sort of thing.”
“It’s an expression,” Baumgartner said. “Besides, it’s all inter-related. They’re stealing to fuel their drug habit.”
Sikes shook his head. “I’m not in favor of this course of action. It seems like too much risk, no matter the reward.”
“You’ll change your mind in six months when the crime stats are golden.”
Sikes gave him a Machiavellian smile. “If that happens, I’ll be happy to share in the credit, Bob. But if this fails, it’s all on you. The angry citizens whose calls you’re not answering so you can staff this team, if the stats remain stagnant or get worse, and any trouble your team gets into…all yours. Get me?”
You devious fuck. He’d boxed Baumgartner into a corner. Now he either accepted these terms, or trashed Farrell’s idea.
He considered a moment. Then he said, “I’ve always been careful not to take too much credit for the crime rate going down, because I figured that would mean I’d need to take the blame when it went up. It sounds like you’ve figured out how to beat that particular problem.”
Sikes kept grinning at him, waiting.
“Yeah,” Baumgartner finally said. “I get it.”
After he left the mayor’s office, Baumgartner stopped by to see Stone. The partially open door was an invitation to knock, so he did, but swung the door the rest of the way open in the process.
Stone looked up, concern flashing in his eyes. When he saw the chief, the expression didn’t change.
“How’re you doing, Gary?”
“Fine, sir.”
“You don’t look fine. You looked worried.”
Stone took a deep breath and let it out. “I suppose I am.”
“About what?”
Stone motioned for the chief to close his door. Baumgartner did, then waited for him to speak.
It took him a few seconds. Finally, he said, “Things around here are crazy, sir. First there was the whole Betty Rabe letter and the report you had me do…”
Baumgartner was glad Stone had the sense to ask him to close the door before talking about such a sensitive matter. He wished he also had the sense to not talk about it in the first place.
“…and then her suicide. I’ve got the mayor leaning on me every day. He acts like I’m a spy…”
Because you are.
“…he wants to turn into a double agent…”
Which I predicted.
“…and now Hahn is pissed at me because of how we’ve handled his case. He’s threatening to destroy my career—”
“Wait. Why is Hahn upset?”
“He thinks we were supposed to be helping him,” Stone said. “Now he thinks we screwed him.”
Shit. I need to get that report entered into the system.
“How? Did you say something? Or do something?”
“No,” Stone said hurriedly. “Garrett interviewed him.”
Garrett again. The chief burrowed his brow. “Why is Garrett talking to him?”
“Her suicide. He’s following up.”
“Did I make Tyler Garrett a homicide detective and forget I did it?” Baumgartner growled.
He shook his head. “Gary, if Hahn needed to be interviewed, it should have been you. That’s why I’ve got you down here. To take care of shit. Not to let it unravel.”
Stone looked stricken. “I wasn’t part of that case, sir. I’m doing the best I can. There’s…there’s a lot of threads to follow.”
“No. There’s one. You,” Baumgartner jabbed a finger toward Stone, “do what I tell you to do. You take care of business. You get results. Do your job, Gary.”
He left Stone sitting at his desk, stalking out of the office. By the time he reached the elevators, he got his gait back under control, projected his trademark easy confidence. But inside, he was seething. As soon as he got back to his office, he was going to call Tom Farrell.
Christ, he was hungry.
CHAPTER 43
Hatcher picked at her sandwich, only half listening to Maggie Patterson’s story about how her Saturday night went after they separated.
Patterson noticed. “What’s wrong, Dana?”
Hatcher shook her head. “Work.”
“Okay…so spill.”
“We’re playing hooky,” Hatcher said. “It’s supposed to be fun. We promised no work talk.”
“Consider it a campaign promise, easily broken. What’s going on?”
Hatcher told her the entire story. All the work she’d put in regarding the details of the plan, large and small. How she’d presented it to the chief and he shot it down. Then Farrell made a couple of minor adjustments to her plan and passed it off as his own.
“Ugh,” Patterson. “Typical man. I’m telling you, a man comes across the Mona Lisa, he pisses on it, and then decides he was the one that painted the damn thing in the first place.”
Hatcher didn’t laugh, but only because it felt that way.
“Fat Boy is still going to implement it, though?”
“Yes.”
“There you go. It will be under your command, right? So it will be your baby.” She popped a roasted baby carrot in her mouth and chewed. “Sometimes you have to fight for credit, sometimes you have to fight for results. Be happy.”
“It’s not going to be under my command,” Hatcher said mournfully.
“What?”
“They’re moving it under investigations because there’s a detective in the unit.”
“What?” Patterson repeated. “The whole team is a bunch of patrol cops, right?”
Hatcher nodded. “Because it has an investigative function, they’re pulling it out of patrol and giving it to investigations. It’s bullshit.”
“And investigations is Farrell’s unit,” Patterson said.
“Yeah.”
“So he gets the credit and the results.”
Hatcher nodded.
“For stealing your idea?” Patterson’s voice had an edge to it.
“Pretty much.”
“You want me to burn it down?”
Hatcher shook her head. “You couldn’t stop it.”
“Want to make a bet?” Patterson said in a hard voice. “I can’t stop it from happening. That’s all within the chief’s purview, but I sit on the Public Safety Committee. I’ll make sure the reporting of it is a miserable affair and I’ll call out every hitch and stumble along the way. After a while, Fat Boy will never want to mention it again, or even hear about it. He’ll shelve the concept and blame Farrell for bringing it up to him in the first place.”
Patterson grinned, her eyes aglow with the concept of battle.
“It’ll be beautiful,” she said.
Hatcher hesitated. “It was a good idea,” she said. “It’ll work.”
“It is a great idea,” Patterson agreed, “but it was your idea. So it can’t work. Not for them.”
Hatcher reached for her glass of wine, stalling. She’d seen Maggie wound up before, but never quite this vindictive.
She swallowed her wine and dabbed her lips with her napkin. Patterson waited patiently When she could delay no further, Hatcher said, “I’m angry, Maggie. It’s complete bullshit.”
“It is.”
“But if I have to choose between someone else getting credit for knocking down our property crime problem
, or seeing the crime rate continue to rise, I have to go with taking care of the bigger problem here. I can’t put my career before the mission.”
“Why not? The chief put his good old boy’s career before yours.”
Hatcher felt that same stab of anger she’d experienced in the command staff meeting again. “I know,” she said in a low voice. “But that doesn’t make it right.”
Patterson shrugged. “It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about results.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Well, the result is going to be that some man is getting credit for your work. You sure you can live with that?”
Hatcher nodded, though she could feel her resolution wavering in the face of the inequity. “If I have to.”
Patterson took a sip of her wine. Then she gave Hatcher a look of pure certainty. “You’ll change your mind about that,” she pronounced.
CHAPTER 44
“That Goddamn mayor,” Baumgartner complained to Farrell. “He’s a piece of work.”
Farrell glanced around The High Nooner diner to make sure no one heard the chief. “What’s the problem?”
“He doesn’t know jack shit about police work, but I’ll give him this. He’s a wily bastard when it comes to politics. If I could think politics one hundred percent of the time, I could beat him, but I’ve got to think about running this department, so he’s got me at a disadvantage.”
“What happened?”
Baumgartner waved away his question. “What have you done so far on this strike team?”
Farrell paused. The idea hadn’t been his, and although he knew his modifications were what got it over the hump with the chief, the bulk of the plan was Hatcher’s. He decided to try one more time to make that clear. “Sir, the idea for this plan was Captain Hatcher’s. And it uses mostly patrol officers. Don’t you think—”
“What I think, Tom, is that her plan was half formed. You made it workable. And it doesn’t matter who the personnel are, their function is more investigative than patrol. They belong under your command.”
“I get what you’re saying, but since it was her plan originally…” he trailed off in the face of Baumgartner’s level glare.