by D L Young
“So why not just put a bullet in you if he’s so hot to bring you down?”
“Because he doesn’t want me dead. Not yet, anyway. He wants to ruin me first, humiliate me in front of the world, and in the process make sure everyone knows it was him who got the better of me.”
“Jesus, salaryman,” Beatrice said, “you sure bring out the best in people, don’t you?”
“It’s a gift.”
“So what now?”
Maddox smoked. “What do you mean?”
“What’s your next move?”
He looked at her crossly. “Well, let’s see. I’ve got every cop in the City looking for me, some feds too, and probably half a dozen government AIs on top of that. I’m thinking getting the hell out of here is the way to go.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Of course I am.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“So you’re just going to bail on those kids?” Beatrice asked pointedly.
Maddox snorted. “I’m not bailing on anybody. There’s nothing I can do for them.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Christ, she sounded like Tommy. “You know what’s bullshit?” He blew smoke. “You thinking I can do anything about the mess they’re in.”
“Come on,” she scoffed, “this whole thing sounds like a house of cards waiting to come down. And if you weren’t so busy trying to save your own ass, you’d see it.”
“A house of cards?”
“Think about it,” she said. “This Gideon can’t be pulling off this frame-up on his own, can he? It’s too big. It’s got too many moving parts. Whoever he’s pulled into this mad little revenge plot with him has to be sweating bullets right about now, worried the feds or the higher-ups in the department will find out, or God forbid, some reporter pieces it all together. People make careers out of uncovering scandals like this. This old friend of yours is taking a huge gamble.”
Thoughts along these lines had already occurred to him. Gideon had been a gambler his whole life. Beatrice had that part figured out. Maddox had never known him to play things safe, always going all in. Why punch someone in the nose when you can crush them into a bloody pulp? That was who he was.
Still, even if Gideon’s scheme was a house of cards, Maddox was powerless to kick it down. His old datajacking colleague simply had too many weapons at his disposal. Pushing back was pointless, doomed to failure.
When Maddox didn’t respond, Beatrice went on. “Let me put it another way. What’s the first thing that happens if our bad lieutenant is out of the picture? His buddies down at the precinct get busy making sure the whole stinking mess goes away quickly and quietly.”
“Yeah,” Maddox agreed, “by locking those kids up at Rikers and throwing away the key.”
“No, by letting them off.”
Maddox chuckled darkly. “Maybe in some parallel universe, sister, where fair is fair and people never go down for crimes they don’t commit. But here in the City, the wheels of justice don’t exactly turn that way.”
He’d heard enough. He started to leave, his attention already shifting elsewhere as he mentally mapped out ways to get out of Manhattan undetected. Beatrice sprang up from the sofa and grabbed his arm.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” she insisted.
“Look,” he sighed, “maybe I don’t entirely disagree with you on this house of cards notion. Maybe if Naz were out of the picture, things might fall apart. Maybe they’d even cut those kids loose, who knows? But it’s not like we can just take him down, now is it? It’s one thing to say it. Doing it, that’s something else. We’d never get close enough.”
“Nobody’s untouchable,” she said.
“Wanna bet?”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “I owe those kids, Blackburn. Maybe that makes me old-school. Maybe it makes me weak. If it does, so fucking be it. All I know is I’m not going to sit around and do nothing while they go down like this.”
He gently removed her hand from his arm. “I’m sorry,” he insisted. “I can’t.”
A long moment passed between them.
“Fine,” she said, gesturing. “There’s the door.”
On the end table, her specs began to vibrate, an alert box flashing on the lens. She held them up in front of her face, reading whatever was there.
“Goddammit,” she muttered, shaking her head in disbelief. She let out a long, tired breath. “They arrested Tommy. It’s all over the news feeds.”
Maddox removed his own lenses from his shirt collar and put them on, pulling up a news feed. Sure enough, there was Tommy goddamn Park, being pulled out of a cop hover, hands cuffed and surrounded by a crush of media reporters and camera drones. A throng of cops hustled him through the crowd and up the steps into the Ninth Precinct building.
ANOTHER BOMBING SUSPECT APPREHENDED, the scrolling headline read.
***
Maddox leaned forward with his forearms on the fire escape, the rail’s metal cool against his skin. Fifty stories below the City thrummed, bright and bustling, its avenues teeming. The clogged neon arteries of some giant organism. At this height traffic thinned out considerably, reduced to a scattering of shiny expensive vehicles shuttling the highfloor wealthy among the City’s superstructure mountains. He blew smoke, alone with his thoughts, the quiet broken only by the occasional whine of a passing hover.
Bad decisions. Life was full of them. Sometimes you made them knowingly, striding confidently forward and then smashing your face into the brick wall your little voice had warned you would be there. Then other times you were clueless, turning right on a whim when you should have gone left, utterly ignorant of your mistake, unaware of the uncovered manhole you were about to step into. Bad decisions. He’d certainly made his fair share, knowingly and otherwise.
Don’t we all, boyo?
Wonderful. Perfect. Not a word for months, now Rooney picked this moment to pop back into his head.
It was hopeless, Maddox insisted, both to himself and to the ghost of his old mentor. Naz had eyes and ears everywhere. Even with the help of Beatrice’s two expert hands, Maddox was outgunned, outmanned, outeverythinged. He wasn’t even sure he could make it out of the City in one piece. And as much as he wanted to fry Gideon in hot oil, as much as he was bothered by the idea of Tommy and his turfies doing hard time, contemplating anything beyond his own survival was unthinkable right now. Undoable. Thoroughly unwise.
He gazed down at the City’s ceaseless churn, unable to lose himself in its countless distractions, unable to shake the news feed image of Tommy in cuffs, the kid’s eyes wide and frightened.
You didn’t leave me in that prison we shared, did you, boyo?
I was trapped there, just like you were. Don’t you remember?
But if you could, would you have?
No.
Then why are you leaving now?
Maddox didn’t answer, his gaze still fixed on the floor of the City.
Jack could have left you, boyo, but he didn’t.
And look what had happened to him.
Maddox squeezed his eyes shut until he was sure the voice in his head had been silenced. He opened them again and took a long pull on his cigarette. Holding in the smoke for a long moment, he thought of Jack. Foolish, loyal Jack. He blew out again.
That kid. He’s going to be the end of me.
The voice in his head returned, laughing. Boyo, if you only knew how many times I said the same thing.
Maddox turned to Beatrice. The mercenary sat in the window, her back against the sill.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a deck and trode set, would you?” he asked.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Change of plans?”
“Yeah,” he said.
She grinned, nodded her approval. “Top shelf of the closet. White box.”
Bad decisions, bad decisions. He’d made his fair share.
Add another one to the list.
15 - Special Agent Nguyen
Moments after he walked through the door, Deke’s hands were damp with a cold sweat. No accusations had been hurled, no other shoe had dropped. Not yet, anyway. He did his best to hide the stress from his face, smiling through the introductions and small talk about the special agent’s flight into Manhattan and the unseasonably warm weather.
It was the man’s look that unnerved Deke. Special Agent Alex Nguyen had a definite look about him, sitting there with his perfectly tailored suit and wire-rimmed spectacles. His meticulous manner, his precise way of speaking. This was an intelligent man, a thorough man, a man who missed nothing. He was exactly the kind of man Deke imagined would bust him and the lieutenant.
Five minutes earlier, Deke and Gideon had been summoned to the special agent’s fifth-floor office. Nguyen had just been put on the T-Chen bombing case, settling into a borrowed precinct office that same morning after arriving on an early flight from D.C., then spending the next few hours reviewing the case files. The F.B.I. assigned a federal liaison to every suspected terrorist crime in the City. Standard procedure. Deke had been dreading this moment, the first meeting between him, the lieutenant, and the special agent. He’d known it was coming and he and the lieutenant had planned for it, but still he felt woefully unprepared.
Gideon sat next to Deke, looking relaxed and amiable, as if he were lunching with an old acquaintance. If his boss felt any of the gut-twisting anxiety Deke did, he’d managed to conceal it behind a perfect mask of calm and ease.
When the agent’s call came, Gideon had made it quite clear he didn’t want Deke doing any of the talking. Don’t offer up anything, don’t speak unless spoken to, the lieutenant had instructed him. And if asked anything by Nguyen, the detective was to play dumb. Deke was to say he’d been focused only on coordinating their men in the field, organizing the search for suspects. He knew little about the investigation’s details, which Gideon had so far worked largely on his own. That was their story, and Deke had damn well better stick to it.
The detective was fine with the arrangement. The less he had to say, the less chance he had of incriminating himself.
The desktop was covered with paper printouts. Nguyen reached for one and slid it closer to him, frowning as he read it. “So this Tommy Park you just brought in, he waived his right to an attorney?”
“Yes,” Gideon answered.
“Just like his friends did, those biker kids?”
“That’s correct.”
Lifting his gaze to the lieutenant and raising his eyebrows, Special Agent Nguyen said, “Bit of an odd choice, don’t you think, Lieutenant?”
Gideon nodded. “Unusual, maybe,” he answered, his voice steady. “Not unheard of.”
“Facing a terrorist rap,” Nguyen said, “seems like a street kid would know he’s better off with a lawyer than without.”
When Gideon said nothing to that, Nguyen shifted his gaze to Deke. “You don’t think that’s strange, Detective?”
“Maybe,” he answered carefully, aware of his quickening pulse, “but we see it from time to time. Suspects who think public defenders are only there to sell them out. Institutional distrust. You know how it is.” The detective was mildly surprised his voice didn’t crack.
“I see,” Nguyen said. He turned his attention back to the papers. “And did you get anything useful during your interrogation sessions?” Again, the upward glance. “You certainly questioned them long enough.”
“Not yet,” Gideon answered. “These are tough punks. And they know how things work. They know the less they say, the better.”
“So they’re smart,” Nguyen observed.
“I’d say so,” Gideon said.
“Just not smart enough to ask for a lawyer,” Nguyen pointed out. He moved his gaze between the two men as he said it. Deke stiffened under the man’s clearly dubious stare, resisting the urge to turn and look at the lieutenant’s reaction, aware that such a gesture would be as good as an admission they were hiding something. He’d questioned enough punks and gangsters in his twenty years to know the telltales of a guilty conscience.
A long moment passed in the small office. Then the special agent collected the papers atop the desk and slid them neatly into a file folder. He put his hands together, interlacing the fingers, and rested them on top of the folder.
“Gentlemen, I’m not here to make anyone’s life hell,” he said, “but I’ll tell you right now there’s a lot about this case I don’t like. Waived rights to counsel. Cameras conveniently malfunctioning during interrogations. Juvenile delinquents who don’t come anywhere close to our typical terrorist profile. And then there’s this datajacker, Blackburn Maddox. He’s still at large, yes?”
A chill shot down Deke’s back. It took a teeth-clenching act of will to maintain an outwardly calm expression and beat down the impulse to whip a surprised look in Gideon’s direction. How did this fed know about Maddox? Had the lieutenant told the agent something and kept Deke out of the loop? Had Gideon changed the plan? Was there still a plan? Or had the lieutenant, in his crazed lust for revenge, abandoned everything and started to wing it? Deke struggled to maintain a calm outward appearance. This was perfect, just perfect. Now Deke had to worry as much about what he didn’t know as what he did know. What a waking nightmare this had become.
“Yes, he’s still at large,” Gideon answered coolly.
“And this is the same Blackburn Maddox you shared a room with in juvenile detention, correct?”
The air went out of the room. Deke felt a flare of panic in his gut. This fed was onto them. In town less than three hours and he was already onto them.
“Done your homework, I see,” Gideon answered, somehow maintaining his composure. “I thought those records were sealed.”
The faintest hint of a smile touched Nguyen’s lips. “Well, there’s sealed…and then there’s sealed.”
The agent let another long silence hang in the air before he spoke again. “Is there anything you’d like to share with me, Lieutenant?”
Gideon didn’t blink, didn’t waver. He nodded to the file folder. “Everything we’ve got on this case is right there.”
“And thanks for getting it to me so quickly. But I’m curious about anything that might be between the lines,” the fed said ominously. “I’m not here to tell you how to run your shop. I’m here to work on an investigation. That’s what this is, I hope, an investigation, and not something else.” He pressed a palm on top of the folder. “I see two paths forward, gentlemen. We can either move along with the investigation the way it is, the way you’ve started it here.” He slid the folder to the edge of the desk. “Or we can work together and start from zero.” He leaned forward slightly. “And between us, something tells me you’ve gone the wrong direction here. And if you take a bit of time to think about it, to look carefully, very carefully, at the facts one more time, I think you’ll agree. So why don’t you take the next hour or two and do just that? Then we can regroup and figure out the next steps. Sound like a plan?”
Special Agent Nguyen stood, signaling their dismissal. “That’ll be all, gentlemen. And like I said, I don’t want to make anyone’s life hell.”
But he would, Deke thought, his stomach burning with worry. In fact, he already had.
***
“He’s onto us,” Deke said, pacing back and forth in Gideon’s office.
“Not possible.”
“Not possible?” Deke could hardly believe the lieutenant’s lack of concern. Was the man crazy?
“You heard him back there,” Deke said. “He’s giving us a chance to sidestep this whole mess. He as much as told us he’d look the other way if we give up on these nonsense leads with Maddox and those biker kids.” The special agent’s warning couldn’t have been more clear. They had to drop whatever game they were up to.
“He doesn’t know,” the lieutenant insisted. “How could he? He just got here. So he found a few weak spots, so what? Of course he’s going to call us out on them. Of course he’s going to
poke at them. That’s what these guys do. He’s pulling on a chain to see what shakes loose, that’s all.”
“I’m telling you, he’s onto us,” Deke persisted. Maybe the fed hadn’t figured everything out yet, but he’d gotten a whiff of something and he didn’t like the smell of it.
“You need to calm down. Let me handle it.”
Let him handle it. That was great. That was just perfect. Whenever Deke thought the hole he was standing in couldn’t any deeper, there stood Gideon, holding a shovel.
“What about Maddox?” the detective prodded.
“What about him?”
“You said you weren’t going to widen the investigation until those punks confessed, remember?”
The lieutenant’s expression hardened. “I needed to get things moving. We raided his office, but he wasn’t there.”
“That’s not what we agreed to. You should have told me before you did anything.”
“Why would I tell you?” the lieutenant shot back. “You’re not exactly solid as a rock these days, in case you haven’t noticed. Walking around here all tense and wound up, like you’re carrying around a kilo of fabbed coke under your shirt.” He held up his thumb and forefinger with a small space between them. “You look like you’re about this close to a nervous breakdown.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Deke said. “People died, Gideon. We should have run away from this the moment that happened.”
The lieutenant took a breath. “Look, there’s no backing out now. And when all this is over and your head stops spinning, I have no doubt you’ll see things the same way. You just have to trust me, all right?”
Trust him? Deke would have laughed at that if he hadn’t been so wound up. After everything that had happened, now Gideon was asking for a leap of faith? Absurd. Completely absurd.
“I’ll talk with Agent Nguyen,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll straighten things out.”
Deke pictured Gideon striding back into that borrowed office, brash and overconfident, then getting cuffs slapped around his wrists about five seconds later.
And then a minute later the cuffs would be slapped around his own wrists. They’d book him and fingerprint him and throw him in a holding cell, right here, in this very same precinct where he’d worked for the past twenty years. He’d end up a pariah, famous for all the wrong reasons. The cop who’d abetted a criminal lieutenant, who’d helped orchestrate a mass murder.