“Great work, Sal.” Robby looked down at the foolscap he was scribbling on while Sal made a face at Mike, who smiled and rolled his eyes. “Have we run this guy yet?”
“No. But I can do that while we’re briefing,” Hoagie offered.
“No, I want everyone here. Julia? What do you have?”
“Well, I met with my contact in Morality…”
“It wasn’t that bitchy chick from yesterday, was it?” Sal asked, looking over at Mike, who sighed and closed his eyes in silent acceptance that it probably was.
“Does it matter?” Julia asked, not wanting to give Amanda up.
“Depends on what info you got,” Mike chuckled, now fully convinced that Julia’s contact was indeed Amanda Black.
“I got three addresses that they’re too busy to work on,” Julia began, flipping through the pages of a steno pad that she had pulled from her purse.
“So now we’re doing Morality’s work, too?” Sal complained. “Tick tock.”
“You’re awfully quiet, Hoagie. What have you been up to?” Robby asked, ignoring Sal’s comment.
“Sorry, boss,” Julia’s partner said, looking down at his hands. “Mel is having a really hard time with this last one. Her mom is staying with us, but I think she’s even wearing her mom out. I got nuthin’. I’ll pull up my socks on the next project, if that’s okay?”
“I have no issue with that, boss,” Julia jumped in. “Hoagie’s always been there for us. All of us. Right, guys?” She looked to Mike and Sal for confirmation. They both nodded emphatically.
“Besides,” she continued, “we’ve pretty well got this one wrapped up.”
“That’s not what I’m seeing,” Robby countered, first looking down at the page of notes he had just written, and then around the table from one officer to the next. “Listen, I know everyone in this room works their asses off, and I appreciate it. I also know that we all have personal stuff that comes up—”
“Listen, boss, I can—” Hoagie began.
“Hold on a minute, Hoagie,” Robby continued. “I know upper management’s mantra is family first, but we all know that it’s not our individual families they’re talking about. Having said that, take care of Mel and your children, okay?”
“Thanks, boss,” Hoagie replied sheepishly as Julia reached over and rubbed his shoulder.
“But that’s it for my warm and fuzzies,” Robby advised with a crispness unusual for him.
“We’ve still got a project to conclude, and I’d rather have a good ending than not. And so would the big bosses.”
Everyone looked around the table at each other without moving, feeling like children being given the benefit of the doubt for some significant transgression that would normally be unforgivable.
“Okay. Now, Julia, are any of these addresses of use to us or are they, as Sal said, just another Morality play to download their work onto us?”
“I haven’t actually had a chance to look into them, but I can do it now,” Julia began, standing up to run the necessary background checks.
“Let’s stop right here,” Robby said. “Instead of going for coffee and cake with our friends, people, we need to focus. It’s…11:03 p.m. right now. I’ll be the first to admit that this is a shitty time for a briefing, and normally, this would be an even shittier time to get back out on the road. But if our intel is correct, and I have no reason to believe it’s not, then we only have until sometime tomorrow evening to wrap this up before this goes multi-jurisdictional, and you all know what a shitshow that will be.”
A collective groan made its way around the table.
“Mike and Sal, do you think it’s worth your while to speak to this LeBaron guy?”
“It’s a start,” Mike suggested.
“A bit late in the game for starts, don’t you think?” Robby said pointedly, making a checkmark on the foolscap beside one of the notes he had made. “And this van. What are we doing about that?”
“I called Border Security to put a hold on it and the occs if they try to go into the States,” Sal stated.
“Good. At least, somebody is doing something proactive,” Robby nodded, checking off another item on the paper in front of him.
Sal smiled broadly at his colleagues.
“And these addresses…” Robby paused and looked at his team. “I know Morality. I know how they work. I don’t mean to knock you, Julia, and I’m sure your contact means well, but they are slimy bastards who don’t give up a thing. We might as well disregard them and focus on Sal’s van.”
“What about LeBaron?” Mike asked.
“They’re not going to let you speak to him this late at night,” Robby advised.
“What if it’s urgent?”
“By the time you guys get there, it’ll be after midnight. What could be urgent enough to justify having a guard wake up an in-custody, and likely the whole cell block?”
“A girl’s life?”
Robby paused and took a deep breath.
“Okay, if I can get them to let you two in, how much time do you think you’ll need?”
“Depends on whether or not he talks,” Sal jumped in.
“He’ll talk,” Mike said.
“Remember, you’ll be in a provincial facility. There are cameras everywhere,” Robby cautioned.
“Hell-ooo, To-ron-to!” Sal called out, simultaneously moving his already-bruised shin away from Mike’s reach.
“And we certainly don’t have any pull there if we need to…rearrange…anything,” Robby warned.
“I know,” Mike nodded sombrely.
“Okay. Hoagie, you go home. Julia, I want you to go with Mike.”
“Why?” Sal asked. “What am I going to do.”
“What you always do,” Mike laughed. “Nothing.”
“And Sal. I want three of you to go. Ideally, I’d have you go in, too, Hoagie, but you’re calling it a night.”
“I can stay, boss,” Hoagie offered.
“No, you’re going home. I’m going to need you back in tomorrow, just in case we actually get into a takedown situation.”
“They do have guards,” Mike reminded Robby. “We don’t need Julia to come with us.”
“I know they have guards, but they’re there to keep the inmates in line. I want Julia to go with you to make sure you two yahoos don’t go off on this guy.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, Mike, I am not. We’ve been working the Chelsea Hendricks case on and off for a long time, and I gotta say I am a little concerned that you and Sal have let this one get under your skin—”
“Not at all, boss,” Sal objected.
“Let me finish, Sal,” Robby continued. “I don’t know whether you’ve both reached your best-before dates in the squad, or—”
“Julia’s been here as long as we have,” Mike pointed out.
“Yes, and I’m hoping she’ll stay even longer. But that’s neither here nor there, and I don’t want to get into it right now except to say that both of you might want to start thinking of where you’d like to go from this unit, maybe after the next project.”
Without giving anyone a chance to say anything else, Robby gathered up his papers and pen and walked out of the conference room, leaving Hoagie to apologize again for abandoning his team mid-play, Mike and Sal wondering what had just happened, and Julia curious about why Robby would say anything about the future of the squad now.
*****
Mike, Sal, and Julia emptied their pockets out into the metal trays the guard behind the glass wall had pushed at them through a fitted opening.
“Guns, gentlemen?” The guard’s voice called through a speaker on the wall by the metal door they had just came through. “And lady.”
“Don’t these usually go in a locker somewhere?” Mike asked, speaking into the small wire-covered hole in the glass wall.
No answer, just the guard’s tired eyes staring back at them.
“Hello?” Mike said.
“They do when the regular midnight guard is here,” the uniformed man’s voice echoed out of the speaker. “Just put them in the tray and I’ll look after them.”
“That doesn’t sound right to me,” Julia muttered to her colleagues.
“No guns past this point. You want to pass this point, put your guns in the tray,” the guard commanded.
The three of them unholstered their guns and put them in the tray.
“And any bullets, ammunition, or knives you might have on your person,” the guard added.
“This guy is thorough,” Julia commented as Sal pulled a knife from his sock.
“Who the fuck keeps a knife in their sock?” Mike asked, grimacing.
“Where else would I put it?” Sal replied, placing the blade in the tray beside his gun.
“And you, miss?” the guard asked, looking at Julia with supreme indifference. “Anything besides this gun?”
“Nope. That’s it,” Julia said.
“Fair enough. Walk through the door to your right and wait until I get there to wand you.”
The three obediently walked through the door and waited for the guard.
“You’re beeping, officer,” the guard said. In person, he sounded much less intimidating. His soft face, which looked as if it had never seen a razor, suggested that he was maybe twenty years old.
“It’s a tape recorder. We’re going to be interviewing Mr. LeBaron,” Mike explained.
“I figured that. Saw it on the screen. And you’ve got a pen and a steno pad. But what about you?” The guard looked suspiciously at Julia.
“It’s my bra,” Julia said after a moment, blushing more from indignation than embarrassment.
All three men stared at her.
“Underwire. It’s an underwire bra. How do you think these things are helped to stay up?” Julia said as she cupped her hands under her breasts and pushed them higher up on her chest.
“Kinda like Barbarella, eh, Julia?” Sal smirked.
“Shut up, Sal,” she hissed.
“You’re going to have to either take it off or remove the wiring,” the guard advised in a steady voice that was somewhat incongruent with his beet-red face.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Julia demanded.
The guard stared at her, unmoved.
“This is a three-hundred-dollar bra,” Julia objected.
“What does a bra do for three hundred bucks?” Sal asked, whistling at the thought of such an expense.
“Keeps… Never mind. I’m not ruining it by taking the wire out, and I’m not walking around without a bra.”
“Then you will not proceed beyond this point. Your choice, ma’am.”
Mike thought he heard the young guard’s voice crack.
“It’s okay, Julia,” Mike coughed, lowering his voice to sound as masculine as possible. “You can wait here. We’ll be okay.”
“That’s not fair to Julia,” Sal objected. “Just because she’s wearing wire mesh to hold up—”
“No, it’s not,” Julia agreed, then glared at the guard. “What do you do about female lawyers who come in to see their clients? I bet you don’t make them take their bras off.”
“I don’t know, ma’am. I’m just the fill-in. The book says—”
“Do you honestly think I’m going to attack someone with my bra?”
“I’d like to see that,” Sal snickered.
“You were so close to sounding enlightened, Sal. Why you gotta ruin it now?” Julia fumed.
“I have no idea what your intentions are, ma’am,” the guard continued. “All I know is that the book says that no one sees an in-custody with any sort of metal on their person. If you want, I can show you the page—”
“It’s okay. We believe you,” Mike stepped in. “Julia, why don’t you just wait here, and Sal and I will go in. I promise we won’t beat anyone up.”
The guard’s mouth dropped open.
“I’m kidding,” Mike reassured the guard. “We just want to talk to Theodore LeBaron—”
“LeBaron is in the interview room now, Ricky. Let ‘em in,” a voice interrupted over the loudspeaker.
“I’ll let you two gentlemen in. You have a choice, ma’am…”
“I’ll stay back. Go ahead, Mikey. But don’t think I won’t be bringing this up at our next meeting.” Looking at the guard, Julia continued, “You have not heard the last of this, young man. And don’t ever call any woman under eighty ‘ma’am’.”
“A strongly worded letter with your name on it will be in the mail,” Sal quipped as he and Mike walked into the secure area of the prison, leaving Julia behind.
“I heard that!” Julia called after him as she pulled a tissue out of her purse and began wiping down the metal chair bolted to the wall that she would be calling home for the next little while.
*****
The lights were dimmer than Mike remembered from previous visits, and the interview room seemed smaller. He was glad that Julia was not joining them. If three was company, four would have been too tight.
“So what’s so important that you woke me up from my beauty sleep?” Theodore LeBaron, aka Teddy Bear, demanded, his unnaturally square jaw jutting forward in defiance.
“Chelsea Hendricks,” Mike said, pushing his shoulders back and puffing out his chest.
“Never heard of her,” LeBaron muttered almost inaudibly, stretching his nearly nonexistent neck one shoulder at a time.
“Two years ago. In a mall…” Mike continued.
“I been in a lot of malls since then, pal,” the in-custody replied, smirking at Mike before interlocking his fingers and stretching his arms out in front of him, accentuating the enormous biceps that strained the seams of his off-white sweatshirt.
“I bet you have. How about Britney George?”
“Nope. Never heard of her, either.” LeBaron pulled his arms back in, barely able to cross them over his chest.
“You’re in for fraud, aren’t you?”
“So they say. None of the allegations have been proven in court.”
“Yet,” Sal jabbed.
“Yet,” the big man agreed, then smiled and sucked his teeth, acknowledging Sal for the first time since sitting down across from the two cops.
“How much time do you think you’ll get?” Mike asked.
“If I’m found guilty?” the man laughed. “And that’s a big if. I dunno. A couple of years, maybe?”
“Hmmm, sounds about right,” Mike said. “And how many years do you think you’ll get if you’re convicted of human trafficking times five, six, maybe thirty or—”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” LeBaron snapped, glaring at Mike.
“Yeah, you do,” Mike corrected, placing the tape recorder on the table between them, “but if you come clean now, maybe that life sentence times five, six, thirty, whatever, might be a little shorter.”
“You got nuthin’ so I got nuthin’.” LeBaron looked over his shoulder at the locked metal door behind him. “Guard!”
“Yeah. Call for the guard,” Mike said. “Right now, they treat you well. You’re just awaiting trial for some low-level fraud scheme. Maybe brought you in, what, forty, fifty thousand?”
The in-custody looked at Mike, then glanced over at Sal, who was nodding at his partner’s words.
“Wait until you go to the pen for running a kiddie-diddling ring.”
The words hung uncomfortably in the air.
“You’ll be in PC,” Mike advised. “But there will be times—”
“Fuck off,” the in-custody spat.
“I doubt you’ll get enough ‘roids or gym time to keep the lifers away,” Mike smiled as casually as if he was advising the man of the merits of using one shaving gel over another.
“Guard!” LeBaron hollered again over his shoulder, the veins bulging in his neck.
“You done?” the guard
called in as he unlocked the door and looked at the back of his charge’s head and then at the two cops.
“Ask Mr. LeBaron here,” Mike replied, motioning towards the big man in front of him with his chin, then glancing pointedly at the tape recorder on the table between them.
“N…no,” the big man stammered without looking at the guard. He glanced quickly from Mike to Sal instead. “No, we’re not.”
“Then why the fuck did you call me?” the guard demanded, not moving from behind LeBaron.
“Sorry, sir. I was mistaken.”
“Don’t be mistaken again.” The guard stepped outside the room, the door clanging loudly behind him.
The three men inside the tiny space could hear the guard’s key scraping in the lock. Theodore LeBaron stared hopefully at the two cops sitting patiently in front of him.
“You were saying?” Mike said, leaning back in his chair.
“What’s in it for me to talk?”
“Always hustling, eh?” Sal smiled, looking over at Mike.
“We can’t make any promises. You know that, Teddy,” Mike said. “Maybe we could put in a good word with the Crown. Tell them that you were cooperative. But… well, you know how it goes.”
“And if I don’t?” LeBaron said, his eyes narrowing.
“Can’t make any promises there either,” Mike replied calmly, “although I’m thinking it would be hard for someone who found themselves in your position to make any friends inside, no matter how long you stayed.”
LeBaron sat silently for a moment, his elbows almost touching the tape recorder lying on the table between him and Mike. Then suddenly, without warning, he threw his head back and snapped it forward to within inches of Mike’s unflinching face.
“I got a thousand bucks a girl, five if she bit,” he said. “Most of them walked away before hitting the five thousand mark, but at least I got something. I needed the cash.”
“Why did they walk?” Mike asked.
“Maybe they got homesick or figured out that I was a Romeo pimp. Or,” he leaned back slightly but still not enough to be comfortable, “the guys on the other end just didn’t like the look of the girl.”
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