The Innocents

by David Putnam

  Yeah, I knew what she was thinking. What kind of son would do something that would risk the health and welfare of his wonderful dad? A dad now sitting in the can, accused of a despicable crime he would never in a million years commit? I wanted to kick the wall in and scream.

  The phone rang again.

  I’d been burned twice in one day answering like some kind of fool and it wouldn’t happen again.

  I picked it up and this time just said, “Hello.”

  “Bruno? I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your father.”

  Wicks.

  At the sound of his voice, and without warning, my grateful attitude suddenly shifted. If Wicks had not talked me into going undercover, going up against Blue and Thibodeaux, two men filled with a malignant evil the likes of which I’d never experienced, Dad wouldn’t be up to his ass in alligators and fighting a false allegation of rape.

  The rape of a white woman was a charge that, true or not, did not bode well for a favorable jury verdict. Those photos of the bruised breast could not be shown to a jury, especially not in conjunction with a witness that put him at the scene. If I couldn’t prove the conspiracy against Blue and Thibodeaux, Dad was headed for prison, no two ways about it. The enormity of the situation settled on my shoulders, smothering me.

  “What are we going to do about it?” I said through clenched teeth.

  “We need to talk. I’m coming to you. No, second thought, make it location number two.”

  Location number two. Why was he talking in code? Did he think Blue had our lines tapped?

  “I just got a call from Blue,” I said. “He called me back in for a dope buy or something. He wants me there in twenty minutes.”

  Long pause.

  “You still there?” I asked. “Did you hear me?”

  “He didn’t say exactly what it is you’re going in to do?”

  “No, and I’m not going back there at all until we get the charges dropped against my dad.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, buddy, but there isn’t anything we can do about that until this whole damn thing plays out. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you dare call me buddy. Is that why you posted his bail, so this thing had more time to play out? So you could play this stupid little game a little longer?”

  He paused. When he spoke, his words came out tight. “No, I posted your dad’s bail because you’re a member of my team, and I take care of my team. I told you. I warned you this could get rough.”

  “You never said anything about pulling my dad down into the sewer with these animals.”

  “That is unfortunate and I’m sorry. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I didn’t think they would stoop this low either. The deputy chief is aware and he’s ready to talk with the DA, as soon as this thing resolves itself. There’s nothing we can do but play along. We cannot, under any circumstances, let them know we’re on to them. Bruno, this is a test to see if you’re working them. We can’t show our hand now. This’ll sound crazy to you, but this is a good thing. What’s happened with your dad means they’re about to let you in. That is, if you don’t blow it. You have to rein in that temper and play it smart.”

  Common sense and logic agreed with him, but the emotions of the situation worked hard on me. No way did I want it to go down the way Wicks wanted it to. I needed Dad out now. The charges dropped, now.

  I said nothing and tried to work out a solution. I either didn’t have the knowledge or experience or no other option truly existed.

  “Bruno?”

  “Okay. But I want someone to meet Dad at the jail and give him a ride home.”

  “That’s already taken care of. Did Miller get called in with you?”

  “I don’t know, probably. Blue said all hands, so I guess that means her, too.” I squinted my eyes closed and fought with myself over telling him about Chelsea. To keep it from him would be to play a dangerous game with Dad now in the mix. I asked, “What do you know about her?”

  “Miller?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? You think she’s somehow part of all this? Is she working with Blue and Thibodeaux? She just got on the team like you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Talk to me, Bruno.”

  “It was something she said.”

  “Come on, give.”

  “She referred . . . I mean, on some other topic, nothing about Blue and this conspiracy, we were just talking. She used the term ‘dog heavy.’”

  Wicks sounded a little distracted. “That right? I’ve only ever heard the chief use that term.”

  “I know. That’s what you said. I’ve never heard it before, either.”

  He paused, the phone line quiet as he puzzled over this new information. “Well,” he said, “there’s really only one explanation, and if that’s the case, we don’t need to worry about her. You stay focused on our two targets, and I’ll look into this. I’ll ask the chief about this right now. You good?”

  “I guess I have to be, don’t I?”

  “I didn’t have time to wait on you to write up that supplemental report on the money taken from the rock house on Peach. I wrote it and signed your name to it. It’s exactly what you told me, short and sweet. You good with that?”

  “I guess I have to be.”

  He’d just committed a terminating offense, falsifying an official document. And he’d told me about it. That’s how much he trusted me. That also meant he wanted me to know that he had a lot of skin in the game. Not as much as Dad and me, but his admission went a long way to assuage some of my misgivings about being used as a puppet.

  “We’re coming up on the wire,” he said, “in about three hours. You just need to hold on a little longer. We’re almost there. I’m bringing in the rest of our team now to help. You keep in touch.”

  He hung up. He didn’t want me to complain anymore or try to throw other options or scenarios out there.

  And I did have one. When he said there could only be one explanation, he meant Chelsea was working for the deputy chief as a secondary undercover, someone else used as a backup plan in case I couldn’t pull it off.

  Or someone just to keep an eye on me.

  I agreed with that premise and understood it. But there was another side to that coin. If Wicks would just take a step back and look at all the information as a whole, then he’d see that the chief could also be the dog heavy, pulling the strings on Blue as well, using Wicks like a little puppet, having him take out these targets. Like the victim under the stake bed truck at the Mona gas station.

  And that maybe the chief put us all in play to manipulate the game, his game, and in some way defer his involvement. If this game all went to shit, the chief could just say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. They did what? My God, what a horrible breech of integrity.”

  At that point, I, Wicks, Chelsea, and even Blue and Thibodeaux all became scapegoats.

  Wicks liked and respected the chief. I’d never met him before the barbecue. With tact and diplomacy, I’d have to find a way to float this option by Wicks.

  I kissed little Olivia good-bye, stroked her soft hair a couple of times, and headed back to the office, where I would need an Oscarlevel performance to keep Blue and Thibodeaux from reading what I really thought, from reading what I wanted to do to them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  MY FEET THUMPED up the wooden steps outside the narco trailer in back of the station. I hesitated on the stoop, took a deep breath, and passed through the door. Blue and Thibodeaux sat at their desks smiling as if one of them just told a lurid joke at Chelsea’s expense. Chelsea sat at her desk not smiling. Her eyes said she needed to tell me something and couldn’t. At least that’s what I wanted to believe. I started to feel a little ache for her in my chest, just as I used to with Sonja. There wasn’t time for any silly high school crush, so I pushed it aside.

  Even in distress she looked radiant.

  Blue and Thibodeaux were the source of her distress, had t
o be. I clenched my fists and counted, like Captain Stubbs had the day before, to get my anger under control.

  At the same time, that unmistakable aura surrounded the whole trailer, the constant low-level hum of potential violence that at any moment, for no reason at all, could erupt in knuckles, boots, and gun smoke.

  “Hey,” Blue said. “Sorry I had to call you back in. How’s your kid doin’?”

  “She’s fine.” I worked at not grinding my teeth and put up a false smile. Maybe he’d think my stiff demeanor came out of not being able to be with Olivia.

  Thibodeaux stood and took the couple of steps over to me and offered up his hand, along with a pasted-on smile, all of us actors today. “Sorry, pal,” he said. “I was a horse’s ass this morning. I had time to think about it and, well, I had no right to treat you like that. Blue’s right, we need to be a team around here and trust each other.”

  I looked at his extended hand instead of his eyes to keep from ripping that smug smile off his face and making him eat it. “No hard feelings,” I said. I took his hand, cold, sandpaper-rough, and strong enough to clamp down on an innocent woman’s breast, strong enough to leave ugly purple bruising. I squeezed in return and gave back a small sample of his own smugness, an arrogance that came with the knowledge that, one way or another, Thibodeaux would pay for all of his wickedness. Comfortable in the knowledge that Wicks had the wiretap in his pocket and it wouldn’t be long now.

  But I wouldn’t let Wicks have the satisfaction, not this time. He wouldn’t track Thibodeaux down in some back alley like at 123rd and Central. This time I’d be the one to take Thibodeaux down, the hard way with a lot of black baton action, curbside justice with broken teeth, ribs, and arm bones. He’d resist arrest whether he wanted to or not. The thought made me smile for real. For a fleeting moment, I didn’t like the sudden and bitter taste of revenge, and I fought it, a battle of right and wrong that didn’t last. I slipped that much closer to the other side, to the evil I’d dedicated my life to chasing.

  I broke eye contact with Thibodeaux and moved around him to my desk. I needed to sit down to keep my knees from quaking from so much pent-up anger and the need to act. Chelsea watched my expression the entire time, as if she thought I might explode at any moment. But that couldn’t be right. How could she know about the frame that locked down Dad, the reason for my anger?

  Blue let his smile take a walk and said, “We’re waiting on a CI who’s coming in to give us a location on one Jaime Reynosa, who can give us Mo Mo. Folks, that’s just one degree of separation. We’ve never been this close to Mo Mo before.”

  I nodded. “Cool.” And looked straight ahead at the cheap wood-paneled wall. I needed to get out of there so I could breathe again. “Hey, Chelsea, can I talk to you outside?”

  Blue and Thibodeaux looked at each other. Thibodeaux said to me, “Man, you work fast.”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, the words too sharp.

  Chelsea got up. “Sure, Bruno.” She walked on past me and out the door.

  I hesitated, something my pride required, and then followed along.

  Chelsea stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Come on,” I said, and moved to the center of the parking area, knowing full well both Thibodeaux and Blue were watching from the trailer windows. I gently took her arm and escorted her farther yet, over by my Ford Ranger. The late afternoon sun now sat far below the roof of the station and gave off more of a subdued yellowish-orange light. The heat remained and hung heavy in the still air.

  “Take it easy, Bruno, you’re hurting me.”

  “Oh, jeez, sorry, I didn’t mean to. Really, I didn’t.”

  She looked back at the trailer with a nervous glance. “It’s not a good idea to be doing this.”

  “Do what? Why?”

  She rubbed her arm. Her big brown eyes gave off an innocence that made me want to hold her in my arms and kiss her. How insane was that? The thing with Dad screwed with me, made me emotionally vulnerable.

  “They already have the wrong idea about us,” she said. “What is it you want that can’t be said in there?”

  “You wanted to meet up with me, remember? What was that all about?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  She broke eye contact and looked down and to the left.

  “Hey, hey,” I said. I tried to get her to look at me. “Did Blue say something to you in there? Did he do something to you?”

  She looked up at me, her eyes fierce. “What are you talking about? I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

  For a moment, her act convinced me that maybe she did just roll in from a Public Relations gig and really didn’t know the kind of viper’s nest she had landed in at the Lynwood narco team. Then I remembered her words, the reference to the “dog heavy.”

  No, she knew exactly what kind of game she played. Only she played better at it than I gave her credit for.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “HEY, DON’T BULLSHIT me,” I said. “Something’s bothering you, something you thought I should know. That’s why you wanted to meet me at my dad’s house.”

  “Look, it’s none of my business. I decided I don’t want to talk out of turn here. It’s just not my place.”

  “Come on, this shit is serious . . . my . . . my dad . . .”

  I almost told her about Dad being framed by Thibodeaux, but the little bit of doubt that she might not really be involved up to her pretty little nose kept me from saying the words.

  “What about your dad?”

  “Never mind, but you and I both know . . . I mean, I know, you know what’s going on around here.”

  “What are you talking about now? What’s going on around here? Bruno, you’re sounding paranoid. I think you need to take a vacation.”

  Wicks’ admonishment to tell no one about working undercover sounded in my head, loud this time, like a gong.

  “I’m paranoid? Then why don’t you really tell me what you wanted to talk about at my place?”

  She did it again, looked down and to the left. A tell, like in poker, indicating her next words would be deceptive. “I . . . ah . . . I just thought that I wanted to get to know you better, that’s all.”

  My heart gave a little skip at the thought, but the truth spoke louder and overpowered the idea.

  “Bullshit.”

  Her sheepishness fled, replaced with anger. She poked me in the chest. “Don’t you try and tell me you know what I had on my mind.” She turned to leave.

  I grabbed her by the hand and held on. “Chelsea, I’m sorry. Please, tell me what you were going to tell me.” The touch of her warm skin in mine made me wish we’d met under different circumstances.

  She looked at my hand on her wrist and then up at my eyes. Hers softened. And I wished like hell I could read her mind for real. She felt something, too; that’s the way I read it.

  She took a step closer into my space and lowered her voice, her breath warm, with a hint of cinnamon. “I don’t know what kind of screwed-up game you and those two hard cases in there think you’re playing, but I want no part of it. You understand?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If you’re going to play dumb, forget it.”

  She tried to pull away. I held on. “Please, tell me.”

  She turned angry when I wouldn’t let go. “Okay,” she said, “I do know what’s going on.”

  “You do?”

  She, too, was undercover and was about to break the cardinal rule and cop out to it.

  “That’s right, I do. You came from the violent crimes team, an assignment half the detectives in the department would sell their souls for. You were only there on paper for a couple of weeks and then you get transferred over to this street narco team. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.”

  I stuck to the cover story, didn’t have a choice. “That’s right. Blue asked for me. Called the deputy chief and personally asked for me because he needed someone of color to do st
reet buys.”

  “Now it’s my turn to call bullshit.”

  “Why? Come on, tell me why you’re sayin’ that.”

  “Your boss on the violent crimes team was Robby Wicks.”

  “That’s right. So?”

  “You’re playing me for a fool here, Bruno, and I don’t like it.”

  She’d either backed away from the edge or she wasn’t undercover.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Really, I don’t.”

  She looked into my eyes, searching for the lie that wasn’t there. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll play along with this bullshit game you’re playin’. But not for much longer, you understand? And so help me, if you’re playing me—”

  “I’m not, I promise.”

  “You remember that story about Blue?”

  For a moment, I didn’t know what she meant. “Oh, the story from Gale Taylor, the sergeant working the women’s jail? The story about how Blue shot and killed his own father?”

  “That’s right—Gale. I also told you Gale said she was doing Blue, really tearing it up with him, remember? Well, she fell for Blue, fell hard. I didn’t put together the part about why you’re here, not right away. Not why you suddenly transferred from the violent crimes team. I did put it together, though, once I found out who your boss was over there in violent crimes, Robby Wicks. Then it came together all nice and neat.”

  “I’m sorry, Chelsea, I’m still not following you.”

  “Jesus, Bruno, I really hope you’re not playing me for a fool. If you’re not, you’re one big chump. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know which would be worse.”

  I said nothing. I didn’t want her to think ill of me. I really didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “Gale Taylor, the woman in the jail, she went back to using her maiden name. Her married name used to be Wicks.”

  Her words hung in the dry, heated air, unable to sink in because of the absolute havoc they would cause.