Badge of Evil

by Bill Stanton

  “How is it, A. J., that I’m here at eight thirty in the morning, eight thirty in the morning,” she continued, “to pull some strings and browbeat a few people so I can bail your assistant out of jail? Someone, anyone, please explain that to me. I just lost my client and his entire fuckin’ family. I’ve got every newspaper and TV station on my back. Do you have any idea how many phone calls and e-mails I’ve gotten in the last five or six hours? Believe me, you don’t. And on top of that, I’ve gotta go practically all night without being able to get ahold of my crack private investigator because he’s babysitting your assistant,” she said, glaring at A. J. “And why is he doing that? Is it to benefit my case somehow? No. It’s on the pathetic hope that he can get in her pants. It’s unbelievable. I’m surrounded by incompetence. I have to do everything myself.”

  With a nice dramatic flourish, she spun around, scooped up her coat, and started toward the exit. Without missing a beat, her driver was in position, standing like a sentry, ready to hold the door open so she could depart. On her way out, she paused one final time and turned to face the table. “While I’m downtown making sure A. J.’s pretty little assistant doesn’t have to spend the weekend in jail, perhaps the rest of you can do something useful for a change. Like figuring out what the fuck is going on, for starters. And, A. J., you smug son of a bitch, you owe me. Big time. I’ll be back in two hours.” With that, she was gone.

  “You gotta love the set of balls on that woman,” Bell said, laughing.

  “She gets the job done,” A. J. said. “If Lucy had just about any other lawyer handling this she’d be cooling her jets in a cell until Monday morning. And my money says she comes back from downtown with Supreme as her new client.”

  “She’s calculating and aggressive,” Bishop said, “but you think she’s that calculating and aggressive? It’s only been a few hours since the whole goddamned Jafaari family went belly-up. Somewhere under all those expensive clothes, even Victoria has some feelings, right?”

  A. J. just looked at him.

  “Okay, you’re right. Supreme’s a lock,” Bishop conceded. “You think she sleeps in her makeup? Who the hell looks that perfect at eight thirty in the morning? How long you think it takes her to get ready?”

  Bell shook her head. “On that note, I’m going home to bed. You guys should do the same. Send John home after he feeds you. And the porters’ll lock up after you leave.”

  When Bell gathered her things, Bishop directed his two guys to take her home. Then it was just A. J. and Bishop, sitting alone at the front table. For a moment, neither man said anything and the only sounds in the restaurant were the muffled voices of the porters and the occasional splat of a wet mop hitting the floor.

  “The way it went down was surreal,” Bishop said, breaking the silence. “You couldn’t even hear the shots because of the music and the people going nuts over the money Supreme was throwing into the crowd. When you think about it,” he continued, taking his phone off his belt and putting it on the table, “it’s the perfect place and time to commit a crime. It’s like a riot, so nobody hears or notices anything. And they don’t give a shit even if they do. I heard no shots and all of a sudden the bodyguard’s head just explodes. Hardly anybody even saw it; they were too busy scrambling for the cash. I only saw it ’cause he was standing right by Lucy and I was watching her. I really tried, but by the time I was able to fight through the crowd and get anywhere close to her, she was being pulled into Supreme’s car.”

  “Hey,” John the waiter said, coming out of the kitchen, straining a little because he had both arms loaded with plates of hot food. “Where’d everybody go?”

  “No worries,” Bishop said. “Everything smells great. Just put the plates down and we’ll have a buffet. Just make sure you give me my chicken.”

  Bishop saw A. J. staring at him. “What?” he said as John laid the plates down on the table. “I told you I did the best I could but there was no way to get to her.”

  “Chicken,” A. J. said incredulously. “You’re eating roast chicken and mashed potatoes for breakfast? What’re we, in college? You want a beer with that?”

  The table was crowded with plates of eggs, pancakes, bacon, and toast. The only exception was right in front of Bishop. He was about to dig into the previous night’s dinner special.

  “What time you have?” Bishop asked.

  “Eight forty-five,” A. J. said.

  “That’s funny,” Bishop said smiling. “I’ve got nine o’clock.”

  “Okay, what’s your point?”

  “You have your time, I have my time. My stomach doesn’t wear a watch,” Bishop told him. “It wants chicken, I give it chicken. Get off my fucking back!”

  Before John left, he brought in all the morning papers, which A. J. and Bishop read intently and mostly in silence. They were desperate to get as much information as they could about what happened to Lucy and Supreme as well as to the Jafaari family. While he was reading the half dozen newspapers, A. J. watched in amazement as Bishop methodically worked his way through about three-quarters of the food on the table. Not only did he devour the roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and string beans, he also ate an order of pancakes, three eggs over easy, bacon, and at least one piece of toast. When he started on a plate of sausage, A. J. could no longer restrain himself.

  “You always eat like this?” he asked.

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “What do I mean?” A. J. said. “What I mean is, like a pig, like someone who hasn’t had any food in a week, like someone who’s not going to have any food for another week, like a condemned man. I swear, you’ve got the biggest fucking appetite I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’m hungry,” Bishop responded while putting a sausage in his mouth. “I didn’t have dinner last night. What the fuck, anyway? What’re you, my mother?”

  “Whatever,” A. J. said, rolling his eyes.

  The two men sat with their plates in front of them, facing the TV, which hung above the front door of the restaurant near the bar. All morning, the cable networks had been running teasers for a live announcement by the president introducing New York City police commissioner—and “hero in the war on terror”—Lawrence Brock as his choice to be secretary of Homeland Security.

  “Unbelievable,” A. J. said right after one of the promos for the Brock announcement. “Well, at least I get another chapter for my book.”

  “What’s unbelievable?” Bishop asked. “Brock’s nomination? What book?”

  “Yeah,” A. J. said. “Brock’s nomination. I mean, who would believe that could happen? A cabinet post for a knock-around guy like him? A guy with his background? Man, it gets harder all the time not to be completely cynical and disillusioned. It’s a book I joke about writing called Why Good Things Happen to Bad People.”

  Bishop smiled. “I like that. Listen,” he said during a break in the news, “about last night—”

  “I already told you,” A. J. said, interrupting him, “I don’t hold you—”

  “I got that,” Bishop said, cutting him off and pushing his plate away like he was finally done eating. “But the truth is, I don’t even know what the fuck I was doing there. I mean, Lucy asked me to go, okay. But there’s obviously something going on here I don’t know about. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what this has to do with anything.”

  “Well, last night notwithstanding, Supreme’s got nothing to do with you,” A. J. said. “Remember a couple of weeks ago, that detective was found dead with a hooker in his house in the Hamptons? It was classified a murder-suicide.”

  “Sure, I remember thinking it was a strange story. There were all kinds of things about it that didn’t seem to make sense. What was the cop’s name again?”

  “Kevin Anderson,” A. J. said.

  “Right, Kevin Anderson. When that story broke, one of my investigators mentioned he was briefly assigned to the same precinct as Anderson, who was like some kind of one-man wrecking crew trying to wipe out the drug business sin
gle-handedly.”

  “As it turns out, he was a one-man wrecking crew trying to wipe out the competition. He was in the drug business.”

  A. J. recounted Supreme’s story in detail. The mysterious voice mails he’d left for A. J. at the magazine, his meeting with Lucy at his town house when he told her all about Anderson and the drug business, and his pronounced fear that someone was going to kill him—the same way they killed Kevin Anderson. “I was a little skeptical about the threat, but I’d say last night pretty much confirms his claim,” A. J. said.

  “I’m guessing you think there’s something else going on,” Bishop said.

  “Well, you were a cop. You tell me. Don’tcha think it’s been a pretty unusual couple of weeks? I mean, first there’s a high-profile murder-suicide in the Hamptons. How often’s that happen? Then Supreme starts calling and leaving me panicky messages about the urgent need for a sit-down. Next there’s the commissioner’s one-man war on terror, his ‘Great Raid,’ that leaves four Muslims, and actually now a fifth, dead. And the commissioner—the fucking New York City police commissioner—shot at least one or maybe even two of them himself. Now we have yesterday’s murder-suicide of the Jafaaris and last night’s attempt to kill Supreme.”

  “It could just be coincidence,” Bishop said. “This is New York, shit does happen.”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  “Okay, Sherlock, what’s the connection?”

  “I don’t know,” A. J. said with a heavy sigh, clearly frustrated. “That’s the problem. But there’s something going on here. It’s right in front of us. You’re the fuckin’ detective; help me out.”

  “It is compelling, I’ll give you that,” Bishop conceded. “But there’s no common thread. And even if there was, what the fuck do we care? It’s not gonna put any shekels in my pocket, is it? No, it’s not. My case is over.”

  “We care because people were killed—your client, for chrissakes—and the way things look now, the killing’s probably not finished. And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re kind of in the middle of it.”

  “Maybe you’re in the middle of it, ’cause you’ve got a couple of stories going here on the commissioner and Supreme. But like you said, my client’s dead. I’m done.”

  A. J. ran his hands through his hair a couple of times and then folded his arms across his chest. “All right,” he said after a few moments, “let me try this another way. Even if you don’t care about police corruption and a couple of dead people you don’t really know, what about the bigger picture?”

  “What bigger picture?” Bishop said with a little smile, clearly enjoying A. J.’s frustration with him.

  “Doesn’t it bother you at all that the president’s about to announce that he’s picked Lawrence Brock to become director of Homeland Security? Aren’t you just a little concerned about that? You know his reputation probably better than I do. He’s a bully and a taker who’s not exactly known for his ethical standards. Is that who you want in charge of the country’s security? Don’t you give a shit about anything other than yourself?”

  “That’s exactly the kind of red, white, and blue bullshit that got me into this in the first place,” Bishop said, no longer amused. “Victoria ran that same game on me about patriotism and the flag and all the rest of that crap. That’s how I ended up working for a terrorist. Well, know what? I’m taking the kid’s murder as an unexpected but welcomed out for me. I see it as a lucky break to get off a case I shouldn’t have been on in the first place.”

  Before A. J. could respond, the front door flew open and Victoria swept in with a subdued Lucy not far behind her. Victoria looked almost radiant. Her cheeks were a little flushed, no doubt from the running around she’d been doing. Nothing made her eyes brighter than a good fight, and now she had a fresh one. While she’d gotten Lucy arraigned and out of jail, she was less successful with her other new client: Supreme. But partial success only made her more energized.

  Lucy, on the other hand, looked terrible—as terrible as someone could look with near-perfect cheekbones, flawless skin, snow-white teeth, and a nose that every sixteen-year-old getting rhinoplasty would kill for, anyway. She was still in the same clothes she had been wearing at the club, including the blouse stained with the blood of Supreme’s bodyguard.

  As soon as Lucy saw A. J., she wanted to run to him. But she controlled herself, knowing everyone was watching. She certainly didn’t want Bishop to see her vulnerable, to see her acting, as he would probably put it, like a girl. Lucy walked over to A. J. and he put his arms around her and held her the way he would have held his daughter. Though he knew men his age who were having affairs with women younger than Lucy, that wasn’t A. J.’s style. He had too much character for that. Though he would never have admitted it, lest he get branded a chauvinist, or at the very least an anachronism, he felt responsible for her in a kind of old-fashioned way. Though she was incredibly beautiful, his affection for her was paternal, not sexual.

  Lucy had managed to maintain her composure through the shooting, the crazy scramble to get out of the club in the middle of a near riot, the arrest, and the arraignment. But now, with her head buried in A. J.’s chest, she lost it. She burst into tears and sobbed quietly.

  “You want something to drink?” A. J. asked her after a few minutes when she stopped crying and regained control.

  “I guess a cup of coffee would be nice,” she said softly. “But what I’d really like is to get out of these clothes, take a shower, and sleep for about a week. I feel so dirty.”

  “Of course,” A. J. said, glancing at his watch. “I just need you to hold on for a little longer. I need you to tell me what happened. I’m sure you’ve already gone over everything ad nauseam with Victoria and the cops, but I need to hear it. It’s important. If you want, you can wash up a little first in the back.”

  Lucy shook her head no and began to go through the evening for A. J.: the silly small talk with Bishop, the mistake of having several vodkas, Supreme’s entrance, the insanity when he “made it rain,” and the shooting. A. J., following his own advice, didn’t interrupt her. He let Lucy get out whatever she needed to expel. He took a few notes while she talked.

  “I was standing next to Supreme and throwing the money for maybe fifteen seconds when I felt a splash on my face. I had no idea what it was. The only way I can describe it is it felt like someone had thrown half-set, warm Jell-O on me. Then, almost in the same instant, the bodyguard fell backward, pushing me into Supreme. I tried wiping my face, and when I took my hand away I saw it was blood. I thought I was gonna lose it. Just for like a split second, just before I felt the splash on my face, I saw a strange long-haired white guy wearing sunglasses out in the crowd raise and point what looked like a gun. But I turned when the bodyguard fell on me, and when I looked back out over the dance floor, the long-haired guy had vanished into the crowd.”

  “My guess is that guy was the shooter,” A. J. said. “Listen, I’m really proud of the way you’ve handled yourself.”

  A. J. told her he’d get her home shortly. What he wanted to do was bring her home with him and have her spend a little time with Nikki, just to make sure she was okay. Lucy didn’t protest.

  “Hey,” Victoria yelled, “get a load of this.” On the television, the president was walking confidently toward a lectern with Lawrence Brock alongside him. The lectern was set up in front of a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback, dressed in his uniform as commander of the Rough Riders. The big, beautiful, wild-looking horse had reared up on its hind legs and Roosevelt, sitting majestically on its back, exuded strength, courage, and leadership. Son of a bitch, A. J. said to himself, they’re making the announcement in the Roosevelt Room. Primarily used as a conference room, it was not the usual choice for this kind of event, but A. J. had to admit it was a perfect symbolic choice—in addition to being one of America’s best-known presidents, Roosevelt happened to be New York City’s most famous police commissioner.

  Ev
eryone in Bell’s went silent as the president stepped to the microphone and Brock, in a nicely tailored gray suit, white shirt, and red tie, stood about a step behind him on his left side. With his chest out, his shoulders back, and his gaze fixed on the commander in chief, Brock looked very confident. “Good morning,” the president began. “I’m proud to announce my nomination of Commissioner Lawrence Brock as the secretary of Homeland Security.” Right on cue, Victoria let loose a huge raspberry. “Very mature,” A. J. said, laughing.

  “Lawrence Brock is one of the most accomplished and effective leaders of law enforcement in America,” the president continued. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a deep commitment to justice, a heart for the innocent, and a record of great success.”

  “All right,” Victoria said loudly, “that’s it. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t take any more of this. It’s bad enough that fat skirt chaser, who by the way hits on me every fucking time I see him, has become some kind of national hero and he’s keeping me off the front page, but Homeland Security? Jesus Christ.”

  As Victoria ranted, A. J. continued to catch pieces of the president’s introduction of Brock. “. . . he understands the duties that came to America on September 11. Commissioner Brock takes that responsibility so seriously, so personally, that last week he put his own life at risk in the active pursuit of those who seek to destroy us. In the name of freedom, he rushed into a dark, danger-filled apartment—”

  “A. J., A. J.” The sound from the TV cut out, and A. J. realized Victoria was calling his name, waving the remote in her hand.

  “Uh, sorry,” he said a little sheepishly, “I was listening to the president.”

  “Well, now it’s time to listen to me,” Victoria bellowed. “We need to figure out what the fuck is going on here. First off, I’m now representing Supreme. Bishop, that means your lazy ass is still on the payroll.”