What You Don't See

by Tracy Clark

  “Who is it?” I asked before he could say anything.

  “No one we know. New detective. Eighteen months in.”

  I felt a selfish wave of relief that it wasn’t any of my friends, but the relief was short lived. A cop was dead. I felt the loss, mourned it, as though I’d lost a member of my family all the same.

  “Cass? She was partnered with Farraday.” Just the mention of the man’s name nearly took my breath away, and it felt like someone had just kicked me in the stomach. “They hit the door without calling for backup. Her first, him bringing up the rear. She caught a round to the head. Dead before she hit the ground.” Ben paused.

  He was waiting for me to say something, but I was still on Farraday. I was back on the roof where I had almost died, the taste of blood in my mouth as I lay dying; back to another door Detective James Farraday had barreled through, hoping to make his bones. Almost three years ago now. A pit grew in my stomach, my heart raced, and the years fell away. The rooftop was here, now, again.

  Ben continued. “I got the details from Corrigan. We used to work the same district. The news is just breaking, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”

  Farraday was a menace, a danger to himself and others. I’d said as much to the bosses, but they hadn’t listened, because Farraday was connected, the latest in a line of top-brass cops who shielded him from his own incompetence.

  She. Eighteen months in.

  We’d been after a banger on that roof, and I’d nearly talked him down. That was when Farraday had made his play. He had stumbled in, gun drawn, and it had all gone wrong. Jimmy Pick. That was the banger’s name. He hadn’t meant a thing to Farraday; neither had I, or Ben. I drew my hand up to my chest now, feeling for the healed-over spot where Pick’s bullet had pierced my flesh. Pick was dead. I killed him. I wouldn’t have had to had it not been for . . .

  “And him?” I croaked it out, my voice sounding far away.

  “Not a scratch. He’s blaming the screwup on her, but this time I don’t think it’s going to fly. This is about as bad as it gets.”

  I watched the people passing by, held the door, the phone sweaty in my hand.

  “I can sub you out if you want.” He was at the front of the club, watching who came in and who went out.

  “No. I’ve got it. Ben? How old was she?”

  He took a moment to answer. “Thirty-two. Second-generation cop. Had a two-year-old at home.”

  I ended the call, squared my shoulders, my fists clenched tight, shaking. “Oh, my God.”

  * * *

  Allen, peering through a pair of half-glasses, stared out the window of her limo as we rode up Michigan Avenue a short time later. The quiet was just fine by me. I didn’t feel like talking. Besides, I’d known Allen just two days, and already I’d had my fill of her. Elliott was at the wheel, Ben was beside him in the passenger seat, and I sat across from Allen, both of us trying not to look at each other. To pass the time, I stared at the normal people outside the window and longed for their company.

  I thought of my grandfather who had worked at a die-cast factory for more than forty years, day in, day out for union pay, and my grandmother who had worked just as long for the phone company before Ma Bell split up and died. They had been working people, not by any means wealthy. I got to college with good grades, a little set aside, and loans, which had taken me years to pay off. No one I knew, and no one they knew, ever rode in limousines, unless someone had died and they were part of a funeral procession.

  The three-flat I now owned was the only thing my grandparents had managed to scrape together, and I maintained it now because it had been theirs and they’d fought so hard to keep it. I’d never sell it. Never.

  It was not that I held Allen’s wealth against her, not really. It was just that, at a time when the gulf between the haves and the chronically disenfranchised had never been wider, the woman’s callousness and high-handedness struck me as niggardly, garish, almost indecent. I’d read her bio. She hadn’t been to the manor born. She’d grown up in the Robert Taylor Homes, the projects, just a few miles west from where we were now. But Allen had obviously forgotten where she came from, and those few short miles might as well be a million or more for all the attention she paid. I wondered about the working people who’d gotten her here. Was this how she honored them? Her cell phone rang. She answered it.

  “What do they want? You didn’t ask? Tell them I’m too busy to . . .” She listened for a bit, her mood darkening with every second. “Kaye, this is absolutely outrageous. I’m on my way in. I’ll give them exactly five minutes.” She ended the call and tossed the phone into her Hermès bag. “The police want to talk to me. What do either of you know about that?”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “I said I didn’t want the police involved.”

  Ben turned around in the front seat. “Yeah, we heard you. Not us.”

  She stared at me; I stared back.

  “And you?”

  I cocked my head toward Ben. “Like he said.”

  Allen removed her glasses, massaged the bridge of her nose. We were close to the office now, and the closer we got, the more worried she looked.

  I leaned forward, kept my voice low. “Let us help you.”

  She pulled away, back to the window and the people in the street. “I run it, Detective. It doesn’t run me.”

  I sighed, sat back, and let her be.

  Chapter 8

  Allen barreled into the reception area ahead of us, but there were no cops waiting. She gave poor Pamela the evil eye, heat oozing from every well-moisturized pore. “Well?” She made zero attempt to hide the nastiness in her delivery.

  The rattled receptionist shot up from her chair. “They’re waiting in your office with Ms. Chandler. Should I . . .”

  But Allen was gone, already stomping back toward whatever awaited her, determined, it seemed, to shut it down.

  Ben let out the mother of all sighs. “I say we hang out here while whatever’s going on back there stops going on.” But I was already on the move, following Allen back. “Or, second thought, go back and see what’s going on.”

  We were halfway down the hall when Chandler came rushing out of Allen’s office and saw us. “Philip Hewitt’s dead. Shot. Early this morning.” She swept past us. “I need to get his personnel file.”

  We watched her rush into her office; then Ben and I exchanged a look that had years of knowing each other in it. When we came to a stop in front of Allen’s partially open door, I peered inside her office to find Allen talking to two plainclothes detectives. I didn’t know the sensibly dressed Asian woman with the police star clipped to her belt, but I sure knew her partner. Detective Marcus Jones, who I hadn’t seen or heard from in two years, since the night I walked out on him. I registered the surprise first; then nausea flipped my stomach. I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing Marcus Jones again and not regretted it, but here he was. I could practically feel Ben’s mood change.

  “Of all the gin joints,” he muttered sourly. “This day will just not let up, and it’s not even ten o’clock yet.”

  Though I was thinking the exact same thing, I kept my mouth shut. I just stood there in the doorway with Ben, watching the cops and Allen, wishing I were someplace they weren’t.

  On the surface, Marcus made for a pretty package. Pushing forty, he looked like he hit the gym on the regular. He’d grown a mustache since I’d last seen him. He had sunglasses clipped to his belt, his star hanging from a chain around his neck, suave, conceit all but oozing out of every pore. I’d found out way too late that he was an incubus.

  Marcus Jones was a drafter who latched on to whatever coattail promised the greatest advantage. He played the power game, Marcus did, currying favor where he could, hoping in the end the other guy’s shine worked for him, too. Smooth and measured, he had taken to the glint of police brass and not to the stink of dirty alleys. But I hadn’t known half of that until that last night. I couldn’t have imagine
d that the teat he preferred to suckle from belonged to James Farraday, the cop who’d nearly gotten me killed, the same cop who just hours ago had coaxed his partner first through a door to get her head blown off.

  “Farraday’s guy,” Ben muttered under his breath. “Toss-up who’s the bigger prick.”

  I slid him a look. “Don’t. All right?”

  Marcus turned to see us standing there, but nothing registered on his face. I could have been anyone anywhere anytime, which said everything. I thought back to the last time we’d shared space. How could I forget it?

  “I saw the report,” Marcus said. “Mickerson got caught flat-footed, and you were slow to fire. You’re lucky Farraday was there to cover.”

  Neither was true. We’d tried to talk a cornered kid off a roof. Farraday had had other ideas. He’d wanted to be a hero. He’d wanted the notch in his belt.

  “There’d have been nothing to cover if he’d stayed out of it,” I countered.

  Marcus frowned, his arms akimbo. “I’m just going by what I read in the report.”

  “His report, not Ben’s, not mine, obviously. And why is that?” I paced the floor, turned back. “Scratch that. I know why. I just can’t believe it. He’s rotten, reckless, over his head. He shouldn’t be a cop. He doesn’t have what it takes. A kid is dead, and he shouldn’t be. Wouldn’t be if Farraday had let us do what we had to do.”

  “Look, I don’t want to fight about this. Take the win, that’s all I’m saying. You can literally write your own ticket now. Promotions come next. Stop sweating that dead banger. Stop stirring things up.” The words slipped off his lips like warm chocolate, smooth, sickening, a serpent’s lie.

  Or else, I thought. He hadn’t said the words, but I felt them hanging in the air all the same. There was a bullet scar right below my left clavicle. A couple of centimeters to the right and I’d be gone.

  He went on. “You’re okay. Out of the hospital. We got one dead gangbanger, no dead cops. That’s cause for celebration, so let’s celebrate.”

  I watched him uncork the wine, stymied for a moment. We were supposed to be cops, not assassins. That was something Farraday didn’t get, but I’d thought Marcus did. Oh my God. It struck me at that moment. I didn’t know the man at all.

  “I almost died,” I said. “Are you really okay gambling with the next cop’s life?”

  He poured a glass of red, took a sip, smiled. “But you didn’t, and I’m not gambling with anything. I’m standing on the blue line, where I’ve always been, where you should be. You want to be a social worker, go be a social worker. If you’re a cop, you get done what needs to get done.”

  I stared at him, seeing then what I’d missed.

  “Hold the line, Cass. It’s a lot safer that way.”

  Safer that way. His words echoed in my head. Was it a threat? I grabbed my bag, turned for the door. “Good-bye, Marcus.” By the time I walked out, I’d let him go.

  An elbow poked me in the side. It was Ben nudging me back to the present.

  “This is my security detail,” Allen said, waving us off. “This doesn’t concern them.”

  Marcus’s partner stepped forward and ID’d herself as Detective Tanaka. “Actually, Ms. Allen, we’ll need to talk to everybody.” She stared at the great lady, no give in the look. “Is there a particular reason you need bodyguards?”

  Ben and I stepped into the room. Allen didn’t answer, but the look she gave the cops was cold enough to frost glass. Marcus stared at Ben; Ben glared back. Neither liked the other, and they made no pretense to the contrary. Ben stood with me, though. I had brought him with me into the relationship, and he had come with me when I left it.

  “Especially a moonlighting cop and a PI?” Marcus added in a tone dipped in flat-out derision.

  Allen looked from him to us, suddenly interested in what wasn’t being said. “Do you know each other?”

  We were silent, her words having landed like a dud grenade.

  “Well?”

  “Tanaka’s the unknown element,” Ben offered glumly. “Otherwise, small world.”

  We stood around in a loose circle, cops, Allen, Ben and I, uncomfortable, awkward, years of crap thought under the bridge flowing back to loom large in our recollections, none of it pleasant.

  Allen frowned, took a seat at her desk. I kept my mouth shut; so did Ben. Thankfully, at that moment, Chandler rushed in with Hewitt’s file and handed it to Allen, who didn’t even bother opening it. Instead, she pushed it across the desk so Marcus could pick it up himself.

  “That’s all we have on him. He was competent enough. I know nothing about his personal business. Frankly, I’m not sure what else you think I can offer you.” Allen leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, her eyes appraising. “Muggings happen every day, don’t they?”

  Tanaka leveled her eyes at Allen. “You don’t look too broken up over it.”

  Allen let a moment go by. “His death is unfortunate. He owed me work. Broken up? I see no reason for that.”

  Marcus asked, “Did he have any enemies you know of?”

  She cocked her head. “I have no idea.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you dealt with the man much at all,” Tanaka said, clearly getting frustrated by all the nothing Allen was tossing her way. “You like that with all your staff?”

  Allen just stared at her. She was the most important person in the room at the moment, and she knew it. “Detective . . . Tanaka?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Yes?” Tanaka shifted so that she faced Allen full on.

  Allen grinned. “Nothing. Just making note of the name.”

  Tanaka reached into her pocket, pulled out a card case, extricated one of her business cards, and set it on Allen’s desk, tapping it with a forefinger for emphasis. “Tanaka.”

  Boss move. I liked her. I slid Ben a look. He was smiling. He liked her, too.

  “When’s the last time you saw Hewitt?” Marcus asked.

  Allen turned from Tanaka, steepled her fingers under her chin, smiled slightly. “Kaye?”

  Chandler had positioned herself beside Allen’s desk, ever at the ready. “Yesterday afternoon. He left around one. Four hours short of a full day. There were some items missing from his office. I made a list.”

  “What can you tell us about him?” Marcus said. He’d addressed Allen, but she made no attempt to answer. Instead, she waited on Chandler.

  “He wasn’t an easy person,” Chandler said. “He was combative, unruly. There is no emergency contact listed in his file. If he had family, he never said . . . I have no idea who to contact.”

  Tanaka scribbled in her notepad, glared at Allen. “We’ll take care of that.”

  Marcus looked at me. I held his glance, until he looked away. “But there’s been no trouble here?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” Allen shot back. “Now, if that’s all—”

  “Not hardly,” Tanaka bristled. “A man’s been killed.”

  Allen stared Tanaka down. “He wasn’t killed here.”

  “Maybe you’d like to answer these questions down at the district,” Marcus said.

  Allen laughed full out, as though she’d just heard the funniest joke ever. Then she stood up, calm as anything, placed her hands on the desk, and leaned over like some Wall Street titan about to gobble up a working stiff’s retirement fund. Her eyes went dark, like two knots of shiny coal, piercing. “Good one.” There was an edge to her voice, a concrete mixer of steel and ore. Allen didn’t go anywhere she didn’t want to go or do anything she didn’t want to do. She said, “As much as I’d like to see you try to pull that off, Detective . . . Jones, is it? I’m going to give you a freebie, a one-off. In the interest of time, mine, not yours. You have fifteen minutes to ask your questions—fifteen, not sixteen, not seventeen—or the next conversation the two of you will have will be with my attorneys. And if it comes to that, I guarantee that conversation will not be pleasant . . . for either of you.”

  The thr
eat hung in the air like pestilence, but Marcus and Tanaka held up. Neither flinched nor blinked nor withered under Allen’s stare.

  Marcus said, “We’ll take you first, alone, and then everybody else. How long it takes depends on the answers we get.”

  That was when Chandler bolted forward to smooth everything over. “I’m the one who works the closest with the staff. I should stay.”

  Allen slid in behind her desk again. “Shut the door behind you, Kaye. Detectives? Sit. The clock is ticking.”

  Rudely dismissed, Ben and I headed out, Chandler behind us. Out in the hall, she pulled the door closed, bolted for her office, and slammed the door behind her.

  Ben ran his hands through his short hair. “I bet she’s in there bawling her eyes out.”

  I shook my head, stared at Chandler’s door. “It’s like the ninth circle of Hell in here.”

  “I don’t know about any circles, but I’m down with the Hell part.” Ben sat down in his usual chair. I plopped down beside him in mine. I turned to look at him. “Hewitt dead. You don’t think—”

  “Who says I don’t?”

  Chapter 9

  Forty minutes later, we were still sitting outside Allen’s door, growing restless, not saying much. I pulled up the news reports on Hewitt’s death on my phone, to check again for updates, but the little we’d gotten from Marcus and Tanaka was apparently all there was for public consumption. The video clip showed red crime tape strung around Hewitt’s front door, uniforms milling around, and again in the news crawl, there was the latest news on the cop killed. She was Detective Marie Russo, married, the mother of a two-year-old daughter. Now she was dead, cold on a slab at the city morgue. I wondered where Farraday was right at this moment, and how he managed to live with himself.