by Cleo Coyle
Over all the chaos, a monotone voice droned. “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”
THIRTY-FOUR
THEY separated us immediately.
I heard Matt cry out in protest before a pair of DEA agents shoved me into the back of a van. Then it was a long, lonely ride to a faceless building under the High Line. I got only a brief glimpse of my surroundings before I was hustled through a glass door, pushed onto an elevator, and deposited in a dark, windowless cube.
I’d seen other interrogation rooms, and this one was no different—soundproofing, three walls, a trick mirror, a couple of chairs and a table. And like the last time I was in a place like this, I was handcuffed to a stationary object; in this case, a metal chair.
I knew what the agents were planning. Mike Quinn was one of the toughest, smartest interrogators in the New York Police Department, and I’d shared enough pillow talk with him to know how he thought, and how he worked.
Mike walked into an interview room like a lawyer going into the first day of trial—or (apparently) a Brazilian drug lord trying to turn a coffee broker. He learned almost everything he could about his suspect, including what he or she cared about most in the world—and especially what would hurt them the most.
If he didn’t know, Mike grilled his suspect until he discovered it. Once revealed, he hammered that idea until the suspect broke. Then he used the suspect’s statements against him (or her). Whether they were truth or lies, any statements had the potential to give police and attorneys exactly what they needed to charge and convict.
That’s what was in store for me.
I closed my eyes, mentally preparing myself for it. The absolute smartest thing I could do now was ask for a lawyer and clam up.
They will not break me, I vowed. Whatever they try, I won’t say a word…
I glanced at my empty wrist, forgetting that the agents had taken all of my personal possessions, including my watch, even the Claddagh ring Mike had given me. I imagined them going through my purse, my wallet, the pictures I carried around. Photos of my daughter, my cats, of Mike…
The door opened, jerking me back from that dark place to this one.
“Oh, no,” said a woman’s voice. “Did they leave you sitting in the dark?”
Yeah, lady, like it was an accident.
Suddenly the room was flooded with fluorescent lights. I blinked against the glare, my eyes tearing. When my vision cleared, I saw white blond hair, pale water-blue eyes, a mannish jacket, and billowing slacks the color of burnt coals.
The woman slapped a manila folder on the table between us and sat down. “So,” she said, linking her hands.
I let the word hang in the air.
“Can I get you anything—”
“A lawyer,” I said, loud and clear. “I want a lawyer.”
“A glass of water? How about a soft drink? We have a machine.”
I said nothing.
“All right, Clare… May I call you Clare?”
Call me anything you like, but call a lawyer first, was my unspoken reply.
“That’s a beautiful name, by the way…”
Shut up.
“My name is Virginia Blanco, I’m a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.” She leaned across the table. “I think we both know why you’re here, Clare. But maybe this is all a mistake. Maybe we can clear it up right here, right now.”
Sure, Virginia. And pigs fly…
Special Agent Blanco opened the folder, flipped through the pages. I avoided the temptation to peek.
“So you manage a coffeehouse?”
My lips remained firmly pressed together.
“You know, Clare, if you’re not going to speak with me, I might as well go back to the other interrogation room. Your husband”—Ex-husband!—“is spinning some pretty amazing tales in there. And those stories are about you, Clare. They’re all about you.”
Matt’s not talking. I know he’s not. You’re allowed to lie in here, and you’re lying now…
“Of course, you don’t have to speak with me if you don’t want to. We can just sit here in silence—”
Great idea. So shut up, already.
“Or I can tell a few stories of my own.” Special Agent Blanco closed the folder again. “When I was training for this job, my psychology instructor taught us that the mousy, quiet ones were the toughest to crack, pardon the pun.”
Special Agent Blanco studied her fingernail. “Like the little old lady who sells crystal meth to school kids. Or a seemingly innocent coffeehouse manager who smuggles Brazilian crack.”
Not true. I’m not guilty of anything! I was dying to shout the truth, scream it. But I bit my cheek instead.
Frowning, Blanco leaned across the table, so close I could smell her shampoo. “I can break you, Clare Cosi. And I will.”
Oh, yeah, honey? Bring it on.
“My instructor was right about one thing,” Blanco continued. “You meek, quiet ones are stone-cold monsters.”
Yeah, that’s me. Godzilla with an apron.
“A sociopath, he’d call you.”
I’m a lady, so I can’t call you what I’d like to call you…
“A sociopath has no empathy. They don’t care who they hurt. Friends. Lovers. Their own children.”
Blanco tapped the folder with her index finger. “By the way, did you know your daughter, Joy, visited Marseilles last week? A city known for heroin smuggling? Are you using your daughter to establish another drug route, Clare?”
Leave my daughter out of this, you b—
“Only a sociopath would use their own daughter to commit a felony. Only a sociopath would wrap a good cop like Michael Francis Quinn around her finger, blind him to the fact that he’s actually sleeping with a drug dealer.”
Shut up!
“You quiet ones are patient, I’ll give you that. How long were you planning this operation, Clare? The timeline is amazing. First you divorce your first husband, separate for over a decade. Then suddenly you’re back, living above the coffeehouse, your ex-husband a part of the business. Was that the plan all along?”
There’s no plan. There’s only my life and the choices I’ve made. If I had a plan, I never would have gotten pregnant when I was nineteen!
“I admire you, Clare. You’re smarter than most. Did you wrap your ex-husband around your finger, too? Or is Mr. Allegro a willing accomplice?”
The gods couldn’t twist Matt around their fingers. What hope did I have of reining the man in?
“And Mike Quinn? Besides turning the guy into a patsy and burning his career at the NYPD, what do you have planned for the detective? Corruption? Murder?” Blanco leaned forward again. “You don’t really love the guy, do you? You can’t. A sociopath isn’t capable of love.”
I love him. I’ve loved him for a long time…
“Is that the point of that sappy ‘friendship ring’ instead of a real diamond? Does Mike have cold feet, or is it you, Clare?”
You don’t understand. Sometimes love isn’t enough. I don’t want to make another mistake.
“If you really do love Mike Quinn, then answer one question. Why did your ex-husband spend the night with you while Mike was out of town?”
Oh, god…
“Still silent? I guess I’ll have to put the same question to Detective Quinn, and see how he replies.”
Oh, god… oh, god… My face felt hot and my heart began to race. I didn’t tell Mike. I was so tired after Lilly’s hit-and-run… half-awake… I forgot. I didn’t think it would matter. And now…
A lump swelled in my throat. I tried to swallow, felt hot tears. I pretended not to notice as the first drop trickled down my cheek. Through a watery blur I saw Virginia Blanco’s smug smile, and began to sob.
She broke me… The woman broke me…
I heard the door open. A portly man with a receding hairline stuck his head into the room. “Lieuten
ant Quinn is here,” he said.
Blanco noticed my sharp gasp, and her smile went from obnoxious to insufferable. “That was fast,” she told the man. “My god, that poor cop must have a real Jones for this one…”
Grabbing the file, Blanco left the room. But she didn’t close the door this time. I was certain she’d left it open on purpose, so I could hear the terrible things they were going to tell Mike.
But if that was the plan, it backfired, because the DEA agents hardly had a chance to speak. It was Michael Quinn who dominated the conversation, and them.
What I was about to hear, for the first time in my life, was Michael Ryan Francis Quinn Unleashed.
THIRTY-FIVE
“YOU’RE holding my people,” Mike began in a dead-cold tone. “I want to see them now.”
“Your people?” Blanco snapped back. “What are you trying to—”
“My people, you moron! My assets in your wonk-assed administration parlance. Matteo Allegro and Clare Cosi are mine. They work for me!” He was a lion now, absolutely roaring. “When you grabbed them up, you jeopardized everything!”
“How can that be?” It was a man’s voice this time.
“Dig the graft out of your ears, Special Agent Weiss, and listen. When you blundered into that warehouse, you may have jinxed a sting operation that took thousands of man hours to set up!”
“What?” Weiss responded. “We were never informed of that!”
“You didn’t inform anybody on my squad before you pulled your asinine raid, either!”
“We dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s,” Blanco replied. “The paperwork will cross your desk on Monday. So listen up, Quinn, if you think we’re going to release—”
A trilling phone interrupted Special Agent Blanco. In the ensuing silence I imagined all three of them staring at the thing.
“The call is for you, Weiss,” Mike said smugly.
It trilled again.
“I think you’d better answer it.”
“Special Agent Darryl Weiss speaking…”
A long silence ensued, followed by a couple of respectful “yes, sirs” and “thank you, sirs” followed by a crisp “good night.” Then Special Agent Weiss hung up.
“So…” Mike said.
“Who called?” Blanco asked, voice tense. “Was it the director?”
“No,” said Weiss. “Higher up.”
“What do you mean, higher up?” Blanco demanded. “How high?”
“That call came from God.”
Dead silence ensued.
God? I thought. Who was God? Certainly not the real God. The real God didn’t call DEA agents in the dead of night.
When Special Agent Weiss spoke again, his tone was conciliatory, almost apologetic. “What can we do to fix this, Lieutenant Quinn?”
“I want your people out of Allegro’s warehouse ASAP,” Mike replied. “If my targets think the DEA is sniffing around, they’ll turn tail and run—and if that happens, I’m coming back here with a machete to collect heads.”
“What else?”
“I want any and all phone taps you have on my people gone, instantly. Surveillance by your agents is over. I don’t care what you do with them—take them to Central Park and put them on a merry-go-round, but get them the hell off this case tonight!”
“Consider it done.”
“Good. Now send this woman to fetch Clare Cosi.”
“Fetch?” Blanco spat back. “Who do you think you—”
“Do as the man says, Virginia.”
A frowning Special Agent Virginia Blanco refused to meet my gaze as she unlocked my cuffs. I ignored her, too. Rubbing my sore wrists, I rose on unsteady legs.
I should have felt liberated, like a great weight had been lifted. I had been rescued, after all. But as bad as this experience had been, I knew things could get much worse. So far, I’d only sparred with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Now I had to face Crazy Quinn.
THE kitchen clock read 4:23 AM when Matt, Quinn, and I arrived at the apartment above the Blend. Out of habit, or perhaps necessity, I began to prepare a pot of coffee.
“No,” Mike said, taking the pot right out of my hand and setting it aside. “Sit down, Clare. I have things to say. You, too, Allegro.”
I dried my hands and sat at the table. Matt sunk into a chair across from me, hair disheveled, an angry bruise below his left eye. (He didn’t say how he got it, and I didn’t ask. Rough interrogation was possible. But, knowing Matt, it would have to be resisting arrest.)
Not a word had been spoken by any of us during our brief, tense drive from the DEA’s headquarters on Tenth Avenue to my apartment above the Blend.
By now, “Crazy Quinn” was gone, but he’d been replaced by another stranger. This Quinn was inaccessible, but not in the taciturn way I’d seen him act in the past. This Quinn was brooding and, I feared, simmering with unspent rage.
I studied Mike’s stony face, tried to meet his gaze, but the man was someplace else. So I took a breath, let it out, and told myself to hang in there and stay tough. Mike and I hadn’t been together in days, and this was hardly the reunion I’d anticipated, but things could have gone far worse tonight for me and Matt.
“Listen up, Allegro,” Quinn snapped, leaning across the table. “You’re not out of the woods yet. Not even close. You could still lose your warehouse, your business, and do hard time in a federal penitentiary—”
Matt pounded the table. “But we’re the victims here.”
“You’re the victims? Oh, great. So we’re going with the plea of choice for nine out of ten hotel heiresses caught with the wrong white powder in their compacts, otherwise known as the ‘that’s not my cocaine’ defense?”
“But it’s not!”
“Shut up and listen. I’ll hear your side of the story later, after we all get some sleep. But before we can close our eyes, I have to lay down a few rules. Obey them, or we’re all going to face some pretty ugly consequences for what went down tonight.”
The chair creaked as Matt leaned back again.
“As of this moment you both work for me. You’re assets, informants, snitches. You will cooperate with the NYPD in all matters pertaining to this investigation. Is that understood?”
I couldn’t nod fast enough, but Matt was, as usual, resisting.
“What do you mean, cooperate?” he griped.
“I mean you will do everything I tell you to do,” Quinn said. “In my absence, you will do everything my squad tells you to do. You will talk to these drug dealers when they contact you. You will pretend to play along. You will meet with them if I deem it necessary, and wear a wire at that meeting.”
“Didn’t you catch that article in the Wall Street Journal?” Matt replied. “The one about how tight neckties cut off oxygen to the brain?”
“And if you don’t want to cooperate with me, I can give you back to Weiss and Blanco and you can deal with them.”
Matt slumped in his chair. “My lifelong ambition is finally fulfilled. I’ve become a rat for the NYPD.”
“I don’t require that you like it, Allegro. But for all our sakes, you have to do it.”
Matt nodded, at last admitted, “I know.”
“Later today, I’ll meet with my squad and dole out new assignments. Everybody under me, and I mean every body, is going to be on this case. We’ll obtain warrants to tap your business and personal phones, and set up surveillance at the warehouse and here at the Blend. Everything should be in place by noon.”
“Geez, you work fast,” Matt said.
“I have to,” Quinn said, “and do you know why? Because we have maybe one week to clear this up. In ten lousy days max my deal with the powers that be will expire. If we don’t have a decent lead by then, you’ll end up in custody, and I’ll likely be swept up for internal review.”
For the first time that night, I felt Mike’s ice blue gaze fix on me. “You’re part of this, too, Clare. Buckman called me about the hit-and-run. The DEA to
ld me about the shots fired—by the way, that’s why they moved in on you two so fast. They saw Brooklyn locals on the case and they didn’t want to lose the collar. Either way, your life is in danger, so until this is over, Sergeant Emmanuel Franco will be a member of the Blend staff.”
Matt groaned. “Oh, man… not him.”
“Train Franco, Clare, make him look convincing as a barista—”