Risky Behavior

by L. A. Witt

  “Shut up,” Asher said, but he didn’t sound too upset. “I guess I did. I was angry about work.” He chuckled, and shit, now he sounded upset. “I didn’t remember that I don’t have it anymore.”

  “But you do now?”

  “At the moment.”

  “Good.”

  “For a given value of good.”

  “Don’t lawyer talk at me. Eat your damn dinner.”

  “Pasta casserole.” Asher poked the plate with his fork. “Must be a Monday.”

  I grinned. “You remembered that right!”

  “Who could forget? It’s part of Mom’s weekly meal system.” We shared a smile, but his dropped off after a few seconds. “I won’t remember it forever, though.” He put his plate on the bed and shoved it away. “I don’t want to forget it. It’s a stupid fucking thing to remember, compared to my work and Melissa and all those years of school, but the thought of forgetting which day is casserole day scares the shit out of me.”

  I put my own food aside and leaned in. “But you haven’t forgotten it. It’s still in there, same as always.”

  “But it won’t be forever.” The way he looked at me, half-scared and half-desperate, let me know that we weren’t really talking about pasta casserole anymore. You won’t be in my head forever, the look screamed. I won’t even be in my own head.

  “Hey.” I reached out and took his hand. He gripped me back so hard I could feel my fingers creak. “You think I’m going to let you go just like that? You know me, I’m a tenacious little shit. I will irritate you so hard you’ll wish you could forget about me, but it’s never going to happen. I’m with you for life, dumbass.” I let go of him and sat back. “Now drink your beer, and let me tell you all about my new partner.”

  “New partner? What happened to Ruiz?”

  Carlos Ruiz and I hadn’t been partners for two years. I kept my face placid, though. “Ruiz took a position in San Diego. This new guy, though, he more than gives Ruiz a run for his money in the asshole department.”

  “Yeah?” Asher looked a little smug. “Does that mean you’ve got an even bigger crush on this one?”

  “You want to listen, or do you want to make more dumb jokes all night?”

  “I’ll listen.” He leaned back against the wall and crossed his legs, then grabbed his dinner. “Tell me about your new partner.”

  “You look like shit.”

  Hello to you too. “Now I’m glad I didn’t bring you coffee,” I said from where I was crouched beside my chair. Fuck being able to swivel it, I just wanted to sit down without getting an ab workout. “You clearly don’t deserve it.”

  “Good thing I brought my own, then.” Andreas sat, but he didn’t do anything, just watched me fuss with propping up my chair until the gimpy leg was stable. I took my seat gingerly, then relaxed a little when it didn’t immediately fall over again. “Problems with those?” he asked, gesturing to the files.

  “Nah, I got through them by six.”

  “Then why are you so beat?”

  I could just not tell him. It would serve him right, frankly, since he hadn’t bothered to tell me shit. Plausible deniability aside, I felt the imbalance of information between us like a broken bone―aching, grinding, capable of being ignored for a while but impossible to forget. This was my chance to even the scales a little.

  Or I could just not be a sleep-deprived jackass and tell him. “I had a late night with my brother. He needed some help and I didn’t want to leave until he was okay.”

  Andreas tilted his head. I thought he was going to ask for details, but all he said was, “And now he is?”

  “Yeah.” Until the next bad day. “I’ll be fine as long as I don’t stop caffeinating myself. Who are we going after next? Because I’ve got to say, correlating Jake’s list of suspects with the info in those files? I’m not even sure whether some of the people he mentioned are still alive.”

  Andreas didn’t smile, but he kind of looked like he wanted to, a little tilt at the corners of his eyes. “Well, now that you’re up-to-date on all this”—he tapped the files—“let’s go get an early lunch and I’ll fill you in on the rest.”

  I wasn’t all that hungry. In fact, I’d been nauseated ever since I’d taken my meds this morning—probably since I’d taken them on an empty stomach—and the thought of food made me want to gag.

  But the department’s open-plan office meant we’d either have to talk about this at our desks with too many potential eavesdroppers nearby, or go find a conference room, and I was pretty sure those conference room walls had ears. That probably made me paranoid. Fine. The shoe fit. Just because a guy’s paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get him.

  Which made it almost hilarious that I was taking my in-bed-with-IA new partner someplace else so we could talk without being heard. Except IA wasn’t the issue here. They were only concerned with how I handled things and my unorthodox means of acquiring information and arrests.

  The rest of the department—my “trusted colleagues”—wanted details about the investigation. I’d heard the gossip. Everyone believed I was just dicking off and dragging this investigation out because it was my only assignment. They were all drowning under enormous caseloads. This—taking down the city’s elaborate narcotics ring—was my entire focus. As a result, people wanted to elbow their way in, take it down, and get me back to handling a dozen cases at a time like the rest of them.

  I didn’t care about the workload or about sharing the glory. I just happened to know from experience that if someone tried to jump in and accelerate things, people got killed. Sometimes cops. Sometimes informants. Sometimes innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if we didn’t take down everyone, if we didn’t yank this weed by its rotten, connected roots, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. I couldn’t just arrest the big players, not even Blake, no matter how many reams of warrants had his name on them, because someone would swoop in and take his place. In ways I wasn’t yet ready to explain to my partner, Blake was the least of my concerns.

  This investigation had to be handled delicately, and the information had to be guarded like nuclear secrets.

  So, now that it was time for Darren to learn some of the finer details, I drove us to a small mom-and-pop deli near the river. Ironically, it was a place I’d discovered when an old partner and I had been investigating some bodies found on the riverbank nearby. After canvassing the area for witnesses and scouring the crime scene for evidence, we’d been starving and happened across this place. I’d been coming here ever since.

  I parked out front, fished my wallet out of my pocket, and offered Darren a twenty. “Ham and cheese croissant and a large coffee. Black. And get something for yourself.”

  He looked at the money, then at me. After a few seconds, he must’ve realized I wasn’t kidding. Rolling his eyes, he grabbed the money and got out of the car, but apparently forgot to slam the door until after he’d muttered, “Not your damn servant, asshole.”

  I chuckled. What fun was having a partner if I couldn’t fuck with him once in a while?

  Minutes later, he returned with the food. As soon as he was in the car, the scents of fresh bread, coffee, and grilled ham and cheese were almost overpowering, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from puking. I’d feel better after I ate. Always did. But man, this part sucked.

  Unaware of my queasiness, Darren unwrapped something that smelled fucking awful.

  “Jesus.” I grimaced. “What the fuck is that? Week-old fish?”

  “Well yeah.” He looked at me with sarcastic innocence. “You didn’t give me enough cash for the fresh fish.”

  “Jackass,” I muttered, and forced down a bite of my own sandwich, which was suddenly a lot more appetizing compared to the ungodly mess in his hand. Then I rolled down the driver’s-side window. The river smelled like brackish swamp water, but somehow that was less offensive than whatever he was eating.

  “Better?” he asked just before he took a bite.

&nb
sp; “All right, new rule—if we’re eating in the car, nothing that smells like it came from the morgue trash can.”

  “Fair enough.” He sipped his soda. “Or we could just, you know, sit in the deli next time.”

  “No. Because the whole point of being out here is to give you some more details about our investigation.”

  “So?” He took another bite. God, how did people eat that shit?

  “This information is need to know.” I pointed at the deli. “Nobody in there needs to know.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. Hell, maybe we should’ve eaten inside. That would’ve saved me from the godawful smell of his food, but I hadn’t actually anticipated that, nor had I anticipated being as fucking hungry as I was.

  I washed down the last of my sandwich, and admittedly, felt a bit better. The fact that Darren’s sandwich didn’t smell as strong now—maybe because the window was open, maybe because he’d nearly finished it—probably helped too.

  “All right.” I put my coffee in the cup holder. “So, the case.”

  Darren wadded up his sandwich wrapper and tossed it in the bag. “Mm-hmm?”

  I rolled up my window, then shifted a bit in my seat, pressing my elbow into the steering wheel and facing him. “I’m probably being stupid, telling you all of this now. You’ve only been my partner for a day. But you’re a good cop. I’m thinking I can I trust you.”

  He swallowed. “Thanks. I . . . Really?”

  “You might be a bit by the book for my taste, but I’ve been in this business long enough, I can read people pretty well. The only rat I smell here is the one who’s got you watching my tail.”

  Darren’s eyes flicked toward the windshield, and some color appeared in his cheeks. “I haven’t told them anything.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I haven’t been called into anyone’s office yet, and someone followed us here.”

  Darren looked around. “What? Followed us?”

  I laughed. “Red sedan. Over by the dry cleaner.”

  He craned his neck. “How do you know?”

  “Because the higher-ups always have somebody on my ass. If they were getting everything they needed from you, they wouldn’t bother.”

  He scowled. “All right. So you . . .” He glanced at the red sedan again before facing me fully. “So you trust me enough to tell me more about the case.”

  I nodded. “Here’s the thing—on the surface, and as far as most people on the force know, Blake’s running a highly successful drug ring and that’s it.”

  “Right.”

  “It goes deeper than that. Much deeper. If it were just narcotics and it stopped with Blake, I’d have given the green light a long time ago to go in and arrest everyone involved.”

  Darren tapped his fingers on his pant leg. “So, what else is going on?”

  “The short version is that Vincent Blake is working for someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the problem.” I sighed. “I’m not sure. I know a few names, and Carter definitely gave me some new ones, but I think there might be more.” Okay, that was a bit of a white lie. I knew who was on top of the pyramid. It was everyone between Blake and the top I couldn’t get my hands on, and without those, I couldn’t make the key arrests.

  “More? A few?” Darren shook his head. “What? So there’s some kind of conglomerate backing him?”

  “If you want to call the city’s highest-ranking political figures a conglomerate, sure.”

  Darren blinked. “Come again?”

  “There are some very high-powered people backing him. Whoever’s on top is running the narcotics shit show, and he’s also got hitmen who are very, very good at making murders look like accidents. Or making intended targets look like innocent bystanders.”

  Darren’s eyebrow rose. I had no doubt he was mentally superimposing a tinfoil hat on my head.

  I drummed my fingers on the wheel. “Remember that drive-by last April a few blocks away from the courthouse? When two judges were caught in the crossfire?”

  “Of course.” He shifted uncomfortably. “It was on the news for weeks. And I went to the funerals.”

  I nodded. “That wasn’t just some gangbangers shooting it out, and those two judges were not bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they were the target.”

  “That’s . . .” Darren pressed back against the door, eyeing me warily. “How do you know?”

  “Because an informant tried to warn us before it happened. He contacted me and said someone was targeting a couple of judges. He said he’d heard one particular judge’s name, but didn’t know who the other one was.” I shook my head, my gut folding in on itself at the memory. “The named judge was Judge Harrison. She was the one the two victims had been having lunch with.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. She normally walked back with them, but that day, she’d left her purse at the café and had to go back.”

  Darren’s lips parted. “I remember that. She showed up like two minutes after it happened and was a fucking wreck.” He paused, eyes losing focus for a moment. “So she was the target?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “According to the informant, her name had come up, but she wasn’t the target. The other two were. Question is, did she just get lucky and not get caught in the crossfire? Or did she know what was going to happen?”

  “So . . . are you suggesting she was in on it? Or she was tipped off?”

  “That’s the problem—I can’t prove anything. I know she was connected somehow, but that’s it. I can’t prove Judge Harrison was taking bribes, I can’t prove that Judge Warner knew about it, and I can’t prove that she had him killed to keep him quiet.”

  Darren’s eyes were huge now.

  “I can’t prove it,” I went on, “but I have that information from multiple sources. I just don’t have enough to get a warrant and arrest a goddamned judge.”

  Darren focused on something outside the windshield and gnawed his thumbnail. I was quiet, letting him absorb what I’d told him and hoping he didn’t decide I was insane.

  Finally, he lowered his hand, though he still didn’t look at me. “So you think somebody at city hall is running this show. Taking out hits on people for judges and politicians.”

  “On paper, that’s what it looks like. Blake is running the narcotics ring, and he’s done hits for higher-ups, but even he doesn’t know who’s calling the shots. He knows it’s coming down from the mayor’s office. But we need to know who’s between Blake and the mayor if we’re going to prove Crawford is involved.”

  Darren took a deep breath. “So what’s your game plan?”

  “My game plan right now is to find Blake. Because that’s one of my—our—biggest problems. I can’t find him. No one can.”

  “And when you do find him?”

  I hesitated. This partnership was much too young for me to lay out my entire hand. “When we find him, I’ll do exactly what any cop would do—ask questions and dig for answers.”

  Still facing straight ahead, Darren quietly asked, “Okay. So how do we find him?”

  “We’ve got a better list of contacts now. We just have to put pressure on them like we did with Jake, and keep working our way up until we find Blake. And from there, to the people ordering these hits and pulling the strings for the mayor.”

  Darren gave a slow nod. Then, equally slowly, he turned to me. “Before we do that, there’s something I need you to tell me.”

  “Okay?”

  He stared at me so intently I almost drew back, and in a flat tone, he asked, “Where did the heroin come from?”

  I pursed my lips, and it was my turn to look out the windshield.

  “Andreas, I think I can trust you too. I trust your instincts. You might be an insufferable asshole, but you’re obviously a solid cop.” He paused until
I faced him. “And you know more about this case than I do. If you really do trust me, then tell me where it came from.”

  I sighed. How much did I trust this kid? My gut said he was different from all the others before him. They’d had alarm bells ringing from the moment we’d met. He had too, but . . . different ones. And so far, he’d covered for me and taken an ass-chewing on my behalf, letting the captain believe he’d dropped the ball on a simple search.

  “All right. You didn’t miss it in the search.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “It . . .” I blew out a breath. “I needed a reason to bring Jake in, and I needed a way to put pressure on him. He’s slipped through my fingers too many times. I had reason to believe there’s a bullet out there with his name on it, so I was running out of time. He was running out of time.” I shrugged. “I had to do something.”

  Darren’s lips tightened, and he focused on something out the window again.

  “Look at me, Darren.” He did, and I held his gaze. “There are a lot of people on the force who think I’m a dirty cop, and to a degree, they’re probably right. Hell, they are right. I do shit the rulebook says I shouldn’t, and I won’t tell you otherwise. But doing things the ‘right’ way wasn’t working.” I paused. “So I need you to make a decision. Right here, right now.”

  Darren swallowed, but said nothing.

  “Option one is you’re in this for the long haul. You trust that I know what I’m doing and my goal—my only goal—is to kill this whole thing from the roots all the way up to the top.”

  “And option two?”

  “You tell IA that they’re right to suspect I’m not playing by the rules. You tell them I acquired heroin and planted it during a search so I could arrest Jake Carter and pressure him into giving up his contacts. You do exactly what we both know IA sent you in to do.”

  Darren’s eyes widened slightly.