by Frank Zafiro
Charlotte smiled, but Renee saw the strain in her face.
She set aside her coffee cup. “Do you know what it’s about?”
Charlotte shook her head. “All I know is that there’s an FBI agent in there with him.”
Renee raised an eyebrow. “FBI?”
Charlotte nodded.
Renee glanced down at the dress pants and purple blouse she was wearing. “Do these look like confident clothes?” she asked.
Charlotte’s smile warmed. “They do. The little bit of lace does the trick.”
“Good.” Renee grabbed a pen and a legal pad.
“All the same,” Charlotte continued, “I wouldn’t make any jokes like that while you’re in there. He appears to take himself very seriously.”
“Thinks he’s pretty important, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“I think I still have a power suit from the eighties in my closet,” Renee said. “You know, the ones with the shoulder pads in them. Should I run home and change?”
The two women laughed. After a moment, both collected themselves and walked to the chief’s office, where Charlotte rapped on the door.
“Come!” a loud voice bellowed.
“Good luck,” Charlotte whispered.
Renee steeled herself and went inside.
The chief of police sat behind his desk, his fingers interlaced and his elbows on the arms of his chair. Directly across from him sat a sandy-haired man in a dark blue suit. Both men looked up at her as she approached.
“Renee,” the chief said, “this is Special Agent Maurice Payne. He’s with the FBI organized crime unit.”
Renee held out her hand. Payne gave her a perfunctory, loose-gripped shake.
“Renee is one of our crime analysts, focusing on emerging trends,” the chief explained. He gestured for her to sit in the empty chair next to Agent Payne. “She’s been following the emergence of our Russian gang problem here in River City for some time.”
“Excellent,” Payne said tersely. “Do you have any sort of organizational chart that we can take a look at?”
Renee shook her head. “Unfortunately, our intelligence is not that far along.”
Payne looked at the chief, then back at her. “Oh, really?”
“No,” she said. “While I know that these particular gangs are highly organized, it has been difficult to—”
Payne raised his hand. “How do you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That they’re highly organized.”
Renee paused, a little confused. “I thought you were with organized crime,” she said haltingly.
“I am. I know how organized they are. I want to know how you think you know that.”
She cleared her throat and spoke slowly. “I have attended a number of gang schools over the past several years. One of them focused specifically on European gangs.”
“Who put on that school?” he asked, condescension in his voice.
“That one would have been the FBI, sir,” she answered.
Payne paused and swallowed. “Uh, good. Okay, what else?”
Why the hell was she justifying her job to him? She glanced at the chief, but his stony gaze told her that she would have to answer the question. “I read a lot,” she said, anger brewing in the pit of her stomach. “Professional journals, books, bulletins. Whatever I can find on the Internet.”
Payne took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, that’s excellent. But be careful about the information on the web. Anyone can put anything out there, you know?”
“I pretty much stick to official sites,” Renee answered, starting to fume inside. I’ve been using computers since we stored data on cassette tapes, while you were popping pimples and reading Richie Rich comics, you little dipshit. “What’s this all about?” she asked.
Payne took another deep breath and affected a grave expression. Renee waited for him to speak, fairly certain that his tone would have a similar sense of measured gravity.
“What I’m about to tell you is completely confidential,” he said in a rehearsed voice. “It is classified based both upon the nature of the information and the source. Do you understand?”
Renee nodded. “Don’t tell anyone. I get it.”
Payne’s eyes narrowed. “It’s nothing to be flippant about,” he said. “Violations carry federal sanctions. If you can’t be trusted—”
“She can be trusted,” the chief rumbled from his leather throne. He cast a cautionary look at her. “Just let her know what’s going on, Agent Payne.”
Payne pressed his lips together as a slight redness crept into his cheeks. He looked like a schoolboy that had just been corrected by the teacher, but it quickly passed. “Do you know Oleg Tretiak?”
Renee shook her head.
Payne sighed. “Well, you should. He’s been the bookkeeper for Sergey Markov for the last two years. You do know Sergey Markov, right?”
Renee nodded, ignoring his tone. “Markov has been a suspect in a couple cases of fencing property, but he’s more likely in charge of a chop shop operation in town. Last year our detectives raided a garage in Hillyard. His car was parked in front of the house, but he wasn’t there.”
“Did any of the suspects talk?”
Renee gave him a baleful look. “No. They don’t talk. That’s the problem. Even the normal good citizens won’t inform on them. It’s a holdover from the old country.”
“They’ll talk,” Payne said. “It just takes a lot to make that happen.”
“Like what?”
Payne smiled coldly. “Well, if you try to kill a man, that tends to loosen his tongue.”
“Not with the Russians.” Renee eyed him carefully. “Are you saying you have an informant?”
Payne nodded.
“Is it Tretiak, the accountant?”
Payne nodded again.
Renee shrugged. “Well, that’s impressive, but I think you have to consider the odds that he’s not giving you accurate information. Even with an attempt on his life, I’m not so sure he’d turn on his—”
“It was more than a mere attempt on his life,” Payne said slowly. “Someone tried to kill him and his whole family by burning down his house. Only he wasn’t home at the time.”
Renee frowned. “There was a house fire on Grace on Sunday. A woman and two children died. The arson investigator’s initial report said that it was a wiring problem.”
“Oleg doesn’t think so.”
“Hoagland conducted that investigation,” Renee said. “I read his report. He didn’t have any evidence of arson.”
“He had his gut,” Payne said. “He called me yesterday. He said something didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t find anything to substantiate his feeling.”
“Then it is what the evidence says it is,” Renee said.
Payne shrugged. “Oleg knows what happened. He has no doubt.”
Renee shook her head in wonder. “So the ones who died in the fire, that was…?”
“His wife?” Payne asked dramatically. “His son and daughter? Yes, it was. And that was enough to make him decide to switch sides.”
Renee’s mind raced. An informant of this magnitude could fill in a lot of gaps, including how big a player Markov really was. He might even make it possible to break the back of the entire operation. “This is huge,” she whispered.
“It is,” Payne agreed. “And you can’t tell anyone about it.”
For once, Renee found herself in perfect agreement. “The FBI involvement? Or the informant?”
Payne looked at the chief again and shrugged. “Our assistance is probably not confidential. But the informant absolutely is on a need-to-know basis.”
Renee nodded her understanding. “What do you need from me?”
“Intelligence support,” Payne said. “We’re a small office here in River City. Most of our assets are in Seattle, which has its own organized crime problem, and not of the Russian variety. I’m asking your chief for support on a few issues, in
cluding using you as an analyst when necessary.”
“All right.”
“You’ll be given temporary clearance into our system,” Payne explained. “And I’d like you to take notes during Tretiak’s debriefings.”
Renee resisted the urge to whoop. This could be the difference maker that uprooted the Russian foothold in River City. It would be a worthwhile assignment, even if she did have to put up with Special Agent Maurice Payne.
“Not quite the CIA,” the chief said, a trace of humor in his gruff voice, “but getting close.”
Renee nodded to him. Maybe he wasn’t quite an orc, after all.
“I’ll be in touch soon,” Payne said.
Renee nodded, rose, and left the office with a smile on her face.
0911 hours
B.J. Carson lifted her glass and drained the last of the beer. The amber liquid slid down easily, the way having been well lubricated by the previous two. She set the glass down on the table carefully, but couldn’t keep it from clunking loudly on the Formica surface. The sound echoed in the near-empty Happy Time Tavern.
“Oops,” she said, and giggled.
Anthony Battaglia chuckled at her from across the table. He emptied his own glass to match her. Then he clunked his own glass on the table.
“Oops,” he said back.
Both officers laughed. Battaglia reached for the pitcher on the table and divvied up the remainder of the Coors Light between them.
Carson reached for her glass, now about a third full. Or, she wondered, was it two-thirds empty? The thought made her giggle again.
“Now what’s funny?” Battaglia asked.
“Nothing,” Carson replied. “It’s stupid.”
“But you laughed.”
“Yeah, but it was stupid.”
“Try me,” Battaglia urged.
“It’s stupid. Really.”
“I’ve got a stupid sense of humor. I’m Italian.”
Carson sighed. “All right.”
“Good.” He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows expectantly.
She held up her glass. “I just noticed that this was about one-third full. Then the thought popped in my mind, is it one-third full or is it two-thirds empty?”
Battaglia lowered his brows and stared at her.
“It thought it was funny,” Carson said, and shrugged.
“No, you were right,” Battaglia deadpanned. “It was stupid.”
“Shut up!” she said, laughing and throwing a balled-up napkin at him.
The wadded napkin struck Battaglia in the forehead and dropped directly into his beer glass.
Carson let out a squealing laugh. She covered her mouth, but her laughter continued.
Battaglia let out an exaggerated sigh. He reached for several other napkins and made a small pile. Then he reached inside his glass with two fingers and fished out the soggy napkin. He held it up for Carson to see before plopping it onto the bed of dry napkins he’d created. Then he peered at the remaining beer in his glass. “Well, now my beer is either one-quarter full or three-quarters empty.”
Another squealing laugh escaped from behind Carson’s hand.
Battaglia waggled an index finger at her. “Well, now I know one of your dark secrets, B.J.”
She shook her head but couldn’t speak through the giggles.
“That squeaky laugh…” He shook his head. “Well, I just don’t know.”
The two sat in silence for a few minutes. Carson’s giggles slowly faded. When she had them under control, she took a sip of beer. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Battaglia said.
“Why didn’t we go to Duke’s?”
“Huh?”
“Duke’s,” she said. “Isn’t that the main hangout bar for patrol?”
Battaglia shrugged. “Sure. I mean, some guys go there.”
Carson didn’t reply. During her stint at the academy and since being in the training car, she’d hardly heard of officers going anywhere else. It was supposed to be the one place where the cops could cut loose without everyone eyeballing them. All the celebrations—promotions, retirements, probation parties—happened at Duke’s.
So why did Battaglia bring her here instead? The Happy Time was a nice little neighborhood bar, right along Division Street, just above the crest of the hill that rose from the river valley below. When she’d parked her car shortly after their shift ended, she’d been treated to a nice view of the city core below. So it wasn’t that this was a bad choice, but it wasn’t Duke’s. Which brought her back to, Why?
Battaglia was staring down at the beer in front of him. Carson opened her mouth to repeat the question when he spoke.
“Why do you think I asked you to beers at all?” he asked. He looked up and met her eyes. “Why, B.J.?”
Carson felt a nervous pang in her chest when she met his eyes. The attraction there was palpable and even when her mind raced to factor in the number of drinks they’d downed, she knew she couldn’t write it off to beer lust. She swallowed.
Battaglia’s penetrating gaze didn’t leave her.
Carson wet her lips, then cursed herself for the obviously flirtatious gesture. She hoped it was the drink talking.
“Uh, you’re the chair of the platoon’s welcoming committee?”
Battaglia shook his head. “No,” he said softly.
Carson shrugged. “I don’t know then. Why did you ask me to beers?”
“That call last night,” he said. “The traffic stop. With the Russians.”
“Oh.” Carson hadn’t wanted to think about it again just yet.
“I figured it might’ve shaken you up a little bit,” Battaglia continued. “Thought you might want to talk about it, is all.”
Carson took another sip of beer. “What’s to talk about?”
“Whatever you want,” Battaglia said. “Tactics, feelings, whatever.”
Carson grinned nervously. “Well, Dr. Battaglia, how much does it cost to lie on your couch and spew out all my secret feelings?”
She regretted the words as soon as she said them.
But Battaglia didn’t smile. His face darkened and he leaned forward. “B.J., you can joke if you want. I like joking. Hell, it’s all Sully and I ever do. But don’t joke about a partner reaching out to you when something bad happens on the job. That’s something sacred and you don’t joke about it.”
His intensity surprised her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking down at her hands. He called me a partner.
He waved her apology away. “Not necessary. You’re a rookie. You don’t know these things. But you’ll learn. Your platoon will help, as long as you’re a hard worker and not afraid to step up when things get hot.”
Carson nodded. “Okay. I can do that.”
“I know. I saw it last night.”
Carson looked back into his face. “I was scared shitless,” she admitted. “And I didn’t know what to do.”
Battaglia’s expression softened. He reached out and patted her hand, then left it on top of hers. “This job is ninety-nine percent boredom,” he told her, “and one percent sheer terror. The stressful part is, you never know when the one percent is coming.”
Battaglia’s palm and fingers warmed the back of Carson’s hand. She knew she should casually pull her hand away. That was the signal she should send: You’re married, and we work together. That’s what she should say.
But that’s never what you say, is it?
She cleared her throat and said, “Last night was definitely in the one percent category.”
Battaglia smiled. He squeezed her hand lightly and removed his. “It was. The whole thing could have gone to shit. So you have to ask yourself, what are we doing here? What’s at stake? They had, what? Seven guys?”
“I think so.”
Battaglia took a swallow of beer. “And who knows how many of them had guns? So we’re supposed to push matters? Get into a gunfight over a traffic ticket?” He shook his head. “No, we did the only thing we
could.”
Somehow, Carson thought he was trying to convince himself as much as her. She lifted her glass and finished it.
Battaglia swallowed the last of his own beer, too. “We should probably call no joy, huh?”
“No joy?”
Battaglia shrugged. “Fighter pilot talk.”
“Were you a pilot?” Carson gushed.
Battaglia laughed. “Oh, I fly my cruiser low once in a while, but that’s about it.” He shook his head. “No, I got that from some movie.”
“Oh,” Carson said. She let out a giggle that she didn’t really feel, embarrassed at sounding like a teenage girl mooning over a fighter pilot.
“Careful,” Battaglia said, standing. “That squeal might escape again.”
Carson stood as well, sending a light punch into Battaglia’s shoulder. “Shut up.”
Battaglia fished some folded bills from his pocket. Carson rummaged through her purse for her wallet. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy.
“Relax,” Battaglia told her. “I got it.”
“No,” Carson said, “I can pay my share.”
Battaglia dropped a few bills on the table. “Next time,” he said.
Carson acquiesced and the two of them made their way to the door. Her movements were a little wooden and clumsy. She was probably borderline for driving home, even though it wasn’t very far to her apartment.
When she reached her car, she felt Battaglia’s hand on her shoulder. The warm strength of it almost made her knees buckle. She froze, then turned toward him, determined not to let her emotions and the beer carry her away. No matter what, I will not kiss him.
“Are you okay to drive?”
“Frobably pine,” she answered, then covered her mouth and laughed.
Battaglia smiled. “Or frobably not.” He released her shoulder. “Come on, I’ll drop you at your place.”
Carson’s heart rate kicked up. Her place?
I can not sleep with him. He’s married. He’s on my platoon. That part of my life is over. I’m a different person now.
“No, that’s okay,” she finally said.
“What?”
“I’ll just, you know, sit and listen to the radio for a while. Then I’ll drive home.”
Battaglia strolled back toward her. “Did you learn in the academy about the rate that alcohol metabolizes in the body?”