While the City Burns (Flynn & Levy Book 2)

by David DeLee

  Levy nodded.

  “Mrs. Weigle took care of four or five children at a time. DeShawn and Trey used to go there.” A smile touched her lips. “They called her Mrs. Wiggles.”

  “Excuse me.” Levy stood up. “Would you mind if I used the powder room?” She forced a smile. “Too much tea and coffee, I’m afraid. A hazard of the job.”

  Mrs. Beach waved toward the front door—and to Levy’s relief—the hallway beyond the kitchen. “It’s that way.”

  “Thank you.”

  Levy scooted out of the room and down the short hallway toward the bathroom, but she stopped at the kitchen, seeing Trey leaning against the counter drinking a soda.

  “It’s been a rough couple of days for you, hasn’t it?” she asked.

  Trey glared at her and took a loud slurp of soda.

  She went into the kitchen. “I really am sorry about what happened to DeShawn. I can’t imagine what—”

  “That’s right. You can’t.” He slammed the can down on the counter. “So don’t pretend to try.”

  “I’m not pretending, Trey. I know it hurts. And I know cops can do bad things, wrong things, sometimes. They’re people first. They make mistakes. It’s why I work in Internal Affairs. Putting on a badge and a uniform, it doesn’t give anyone the right to mistreat, abuse, or kill anyone without consequences.”

  “Fuckin A.”

  “But it doesn’t mean we should have a target on our backs just for doing our jobs either. It doesn’t mean we don’t get to defend ourselves. Cops want to go home at the end of the day, just like everybody else.” She took a step closer. “Listen. If Officer Stokes abused his authority, if he acted improperly in any way, you have my word, he’ll answer for it.”

  “Yeah,” he said, not convinced. “Right.”

  “But we need to know what really happened.” She put her hand on his arm. “We know about the kitten. The one DeShawn took from Miss Ellie’s apartment.”

  He didn’t ask what kitten. That told Levy she was on the right track.

  “A young man has come forward saying he’s got information about the shooting. About what went down between Officer Stokes and your brother. His name is Kevin Wills.”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you know him?” Levy asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Trey?”

  “Yeah. I know him. He goes to school with us. He’s in DeShawn’s class.”

  There was a year differences between the brothers. Trey was a senior and DeShawn had been in junior at the East Side Community Public high school. Officers had spoken with the principal and several of DeShawn’s teachers. He was quiet boy. A good student. Not the sort to be caught burglarizing apartments in their opinions. They also told the police that Wills and the Beach brothers were like the three musketeers, always together. But they weren’t troublemakers.

  “Kevin Wills says he saw Stokes shoot DeShawn.” Levy watched Trey carefully.

  His bottom lip twitched and his eyes watered. “I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Trey, where were you when you brother was killed?”

  “I…I was here.”

  “What were you doing here?” Levy asked. “At the time?”

  “I was asleep. It was three o’clock in the morning.”

  They hadn’t released the time of death to the public. While Trey might have heard it from the ME’s Office or Goodall might have found out somehow, Levy had her doubts. She made a leap.

  “You were there with DeShawn, weren’t you, Trey?”

  “No.”

  His denial was too fast, too defensive.

  Levy pressed. “Did you see what happened? Were you there when your brother was shot?”

  “No.”

  “Was Kevin Wills there?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Trey didn’t answer. He held the edge of the counter with both hands. A death grip.

  “We found the kitten. His name is Mr. Pumpkin White.” Levy forced a smile. “Even though he’s a she. We returned her to Miss Ellie. She was very glad to get him back.”

  The trembling in his lips reached his jaw. A muscle twitched as he ground his back teeth.

  “You were there, weren’t you, Trey? You were with DeShawn.”

  And the tears fell. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like that.”

  He lowered his head and covered his crying eyes with his hand. “It was just a dare. A stupid prank. I made him do it. I told DeShawn he was punk ass bitch if he didn’t do it.”

  “Do what, Trey?”

  “Break into Miss Ellie’s apartment. I told ’em if he didn’t do it, I’d tell everybody at school what a punk ass bitch he was. I told him he had to take something. Something to prove he did it to everybody at school. So he took the cat. Who steals a stupid cat?”

  “You were with him? The whole time?”

  “Till he broke the glass in the window. We heard five-oh pull up. Heard ’em getting out of the patrol car. We split up and ran. That cop spotted DeShawn and went after him. Why the fuck didn’t he chase me?”

  She didn’t know. They’d have to ask the cop. Re-interview him. Did he not see Trey? Did he have to make a choice and he chose DeShawn? Fate, or something else?

  Trey shook his head. Tears tracked his dark face. “DeShawn’s dead cuz of me. Cuz of what I made him do.”

  Levy patted his back. She couldn’t argue with that.

  “How’s Kevin Wills fit in to all this?”

  He looked at her like she had three heads. “Kevin? He ain’t got nothing to do with this.”

  “According to Mr. Goodall he does,” Levy said. “But you’re saying he wasn’t there?”

  “No. He bounced hours before Deshawn and me went to Vladeck. Said his punk ass wasn’t getting hisself arrested just to prove something to the homies at school. He bailed, man.”

  “What’s going on in here?” Mrs. Beach appeared at the kitchen doorway. Flynn and Tillman gathered behind her. “What’re you doing to my boy?”

  Eleanor Beach went to her son and enveloped him in her big arms. She patted his head as he sobbed against her chest.

  “I’m sorry, momma. So, so sorry.”

  She glared at Levy over her boy’s head. “What’d you say to him? What did you do?”

  Tillman said, “You had no right to talk to my client without me—”

  “I thought Mrs. Beach was your client,” Flynn said.

  “They both are,” Tillman said. “What did the boy tell you?”

  “Flynn,” Levy said. “I think we should leave.” To Mrs. Beach, she said, “We’re so sorry to have disturbed you. Again, please accept our condolences.”

  Flynn appeared confused but followed Levy’s lead and together they headed for the apartment door and got out of there.

  Block-by-Block New York Headquarters

  521 West 19th Street

  Chelsea, New York

  Wednesday, November 29th 8:15 a.m.

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Flynn and Levy were leaning against the front fender of their unmarked vehicle, illegally parked in front of the glass and aluminum fronted New York headquarters of Theodore Goodall’s non-profit Block-by-Block Crusade organization. They sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups and watched the steam rise from the tiny, ripped holes in the plastic lids.

  It was cold and standing around waiting didn’t help, but the rain had stopped and except for the soggy gunk wadded up around the storm drains, the city was dry for the first time in over a week. The rush hour was in full swing and people filled the sidewalks, rushing by with their heads down and their collars pulled up against the icy gusts of wind that blew between the buildings. Their shoes clicked quickly and loudly against the pavement. Most had a phone pressed tightly to their ears.

  Everybody you saw these days had a cell phone of some type glued to their ears. What could so many people have to talk about? Flynn wondered, watching them. How had the world ever operated before cell p
hones?

  A blue and white sat at the curb half a block down the street, pumping a cloud of exhaust smoke into the air. A second unit was posted on the opposite side of the building where the lobby opened up onto West 20th.

  After their visit with Eleanor and Trey Beach the night before, Flynn and Levy returned to the precinct. Levy filled him on the conversation she’d had with Trey. They caught Whalen up to speed and he ordered a two-man detective team to sit on Kevin Wills’ apartment building on East 13th Street. It was past time they talked to the young man.

  After an hour of waiting, the detectives decided to be proactive and knocked on the apartment door. No one was home. Neighbors told them Kevin and Trey had been picked up by a shiny black, brand new looking Porsche SUV about an hour before the detectives had gotten there. A partial plate confirmed who the vehicle belonged to. Fifty minutes later, the detectives were parked outside Theodore Goodall’s one-point-six-million-dollar North Side home in the Huntswood section of Mount Vernon, a suburb of affluent Westchester County.

  Kevin and his mom were spotted on the property.

  Armed with that intel, Flynn and Levy had put a call in to Brooke Prescott. It took a lot of arm twisting, but Brooke Prescott managed to convince a judge to sign off on an arrest warrant.

  At eight that morning, Flynn got a call from the detectives sitting on Goodall’s house. Kevin and mother, along with the man himself, Theodore Goodall, were being chauffeured into the city in the same Porsche SUV. They were dropped off and escorted into the building.

  Minutes later, Flynn and Levy, along with two cruisers, were on site and waited for Prescott to arrive.

  “So, you okay?” Flynn asked.

  Levy glance over at him. “How do mean?”

  “Goodall dredging up all that shit yesterday on TV.”

  “It was a low thing to do.” She peeled the lid off her cup and blew the steam away before taking a sip. “But it’s my past. I can’t change it. I did what I had to do. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed by it. That’s everyone else’s hang up.” She sipped her coffee. “When it comes up again, and it will, all I can do is deal with it. What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Jillian. That’s something you’re dealing with now. It’s got to be hard.”

  He stared at his coffee cup. “You know, right after we arrested her, it just felt surreal. Like a bad dream, one I couldn’t wake up from. I was numb though most of what happened next—retaining an attorney, the arraignment, bail, her coming home that first night. And confused. Do I walk away? Do I help her? She’d been my wife for nineteen years. But she cheated on me. In a jealous rage, she killed a cop. Yet she’s the mother of my child, a girl who still needs both her parents. How do you reconcile those two extremes?”

  “Maybe you don’t.”

  “You’re saying I should walk away? I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do, Frank. Either way there’ll be unpleasant consequences. And they’ll never go away.” She smiled. “Just ask the girl who tried to get all her porn movies pulled off the Internet.”

  He drank his coffee.

  “Through it all, the hardest has been dealing with Hailey. She’s confused, angry, filled with guilt and adolescent outrage. When it first happened, we fought. A lot. She blamed me. She blamed Jillian. She blames herself.”

  He looked down the street one way. Then the other. “It helps she’s away. Distance is good. For her. For us.”

  “You talk to her?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. A couple of times a week by phone, and we have a standing Skype date every Sunday night. Catch up on each other’s week. It’s good.”

  “The only advice I can give is this. While you’re trying to do right by everyone else, make sure you do the same for you, too.”

  He finished his coffee and strolled over to a trash can chained to a tree. He tossed his empty in. When he came back, he asked, “Did it work out the way you wanted it to?”

  “Did what work out?”

  “Going back to IA.” He didn’t add, breaking up our partnership.

  She waited a minute before answering. “Too early to tell.”

  When her past came to light, her co-workers, all men, harassed her horribly. He would have thought getting transferred out would have been a blessing, but the first chance she got she went running back. Try as he might, he couldn’t understand it.

  “You don’t need to prove anything to those guys.” It wasn’t the first time he’d told her that.

  “It’s not about them. It’s about me. I need to know they didn’t chase me out.”

  “They didn’t. The department did that.”

  “I need to prove they can’t get to me.” When she’d told him that before, she said he’d never understand, and on that point she was right. He wouldn’t.

  Now, he shrugged. “Seems like you’re torturing yourself needlessly. Jerks like that won’t ever change. Nothing you accomplish is ever going change how they act, what they do.”

  “You might be right,” she conceded. Then she pointed. “Look. There’s Brooke.”

  A green city sedan drove around the corner and slid to a stop behind their unmarked car.

  The engine clicked, cooling as Brooke Prescott stepped out of the vehicle.

  As usual, the woman was dressed to the nines in a navy Anne Klein dress suit and a full length hooded trench coat. She held a cell phone pinched between her shoulder and her ear, while she dug the arrest warrant from an oversized brown leather bag. Her heels clicked on the pavement as she approached. Her long brown hair was tied in its usual single thick braid and draped over right shoulder.

  She handed the warrant to Levy before closing out her phone call. “Can I just tell you, Joseph Gregg is hopping mad over this.”

  “Then you just made my day,” Flynn said. “Second only to how much fun this is going to be.”

  He strolled with purpose toward the front doors, leaving the women.

  Brooke glanced at Levy. “Are we going to be okay here?”

  “Did you catch yesterday’s Studio Live segment?” Levy asked.

  Prescott nodded. “That’s why I ask. And speaking of, are you okay?”

  “I’ll get through it,” Levy said.

  Flynn was already at the lobby doors.

  “We better get in there before he shoots someone,” Levy added.

  “Don’t even joke.” Prescott hurried to keep pace with Levy as they rushed to join Flynn.

  They caught up with him at a small reception desk where a young man in an ill-fitting security uniform sat playing Words with Friends on his phone while watching a small bank of surveillance screens.

  Flynn badged him. “Where can we find Theodore Goodall?”

  “Second floor.”

  “What office?”

  “All of them. Block-by-Block takes up the entire floor.”

  “Patrol cars are waiting outside. You call upstairs, you warn them, you’ll be sharing a cell with them,” Flynn said. “Understand?”

  The guard nodded vigorously. “No problem. I’m on your side.”

  As they headed for the elevators, the guard leaned out from his counter to watch them. “You’re seriously going to arrest them?”

  The question went unanswered. The elevator arrived. Flynn, Levy, and Prescott stepped inside. The doors closed.

  “Brooke, you don’t need to be with us for this,” Flynn said.

  “Planning on doing something you don’t want me to see?”

  “No. Trying to give you some cover with your boss.”

  “He knows I submitted the request for the warrant. In for a penny, as they say.”

  “Sorry,” Flynn said.

  “It’s not on you. I could’ve refused your request. I didn’t.”

  The elevator opened with a ping. They faced another reception desk. This one was large and more opulent than the one in the lobby. Wood-grain with the Block-by-Block Crusade logo embossed in brass on the front of it and b
acklit making it glow. A second, larger logo was etched into the frosted glass panel behind the desk shimmering through a curtain of cascading water.

  From somewhere down the hall a phone rang.

  They approached a pretty Latina behind the desk. She wore big gold hoop earrings and snapped her gum as she talked on a cell phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear.

  Flynn badged the girl. “Goodall. Where is he?”

  “His office.”

  “Where?”

  Without a care or concern, she pointed. “Down the hall in the corner.”

  “Corner office,” Flynn said. “Figures.”

  “Kevin Wills,” Levy asked. “He’s with him?”

  “Don’t know who he is.”

  “Young black male,” Levy said. “Seventeen years old.”

  “Sounds like the guy come up on the elevator with him,” the receptionist said, snapping her gum.

  They found the corner office, but it was empty. Flynn snagged a passing worker who was carrying a stack of papers. He asked for Goodall and they were directed to the conference room. It was in the opposite corner. The door was closed.

  Flynn went in without knocking.

  Inside were several men, two women, Tillman, Goodall, and Kevin Wills. Goodall sat at the head of a long conference table. Kevin sat in a chair pulled up next to him. The adults had been deep in conversation when Flynn barged in.

  Goodall came to his feet. “What is the meaning of this?”

  He was dressed down, wearing a light blue track suit with white piping down the sleeves and the legs. He wore the jacket unzipped. Underneath it was a 76ers T-shirt and several flashy gold chains around his neck. They matched the bling on his fingers.

  Flynn walked to the head of the table without answering. The others in the room remained seated, watching him. Tillman stared, anger burning in his eyes.

  “I demand an answer,” Goodall said. “This is private property.”

  “We’re executing an arrest warrant.”

  “On what charge?” Goodall demanded. “I’ve done nothing illegal.”