OFFICER INVOLVED

by Lynch, Sean

  “You’re the doctor,” Kearns said.

  “You grew up in small town in Iowa?” she said, sifting through the file.

  “I did.”

  “You have no living relatives?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you never knew your father?”

  “Correct.”

  “You entered the military out of high school?”

  “Right again.”

  “Why?”

  “It beat joining the circus,” he said.

  “What made you choose law enforcement as a profession?”

  “When I got out of the army I needed a job. After military service I discovered I liked the structure a para-military organization offered, and wanted the security of government work. I also wanted to go to college. I figured a profession where I could work a night shift would enable me to take classes during the day.”

  “A man with a plan. I see you completed your bachelor’s degree recently?”

  “Better late than never.”

  “Did you ever consider returning to the Midwest?”

  Kearns shook his head. “No. Not after...” his voice trailed off.

  “After the Vernon Slocum incident, you mean?”

  “Looks like you didn’t waste any time digging into my history.”

  “I take my work very seriously, Kevin,” she said. “Tell me about Mr. Farrell?”

  “Bob?” Kearns said. “What’s to tell?”

  “One could extrapolate a lot from your relationship with him,” she said.

  “You’re not going to feed me a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about how I’ve made him a surrogate father-figure, are you?” Kearns said.

  The beginnings of a smile started on Dr. Marks’ face. “You’ve considered that comparison?”

  “I’ve taken a few psychology classes,” Kearns said. “I’m not quite as dumb as I look.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said.

  “I’m not offended. I disagree with the inference, that’s all.”

  “You believe it’s inaccurate?”

  “Here’s how it is between Bob and me,” Kearns said. “I met him at the lowest point in my life. When the rest of the world was ready to flush me down the toilet, Bob stepped in and gave me a chance to quit feeling sorry for myself and get back in the fight. He didn’t do it out of pity, or charity, or because he’s a nice guy. He did it because he’d been where I was, and he needed my help.”

  “To track down the child-killer Vernon Slocum?”

  “Yeah. His own encounter with Slocum was eating him up, same as me. Difference is, his dance with Vernon had been knawing at him for years. Bob let me ride his coattails while we hunted down that murderous son-of-a-bitch and punched his card. For that I’ll always be grateful.”

  “So you trust him?”

  “Hardly,” Kearns said. “Bob initially lied to me about who he was, and to be honest, I don’t entirely trust him to this day. But I’ve ridden the river with him, more than once, and can count on him more than anyone else I’ve ever known. He’s a stand-up guy.”

  “If you had to,” Dr. Marks said, “how would you characterize your relationship with Mr. Farrell today?”

  “Same as yesterday,” Kearns said. “He’s got my back.”

  Chapter 30

  “You were in with Dr. Marks almost as long as I was,” Kearns said, as Farrell drove him away from her office.

  “I’m not crazy like you,” Farrell said. “I was only trying to get to know her.”

  “Who says I’m crazy?”

  “Of course you’re crazy,” Farrell said. “Why else would you be seeing a shrink?”

  “What the hell was she talking to you about for all that time?” Kearns demanded.

  “Nothing,” Farrell grinned. “She was merely basking in the aroma of my Drakkar Noir.”

  “This whole counseling thing is goofy,” Kearns said, shaking his head.

  “Give it a chance,” Farrell said. “If you have to go, you might as well make the best of things and try to get something out of it.”

  “Like what? She spent most of the time asking me about my childhood, and family history, and my relationship with you, and a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with police shootings or the sheriff’s office.”

  “That’s how psychiatrists work. They don’t come at you head on. They attack an issue from your flank. Get you to open up without you even being aware that you’re opening up.”

  “Did she get you to open up?” Kearns asked.

  “Kid,” he said, “if Dr. Pat Marks asked me to bounce through Union Square buck naked on a pogo stick, I’d do it with a Coke and a smile.”

  “That conjures up a nauseating image,” Kearns said. “And answers my question, I suppose. Did you have any luck with her?”

  “Not a bit,” Farrell admitted. “She was an iceberg and I was the Titanic.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Kearns said.

  “Don’t be; it ain’t over yet,” Farrell said. “I may have lost the battle, but the war rages on.”

  “You just told me you struck out?”

  “No,” Farrell said, “I said strike one was a swing and a miss. I’m still at the plate. You have another appointment scheduled, don’t you?”

  “Fantastic,” Kearns said. “My job is dependent on Dr. Marks giving me a clean bill of mental health, and you’ve officially become her stalker. That shouldn’t prejudice her against me at all.”

  “I’m dismayed,” Farrell said. “Earlier you underestimated my will, and now you’re underestimating my sex appeal. Don’t you have any faith in me at all?”

  “I’ll admit I was wrong about you quitting smoking,” Kearns said. “I won’t make the same mistake about your ability to charm Dr. Marks into submission. As a personal favor, I’d ask you to wait until she’s officially declared me fit-for-duty before you break her heart and make her hate your guts forever?”

  “I’ll consider it,” Farrell chuckled. He pushed in his Sinatra cassette and let Frankie ask, via Cole Porter’s lyrics, What is This Thing Called Love?

  “Speaking of favors,” Farrell said, “I’ve got one I want to ask of you?”

  “Name it.”

  “I was wondering if you could take Jennifer out to dinner tonight?”

  “Me? Take Jennifer out?” Kearns stammered. “To dinner? Tonight?”

  “I speak real good English,” Farrell said. “Yes, I want you to take Jennifer out tonight. I promised her we’d dine out, but I’ve got something important I’ve got to take care of and I don’t want her moping around in my apartment all by herself.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea? I am, presumably, still wearing a bulls-eye on my back.”

  “Nothing will happen with your sheriff’s babysitters watching over you,” Farrell said. “Sergeant Avery and his narcotics ninjas are on the job.”

  “If you say so,” Kearns said. “Is Jennifer okay with this?”

  “Let me worry about that,” Farrell said. “Besides,” he continued, “it ain’t like it would be your first date. Didn’t you two have a rendezvous at a hospital in Omaha once?”

  Kearns’ face flushed. “That was different,” he said.

  “Take it easy,” Farrell said. “I was only ribbing. I guess it was my turn to underestimate you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I underestimated the torch you’re still carrying.”

  Chapter 31

  “They just got seated,” the voice on the portable radio crackled. “Might as well get comfortable. As crowded as the place is, they’ll be here awhile.”

  Sergeant Avery was sitting in his car, which was parked a block from Tommaso’s Restaurant. The historic Italian eatery was situated at Kearney and Broadway Streets in San Francisco, a busy intersection at any time of the week but particularly frenetic on Friday nights.

  Avery and one of the narcotics detectives under his command, a scruffy-looking young undercover operative named Ed Cason, had spen
t the afternoon and evening following Deputy Kearns.

  Avery was driving his Ford Granada and didn’t care if he was spotted. He suspected Farrell had made him right away. The moment he met him, he instantly identified the retired S.F.P.D. inspector as a shrewd actor, and made a mental note to be extra cautious in further dealings with him. That Farrell had taken on the role of Deputy Kearns’ guardian angel was a complication he didn’t anticipate and wasn’t particularly pleased about.

  Cason was driving a beat-up looking Toyota pick-up truck, and in his blue-collar attire and shaggy beard appeared to be a typical laborer when in the East Bay city of Pleasanton. Now that he was in San Francisco, he looked like one of the countless hippies, vagrants, or starving students roaming the bustling streets.

  The two-car surveillance team had shadowed Farrell’s Oldsmobile from the sheriff’s headquarters in downtown Oakland to Alameda, where they dropped off Judge Callen at his impressive home, and then to Kearns’ counseling session in Pleasanton. A couple of hours later Avery and Cason followed Farrell and Kearns back to Alameda, where Kearns picked up his ragtop jeep and the two separated.

  Avery debated on splitting the surveillance and having Cason follow Farrell while he remained on Kearns, but he quickly discarded the idea. As much as he would have liked to know what the private investigator was up to, he was far more interested in finding out where Kearns was laying his head.

  Avery sat in his car and smoked. He was all-too-aware of how erratic Cervantes had become in the wake of his brother Gabriel’s death, and knew the hotheaded gangster wouldn’t rest until Deputy Kearns was dead. He was also aware that Arturo blamed him not only for Gabe’s demise, but held him responsible for the spectacular failure of his foolhardy attempt on Kearns’ life at his former girlfriend’s residence; a location he was directed to by Avery.

  Arturo would be placated by only one thing, the rookie deputy’s head. Until he got it, he was a liability to the entire operation; a lucrative money machine years in the making. Avery was not about to let more than a decade of meticulous planning, all his hard work, and a steady conduit of tax-free cash go up in the flames of a reckless vendetta.

  The easiest thing to do, Avery knew, would be to simply eliminate Arturo. But as much as he relished that thought, he put it out of his mind. Taking Arturo out would bring everything down as quickly and as surely as if Arturo was arrested and snitched. As much as Avery had tried over the years to implement the compartmentalization he’d utilized so effectively in Viet Nam, he was thwarted by the very feature which made the operation run so efficiently in California; gang loyalty.

  Like it or not, what had made the manufacture and distribution network run like clockwork for so long, and made it impervious to infiltration by rival gang members or the police, was the familiarity and devotion long-term gang affiliation inevitably produced. Avery learned this from his own days as a gangster, and exploited his unique role as both a bona fide banger and narcotics detective masterfully. But it was a double-edged sword, and he knew it.

  Once blooded-in, there was no way out. The bonds formed by the time-tested and brutally economical gang initiation process were designed to ensure lifelong loyalty. Men who had sworn their allegiance and lives to their neighborhood gangs as children, and who lived and died by those oaths as faithfully as any soldier ever did in service to his country, wouldn’t ignore the death of one of their own. They couldn’t. Such loyalty was the very glue which made the modern gangster more than just a common criminal. Under no circumstances would such a community tolerate weakness.

  Arturo Cervantes was between a rock and a hard place, and Avery knew it. As heir to Gabriel’s piece of the empire he had to avenge his brother, even at the risk of arrest, incarceration, or death. If he didn’t, he would be perceived as weak. As a member of a Norteno crew affiliated with Nuestra Familia, a group with a strictly-enforced code of machismo-based honor, weakness could be fatal. And a failed gangster couldn’t simply quit; blood in, blood out.

  If that wasn’t enough motivation, Arturo’s botched attempt on Deputy Kearns’ life, which resulted in the death of a popular and tenured member of the gang, further highlighted his lack of leadership. Arturo had to make things right or die trying. He must restore his face and standing among his peers if he wanted to remain alive. Nothing else mattered. Not the business, the money, or living up to his brother’s legacy. If he didn’t, none of it would matter anyway.

  Avery lit a fresh cigarette from the glowing end of the last one. He had to placate the rampaging Cervantes, and soon. He would have to serve up the rookie’s head if he was to convince the PCP-smoking gangster to get back to the business of moving dope and making money. His previous attempt to buy time, temper Arturo’s misguided anger, and assuage his bloodlust, giving him the rookie’s address, had backfired. Instead of prompting Cervantes to back off, as he’d hoped, it threw gasoline on the fire.

  Cason reported by radio that Kearns had parked his jeep on Grant Avenue and walked to an unknown address on Lombard Street. Forty-five minutes later he emerged with a very pretty redheaded woman, and they walked to his jeep. He drove a half-mile south on Grant Street, parked, and escorted the woman to Tommaso’s.

  Avery was pissed Cason hadn’t been able to discover which building on Lombard Kearns had entered and exited. The narc explained there was no place to park, and traffic was too heavy on Lombard at that time for him to stop. One of the problems with urban vehicle surveillance is that once the target dismounts, it can be easy to lose them unless you already have a foot surveillance operative in place. Avery would have to settle for tracking Kearns after dinner, when he escorted the woman back to wherever she came from.

  He smoked and waited.

  Chapter 32

  “People are staring,” Jennifer said.

  “It’s not my fault you’re so damned pretty,” Kearns said.

  “Nice try,” she said. “We both know it’s because of the shiner.”

  “Don’t pay them any mind,” Kearns said, looking around at the other restaurant patrons who were, in fact, overtly noticing Jennifer’s bruised eye. “As far as anybody knows, you took an elbow playing volleyball.”

  Kearns and Jennifer Farrell had managed to get seated in Tommaso’s, and the restaurant was full, typical for a Friday night.

  “I owe you an apology,” Jennifer said.

  “What for?”

  “I didn’t even acknowledge your presence yesterday. When I finally stopped crying and looked up, you were gone.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kearns said. “You had a lot on your mind. Not to mention, we must have scared you half to death barging in on you in the tub like we did with our guns out.”

  “Speaking of that,” she said, her eyes scrunching, “how much of my soaking wet, naked body did you actually see?”

  “Not a thing,” he lied. “Once I realized you weren’t a burglar, I backed out.”

  “Dad stepped out quickly enough,” she said, her eyes relaxing, “but I seem to remember you lingering a while.”

  “I might have caught a brief glimpse,” he said.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “So how did your dad get us a reservation at a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations?” Kearns asked, desperate to change the subject. “The line of people waiting to get in stretches out the door and halfway down the block.”

  “How does Dad do anything?” she said. “By breaking the rules.”

  “Bob certainly has his methods,” Kearns agreed.

  “Actually,” she said, “he knows the owner. He also knows I’m a fiend for their brick-oven calzone. I make him take me to Tommaso’s every time I come to San Francisco.”

  “I’m sure he wishes he were here with you tonight instead of me.”

  “He said he had something important to take care of,” she said. “I can’t very well complain. I dropped in on him unannounced.”

  “He didn’t mind,” Kearns said. “He’s delighted to see you. In fact, I h
appen to know how disappointed your father was when you told him a couple of months ago you wouldn’t be coming out this summer. I thought he was going to step on his lower lip.”

  The waiter arrived, and Jennifer ordered a glass of Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon to accompany her mushroom and sausage calzone. Kearns got a bottle of Anchor Steam to go along with the half spaghetti and meatball/half ravioli dinner.

  “I hear you’re a college graduate now,” Jennifer said, once the waiter had left.

  “Bob told you?”

  “Yes. He said you were doing well at the sheriff’s department too. Moving up fast.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “That you recently broke up with your girlfriend. He told me she was a lawyer,” she said, “and very beautiful.”

  “He was right on both counts.”

  “You have something against attorneys?” Jennifer asked, one corner of her mouth turning up into the hint of a smile.

  “Not especially,” he said. “It wouldn’t have worked out between us.”

  “That’s what Dad said.”

  “He did, did he?” Kearns said indignantly. “Did Bob say anything else?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking into Kearns’ eyes. “He told me people have been trying to kill you.”

  Kearns silence was his answer.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I can’t complain,” he said.

  “I gather it’s a subject you’re not comfortable discussing?” she said.

  “I wouldn’t mind talking about it,” he said, “except that’s all I’ve been doing lately. Getting shot at and talking about it. Conversing with sheriff’s officials, police detectives, deputy district attorneys, and even a psychiatrist, if you can believe it. I’d rather chat about something else if you don’t mind. I don’t get an opportunity to see you very often, and when I do-”

  Kearns was interrupted by the waiter’s return with their drinks.

  “Sounds like your summer isn’t going any better than mine,” Jennifer said, once the waiter had gone for the second time.