by David Grace
Mortensen gave Danes’ hand a brief, but sincere shake, then tucked the CD inside his coat and, smiling for the first time in weeks, marched out the door.
CHAPTER THREE
Ned and Janis had converted their spare bedroom into a shared office where he could spread out his case files and she could work on her evaluation reports. When he got back from Vinnie’s Ned closed the door, settled behind his desk and uneasily glanced at the digital clock — 10:08. It was really too late to call Phil Abbott but Mortensen’s words had drawn blood. Chances were that by this time tomorrow he’d be on unpaid leave and they weren’t going to be able to survive on Janis’ salary alone.
Last year FBI Special Agent in Charge Phillip Abbott had given Danes his cell number “in case of an emergency.” Ned thought about it for a few seconds and decided that the imminent end of his career probably qualified. He squinted at the ballpoint number jotted on the back of the card that read: “Special Agent In Charge, Phillip Abbott, Federal Bureau of Investigation - Major Crimes Unit” and started dialing.
* * *
Phillip Breckenridge Abbott looked like the actor Central Casting would have picked to play the CEO of an old-line bank or insurance company, someone whose chiseled face and perfect teeth matched an undergraduate degree from Yale, summers on Martha’s Vineyard and money old enough to pre-date the invention of the telephone. And that was just as it should be because Phillip Abbott was all of those things. The Abbott family had founded its fortune on the sale of beans and canned beef to the Union Army and then parlayed those profits into investments in the Union Pacific Railroad and a strategic marriage to Abigail Breckenridge whose father was the principal shareholder in the Northeastern Bank & Trust. By the turn of the century the bank had given birth to an industrial fire and casualty company and from there on the Abbotts and the Breckenridges had never looked back.
By the late ’50s a habit of sending their boys off to war and a diminished gene pool had reduced the hopes for the continuation of the Abbott line to only two candidates, Phillip Breckenridge Abbott, and his younger brother, Harrison Tyler Abbott. In every way Phillip was the family’s fair-haired boy — handsome, charming, intelligent, as honorable as an archbishop if you believed his friends, and as dangerous as a pit bull, if you believed his enemies. In fact, both descriptions were true.
It was assumed that after graduation from Harvard Law, Phillip would go through a suitable apprenticeship and eventually replace his father, Sterling Abbott, at the helm of the family empire. Phillips’ announcement that he had decided to join the FBI was therefore greeted in certain quarters with not a little consternation and gnashing of teeth, especially by Phillip’s mother, Elaine Symington Abbott.
“Philly, you can’t be serious,” she had said in that voice she used when she heard something that just positively could not be true. Phillip smiled and recalled the last time he had heard her use that tone:
“A peanut farmer from Alabama?”
“Georgia, dear,” Sterling corrected her.
“How could anyone think that this country would elect a Georgia peanut farmer as its President? This all has to be some wretched joke.”
“It’s not a joke, mom. He’s really running for President. He might even win.”
“Nonsense. I refuse to believe it.”
Phillip pulled his mind back to the present and gave his mother his best smile.
“I’ve already filed my application and it’s been accepted,” he told her.
“Then unfile it. They’ll just have to make do with some, oh, I don’t know, fireman’s son or a football player whose knee doesn’t work right anymore.”
“I’m sorry, mom, but I leave for Quantico next month.”
“Quantico? It sounds like some kind of a skin cream. Why would you want to be a policeman anyway? What if you get shot? Then what will I do?”
“I’ll do my best not to get shot, I promise.”
“But, why Phillip, why a policeman?”
“Mom, you’d only laugh if I told you.”
“I could use a good laugh right now, Philly.”
Abbott took a little breath. “I want to do something with my life. All my life I’ve had a free ride. What good have I done? Who have I helped? What’s the point of just putting more zeros in a bank account someplace?”
“Oh, Philly, such nonsense! When you run the company you’ll help lots of people. We have thousands of employees. Someone needs to look after them, and there’s always charity. You can establish a foundation or something, give money away left and right if you want.”
A dozen replies flitted through Abbott’s brain, none of which his mother would understand.
“Mom,” he said finally, taking her in his arms, surprised at how frail she felt. “I’ll do good work and I will make you all proud. Think about it. We’ve never had an FBI agent in the family. Imagine that when one of your friends talks about her son fixing a broken leg or building a new sewage treatment plant and you tell her that last week your son arrested a gang of crooks just before they could knock over First National Trust and steal all their jewels and platinum watches. That’ll get their attention don’t you think?”
“Oh, Philly,” Elaine said, trying to smile while she held back her tears. “You will be careful, won’t you? You’re not going to get yourself into any shootouts or whatever it is they call them are you?”
“It will be strictly white-collar crime for me, mother, I promise. It won’t be so bad. I’ll wear a suit and tie every day.”
“A nice suit,” Elaine insisted, pushing Phillip back to look him in the eye. “Tailored, tasteful, a nice gray pinstripe perhaps. Nothing off-the-rack like those policeman on the television wear.”
“I promise, mother, nothing off-the-rack. I’ll be the image of sartorial propriety. All right?”
“Well, if you must, I suppose you must. Perhaps you’re right. And, if it doesn’t work out you can always resign. I’m sure that with a little effort your father could get you appointed as a federal judge someplace or other.”
“We’ll call that Plan B. Now, I’ve got to tell Harrison he’s going to be stuck running the company. Do you want to come with me when I give him the bad news?”
“Oh, Philly,” Elaine laughed and circled his waist with her arm.
In point of fact, Phillip Abbott zoomed through the ranks of the FBI. With old money, a brilliant mind, an insane work ethic and a marriage to Kimberly Danberry, the only child of former U.S. Senator Roger Danberry, Abbott sped through the FBI bureaucracy as if he was coated with pig fat. Before long they wanted to send him to Washington and make him a paper-pusher. He was fine with the Washington part but refused to become a bureaucrat. Instead he spent six months arguing for the establishment of the Bureau’s equivalent of a Major Case Squad. There was already a precedent, the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the BAU, which chased down serial killers out of its headquarters in Quantico.
“The Major Crimes Unit, the MCU,” Abbott argued, “will have the same structure as the BAU and the same strategy. It will go after the biggest threats, the biggest gangs, the worst offenders, people whose actions stretch beyond a single field office, whose crimes are so serious that they require a dedicated, high-impact, team approach.”
It took all of Abbott’s powers of persuasion, every favor he had ever earned, every political connection the Abbotts and the Danberrys together could muster, but, in the end, he got what he wanted. The MCU was established, based out of headquarters in Washington, D.C. And, of course, its first commander was Phillip Breckenridge Abbott.
Ned Danes knew none of this. To him, Phil Abbott was just the Special Agent in charge of a team that had been tracking down an interstate gang of bank robbers who had paused long enough in Upstate New York to knock over the Lincoln Trust Company and, in the process, kill the night security guard, a murder that Ned Danes had been charged with solving. Ned and Phil Abbott had gotten along well, seemed to click, though Danes had no idea why Abbott had gone out of
his way to befriend him. It was simple, really. Phil Abbott had a habit of grabbing hold of every honest, decent, courageous cop he would find and adding them to his secret list of men he could trust to do the right thing. So Abbott had told Danes to call him if he was ever in need of a friend, because Abbott knew that what goes around comes around and that someday a favor given might well become a favor received.
At ten after ten that Tuesday night Phil Abbott looked at the caller ID, pressed the “answer” button and said, “Ned, what can I do for you?”
“Phil, I’m sorry to call so late, but something’s come up and I could use some advice, well, more like a referral I suppose.”
“Tell me about it.”
Danes spent five minutes laying out what he had learned, his anger growing second by second. “And so they picked this poor sap, Fraschetti, as their patsy. I checked him out. Forty years old, still lives with his parents, IQ about 85. He works as a minimum-wage stock-boy at the local market. He doesn’t own a car. He’s never even had a driver’s license. Their story is that he stole his store’s delivery truck to do the crime. They’ve got some crap video of some similar kind of truck in the area of the dumpsite but it’s nothing more than a gray blur. Fraschetti’s a perfect fall guy to clear the case. He looks a little odd and he’s not bright enough to really understand what’s happening to him. The sons of bitches!”
“And tomorrow you’re going to blow up their case?”
“Damn straight, I mean, what choice do I have? The bastards! . . . Sorry, well, anyway, it looks like I’m going to need to start looking for a new job. I’m guessing that I’m too old for the Bureau to want me but I was hoping that you might know somebody who could use my training, maybe in private security or corporate in-house? Even something part-time would be a help.”
“I could probably point you in the right direction but I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. You’ve got a union. The department can’t just fire you.”
Danes gave Abbott a bitter laugh. “Chief Jaworski’s in the D.A.’s pocket and he’ll find a way to get rid of me, you can count on that — tardiness, failure to properly document expenses, insubordination, breaking any one of a hundred petty rules. When they want to get rid of you they can always find a way. Right now I just need to figure out what I’m going to do next.”
“All right.”
“So, you might know some people you can refer me to?”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll help you find another job if you’ll do something for me.”
“Like what?”
“I want you to record any conversations you have with the D.A. or anyone at the PD over the next couple of days.”
“You want me to wear a wire! What for? I’m not a snitch.”
“I know that.”
“Then why?”
“If this hits the fan you’re going to have one story and they’ll have another. If I’m going to go to the CEO of a bank and tell him to hire you, I’m going to need to be able to tell him that I have personal knowledge that you were screwed over and that everything they’re saying about you is a lie. So, if I’m going to go to bat for you, if I’m going to give people my personal guarantee, then I need you to record everything they say to you so this doesn’t turn into just a he-said/she-said.”
“I’m not wearing a wire so I can sue people, even these bastards,” Danes insisted.
“Nobody’s asking you to sue anybody, Ned. I just need you to do this for me so that I can help you. That’s not an unreasonable request is it?”
“I guess not,” Danes answered after a few seconds thought.
“All right. You go to court and tell the truth and if it all turns bad, I’ve got your back.”
“Thanks, Phil. This means a lot to me. I’ve got a family, responsibilities. I have to support my family. I need to have a job.”
“Ned, listen to me very carefully. Are you listening?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m listening.”
“All right, here’s my message to you: Get yourself a good night’s sleep and tomorrow, wear the wire and then tell the truth. And know this: I’ve—Got—Your—Back.”
Janis popped her head through the door just as Ned was hanging up. “Everything all right?” she asked.
“Come on in, honey. We need to talk.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Almost a hundred years ago the county courthouse had been constructed of marble and granite, grand arches and high ceilings, all in the hope of overawing the citizenry with the majesty of The Law. Over the years the building had grown tired and it was now sadly shopworn. Danes slumped onto a scratched-up bench outside Department 14 at five to nine and stared blankly at the Just Say No To Drugs placard on the opposite wall. An anonymous stream of lawyers, witnesses, potential jurors and defendants wandered past, and one person not so anonymous.
Art Wayman glanced idly at Danes, half-turned and gave him a surprised stare, then hurried into the courtroom. Shit! Ned thought and clicked the button on the ballpoint pen that was really a digital recorder. Ten seconds later Terry Worthington stormed into the hallway.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” he demanded, looming over Danes. Worthington’s charcoal suit fit him perfectly, hand-tailored no doubt. A white Egyptian-cotton shirt, a burgundy silk tie, and a set of square off-gold cufflinks completed the image of a savvy, young attorney battling to protect the citizens from demented monsters like Howard Fraschetti. Ned stood, forcing Worthington to take a step back.
“Mortensen subpoenaed me.” Ned half pulled the form from his inside pocket then shoved it back down.
“This is all about that damn surveillance video isn’t it? I told you that thing’s bogus.” Ned just shrugged. “Listen to me, Danes,” Worthington whispered, then paused, looked over his shoulder, and pulled Ned into the corner. “You’re a cop and that means we’re on the same side. If you blow up my case you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.”
“I’m here under subpoena.”
“This was never your case. Why the hell would Mortensen subpoena you?” Again, Ned shrugged. “You told him, didn’t you? You told him about the tape.”
“You said he already knew about the tape.”
“Don’t play games with me, Danes. You called Art Wayman, then you called me, then you called Mortensen and shot off your mouth. That’s the only way he would have gotten the idea to subpoena you.” Ned just stared at Worthington, his face as flat as a plate. “You listen to me, Danes. Your job is hanging by a thread here. If you go into that courtroom and tell the jury that Fraschetti is innocent I swear that I will see to it that by the end of the week your job and your pension are both gone.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say that you don’t know anything about the damn tape or that you lost it or that you accidently stepped on it or that your computer ate it or that you don’t have any chain of evidence on it, that it’s unverified, that the clock was off, that it’s not from the night of the murder, whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t hurt my case. You’re a cop for Christ’s sake, you know how to testify to make it sound right.”
“You’re telling me to lie?”
“I’m telling you to remember what side you’re on. I’m telling you that it’s your job to see to it that Howard Fraschetti goes away for this and that you had better do your job.”
“Are you serious?”
“Listen, Danes,” Worthington said in a voice that was almost a hiss, “you go in there and say whatever you have to say to make sure that the jury finds that moron guilty or I will ruin your life.”
Worthington paused, looked around to make sure no one had heard his outburst, straightened his perfectly cut coat, and walked back into the courtroom as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Five minutes later the bailiff opened the door and called, “Detective Nedrick Danes.”
— End Of The Concrete Kiss Excerpt —
To visit the Concrete Kiss page on David Gra
ce’s website TAP or CLICK here.