by John Griffin
First Kindle Edition, Dec 2016
Copyright 2016 by John Griffin
All rights reserved.
For everyone still looking for something; I hope you find it.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Psycho
Chapter One: Reg
Chapter Two: Solomon
Chapter Three: Clive
Chapter Four: Solomon
Chapter Five: Reg
Chapter Six: Solomon
Chapter Seven: Reg
Chapter Eight: Solomon
Chapter Nine: Clive
Chapter Ten: Solomon
Chapter Eleven: Reg
Chapter Twelve: Solomon
Chapter Thirteen: Clive
Chapter Fourteen: Reg
Chapter Fifteen: Solomon
Chapter Sixteen: Justin
Chapter Seventeen: Greg
Chapter Eighteen: Solomon
Chapter Nineteen: Greg
Chapter Twenty: Solomon
Chapter Twenty-One: Justin
Chapter Twenty-Two: Solomon
October 2, 2014
October 3, 2014
Epilogue: Clive
Prologue:
Psycho
Psycho shuffled into the car seat and moved his hips until they sank comfortably into the groove. He adjusted his rear-view mirror downward until Greg, tied and gagged in the back seat, filled the frame. He smiled, started the ignition, put the car into gear, and peeled into the street, cutting off oncoming traffic, some of which honked.
“You see,” Psycho said, “people think rules inhibit. If anything, rules liberate. People think rules stop criminals. If anything, they enable us. Observe.”
Psycho drifted into oncoming traffic. More honking, but the cars swerved around him. He gently drifted back into the proper lane. “Have you ever considered how absolutely terrifying driving would be without rules? That pedestrian there, the fat one — oh, you can’t see them. Trust me, he’s fat. That pedestrian is walking not four feet from cars that are traveling fast enough to turn most of his organs into paste if they hit him. Is he afraid? Not even in the slightest. Why? Because he is on the sidewalk, and the rules say cars don’t drift onto sidewalks. But see that other guy up ahead?”
Psycho smiled into the rear-view mirror and made sure Greg made eye contact as he drifted onto the sidewalk. There was a splat and a big bump and a rumble as he ran over the pedestrian. “Rules. He didn’t see it coming. He wasn’t afraid. He thought he was safe because of those rules. He did not take even the slightest, sanest precaution because, well, you’re not supposed to drive on the sidewalk. So people like me? We can do what we please. Once you know the rules. Once you understand how they fit everyone else’s behavior into a box. It makes everyone so predictable that planning a crime — or not planning a crime, but simple, random crime — becomes easy. Once you know the rules for behavior in that box, you can smash the box and take or do anything you like.
“That’s something you cops know, isn’t it? How incredibly thin that blue line is between the victim and the criminal. In today’s day and age, the only protection is the sheer number of law-abiding citizens. I can’t kill them all. A thief can’t rob them all. So the majority of people are safe. But really, the rules keep them prisoner. They keep them sitting there waiting for someone like me. That terrifying truth is that rules do not protect anyone from harm; worse, they enable harm by lulling people into a false sense of underserved security.
“Rules, as they say, are made to be broken. And I was made to break those rules.”
Psycho drove out of the city, but not far. In a truck stop under cover of darkness a few miles into Connecticut, he parked, got out of the car, took a canister of gasoline with a rag coming out of the spout from the trunk, and put it next to Greg. He lit it and walked away as the car caught fire and Greg screamed.
Chapter One:
Reg
Reg sat at his desk working on a tablet, consuming the file with all his attention, his right hand only intermittently dipping into the bowl of high-fiber granola or down to his alkaline water when he remembered he was hungry or thirsty. He swiped through the notes Detective Solomon Roud had made on the Psycho case. It was clear from the increasingly stressed tones and urgent language that Sol was losing it.
He skipped forward to Greg’s notes, briefly shuddering as he realized he was reading notes from a dead man. He forced himself to swallow the building guilt and remember he had not been a cop when it happened, and this was exactly why he graduated from Columbia Law and never really considered being a lawyer before enrolling with the NYPD.
Greg had notes on the crimes — more fulsome descriptions than Sol, less of the pontifications and Sol’s incessant worry that he could have stopped the murders. Simple facts about what the accused did or may have done and some ideas about how he may have done it. Where possible, evidence — and that helped. But that was not why Reg was reading.
Three weeks earlier, Lisa came to see him. She offered him a short cut to the force and the opportunity to start his career in deep cover. They needed recruits — smart ones. Recruits whose backgrounds would not suggest a desire to get onto the force. A few manipulated data points here and there, and it was like he had never applied, but he was in. He said yes before they told him what he would be doing.
A week after accepting, he met Lisa in a small rented boardroom in midtown. Sham was there, a skinny South Asian who had just finished a tour with the Navy. He was a doctor by training and, near as Reg could tell, a shit-talking asshole by nature. He never shut up, and the sound of his voice put Reg on edge.
When Lisa did get the room quiet and find a few minutes to string together the operation, Reg was not surprised, but he would have been if he knew better or had any experience. Sol had been removed from the force and had not been an officer for months. He was seeing the force shrink once a week on mandatory visits. “And,” Lisa added after a crude joke from Sham, “he came in three weeks ago and told me he had a part in four robberies in the last six months. Big ones. And he could connect them all back to the same ringleader.”
“Everyone needs a part-time job,” Sham said.
“And that he was in over his head and needed to get out.” Lisa said, ignoring Sham. “But this is not the type of gang you quit. You work, you get paid, and when they cut you loose you die or you escape. He needs to escape.”
Lisa needed to build a team for the next planned heist and work with Sol to get to the person planning the thefts. To be clear, Lisa did not need to build a team or do anything — that was not lost of Reg. Sol had gone rogue; he was an officer removed from active duty, and he fell in with this gang on his own. He was a criminal working with criminals. But here was Lisa, going out on a limb to help Sol, and Reg knew there had to be a good reason. He parked his intuition and promised to ask later.
“Who are we after?” Reg had asked.
“We don’t know who the Big Kahuna is,” Lisa said. “The Chief could be a man or a woman. Could be here or overseas. Could be a suspect on one of our lists for something else or could be someone entirely new. Could be someone in jail. We don’t even know if this somebody exists or not. We hadn’t connected the crimes before.”
“So it could be Sol playing us all,” Sham said, giving voice to Reg’s suspicions. Assholes have their place, after all.
Lisa paused and stared at him.
“Raw nerve?” Sham said, putting his hands up in a peace offering.
“It’s a fair question,” Lisa said, though by the tone Reg sensed she thought it was not fair, and that this was not the first time she had heard the question. “You need to spend some time getting to
know Sol. Did he commit some crimes? Yeah. And if you are wondering what it takes to break a cop, then read his file. It’s on the tablets I’m giving you today. And read up on the Psycho case. Sol’s notes. Greg’s, too. If you can read all that and not sympathize, then you let me know, and we can find someone else.”
“What’d he do?” Reg asked. “The Big Chief Kahuna.”
“Captain Crime was involved in the gold theft at the Federal Reserve Bank.”
“I thought that was an inside job?” Sham asked.
“All jobs are inside jobs if you look hard enough,” Lisa said. Reg noted it.
Sham yelled, “oh, snap.”
She continued. “And he robbed First National, the safety deposit boxes.”
“I remember that,” Sham said. “Bunch of dumb rich people who refused to tell anyone what was stolen. The news called it the perfect crime.”
“And it was,” Lisa said. “We couldn’t arrest someone for that if we found them driving down the street showing off the contents of the bank in the back of a pickup. Not a single statement. They left boxes of cash and other valuables sitting there untouched. They emptied just thirty-two boxes from thirty-two people and families who refused to tell us what was inside.”
The moment got heavy as even Sham seemed to realize how serious this was. Lisa sensed it. “The rest is in the files. Read up. Do the homework. You’re gonna meet Sol, and you’re gonna like him. But you need to know what he went through. And yes, Sham, you need to suspect that he is the Kingpin, and that he is playing us all.”
“And if he is?” Sham asked. “If we figure it out and it is him?”
“That’s my problem, not yours. You’re not here to make decisions.”
And here Reg was six hours of reading later. He had gone straight home and powered on the tablet, pressed his thumbprint in to clear security and started to read. He blew through Sol’s personal file in twenty minutes and saw something of himself in it. Sol was the son of a wealthy art dealer. Supposed to be worth hundreds of millions, but his family lost it all in a Ponzi scheme. Before it was gone, though, Sol joined the force. Could have done anything but chose this. Not quite Reg’s story, but close. It was a boring read.
The Psycho case was more interesting, but creepy. He skipped over the last of Sol’s notes and moved on to Greg’s. Detective Gregory Kellogg, deceased. Funeral attended by thousands of cops from across the world in a show of support following the brazen immolation of one of their own. Reg had gone himself as a new cadet — not in dress uniform yet, but he felt he needed to be there.
Psycho was two cases — maybe three. Hell, maybe four. It was a case about a guy who kidnapped and killed young schoolgirls. Watched them asphyxiate and broadcast it over the net on gore websites. But before he did that, he killed two dozen homeless people in escalating iterations, perfecting his M.O. And in the middle of those murders he took the time to try to shake Sol and Greg off his tail, mostly by taking Sol’s life apart bit by bit.
Greg wrote scant details about the deterioration of Sol’s finances. Sol had always been private but lived a life Greg could not imagine. Even broke, his family was wealthy. Some assets you could lose in a Ponzi scheme — cash, stocks, investments, and returns that never really existed. Others no one could touch — condos, yachts, paintings. Plenty left over to pay for Sol’s life, but it started disappearing as Sol sold everything of value Greg had ever seen.
Then, Psycho took Greg. Injected him with propofol, tied him up, drove him to a truck stop in Connecticut, and set the car on fire. They were partners five years, Sol and Greg. It meant something. Reg did not know what it meant yet but knew that would mean Sol needed revenge or justice. He knew that Sol would have gone to see Greg’s wife and kid and said something like, I’ll find the guy who did this and I will get him, I will bring him in. But that was not what pushed Sol over the edge.
Reg read the report about April 1, 2014 like he was watching it unfold on a screen. Sol, transferred out of homicide and into a crisis intervention unit, gets a call about a jumper. He hitches a ride with a uniformed NYPD patrol. The lights were on. The siren was not. The two men stepped out of the car. One wore the NYPD uniform; he was tall, white hair, and heavy. He walked along the sidewalk and called to pedestrians to keep clear. The other man, Sol, was in plainclothes, a taupe suit and a beige overcoat. He was young but sharp, swiveling his head and fixing his eyes on the jumper. His hands were on his hips.
“Need a hand, Solomon?” the man in blue said. “Roud?” he added after being ignored. “Detective?” he barked, finally, having cleared the sidewalk. A fire truck was bearing down on them, stopping traffic from the west.
Solomon looked back. He shook his head. He turned around, his right hand moving from his hip into his pocket, where it lingered. He turned toward an ice cream truck parked across the street. “Don’t have my tools,” he said. “Need him to hear me.” He walked over, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket, looking down toward it and then putting it back.
The ladder captain walked up to the man in blue. “Who’s he?” he asked.
“Detective Roud, negotiator,” the man in blue said.
The two watched Solomon as a crowd gathered outside the perimeter created by the firemen and the other officers who had arrived. Solomon spoke briefly to the ice cream man, who handed over the microphone for his loudspeaker. Solomon took it in his hand and held it up to his phone. He played a song, and the crowd started to laugh nervously as they looked from the ice cream truck and then back to the jumper.
“Might as well JUMP!” David Lee Roth sang. “Go ahead and Juh-ump!”
The jumper stepped off the ledge and slammed into the ground, dying instantly. That night was the night of Greg’s death, but by then the damage was done. Sol hadn’t been at work since.
Chapter Two:
Solomon
Three days before Lisa first spoke to Reg and Sham, Solomon stepped to a desk at the Harlem YMCA. A woman with short, curly gray hair smiled at him. Her nametag said “Phyllis.” “How can I help, honey?”
“I need a room,” Solomon replied. He was wearing his taupe suit and had a small nylon duffle bag with him that was filled mostly with air.
Phyllis smiled. “How long will you be staying with us?”
“Two weeks.”
“Okay,” she said as she typed the reservation into her computer. It had a CRT screen. “Hundred dollars a night, so that will be thirteen hundred, plus taxes.”
Solomon shook his head. “Isn’t this the Y?”
“We’ve come a long way, honey,” Phyllis said.
Solomon paid the entire amount in advance in cash. Phyllis gave him a plastic card for his room key. He walked straight toward the elevators, between two ferns in the opposite direction of the lobby. He took the elevator to the second floor and found his room quickly. He got in and emptied his duffle bag into the drawer. There was ample room for his extra shirt and three pairs each of underwear and socks, his gun, three clips, his badge, and six packages of ramen.
He sat on his bed. It smelled like fish. He took his phone out of his pocket and made a call. “Lisa?”
“Sol?” Lisa replied. “Where are you?”
“The Harlem Y.”
“Jesus, Sol,” Lisa said. “You have no idea how to be poor, do you?”
“I’m trying,” Solomon said.
“You might as well be staying at the Ritz. The Y isn’t what it used to be.”
“Oh, it’s close. Prices are up. Still smells like fish…”
“I’m not driving to Harlem.”
“Dog and Duck?” Solomon offered.
“Sure.”
Solomon made his way to the bar. Lisa had arrived first. She was taller than Solomon, himself taller than everyone else in the bar. She was lean with red hair, and she looked young, fit, healthy. She was drinking something green. She stood
to welcome him. They embraced briefly, and she went to sit. “Nah,” Solomon said. “Not here.”
He held her elbow and pulled her with him gently. He let go, and she continued following. He nodded at Sean behind the bar and took Lisa to the back room with the purple felt table.
“Sol,” Lisa said. “Tell me you didn’t take me to an underground poker room?”
“It’s just a room. I don’t see no poker,” Solomon said. “I’ve bought it out. Just for a few weeks.”
“For the operation?” Lisa said.
Solomon nodded.
“So, what was enough for Minister Moneybags to reach out?” Lisa asked.
“It’s not a big score,” Solomon said. “Two million in cash and fencible goods. Private home in Short Hills. Old man living alone. One of those guys whose parents lived through the crash, and he was raised not to trust banks. But he’s got a painting. Worth a few million.”
“Which one?” Lisa asked.
“Not sure. Some new guy. Don’t really follow that stuff anymore.”
“I don’t get it, though. He robs a bank, clears out god-only-knows in safety deposit boxes while leaving all the cash — leaving everything that we could have traced. Most of the box owners wouldn’t even tell us what they had in there. He knew, he must have known, he was stealing something that wouldn’t be traced. We can’t track goods that aren’t reported stolen, Sol. Next, he gets a man inside the Federal Reserve and takes precisely two hundred one-kilo gold bricks. We don’t even know when he took them. Might have been yesterday, might have been the day after the last visual, manual audit. But he takes just two hundred. Not one more. The dedication, the discipline, to resist all that temptation, it is downright religious.”
“He’s extraordinary,” Solomon said. “But he’s not greedy. He has a risk/reward model. It’s a deep code. And this is perfect. A simple alarm — motion sensors, window and door sensors, a few safes with the cash and diamonds. And the painting is currently registered as stolen in the Art Loss Register. So that’s not likely to get reported, either.”