by Frank Zafiro
“You search him?” a hard voice barked.
“Not yet.”
“Then why the fuck is he standing up?”
“I figured it’d be easier—”
“Just search him. We’ll talk about it at debrief.” The rebuke was plain in his tone.
“Yes, sir.”
The cop kicked my feet out to the side so that I was in a wide stance. Then he performed a brusque search.
Great. He screws up and I pay the price.
When he came across my wallet, my phone, and my hospital paperwork, he tossed them on the coffee table.
“Doobie, search the couch for me,” he ordered when he was finished.
Another black-clad SWAT officer lifted the cushions of the couch. When he lifted the third cushion, he stopped.
“Gun!”
The grip on wrist my increased. I grunted in pain. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a gun there?” he growled in my ear.
“You didn’t ask,” I told him between clenched teeth.
“I got the gun,” Doobie said. “We’re good.”
He replaced the cushion and stepped away.
The cop forced me toward the couch, finally releasing me with a light shove. I fell clumsily onto the askew cushion.
I looked around for Helen. She was being searched by another SWAT officer.
“You need to have a female conduct that search,” I snapped at him.
“Shut up,” my cop said.
I turned back to him. “If requested, you’re required to provide a female to search—”
“I said shut up. I’m not required to do shit.”
“ State v. Meringue ,” I told him. “You might want to check your case law if you want to avoid a lawsuit.”
His eyes crinkled. I figured he had to be smiling behind that mask. “You might want to keep up on your case law, Stankovic. That ruling was overturned three years ago.”
I didn’t answer. He could be right. I’d made a point of keeping up with case law, but only as it pertained to my small slice of business. I didn’t pay attention to the rulings regarding opposite gender searches. Why would I?
“Piece of shit,” the cop muttered.
“What’s your badge number?” I asked him.
“Double-oh-go fuck yourself.”
“I want to see a supervisor,” I said. “Right now. And where’s your warrant?”
“It’s coming.”
“You took my door without a warrant in hand?” I asked incredulously.
I heard him chuckle underneath his balaclava. “No. It’s right outside.” He glanced at the door. “Check that. It’s right here.”
I followed his gaze. Detective Kyle Falkner stood in my doorway, a smug look on his face. He held up a packet of paper. “You looking for this, smart guy?”
It took a moment for the shock to wear off. Falkner spent that time giving me a gloating stare.
“Let me see that,” I finally demanded.
He tossed it onto the table next to my wallet. “Your copy. You can read it when I’m gone.”
“I want to read it now.”
“Well, then use your psychic powers to levitate that shit in front of you, and read away.”
I looked at him and then back at the officer guarding me. “You both realize that I will be filing an IA complaint, right?”
Falkner shrugged. “File away.”
“You’re both easily a demeanor beef already. And if this warrant isn’t bulletproof, I’ll add illegal entry and search to the list.”
“My warrant is air tight,” Falkner said easily. “And as far as a demeanor complaint goes?” He shrugged. “You think anyone is going to believe a piece of dog shit like you over me and these fine officers?”
“What about a witness?” I asked.
“Who?” He looked over at Helen, then laughed. “Oh, that’s priceless. Yeah, my bitch ex-wife would have absolutely no motivation to walk into Internal Affairs and lie. She can get me in trouble and bail out her boyfriend.” He shook his head. “People try that all the time, Stank, and you know it. At best, it’ll be insufficient evidence. Most likely, though, it’ll get tossed.”
I didn’t reply because the son of a bitch was right.
Two more detectives wearing latex gloves came into the living room. Both gave me hard, disappointed looks.
“I’d be more worried about my own predicament, if I were you,” Falkner continued. “I mean, here we haven’t even started searching yet and we already found a gun? Aren’t you a convicted felon?”
He knew I wasn’t. He was just rubbing my record in my face.
“The gun’s legal,” I said. “And so am I. What’s your warrant for?”
“To search,” he said. He motioned to the other two detectives, who fanned out and started searching the house.
Falkner remained in the living room with me. Most of the SWAT officers filed out to the waiting armored vehicle, replaced by patrol officers for scene security. I recognized a couple of the patrol cops, but they studiously ignored me.
A female cop took the place of the SWAT officer who’d been guarding me.
“I want his badge number,” I told Falkner.
Falkner shrugged. “Do a public records request. Then you can read it in the report.”
I glanced up at the young officer next to me. She bore a pony tail and an earnest expression. The dichotomy of that almost made me smile. “Don’t be part of my complaint,” I told her. “What’s that officer’s name and badge number?”
“Please be quiet, sir,” she said, her voice firm and professional. “Or you’ll have to wait in my patrol vehicle until the search is complete.”
So much for that.
I sat silently while the detectives went through the house. Falkner stood in the room with a smirk on his face. Helen sat in the easy chair a few feet from me, her expression alternating between confused and angry. She didn’t say a word, though.
The detectives seemed more intent on making a mess of my house than on finding anything. The banging noises progressed in an orderly fashion until eventually they’d make a complete circle and were both back in the living room.
“What’d you get?” Falkner asked. He held out my gun, which he’d already put into an evidence bag. “I mean, besides this?”
One detective had a jewelry box in his hand. He flipped it open and showed it to Falkner. His eyes lit up.
“Stolen property, perhaps?”
“Most of that is my grandmother’s jewelry,” I said.
“Yeah,” Falkner said. “Every thief I know has a rich grandma who likes to leave him jewelry in her will.”
I looked away, sorry I said anything. I wasn’t stupid enough to keep anything hot here at the house. And if they didn’t know about the storage unit under a false name, then they weren’t going to end up with anything for all this effort.
“Book it onto property,” Falkner said. “Run the jewelry against our stolen property database.”
The detective nodded and headed out the door.
“How about you, Kookachoo?” Falkner asked the other detective, almost giddy.
“Nothing,” the other detective replied. “Unless you want to run his electronics for stolen.”
“Do it.”
“All right.”
“Anything else?”
“Well…”
“What?” Falkner asked.
The detective gave me a sideways look, then shrugged. “There’s a hiding place in the extra bedroom.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Fake floorboards
in the closet. Opens up into a space about two feet by four feet and maybe a foot deep.”
“A secret stash,” Falkner gloated. “What’s in it?”
“It’s empty,” I said, smiling. “So nice try.”
Falkner’s gloat diminished. “Is he right?”
The detective nodded. “Yeah. Nothing in it.”
Falkner scowled, then shrugged. “Oh, well. I guess we know where to look next time we kick in your door, huh, Stank?”
“Fuck you.”
Falkner smiled a hard, cold smile. “You get the property on the sheet?” he asked the other detective without looking at him.
“Yeah.”
“Give him his copy and I’ll meet you back at the station, then.”
The detective produced a piece of paperwork, tore off the pink copy and tossed it on the coffee table. Then he turned to leave.
Falkner turned to the patrol officer. “Thanks, Sandi. I’ll finish up from here. You can go back into service.”
The officer hesitated for a second. Then she turned and followed the detective out the front door.
Once we were alone, Falkner took a step closer to me. “This is just the beginning, Stank . It’s going to keep on coming. And let me tell you how it’s going to end. It’s going to end with you in prison.” He jerked his head toward Helen. “The cunt, too, if I can make it happen.”
I surged forward but he saw it coming. Before I was even standing, he planted his hands into my chest and sent me sprawling back onto the couch.
“Don’t try to be a hero,” he said. “It ain’t you.”
Then he turned and walked toward my front door.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled after him. “Undo these cuffs!”
Falkner didn’t break stride. He slammed the door behind him.
“Son of a bitch! ” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
I stood up and went into the kitchen. After fumbling with the handle, I managed to slide the silverware drawer open. I reached inside and felt around until I found a steak knife. When I turned to go back to the living room, Helen was standing near me.
“Turn around,” I said. “And hold out your hands toward me.”
She didn’t hesitate. I stepped as close as I could and eased the knife between her wrists. When I felt the saw tooth catch on the plastic of the flex cuffs, I pressed down.
“Pull against the knife,” I told her, and began sawing awkwardly back and forth.
It only took a minute to get through the hard plastic. Helen’s hands burst free. I gave her the knife and turned around. She cut me loose.
I went straight to living room and grabbed the paperwork Falkner had left behind. I ignored the pink property form, which would only list the gun and the jewelry they took. I looked for affidavit of probable cause, but found only a signed copy of the search warrant.
I read through the search warrant boilerplate but the information was overly broad. A magistrate found that there was probable cause to believe that I was involved in the crimes of possession of stolen property and trafficking in stolen property and therefore Detective Falkner was authorized to search my person and premises for the same.
I cursed quietly. This was no help. I’d need to get a copy of the actual affidavit to see what he was basing his PC on. That would mean going to the courthouse, waiting in line, and paying a fee. Only then could I make a reasonable decision on how to respond.
“What’s it say?” Helen asked me, rubbing her wrists.
“Shit,” I told her. “It doesn’t say shit.”
I went back into the kitchen and poured a stiff drink at the counter. Helen appeared beside me and asked for one, too. I poured her one and we both sat down at the kitchen table. We sipped our whiskey in silence for a long while.
Something didn’t add up. I could feel it in my gut. Before Falkner arrived with his warrant, the logical source of that wrongness seemed to be Helen. It had just seemed too perfect, her coming back into my life at this time. And so completely, as if she’d never left. Things like that don’t really happen in real life.
But I saw the look of genuine surprise on her face when the cops hit the door. No one could fake that. And she’d come to the hospital, hadn’t she? So maybe I was being cynical about what happens in real life and what doesn’t.
Still, something was wrong. I suppose Ozzy’s guys could have spotted me sitting off of the store and rousted me. And Falkner could have just been looking for Matt because of the assault warrant. Officer Burke might have just happened to see me on my cell phone and decided to make a stop. And that detective searching my bedroom could have just gotten lucky and found my secret compartment, even though it was almost undiscernible.
But I doubted it. One of the Bond villains put it best when he said that one time is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action. Something was going on.
My mind drifted toward my small crew. Matt and Brent. Could one of them be working with Falkner?
I hated to think it was possible, but experience has shown me that anything can happen when someone is staring five years in prison right in the face.
Matt.
Goddamn it.
He got popped. He met with Falkner. He got out early.
Do the math.
I spun my glass around slowly, thinking.
“Jake…” Helen began, but I raised my hand.
“Shhhh,” I said, not looking at her.
Big, goofy Matt. What could he give Falkner?
A lot.
Matt did all my in-town hauling. He knew where the storage units were. It didn’t matter that they were under a false name. The facility manager might be able to pick me out of a lineup as the guy who rented the place.
If Matt gave Falkner the storage units, it was game over. That, along with his testimony, was enough to sink me.
But Falkner didn’t utter a word about storage units when he was in here. And his warrant was only for this house. That didn’t mean he didn’t know about the storage units but the way he’d been gloating, I had a hard time believing he wouldn’t have said something about them. A smart detective would have hit those first. Lower risk, and it adds a huge boost of probable cause to the warrant for me and the house.
No, I decided. Matt didn’t give him the storage units. At least not yet. Or he gave him empty ones.
Which brought me back to my first question. Was Matt even working with Falkner?
I took another sip of whiskey. The harsh liquid burned my throat and warmed my belly.
The fact was, I didn’t know for sure. Something was wrong, but I didn’t know if it was Matt. One thing was sure, though. I’d have to find out, and fast.
That brought me to Brent. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall any signs that he might be helping out Falkner. There’d been no indication he’d been in any legal trouble, either. Frankly, I just couldn’t see it happening. Brent was careful. He handled my out-of-town transportation and the short-term loans.
I thought about that some more. What if he got popped for possession of stolen property while he was out of town? I might not have heard about it. Local cops where he got arrested might work with the State Patrol or the cops here, if there was a payoff.
Was I the payoff?
Was I worth it?
I took another drink, trying to think like a cop again. How much damage did we do? How big was our criminal footprint?
Not big.
And cops everywhere have to triage cases. Even if Brent rolled over and showed his belly, would it be worth their time to follow up?
No.
But it’d be worth Falkner’s time. Any
thing to do with me was.
I could see a scenario where Brent gets passed off to Falkner. That’d get it off the originating agency’s plate without counting as a loss. Or, more accurately, a forfeit. And Falkner would work the hell out of it.
But Brent? I just couldn’t see him doing that. He was solid. Loyal. Steady. And too smart to get caught in the first place.
I sighed.
Couldn’t see him doing it? Or was it that I didn’t want to?
I’d have to figure that one out, same as Matt. And just as soon.
My telephone rang. I stood and walked slowly into the living room. When I looked at the number, I didn’t recognize it. I hesitated, debating whether to answer it. In the end, I hit SEND .
“Hello?”
“Hello, asshole,” came a female voice.
“Who is this?”
“Up until she found out what a dick you are, it was your sometimes girlfriend.”
I resisted the urge to sigh, and cast a glance toward the kitchen where Helen still sat. “Cleo, I’m really not in the mood.”
“I couldn’t care less about your mood.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“What? And miss hearing about me and your detective friend?”
I paused. “What are you talking about?”
“Your pal. Kyle Falkner? I thought you might like to know he and I met.”
Jesus, when it rains, it fucking pours.
I reached up and rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, wincing slightly when my thumb pressed on the tender left lid where Damon punched me. “Well, good for you, I guess.”
“It was, actually.” Her voice took on a slight purr.
We were both silent for a moment. Then I scrunched my brow. “Wait a minute. What are you saying? You fucked him?”
She scoffed. “Sure, Jake. I’m the same kind of whore you are, huh? I just fuck anyone. ‘Cause I’m a flight attendant, right?”
“Well, that’s what you made it sound like.”
“I know. Feel good, did it? To think I was fucking someone else?”
“Cleo, stop.”