This time the silence lasted a full twenty seconds. Gorman knew that this was the critical moment. Patrolman Brooks was deciding whether to bare his soul to a stranger. If he decided not to, he would be out the door in a couple of minutes and that would be the end of it. If he chose to talk to Gorman though, Patrolman Brooks would find himself with more help for his problems than he had ever expected.
But the choice was his.
Finally, Brooks looked up and said, “It’s Francine, my wife. She’s trying to break me down. And it’s working.”
“What exactly is she doing?”
“It’s like she’s just looking for things to fight with me about. Nothing’s good enough for her anymore. I asked her to go to counseling. She told me that only nuts like me need counseling, not sane people. And the other night I found a business card for a divorce lawyer on the bedroom dresser. She’s right about one thing. It is making me nuts.”
Gorman put his palms together and said, “A lot of people get divorced. It shouldn’t be the end of your world.”
Brooks sat in sullen silence. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Then did it again.
Gorman looked at him for a few long seconds and then said, “Gunny, please take Officer Giles outside. I want to talk to Patrolman Brooks alone.”
When the door closed behind the other two men, Gorman said, “Okay, just us two. Now what is it? What’s the real problem? Divorce isn’t the end of the world.”
“I’ve got a daughter. Amy. She’s fourteen. I could live with a divorce. I sure as hell could live without Francine. But the thought of losing my kid…I don’t want to deal with that. I’ve put up with a lot of crap trying to keep my marriage together. But no matter what I try, it isn’t good enough.”
“You think your wife is just out of love with you?”
Brooks shrugged. “Seems that way.”
Gorman leaned forward on the table and his voice was crisp and almost accusatory. “You beat her? You cheat on her? You got a secret gambling habit that eats up the household money?”
Brooks seemed stunned by the ferocity of the questions. For a moment, a hint of anger flickered in his face, and then he just shook his head as if nothing in his life mattered anymore. “None of those things.” He sighed. “Why are we here bothering with this?” And then his mood turned to anger. “Who the hell are you anyway? Doctor Phil?”
Gorman said, “Patrolman Brooks, do you know what B.B.I., those initials on the door, stands for?”
“Something blue, I think Vinnie said.”
“It stands for Beyond Blue Investigations. We have only one mission. That is to help policemen in trouble. Any kind of trouble. Now I can’t promise to save your marriage. But if your wife is acting strange, if she’s going to try to rough you up without cause…well, we’ll see what we can do about that.”
“What can you possibly do?”
“It’s just as well you don’t know. You just go on with your life. Our efforts will be invisible to you. And don’t worry. Your problem has just become our problem. If you’ve been telling me the truth, we’ll see what we see.”
“Wait a minute,” Brooks said. “I haven’t agreed to anything, and I sure can’t afford to hire a detective agency to follow my wife around.”
“Don’t worry about money. There’s no charge. Not in money, anyway. Gunny will go over the contract with you, but basically, you’ll make three commitments. You will keep our service confidential and that means confidential. If you ever see a fellow officer in trouble, you’ll bring it to our attention. And you will accept that you owe us a favor.”
“A favor?” Brooks took on a nervous and suspicious look.
“Nothing complicated or illegal. Gunny will go over all of that with you,” Gorman said, rising. “But apart from the contract, there’s one thing else.” His eyes bore into the uniformed officers and his voice dropped almost to a whisper, so that it would not be heard by the men in the other room.
“You’re on duty right now for the people of the city of New York and you’ve got alcohol on your breath. That makes you a disgrace to that honorable uniform. If you ever come up here again and you’ve been drinking on duty, I will personally kick your ass down the steps of this building. And by the time you get back to your precinct, you’re going to find yourself suspended and on the way out of the department. We’re in the business of helping cops, not tolerating rummies.”
As he walked toward the door, he put his hand on the patrolman’s shoulder.
“Leave it to us,” he said softly.
He was stopped by Brooks’ voice.
“Mister Gorman, I’m sorry.” He paused. Gorman had seen this expression before, a mixture of shame and relief. But this time there was something else in the client’s eyes, a concerned curiosity, “Why do you people do this?”
“Somebody you don’t need to know wants to repay a debt to the police department. We’re the way he’s doing it. What the men in blue can’t do for themselves, we do. We’re beyond blue.”
Gorman walked into his office to find one of his operatives in the visitor’s chair. As he entered, she rose casually to her feet, absurdly long legs making her appear taller than she really was.
“Good morning, G,” Chastity said. “Do you have something for me today? I’m anxious to get into a good case.”
Gorman got around his desk and into his seat before responding. “I believe I do, Ms. Chiba. You are between cases, correct?”
Chastity settled her left butt cheek on Gorman’s desk, which he always found a little disconcerting. Chastity Chiba was a true Eurasian beauty, with long, raven hair, soft, dark almond eyes and skin like whole milk with a few drops of caramel syrup stirred in. Her blouse was cut just low enough to remind him that she was far too shapely to be purely Japanese.
“You never miss a trick, G,” Chastity said. “So, what deadly villain do I get to go after today? Mafia don? Corrupt city official?”
“Actually, it’s the wife.”
“Excuse you?” Chastity pulled her head back in surprise. “My famous ancestor would be insulted.”
Gorman knew of Chastity’s harmless fantasy. She believed that her British father, whom she’d never had the chance to meet, was in fact the real life model for the fictionalized James Bond character. Or at least, she appeared to believe it. This fantasy had probably helped her to survive as a half-white in Japanese society and, although she had been turned down by both the Japanese and British secret services, she had found her way into undercover work in America as a private detective.
“Ms. Chiba, this case is worthy of your talents,” Gorman said, pushing the folder toward her. “Poor guy doesn’t even know she’s planning to file for divorce next week. And she might be dummying up evidence of child abuse. That’ll destroy his life and his career, and she’ll get everything he owns.”
“I get it,” Chastity said, leaning toward him. “It’s time sensitive. That’s why you’re giving this one to me. I need to get inside this cheap dame’s head, figure out her scheme, and bring her down.”
Gorman looked her dead in the eye. “You know, that hard-boiled dick talk sounds stupid coming out of an Asian face. But yes, Ms. Chiba. I do indeed want you to, as you put it, bring her down.”
Chapter Three
Rico Steele inhaled his Winston deep into his lungs and blew the smoke out his half-open driver side window. “I’m tired of sitting, Stone.”
“It isn’t cold enough, you got to have the window open?” his partner asked. He sipped his coffee, made a face, and turned the collar of his leather coat up around his ears. “What the hell kind of weather is this for September? What the hell ever happened to global warming?”
“Maalox,” Steele said.
“What? Maalox what?”
“It’s true. They found out that global warming was being caused by cows farting and burping. So they feed them Maalox now and it stopped. We’re going to have a freaking ice age, because freaking cows don’t freaking know how t
o freaking behave themselves. Meanwhile, every time you take a deep breath, you’re inhaling cow farts.”
“It’s better than inhaling your damned cigarette smoke,” Stone said. “Being with you is like living in a coal mine. A coal mine filled with farting cows and smoking degenerates.”
“Oh, shaddup, all you do is complain. I’m getting tired of you,” Steele said.
“Maybe if you had heat in this damned truck of yours. Don’t know why you bought a truck anyway. Who needs a truck in New York City?”
“It’s not a truck. It’s a compact SUV.”
“You’re a terrorist. I heard it on Fox News. Out in California, they say anybody who drives an SUV is a terrorist and supports Al-Qaeda,” said Stone.
“How the hell they figure that out?”
“Because of gas, Steele. What do you get, three blocks a gallon? Because of you and all the other terrorists, we’ve got to buy oil from the Arabs. And all that money goes to Osama bin Laden’s boys.”
“That is such crap,” Steele said. He tossed his cigarette out the window and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of the gray Hyundai Santa Fe. He wondered if it was true that Arab oil money financed terrorism. Stone had been his partner on and off the job for twenty years and while he did like to bust Steele’s chops, he also knew a lot of things that other people didn’t know. Maybe he would get rid of the SUV when the lease was up; maybe it was time for a motorcycle.
He stared across the street at Irving Jerome’s office building. It had a little more personality than its neighbors. They were glass and steel monstrosities but this building was stepped like a wedding cake, a series of boxes stacked big to small as you moved up. Jerome’s office was on the bottom level of the third box from the top, with a little balcony outside, and very easy to see into from across the street where he and Stone had observed the crooked lawyer for the last two weeks.
Jerome was in early every day and then off for the opening of court. Almost as soon as Jerome was gone, his receptionist left the building too, usually for no more than half an hour.
It would be time enough, Steele hoped.
He looked across at his partner. “You know who I’d like to bang?”
“Let’s see. Yesterday it was Winona Ryder and Ashley Judd. Who’s the object of your affections today?” Stone asked.
“Ryder and Judd, only in a threesome. One on one, I’d like to bang Ruby Sanchez.”
“Get out of here,” Stone said.
“What’s wrong with that? She’s beautiful and she’s got a great ass.”
“Exactly. And that’s why she won’t have anything to do with you.”
“Why? Why won’t she have anything to do with me?” Steele said.
“Because you are a big funny-looking white guy. She takes a look at you and she sees this guy wearing dopey red-and-white basketball shoes and high-water pants and driving a truck and she says to herself, this guy is just country. Seriously, what would she want with you? She takes you back home to meet mama and she gets laughed out of the hood. Do yourself a favor. Keep sniffing after Winona and Ashley. Maybe you can take Winona shopping someday. Whatever she steals, you can stick in the back of the truck.”
Steele lit another Winston. “Maybe you can put in a good word for me with Ruby. You know, one black humanoid to another.”
“Not a chance. I like Ruby too much for that. Besides, if Gorman ever found out you were sniffing around her, there’d be hell to pay.”
“Aaaaah, I’m not afraid of Gorman.”
“That’s just proof of how dumb you are,” Stone said. “Wait. There he is.”
As the two men looked out the window across Park Avenue, Irving Jerome left his office building, stepped to the curb and hailed a cab.
“Let’s go,” Steele said.
“Wait five minutes for the girl to leave. And listen, we’re in there and we’re out. We’re not going to shoot anybody or get in a fight or do anything stupid. Let’s see if we can find something that pins Jerome to buying off a juror. That’s all we want.”
“Well, I’m glad of that,” Steele said. “I’m so tired of always winding up in trouble because you’re like a crazy man. There she goes.”
Jerome’s secretary, short and blonde, came quickly out of the building, belting a trench coat around her against the unseasonable chill. As she walked down the block, the two men stepped from the parked vehicle. Samuel Mason was six feet one and as black as men get. He was built like a running back with short hair and amber eyes. His face seemed to be composed of flat planes, joined together at sharp angles. His no-nonsense manner and graveyard voice, as much as his chiseled features, had brought on him the nickname Stone. As in gravestone.
Rickard “Rico” Steele was, by contrast, so white, he seemed to be his partner’s negative image. If Stone looked like a running back, Steele was built like an NBA power forward. He was three inches taller than his partner and his natural pallor and washed-out blue eyes showed his Swedish heritage. His hair was that perfect Nordic blonde and almost shoulder length. He wore khakis and a denim jacket, left open as if in defiance of the early autumn breeze. Stone, on the other hand, wore a dark suit and a black leather topcoat and carried a briefcase.
“I must look like a lawyer escorting some perp into a precinct house,” Stone mumbled under his breath as they walked across the street.
“Not even a doorman,” Steele grumbled as they walked into the building’s lobby. “A low-rent lawyer.”
They rode the elevator up to Jerome’s floor. The white painted legend on the wooden office door read simply, “Irving Jerome. Attorney at Law.”
Stone jiggled the doorknob but of course, the door was locked.
“Stand aside, you wuss,” Steele said. “Let the master at that.”
He pulled a lockpick kit from the inside pocket of his denim jacket.
“Good. You do it. If you get arrested, I’ll tell them I don’t even know you.”
“Hey, we’re ex-cops. Who’s gonna arrest us?” Steel asked.
“Just make it quick, huh?”
Stone turned his back to the door to keep watch down the empty hallway. “You know, when we were on the job, we never would have gotten anything on this guy.”
“Well, we go where the real cops can’t and we do what the real cops don’t,” Steele said. “I guess that’s why we’re called Beyond Blue.”
“Your insight is staggering, but will you open the goddamn door?”
Steele fiddled around for only a few seconds, then pushed the door open. Once inside, the two investigators were unimpressed. Even for a young lawyer and not such a big-time cop-baiter, the office would have been unprepossessing. The receptionist’s desk was cheap metal with a gray chair that looked so hard and unyielding, one might expect it to give anyone who used it calluses.
“What a dump,” Steele said. “Cheap bastard.”
But what money Jerome had saved in buying furniture for his secretary, the lawyer clearly had lavished on his own workspace. The two men’s feet sank deep into tan woolen carpet as they entered Jerome’s office.
“Damned desk’s big enough to play soccer on,” Steele said.
“He’s got an ergonomic chair,” Stone said.
“Whatever the hell that is. Maybe he can take it with him to Attica.”
Stone instantly began to open desk drawers. He was looking for ledgers, checkbooks, address books, anything that might indicate a trail of money from Irving Jerome to a Staten Island blue collar worker named Anthony Benedetto.
A month earlier, a known drug dealer had been freed in a trial in which Benedetto was on the jury. Benedetto was the sole vote for acquittal but he was so stubborn about it that eventually all the other jurors folded and set the defendant free, even though the evidence against him was overwhelming. Two days later, Paul Gorman had called Stone and Steele into his office.
The two ex-policemen were the last detectives Gorman hired. He had already signed on two other operatives and Gunny as straw
boss, but Gorman wanted some people who had been “on the job” in New York City and who knew their way around the police department and its labyrinthine bureaucracy. While Gorman tended to be conservative and low-key, he understood that investigative work, especially in cases involving policemen, could be dangerous…even deadly…and the idea of having a couple of burly brawlers on the payroll, just in case, seemed to him to be a necessity.
At that same time, Stone and Steele were taking early retirement from the NYPD. Gorman read about them in a brief New York Post story, obviously written by a friendly reporter, who referred to the two detectives as “decorated hero cops,” and said they were leaving because of “too much red tape. It’s getting so cops can’t do their jobs anymore.” The article made no reference to the unsubstantiated accusations of planting evidence, or the broken jaw Steele had given one of his fellow detectives one evening just two weeks before. Reporters never get to be in cop bars where such lively discussions take place.
Gorman called them that same day and hired them the next morning, after first having Gunny make sure that there was nothing in their records that would stamp either of them as a thief or untrustworthy.
For their part, both Stone and his huge white partner, Steele, seemed happy to have some work to look forward to. It was instantly obvious to Gorman that they had taken early retirement on almost a whim without worrying too much about how they were going to live. This was not much of a problem for Steele who seemed to be a low maintenance bachelor, but Stone had a wife. There was probably some other reason behind their retirements, but Gorman never asked about it. He didn’t have to. His connections let him know of this pair’s intolerance for lazy investigators and for the casual way that some policemen take advantage of their status. Whatever had triggered the actual decisions, he figured that as long as they were clean, it was their own business. Since then, Gorman had grown to appreciate not just their toughness and their street smarts, but also their absolute commitment to making the bad guys pay their bill. A lot of cops pretended to have that attitude, but not many really did. Stone and Steele were the exceptions.
Beyond Blue Page 3