Watch Out for the Big Girls

by J. M. Benjamin

  As the young officer eyed her from head to toe, he saw that her right leg sported an expensive-looking diamond anklet that sat over the strap of her Manolo Blahniks stilettos. Her bright red lipstick parted to reveal her perfect teeth as she smiled at the younger deputy before looking back down and handing the front desk officer her ID and business credentials. He studied both and then looked back up at her with a smile before entering her into the logbook.

  “You want to go right up to the seventh floor,” he stated. “He’ll escort you to the elevator, ma’am,” he added as he pointed over to the standing officer who was pleased to perform his duty.

  “Thank you,” she replied while pulling her briefcase down to her side. She adjusted her frames as she strolled through the walk-through metal detector.

  The younger officer was really hoping the alarm would ring off until she would have to be forced to strip naked.

  As she cleared it she spread her arms wide for him to scan her with the hand device. Damn Feds don’t trust oxygen, she thought as she passed him her briefcase.

  He set it on an X-ray machine and watched the screen as it went through. He then escorted her to the elevator. “Have a nice day.” He politely bowed, tipping his hat.

  “I always do,” she retorted as the elevator doors shut him out and her in. And this is my favorite part of it, she continued to herself, smiling. She then turned to the elevator officer. “Seventh floor, please,” she declared, turning on her full attitude. The curtain had just been raised. The show was on. Diamond stared at the numbers as the elevator climbed upward. She put her game face on as the elevator’s dial lit up on the number seven.

  Just a few doors up the hallway, “That’s bullshit!” were the words Careese Pearson spewed and Agent Donahue walked in on as he entered the interrogation room.

  Agent Donahue was a middle-aged white agent who had been in the Bureau for as long as Tom McCarthy. McCarthy’s presence was scary and uninviting. He was huge with broad shoulders. His jaw line structure was frightening. His upright posture was still as strong as it was in his college football days. His wide frame left no extra space in his suit. His voice was convicting. Donahue was the exact opposite. He was smooth, friendly, diplomatic, and deceivingly frail. Above all, he was extremely smart.

  “No, sweetheart! This is all real,” Agent McCarthy retorted. “We have evidence proving that you are in fact a part of the Double G organization,” he bellowed. “And that you also helped murder two young, innocent agents! That’s capital punishment! Lethal injection!” He laid it on thick, wondering if he had gone overboard with his interrogation tactic. He was in a zone though. “What do you think, Agent Donahue?” he aggressively called out, noticing the agent’s sudden presence. He then drew his attention back to Careese, whose eyes were now wider than they were previously.

  Agent Donahue’s tone was soft. “No, no, Agent McCarthy. She did no such thing. They manipulated her. It’s not her fault. They set her up to take the fall. She was clearly just caught up with the wrong people. Unfortunately, they’re hanging her out to dry,” he calmly explained with his face in her opposite ear.

  “To dry?” Agent McCarthy released a sarcastic laugh. “No. More like to burn!” he yelled into her other ear, shaking her up. “Look at the pictures!” he demanded, forcing her to view the autopsy photos of Agents Mullin and Craven, and the other ones from the crime scene. “They got off a lot easier than you will. You’re going to be alive to suffer your death!” he yelled, sending chills through her.

  “No, she won’t,” Donahue calmly intervened. “She’s here to help us. She doesn’t like what happened to those poor young agents any more than we do. We have her full cooperation from here on out. Don’t we, Ms. Pearson?” he asked, looking into her eyes. Her face was sandwiched between them both as she looked down at the brutal pictures spread all over the table.

  Careese didn’t know what to do or say. They were coming at her so hard, left and right. She couldn’t escape the balanced attack of their voices. They were in her head, thinking for her. They barely even asked her questions. She started to get scared. Lethal injections? Life? Am I ready for that? But I made a vow, she reasoned. Double Gs for life, chimed in her head. Her options were not good. Her heart rate rose as she began to panic. It was getting hot. No, the air conditioner was on full blast, she remembered. It was freezing. Well, it was a minute ago. What do I do? Does anyone even know I’m here? I’m all by myself. They’re going to fry me. No. I didn’t do anything. Did I? Her mind was all over the place. She tried to shake it off. They were fucking with her, she knew. Her thoughts were interrupted.

  “Listen.” Donahue set his attention on Careese and then looked over at McCarthy. “Where’s your hospitality? Get the lady some coffee while I speak to her in private, will you?” he asked in a delicate tone.

  “All right. But I’ll be right back. And when I return, she’s mine!” he announced before he exited.

  Careese shook as the door slammed shut behind Agent McCarthy. As Donahue took a seat directly across from her and held her trembling hands, her palms were so cold, yet sweaty. Her eyes seemed distant. They had her. It was time for the kill.

  Agent McCarthy walked into the next room, loosened up his tie, and smiled at the other three agents who were monitoring it all from behind the two-way mirror. “I give her five minutes. We’ll have all the information we need,” he gloated as they shook their heads agreeing, enjoying the show. He watched like a proud parent as Agent Donahue played good cop.

  “Listen. What I want from you is to explain it to me. Just me. I know you didn’t hurt anyone. But the reality of it is that two agents were killed. And you didn’t do it. But accessory is like pulling the trigger yourself. Especially when you’re the only person we have for this to fall on. Meanwhile, whoever protecting you left you for dead. That’s just the reality of it. The fact remaining is that we’re the only people who can help you now. Well, I am. Agent McCarthy would rather destroy you,” Agent Donahue informed her. “He and those murdered agents were real close,” he added.

  “But me, I just want justice. Making you the fall guy isn’t justice.” His tone became more empathetic. “It’s vengeance. I don’t want vengeance. I just want the truth. Once I have that, I won’t even need you any longer; you’d be free to go. Back to your job at the bank. No one will even know you were here. We’ll make it seem like we thought you may have been stealing from the bank. A false indictment to show people usually works. I promise I will go the distance for you. But first,” he said, and pushed the pen and paper in her direction, “I need to know exactly what happened two nights ago. And you’re free to go.”

  Careese looked down at the pen and paper. Its letterhead read, CONFIDENTIAL CONFESSION/CLASSIFIED. She stared at the photos of the murdered agents scattered across the table. And then she looked back at the paper, back at the pictures, and then at the pen. With broken reluctance, she slowly reached for it. Her hand jerked back as the door burst open.

  “Get the hell away from my client!” Diamond yelled out like a female lioness protecting her young as she slammed her briefcase down on the table and scooped up the group of pictures along with the statement forms and the pen in front of Careese. “I don’t believe any of this concerns her, so I’d advise you to end your line of questioning. Now!” she sternly stated. She smacked him in the chest with the items that were on the table when she first entered the interrogation room.

  “What’re you doin’ here?” Completely caught by surprise, Agent Donahue fumbled to catch the items just in time before they hit the floor. Diamond’s arrogance transformed him from the once good cop he was pretending to be to Careese Pearson back to his normal asshole self. His friendliness was gone. “What does this have to do with you?” he followed up with.

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing. But not before I asked why the hell my hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding citizen of a client is being held under false pretenses,” Diamond retorted. She knew he could
n’t possibly know who she really was. No one outside of their organization really did.

  Agent McCarthy abruptly burst in. He had the look of a defeated man as Diamond continued, “She isn’t under arrest. Why was she detained?” She wasted no time cutting into Agent McCarthy. “She’s no criminal. And unless you come up with proof of otherwise, I advise y’all to stay as far away from her as possible in the same state, unless you want to be downgraded to traffic cops. I’ve already spoken to your superiors. They’re not pleased. I’ve also spoken to the magistrate judge who claimed to have no knowledge of a warrant being sought for the detention of my client. The truth is y’all never gave her the opportunity to cooperate. Y’all embarrassed her at her job, which she might not even have any longer. All y’all had to do was call her, which still would’ve been a dead end. She doesn’t know anything. Nor has she done anything. But you, gentlemen, have done something. You publicly embarrassed and humiliated my client at her workplace. In addition to that, I’m sure that her job is in jeopardy, if they haven’t already filed for immediate termination. So, unless you plan on falsely charging her with something, this meeting is over.”

  Diamond politely stated, “Oh, and y ’all can expect to hear from my firm again, but on liability charges this time. Y’all have a good day, gentlemen,” she ended as she unleashed verbal assault all in one breath.

  She then snatched Careese up by her arm and pulled her out of the door, before Agent McCarthy or Donahue had a chance to rebut her claims and accusations. Just as she reached the door with Careese in tow, she turned and faced Agent McCarthy.

  “Oh, and give Linda my love. She knows me.” Diamond shot Agent McCarthy a wink and a smile then stormed off leaving with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s possibly best lead on their organization. The only one they’d had.

  An egg could’ve been fried on Agent McCarthy’s face he was so heated. He stood there watching the arrogant attorney sashay out of the building. His pressure went from zero to one hundred, not only because she had walked away with who he believed to be his star potential witness, but because of the mention of his wife’s name. He made a mental note to ask her about the cocky plus-sized female attorney working for who he believed to be the Double Gs.

  “Can she do that?” Agent Donahue asked McCarthy as the two men stood there dumbfounded.

  “She just did,” McCarthy replied dryly. “It was a long shot.” He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “And we were this close to a damn confession.” He illustrated with his two fingers. “It would’ve been all we needed.” He was sure he had gotten Careese Pearson on the ropes and, up until the unexpected presence of her attorney, Agent Donahue was doing a great job wrapping things up. He sucked his teeth and cursed himself for not closing on the interrogation personally. He had gotten too excited and was now paying for it. Had he stayed focused on the main objective he wouldn’t have let up on the Double Gs’ puppet until he got a signed confession. That was now a distant memory. McCarthy chalked this incident up as a loss for the home team.

  “So what now?” Agent Donahue asked. He was still in shock behind Diamond walking in and whisking out a potential key witness and informant against the female organization he too had now taken seriously.

  “Good question.” McCarthy grimaced. “Back to square one.” He sucked his teeth and pounded his right fist into his left palm. “Dammit!” he then abruptly let out as he smacked both palms down on the hardwood table.

  “After you.” Diamond let Careese out of the elevator before she herself exited. The nervous look on Careese’s face did not go unnoticed. But Diamond paid her facial expression and fidgety demeanor no mind. No words were exchanged the whole ride down from the seventh floor, where Careese was just being detained. She walked back past the metal detector and back out of the revolving door through which she had entered, as Careese trailed behind. Neither of them uttered a word to the other until they were safely enclosed in Diamond’s Maserati.

  Diamond pulled out her cell phone. “Yeah, I got her,” Diamond informed Starr. Seconds later she ended the call.

  “Thank you, girl. That was too much.” Careese gasped as soon as Diamond hung up.

  “What were you thinkin’?” Diamond snapped. “You should know better than to let them trap you off without me present. Or any lawyer for that matter! I need to know everything you told them or I won’t be able to defend you.”

  Careese began to play the tape back for Diamond from the time the agents swarmed the bank up until the time she had entered the interrogation room and whisked her up out of there. Diamond was sure she had seen Careese ready to reach for the pen and pad the agent had placed in front of her. Everyone in that room knew she had intervened just in time, including Careese. Diamond listened carefully to her and made a mental note to inform Starr about what she had witnessed.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Another night of waking up in a cold sweat almost drove him insane. The nightmares seemed to get worse. Was it his conscience? For the most part, the guilt was a burden. The nightmare was a constant punishment, a brutal one. The things he and his partner were forced to do: the murders, the violence, and the stealing from the evidence room. So many things compiled as a whole, thought Officer Douglass. It was stacked against him, enough to put him away for life, and he couldn’t take it any longer. He thought he could handle it, thought it was over, but it wasn’t. And he was a fool for believing it ever would be.

  Weeks had passed since, according to Blake, they had carried out the last job. So when his partner and friend called him with a sob story about one more job being the official last one, his mind was made up. There was no way he could see himself putting everything from his career to freedom on the line again. By the grace of God he believed he had escaped and now he was not willing to step back into the lion’s den. His only hope was that he’d somehow receive leniency for the information he planned to provide.

  It’s perfect timing. With the fresh death of two federal agents, they will worship me for being able to help. I’ll be a hero who is looked at as a victim who finally willed himself to get strong enough to do the right thing, he convinced himself. It was a hell of a risk, but so was everything else he was being forced to do against his will. He knew by coming clean it meant throwing his partner under the bus as well. He was torn between regret and fear, but he felt there was no way of getting around it. A small price to pay for peace of mind and a good night’s rest, Douglass weighed it up as. He took a deep breath and exhaled. He then rapped his knuckles on the pane glass of his superior officer’s door.

  The words, “Come in,” caused his heart rate to quicken. Douglass slowly turned the door knob and entered the office.

  “What is it, Douglass?” Chief Andrews looked up over his reading glasses. He was preoccupied reading over the reports due before the day was out, concerning a 211 that turned into a 187.

  “Sir, may I sit?” Douglass’s voice cracked as he spoke.

  “Make it fast.” Chief Andrews extended his hand to the wooden chair in front of him. “I really got my hands full with this gay bike group crap,” he added.

  There was a brief pause. “That’s kind of why I’m here, sir.” The nervousness could be detected in his tone.

  Chief Andrews dropped his pen down onto the papers he had been sifting through. He leaned back in his desk chair and clasped his hands together. “You have information on the Double G case?”

  Officer Douglass bit the inside of his gum. “I have more than information on the Double Gs, sir.”

  Chief Andrews leaned forward with a peculiar look on his face. Something in Officer Douglass’s tone raised an eyebrow. “Do I need to pull out the tape recorder, Douglass?”

  Officer Douglass nodded his head and took another deep breath. Chief Andrews went into his desk drawer. Seconds later, he was spilling his guts. Twenty-five minutes later Chief Andrews pressed stop on the tape recorder.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Chie
f Andrews asked Douglass after hearing the chilling confession. He was still trying to take it all in. Never in a million years would he have thought Douglass and Blake to be crooked cops. Although he partially understood the circumstances, based on what Douglass had revealed, there was no excuse in the chief’s eyes when it came to not upholding the law. The blinds in his office were drawn low. The chief had lowered them once Officer Douglass informed him of the nature of his visit to his office.

  Douglass was now in tears. He didn’t hold back one single detail. He let it all be known exactly the way he remembered it. He painted vivid pictures so that he would be safe from his leverage coming back to haunt him. After being on that side of the law for so long, he knew exactly how rolling over on somebody worked. Whatever you left out, the other person would bring up and make it look like other stuff was being held back. He left his partner with no tuck cards of his own. He would be awarded extreme leniency and Officer Blake would fry. Fry for dragging him into this mess. When they were just skimming money from raids and planting the same drugs they had just arrested somebody else for on another charge, it was cool. The partying with hookers was one thing, but to become a professional hit man on call who wasn’t even paid, that was something different. He didn’t care what they had on Blake or what Blake had on him. It was all out in the open now. The truth would set him free, full immunity.