The Grave Above the Grave

by Bernie B. Kerik

  “Chelsea?”

  “Rick. Looks like whatever they’re planning is going down Friday next week. They’re still working on trying to ID the talkers and their exact locations.”

  “Good work,” Raymond said.

  Jones continued, “Our guys in Vegas and North Carolina are infiltrating all the local mosques, collecting as much intel as they can. Hopefully, we’ll locate those actors before they can hit.”

  “Terrific.” Then Raymond paused and said, “Jones, what are you doing for dinner? Any plans?”

  “I was thinking maybe a Shake Shack and after a couple of beers.”

  “I know a nice little place on the Upper East Side. Let’s meet there and try to make a plan, say 7:30?”

  “Good.”

  “Hold on. My assistant will give you the address.” Raymond hung up and told Janey to give Shelby the evening schedule. “Let’s see what happens.”

  At 8:15 pm, Shelby, Archer, and Gallagher were sitting in the Suburban outside the restaurant, when Gallagher saw Breshill in his side-view mirror, on foot, turning the corner and walking toward the restaurant. Gallagher called Raymond, who was already inside the restaurant with Jones; then he got out of the car and approached Breshill. Raymond excused himself and walked outside, where Breshill, who was never surprised by anything, look genuinely caught off guard. The reporter was standing with Gallagher, looking openly scared, even more so when Raymond came into his view.

  “Sam,” Raymond said, walking right up to Breshill and putting his face in the reporter’s, “Your scam’s over, and your girlfriend’s fucked. How would you like it if I called your wife and told her you’re fucking one of my detectives? I hope you make enough to support the three of you, because I’m going to fire your babe’s ass tomorrow morning before coffee. And if your wife doesn’t know, she’s going to.” He stared at Breshill for several elongated seconds, and then turned around and walked away and left Breshill standing there next to Gallagher, who had a silly smirk on his face.

  Breshill stood there looking at Gallagher as if he were waiting for permission to leave, and Gallagher said, “Listen, you fucked up. You don’t like the mayor, so you’ve haunted this guy for a fucking year now over bullshit. It’s wrong and you know it.”

  “What’s he going to do?” Breshill asked, looking as if he were being sent to the gas chamber.

  “Who knows, but I wouldn’t want to be your girlfriend or your wife unless you figure out a way to make it right.” With that, Gallagher walked to the Suburban, got in, and closed the door, leaving Breshill standing there.

  CHAPTER 14

  10:30 pm, Monday, 16 October

  Sheilah was a little punchy by the time Raymond arrived at the Marcus penthouse. She had come from a fund-raiser for the governor, one of the few events she didn’t mind going to because she needed that network in the future, if and when she ran for mayor the next time around. But all the glad-handing was tiresome and she was anxious to get back to something real.

  In addition to his powerful personality, she also appreciated that Raymond was a good-looking man. His six-foot, two-inch muscularly sculpted frame made it obvious that even with his 16-hour-a-day job, he still made time for the gym. Had they not held the jobs they did and had they made their relationship public, they could have been the best-looking and most powerful couple in the state of New York. Rick had the perfect combination of good looks, street smarts, and from-the-gut appeal, and Sheilah had smarts and telegenic charisma; they had real-life command.

  She stared into the bathroom mirror as she began the intricate process of bringing her face back to normal, rather than the pancaked, eyelashed, eyelinered, blow-dried, lipsticked professional official the public saw. She always began by peeling off the thick black fake eyelashes, slowly and carefully so as not to make her eyelids swell. She studied herself in the mirror as if she were performing surgery, and Rick came in, as always, sat on the closed toilet seat, to observe, sometimes with wonder, the intricate operation. She liked it when he watched her take her face off, knowing how much he appreciated her natural beauty. It became something erotic to the both of them.

  After only a few minutes, Rick stood, went behind her, and unzipped her stiff ball gown, as she moved her face closer to the mirror. That close, she could only see the side of Rick’s head. His silvery sideburns, she thought to herself, made him look so distinguished. Most men would kill to have a full head of hair like his. He combed it, blow-dried it, styled it with any one of a number of products he kept on his sink. He preened sometimes, which to her was a sign of his vanity, which normally she would consider a sign of weakness, but she thought Raymond contradicted her theory, because he was definitely all man, from head to toe. The way he . . .

  “Darling?” Rick interrupted her dream-thought. “Drop your hands and let your dress fall to the floor. I’ll hang it up.” She did so, and it fell. Rick stared at her back for a second, marveling as he always did at the dimpled muscles just below her shoulders. All those years of tennis showed her off well, and the two dimples just above her athletic backside.

  Rick slipped his hand around her waist, pulling her aggressively into him (just the way she liked). She shrugged and wiggled at the same time, until she was free of his grip, teasing him. “Rick,” she said, matter-of-factly, “I’m trying to take off my face.”

  He stood up behind her. “You don’t like it?” Smiling, looking at her in the mirror.

  “Please, darling . . .”

  He let go of her waist, massaged her back, helping her release the tensions of the day.

  She stopped, turned around, and looked down to face him, then leaned over, putting her face up close to his, sticking out her tongue and licking his lips. “You need to behave yourself, for just a few minutes, and I’ll reward you for your good behavior, but I cannot with your octopus hands all over me. Go get in the bed, and I will be there shortly.”

  Like an obedient child, Raymond got up and walked into the bedroom, pulled down the rich bedding, and crawled under. Within 30 seconds, he was dozing off, thinking about Breshill, and feeling relieved that he now had closed that leak in the department.

  A few minutes later Sheilah came into the bedroom of the suite, wearing her silk beige robe, the one that came to just above her knees. “Darling,” she said, as she slid in besides him and kissed his cheek to wake him up. “What’s on your mind? You seemed a little distant tonight.”

  “No, actually I’m not. Not at all,” as he rolled over, kissed her. She loved being his pet. As powerful and aggressive as she was in her job, there was a place where she felt safe and secure, and that was in his arms, where she knew she’d always be protected, so she thought.

  She could not imagine a time that her best friend, her protector, and the love of her life, wouldn’t be there when she needed him.

  Rick was in his office the next day by 6:30 am. The night before, Janie had his schedule for the day waiting for him on his desk. Two morning meetings, lunch with the mayor, a press conference, a stop-by at the academy, afternoon meeting with Fox News, 5:00 cocktails at City Hall for a subway something ceremony, dinner with the DA. He sat back, closed his eyes, and found himself a few hours forward in time to when he would see Sheilah in high heels, her pursed lips leaving a red imprint on her martini glass, the suite at the Marcus smelling like fresh lilacs, her . . . He was yanked out of his daydream as Gallagher burst into the office, like he was on a SWAT team.

  “What?” Raymond said, as Gallagher looked like he was on a mission.

  “I’m going to talk to the girl—Mandy Walker— now. You want to come?”

  “Leave me out of it. Get rid of her, but don’t be too hard. Move her somewhere else; don’t fire her. Let’s keep her where we can have eyes on where she is and what she does. She still has Breshill’s number. I think we got him neutralized, but let’s make certain.”

  “Okay, I’ll
take care of it.”

  Gallagher went out past Janey, over to Mandy’s desk. She was attractive, he thought to himself, too good for Breshill. For Shelby too. “Mandy, see you a minute? The second office is free.”

  “Sure,” she said, bright as a light. She grabbed a note pad and her iPad as she stood. He was about to tell her she didn’t need any of that, but he decided to let her think she did, and she followed him into the empty office.

  “Sit down,” Gallagher said. She took a seat, crossing her legs. “How’s everything going, Mandy?”

  “Fine,” she said, a sincere smile on her face.

  Gallagher parked himself on the side of the desk, so he was higher than she was, making her have to look up as he spoke, in his quiet, measured tones. “So here’s the deal, Mandy. We don’t want you to lose your job, or fuck up your marriage.” He saw the smile start to droop and her jaw tighten.

  “We’re going to have to transfer you out of the office, so let me know by four o’clock today where you want to go.”

  Her eyes teared up. “What have I done? I didn’t do anything!”

  “Doesn’t make a difference; you’ve got to go.”

  She put her face in her hands and started crying. “What did I do?” she managed to get out from behind her fingers.

  “We know about your relationship with Breshill; we also know you have been feeding confidential information about the PC’s movement, and although it’s not a crime, you could be brought up on charges.”

  She looked up and stared at him. “I didn’t . . .”

  “Stop. You did. Maybe Breshill worked you, I don’t know, and I don’t care, but it ends here. Have your decision on my desk by four. It’s the only way. Understand?”

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and shook her head up and down quickly.

  “Okay. Go wash your face.”

  He watched her leave. Too bad, he thought to himself.

  He leaned out the door and told Archer to get Shelby, in the car, and tell him to come in.

  When Shelby entered the room, he looked like he was about to be sent to the guillotine. Gallagher took him into that same room and proceeded to rip him a new asshole. Shelby started babbling and explaining that it was just BS conversation and she was a part of the office, so he didn’t think anything of it when he told her things, never believing she was talking to a reporter.

  Gallagher said, “You’re lucky the boss loves you, but if it ever happens again, he’ll have you walking a foot post in Alaska. Got it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now get the fuck out of here and go back to work. And keep your fucking mouth zipped.” Back in his office, Gallagher called Breshill, who was downstairs in the press shack, the press office at NYPD headquarters all the reporters worked out of, and told him Raymond wanted to see him.

  “When?” Breshill said, curious after his last encounter.

  “Yesterday . . . Now, like right now.”

  “On my way.”

  When Breshill arrived, Gallagher met him at the elevator and brought him into Raymond’s office himself, then stood off to the side and watched and listened.

  “Sit down,” Raymond said in a tone that could not be refused.

  Raymond got up and went to the window, looked out for a few seconds, then came back to his desk and sat down opposite Breshill. “Look,” Raymond said, “you don’t like the mayor, so you don’t like me, and yes I don’t like you. I try to avoid the press; you want to make headlines. That makes us natural enemies, right? It doesn’t have to be, but you’ve done everything you could to make it that way.” He leaned over, closer to Breshill, as if to emphasize what he was about to say. “You used this Mandy girl; maybe she didn’t know what you were doing, but you did. So, here’s what we’re going to do, from this point forward. You stay out of my personal life, and I’ll stay out of yours. Understood?

  Breshill nodded.

  “Good.” Raymond then stuck out his hand to shake Breshill’s hand, and just for a second, Breshill hesitated before he shook. “Let’s have a drink sometime, and, you know what? I may have something for you in the future.”

  Breshill perked up. “Sure. A drink. Great.” Then he smiled, nodded to Gallagher, left the office, and sped toward the elevator.

  Gallagher looked at Raymond and said, “I thought you were going to kill him.”

  “For what, getting laid and doing his job? He’s been neutralized, and, besides, we need as many friends at the Herald as we can get.

  You learn something new every day, Gallagher said to himself.

  CHAPTER 15

  12:00 pm, Tuesday, 17 October

  Raymond and Gallagher were about to leave when the desk phone buzzed. Raymond held up a hand to Gallagher and picked up the phone. “Janey?”

  “Agent Jones is stopping over in 15.”

  “Fuck!” He hung up and looked at Gallagher. “Now what?”

  Gallagher shrugged.

  Twenty minutes later, Janey opened the door and Jones walked in. She shook hands with the two, then sat down on the sofa, while Gallagher moved toward the window, where he stood silently.

  “Gentlemen,” Jones began, “we discovered some encrypted files on one of Hamadi’s hard drives. It took several unsuccessful tries but we were able to break it. Usually, we can’t crack them. That’s the official Bureau line, what we want the enemy to think. Actually, we crack most of their chatter and code fairly quickly, in a matter of days.”

  Raymond said, “Everything here is on high alert, and there’s a visible presence at all the surface and tunnel entrances and exits to the city, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, the Seaport . . .”

  Jones interrupted him. “We don’t think they are planning on hitting this city again.”

  “Then where?”

  “We think it’s going to be Las Vegas and Fayetteville, North Carolina. Anywhere in those areas it’s legal to possess machine guns and other heavy weaponry. They probably think nobody will notice weapons movement there.”

  “More fucking nuts,” Raymond said.

  “Bad news,” Jones said.

  “If this guy did the two cops, and now this, we’ve got to take him out,” Gallagher said.

  Jones: “We’ve picked up chatter that makes us fairly certain they’re going to hit two targets simultaneously. Keep in mind that Fort Bragg is in Fayetteville, the home of the Airborne Rangers, the 82nd Airborne, several Special Forces groups, and the John F. Kennedy Unconventional Warfare Center. It’s perfect for them.”

  Raymond frowned. “Could they be that crazy?

  “Yes,” Jones said, “but there’s a five-mile pedestrian walk just outside Fort Bragg—Bragg Boulevard. It goes from Hay Street all the way up to the entrance near the base, and it’s filled with strip clubs, restaurants, and malls and shopping centers that service the soldiers. On any given day, there are thousands of GIs that hit these spots up and down that strip, not to mention their families. It’s especially busy on Friday and Saturday nights; the strip clubs make the area a target-rich environment. These assholes love all the Western depravity they pretend they hate. It makes them look good to their people, but we know how much they love pornography, and they rape their own women as regularly as the queen takes tea.”

  “Same thing with Vegas,” Raymond said. “It’s the sex and sin capital of the country. The casinos are packed on weekends.”

  Jones stood up. “We’re focused primarily on the base, but these guys could show up anywhere.”

  Late that evening, at the Marcus, Raymond and Sheilah were sitting up in bed, finishing off the last of a bottle of Laurent-Perrier. Sheilah was wearing a sheer, flowing beige silk robe, the robe falling open when she sat against the pillows with her knees up and bent. Raymond was back in his jockeys. “You seem distracted, Rick,” she said
, as she sipped the last of the champagne from her glass.

  “Sorry.”

  “Breshill?”

  Rick laughed and waved his hand. “He won’t be bothering us anymore.”

  “Did you see the headline this morning?” She had the paper folded on the night table and held it up to show him the front page.

  “I saw it,” he said.

  The front page screamed

  DELIGHTFUL DA TO RUN FOR MAYOR?

  Story by Sammy Breshill starts on page 3

  “Well,” Rick said, “It happens to be true.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Sheilah said, throwing the paper off the bed. She laid back, sinking deeper into her pillow, put her glass on the night table next to her. “Delightful . . . they wouldn’t say that about a man! It’s a sexist thing to say. It makes fun of and diminishes my abilities and my ambitions.”

  “He’s a journalist, Sheilah. We can’t stop him from doing his job.” Rick took a last sip of his champagne. “At least he didn’t call you Cruella de Vil.”

  “He better not if he wants to live.”

  A few minutes of silence passed. “What is it?” she finally said to him. “What’s wrong?”

  He took a deep breath, then spoke. “The FBI came by my office today. They think another attack is coming.”

  “In New York?”

  “They don’t think so, but I can’t really get into it.”

  “Be careful.” She took his drained glass and put it next to hers. “Lie back, warrior. You’re too tense. Let me attack you, and I guarantee you, I won’t stop until you surrender yourself to me.”

  Rick smiled. He had to admit, she had a way with words.

  CHAPTER 16

  2:30 am, Wedesday, 18 October

  Rick left the Marcus and got home to Riverdale just before midnight. He hated leaving Sheilah, but needed to get fresh clothes and sometimes just needed some private time, to get his “off-duty” work done—his reading, writing, and transfer considerations. He removed his jacket, threw it on the sofa, and headed for the bathroom to get cleaned up and ready for bed. He was exhausted, from the day and from Sheilah, and hoped he could get in a few hours of sleep before going downtown. He smiled to himself. Sheilah must have really been pissed off at that headline; she’d given him an extra-rough going over.