by Mike Bogin
A second man came forward, looking exactly like an older version of Tremaine, square and stout, but with a head full of graying hair. “So I’m Fontenelle,” he said, introducing himself. “In our family, I’m the second-oldest. Number two. There’s a lot of us I haven’t seen for a whole long time. A long time. I did not see Tremaine for at least ten years. And now we are here together to say goodbye to our baby brother. Tremaine is the first one of us of this generation to pass on. Maybe we can learn a lesson about telling people we love that we love them while they’re around to hear it. I don’t know.”
From around the room came murmurs of assent, along with several assertions of “Truth.”
Al Hurwitz was seated at a table toward the back. His eyes were fixed on the disposable paper tablecloth as he tried to get his mind around why he was the one who was still alive. “You’re done,” Turner had told him. “Get packing.” Trudy gone. No family. No home. Now no job.
Special Agent Matthew Turner was filing a formal complaint against him. His unauthorized operation had expended almost forty thousand non-recoverable dollars on the Bureau’s name. But that wasn’t what was on the tape that kept looping through Al’s mind.
At the events website, the saleswoman had told Al that the event would “go live” forty-eight hours following submission. But the website team had posted the event live only three hours after Al submitted it. The killer was inside the stadium ahead of their entire team. If she had said that posting could take up to forty-eight hours, Tremaine would still be alive. The plan could have worked. Instead, Tremaine was dead.
Owen wiped back the tears from his eyes as one of the women moved from her seat toward the aisle to go up to the microphone. A man held her back by the arm until she shook free. “If you don’t know me, I am Baby Girl, the next youngest just ahead of the Fat Cat,” she said. Turning to the coffin, she added, “We love you… I love my baby brother.”
Baby Girl, looking thin and unsteady on her feet, began singing the Temptations song “I Wish It Would Rain” with a voice that might have been in a church choir at some earlier time before the ravages of a hard life weighed on her. The range was still there, the expression felt in every note despite her frequent wanders off-key. Baby Girl took a bow and looked like she might sing again before another family member took away the microphone.
Baby Girl sat down beside Callie. She said, “Fat Cat used to always be B-boying away. Oh my, that boy used to get down!”
Callie, whispered to Baby Girl, asking her what was B-boying?
“That was before they called it Breakin. Fat Cat was good, too, free-styling and crazy moves. Beautiful. Beautiful.”
“Fat Cat?” Callie asked.
“Tremaine Albert Bull. T-A-B. Tab. Tabby. Cat. Fat Cat. Even when that boy was five years old, he was shaped like a barrel. But oh my, he could move.”
Baby Girl took Callie’s face into her hands, calling Callie “my sweetheart darling woman.” She lifted one hand off Callie’s face and reached up toward Owen, who resisted his impulse to pull back and allowed her to press her thin hand along his cheek. “And you, my Big Man. The Fat Cat, he loved you both so much. We, all of us Bulls, we were his family. But you were the family he never had.”
Baby Girl started again. “I can’t give you anything but love, baby,” she sang robustly, standing up to let it come with all her heart before two of the brothers came over to herd her toward the kitchen area.
“Leave me be!” she cried. “I’m the Baby Girl. I’m the Baby Girl!”
“We’re never going to see Uncle Tremaine,” Liam sniffled. Callie kept running her fingers through his hair, lingering after each stroke with her warm hand against his neck. Liam started crying harder, breathing from his mouth as his chest and throat shivered uncontrollably. Tears started flowing again from her eyes, too.
“What if it happened to Daddy?” he stammered.
“Daddy’s fine.”
“I know. But what if?”
Callie pulled Liam tight against her side, putting her face onto the top of his head and not moving.
The same “what if” had her ready to vomit.
“I married you, Owen Cullen,” she said to herself. “I never married ‘The Job.’”
* * * * *
Owen rewound and replayed Tremaine’s death in his head, telling himself to “Look for what is missing.” He couldn’t get shit from anyone about Jonathan Spencer, but full press packets with photographs, fingerprints, entry and asylum information were available in a flash all about this other guy, Vosilych.
Again and again, Owen obsessively reviewed all the parts. Callie had been right about the websites. The trap was right. The bait was right, too. A glitch in the set-up process didn’t explain enough. OK, the online magazine didn’t always wait 48 hours before uploading advertisements and announcements; they only guaranteed that they would upload within 48 hours.
The ad department’s one tech had reviewed the event and input it shortly after submission. Spencer had access two days before they were intending to deploy inside the stadium. But why was Tremaine at the stadium? Why early? Why alone?
The questions preoccupied a dark corner in Owen’s mind.
A late Indian summer kept temperatures high nearly through October, prompting a rally in Montauk and the Hamptons as everyone with the time and the financial means seemed to rush in to recapture their beach vacations. Owen’s mandatory one-week leave extended another week into accrued vacation time. But Owen never left the house. He spent most of the day lying in the hot bedroom, never turning on the air conditioner.
He stopped shaving. Long red wisps of sparse beard spewed off his face like random mole hairs.
“You can wait until the court date before locating another place to live,” the bankruptcy lawyer told them, but Callie was already impatient to start looking.
“Here are some basic rules, “ he told them. “Direct your mail to a post office box. No need for the kids to see the types of mail that you’ll be getting. If you still have a home telephone, cancel it. Move to your cell phones. You won’t want your children to be answering the phone, believe me. Better to not discuss this with others. Keep it simple. But if you do confide in anyone, or if something slips, don’t let that bother you too much. It happens. You are far from alone. Be positive. We’re going to get this monkey off your backs. This is the start of an exciting new chapter.”
Be positive. Be excited. Yeah, right. Owen wasn’t buying. Callie brought home Disneyworld brochures and ran out of the room when Owen saw them. He looked like he was close to punching her in the face.
“We stop paying the mortgage and you wanted to go to Disney?” he roared, loud enough to be heard from across the street. “Fuck’s sake. What the hell?”
They couldn’t get through the day without screaming, even with Liam and Casey right there in the room with them. “The whole bankruptcy thing is bullshit!” Owen shouted at Callie, at himself, at the ceiling. They should have found some other way through it.
Callie could argue until she was blue in the face; it didn’t matter to him if the heads of banks had stolen more than the both of them could take in a million lifetimes. It wasn’t right. Whatever the lawyer said, they both knew that they were running a scam. They were supposed to be honest. But they weren’t honest. Not now.
Callie used Shelley and Mike’s address on Bridle Trail Lane in Lake Success to enroll Liam in his new school. Mike and Shelley were paying all those property taxes toward the good school district and they didn’t have kids, so she said why not get them enrolled and then look for a rental within the district when they were ready to move?
Sometimes he wondered if he even knew her anymore. Like he was going to declare bankruptcy and then move to a place called “Lake Success?” Did she even know him anymore?
“Why not sit down w
ith the department psychologist?” Dansk asked him.
Owen glared. “Why not get me forensics reports on your Dimitri Vosilych?” he countered.
You think you’re saddling me with a fucking depression diagnosis? Fuck you.
Bitch. You didn’t lose your best friend. You didn’t have to declare bankruptcy. What the fuck do you know?
“Tee’s revolver was emptied,” Owen reminded her again. “Five rounds. So where are the bullets? Where’s the fucking autopsy report?
You’re supposed to lead the Division! What are you doing to get the answers, Dansk? And what about Jonathan Spencer? Did you even contact DOD?
Who’s the one on vacation here, huh? Tell me! Because I sure as hell don’t see leadership.”
Everyone nearby them could see and hear through the glass walls. Dansk rose up. In heels, she stood eye-to-eye with Owen.
“Next time you enter this office, I’m recording every word you say and we’ll have witnesses,” she warned him.
“The more the better!” Owen barked back. “Call Internal Affairs! Who comes out better, me for calling you out or you for selling out?”
“Get out! Cullen, unless you are reinstated, you even step inside this Division, I’ll remove you in handcuffs. You hear me?! Get the hell out!”
* * * * *
He was drinking too much. He knew that. But it wasn’t out of control. He knew he could stop.
Eight weeks of sitting on his ass. Callie constantly pissed. Even the boys were shying away from him. No wrestling on the floor. Liam didn’t want him to help with coach-pitch baseball.
Owen got out of bed before 6 a.m., shaved his scraggly face in slow, careful strokes, dressed himself, then stepped down the stairs one by one.
“Get it together,” he told himself. “It’s time.”
He got behind the wheel, continuing step-by-step through the process of starting the car. He drove himself in to Intel Division. The division had changed. There were people with faces he recognized who shook his hand and patted him on his shoulders but he also sensed how others were not so welcoming. It didn’t occur to him that they were working, that every one of them had a job and a home and a thousand things more immediate than judging Owen Cullen.
He wasn’t there for Tee. That was fact. There was no getting around it.
There were new faces, too. The most important change was at the top. Dansk was gone. She had shifted adroitly straight into the private sector. Executive Vice President for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in charge of the National Sales Division. The company was rolling out its campaign for selling drone aircraft to police departments in all fifty states. Rumor was a Learjet came with the job.
Dansk could finally afford her wardrobe. Her business entertainment budget alone amounted to double the white-shirt commander’s salary she took down when she was at NYPD.
Dansk had pulled Owen’s file and set it out for the temporary commander who was filling in while the department interviewed for her replacement. She highlighted how Detective Lieutenant Cullen was having financial difficulties. Every intelligence service in the world evaluates the financial stability of its employees. If it had been her decision, she would have also required anyone using anti-depressant therapies to report that, too. But legal services claimed that asking about depression violated federal patient privacy laws.
At one time, Owen would have thrown his hat into the ring for the command, but now it was all he could do to handle the cacophony of ringing telephones and still read through the case board.
The interim captain came out to shake hands. “Welcome back, Owen,” he said warmly. “I don’t give two craps about anything Dansk has to say. She turned on the Department. We’re here, we’re in this together. Clean slate.”
Back behind his desk, sitting in his familiar wooden chair, Owen felt a surge of strength. You can do this, he told himself.
Work into it.
Ahead of him, on his left, Tremaine’s desk was missing the rotating bottles from the hot sauce collection. His baseball was gone, too, the home run ball off Curtis Granderson that Tee had caught in his beer cup. It wasn’t Tee’s desk. Not now.
There was a framed picture on the desk; some guy, Italian maybe, with a blond wife, and a boy and a girl maybe five and seven.
Owen felt like a hot blow dryer was pointed into his eyes. He blinked and the sloshing wetness returned; the skies broke into a downpour beyond his control. He rushed toward the men’s room with his hands up in front of his face, but even washing his face did no good. Bright red, burning eyes stared back at him from the mirror with tears running down his cheeks like water out a faucet. His legs gave out, sending him slumping to the floor. He curled up around the overflowing trash bin and sobbed.
* * * * *
Sixty-two heartbeats made a minute.
A green light blinked on a camera mounted high up out of reach. Thirty green blinks equaled sixty-two heartbeats.
He was splayed there in loose underwear pulled over casts up both his legs. Nothing else. No clothes, not even a blanket. The barren concrete cell might drive a prisoner to contemplate suicide, but his captors had made certain that there was nothing that might be used for it.
He could see the GE logo on the side of the fluorescent light bulb. The stainless steel wall-mounted toilet was a U.S. brand, too. American Standard. But no useful meaning from that; they could be holding him anywhere.
No contact. Not with another prisoner. Not with the two MP-types who replaced the bedpan, hooded him and then rolled him onto the interrogation chair. A slot at the base of the steel door opened before paper trays got pushed across the floor. Breakfast. Dinner. Two plates equaled one day.
At fourteen meal intervals, after scrambled powdered eggs and before macaroni and cheese, they strapped him onto a gurney to be rolled over for x-rays and to see the doctor. Once a week.
These were his measures of time.
The thick one, the ranking NCO, kept the keys to the handcuffs and to the doors. He could hear him working through a big ring of them and huffing as he walked. E6, Staff sergeant, Spencer guessed.
They had the plywood pallet that kept him off the concrete floor riveted to a welded metal frame that was lagged into the concrete walls. Not a nail or screw anywhere. Four capped, wall-mounted bolts held the toilet in place. American Standard.
While he appeared to be asleep, he left his hands dangling over the plywood. Outside the view of the ever-present camera he was working his thumbs raw, prying against the underside of the platform along the edge where the layers of plywood were glued together. A long triangular piece was nearly ready to snap free. He left it hanging by just enough contact to keep it from falling off onto the floor; four inches at the base, sharp stabbing points at the apex. It would fit flat against his palms.
This thin shard, this was the one thin chance.
He was prepared. Mind and body.
The casts were coming off.
Get it now on Amazon.
READY TO HEAR SPENCER’S Story?
The thrilling follow-up to the first book in the IKRP series tells the story of Spencer, the renegade sniper. Terrorist, psychopath, or patriot; what drives this elite US Army combat sniper to turn his sights on America’s billionaires? Has he lost it? Can this shocking shift be a new patriotism?
Owen Cullen, a decent cop by all accounts, is stuck. His closest friend is dead, nothing adds up, and he can’t let it go. His obsession at getting to the truth threatens his fragile marriage and puts his career in jeopardy, too. Owen needs a second chance, a shot at redemption with his wife, his kids, and with the police department he loves. But he will never get to Spencer within the official system.
When the lone wolf is killing billionaires, our hallowed constitution is reduced to a minor speed bump as powerful, angry men intent buil
ding their wealth and sovereignty fight back, writing off rules, laws and any innocent people who get in the way. Is it even possible to tell the good guys from the bad when their ends justify their means and regular people become acceptable collateral damage?
There is one way for Owen to bring Spencer down, but at the cost of his honor and his values. He can chose to serve the brutally powerful forces acting behind the veil of purchased loyalties. If he makes that call, his search for redemption might well destroy him.
Get it now on Amazon.
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A
bout the Author
Mike Bogin lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife of twenty-eight years. He has three grown children. His parents traveled extensively and worked abroad; taking him to sixty countries by the time he was ten.
Mike completed his undergraduate degree at the University of California, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with Honors and Distinction. After spending a year on an island in Greece working manual labor and writing his first novel, he went on to complete his graduate studies at the University of Cambridge in England at the Institute of Criminology within the Faculty of Law. His Master’s Thesis focus, Anti-Terrorism, would not turn into a major industry until after the 9/11 attacks.