Soft Target

by Rachel Brune

  “Yup,” said Scott. “I skipped the gym yesterday and this morning.”

  “Gross.” Gina took a sip of coffee, attempting to wash away the imagined taste of a healthy doughnut. “Hey, where’s your sidekick?”

  Scott opened his computer, chose a file from the top of his pile. “Hopefully out covering some story on the world’s largest dog turd.”

  Gina snorted, then straightened her face. “Don’t look now, but here he comes.”

  Scott groaned. “That man never gives up.”

  Gina laughed out loud as Mark knocked on the door. He poked his head into the office, then proffered a box of doughnuts.

  “Hey, what do you think this is, some kind of clichéd stereotype?” Gina demanded. “You think we’re going to be nice to you just cause you brought us some doughnuts?”

  “Uh, sorry?” Mark looked in confusion from Scott to Gina to the box on the desk.

  “She’s just kidding, Jimmy,” said Scott. “Leave the box on the table outside. The rest of the guys will enjoy it.”

  “Hey, no problem,” said Mark. “Who’s Jimmy?”

  “Didn’t you ever read a comic book?” asked Scott. “Never mind. Listen, all I’ve got today is some paperwork, why don’t you come back tomorrow?”

  “No can do,” said Mark. “My producer is on my case about this story. Can’t you get someone to cover for you?”

  Scott looked at Gina. She shrugged. “No. I can’t.”

  “Go ahead, Scott, I’ll hold down the store.”

  “No, I’d better stay,” said Scott. “It could get really busy down here.”

  “Yeah, and fat pigs could fly out Osama bin Laden’s sunken ass,” said Gina. “We’re fine. Go. Babysit.”

  “Cool,” said Mark.

  “Shit,” said Scott. He thought back to the request for deployment he had sent out that morning, and hoped like hell this one would go through.

  * * *

  Alan stared at Dodger, wondering if he was truly stupid or just testing him.

  “What the hell is this?” asked Alan.

  “It’s an alarm clock, man,” said Dodger.

  “Yeah.” Alan was pissed. Eddie started edging toward the living room. “It’s a digital alarm clock.”

  “So?”

  “So I told you to get a damn alarm clock with a mechanical timer.”

  “I couldn’t find one of those, man,” said Dodger. “I looked all over the place.”

  Alan rubbed his mouth with his palm, feeling the stubble on his chin. He hated shaving, but it was time.

  “I told you to go down to the ninety-nine cent store. I checked. They have them there.”

  “If you knew they were there, why didn’t you get them yourself?”

  Eddie and Dodger knew Alan’s penchant for sudden, extreme violence, but only Dodger needed a constant reminder. Alan’s fists hit his mouth, temple, and gut in rapid succession. He doubled over, coughing blood through the loose teeth in the front of his jaw.

  “Stop, stop, I’m sorry!”

  Alan cocked his fist back, then opened his hand and slapped Dodger across the head. “Go get the fucking mechanical alarm clock.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Eddie waited until he heard Dodger leave and the door slam shut, plus an extra couple of minutes to let Alan cool down, then went back into the kitchen.

  “Hey man, I talked to my cuz, the one who works for that bike service.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And he said he doesn’t have a problem picking up a few extra bucks.”

  “Okay. And we can trust him?”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about him.” Eddie was insulted, but liked his teeth where they were. He wasn’t angry; Dodger showed disrespect, and had earned the reaction he got. Eddie was used to playing number two man to the alpha dog of the group, and Alan wasn’t the worst he had ever worked for by far.

  And the reward—he had worked for money before, but this time, he was promised more than the transitory pleasures of cash. Alan had promised him revenge.

  * * *

  Mark’s brilliant idea was to do some background on Scott in order to lead up to the work he was doing for the task force. Undeterred by Scott’s protests that he was simply riding a desk for a while, Mark pestered him with a series of mostly unanswered questions. Finally, Mark suggested heading back to some of Scott’s original NYPD haunts and talking to some of the people he had worked with.

  “Yeah, sure, but I don’t think they’re going to talk to you,” said Mabry.

  “Okay, then maybe you could ask them about that e-mail,” said Mark.

  “You’re not giving up about that are you?” asked Mabry.

  “I think it’s genuine,” said Mark. “Therefore, it’s a story. And if I have to cover you to get to that story, then so be it.”

  “And here I thought you were actually interested in what we do,” said Scott.

  “No, that didn’t come out like it was supposed to,” said Mark. “I meant—”

  “Yeah, I know what you meant,” said Scott. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Meet some of the people I used to work with.”

  The NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau, Scott Mabry’s home for two years, was the bureau that investigated and prosecuted organized criminal activities. For Mabry, that had meant two years of growing his hair long, letting his speech grow sloppy and learning how to act like a scumbag. Not all of that had been hard to do. The time in the bureau had cost him about twenty pounds and the last crappy months of his already-doomed second marriage. The orders deploying him to Iraq had seemed a lucky break at the time. On his return, his supervisors had decided that jumping back into the abyss might not be the best decision, and so had shunted him to the task force on the basis of his military experience and Arabic language skills.

  Still, Mabry had made some friends, who true to the reputation of OCCB as an officer-sucking black hole, were still there when he and Mark showed up for a visit.

  “Hey, ees Señor Clean!” The joker was a short man with greasy slicked-back hair and a thick Latino accent.

  “Hey ese, did you know someone poured motor oil on your head?” Mabry slapped his friend lightly on the head and made a big show of wiping his hand off on his jeans.

  “Gringo, I keep telling you, ‘ese’ is for those fucking southerners,” said Paul Moreno, who had joined the bureau at the same time as Mabry. He switched to an obviously fake Hispanic accent. “Yo soy norteño, fucker.”

  As Mark watched, fascinated, the two men clasped hands and pounded each other on the back.

  “You ain’t fooling no one, homes,” said Mabry. “You were born and raised in Toms River.”

  Moreno shrugged. The accent fell off his speech. “Just trying to impress your girlfriend, here. Hey, how are ya?”

  Mark extended his hand. “Mark Granger. New York Central News.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you on the television,” said Moreno. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “It’s take-your-annoying-reporter-to-work day,” said Mabry.

  “I’m doing a piece on the anti-terrorism task force, and Scott’s role as a soldier and a cop,” said Mark.

  Moreno raised an eyebrow. “Scott?”

  “Yeah,” said Scott. “Morris thinks it’ll be good publicity or some shit like that. Listen, Paul, I got a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You hear anything out of Marshall’s unit about these stop and robs, where the one guy yells something about jihad?”

  “Nah, Everett and I don’t talk much since he transferred out. You following something?”

  “Don’t know yet,” said Scott.

  “Huh.” Moreno thought a moment. “You run it through Real Time yet?”

  “What’s Real Time?” asked Mark.

  “Put your notebook away,” said Scott. He waited until Mark flipped his notebook closed and stuffed it away. “It’s a database. And no, I haven’t
. I didn’t even think about it.”

  “Hang on,” said Paul. He picked up his phone and dialed a few numbers. “Hey, Janis, it’s Paul.”

  Ten minutes and some sweet-talking by the OCCB officer later, Paul printed out an incident list of six separate robberies and their times, locations and descriptions of the perpetrators. Scott took the list with no small amount of admiration.

  “Granger, you are my witness,” said Scott. “That was the fastest time I have ever seen anyone get anything out of those tight-asses down at Real Time.”

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to write about Real Time?” said Mark. “Or about anything here?”

  “That’s affirmative,” said Scott.

  “I’ll be outside,” said Mark. He put his jacket on and walked out.

  “He got an issue?” asked Moreno.

  “More than one,” said Scott. “Listen man, thanks. I owe you.”

  “Make it single malt,” said Moreno. “Peace.”

  Scott jogged down the stairs and out the front door, looking around to see if Mark was still hanging around. He spotted the reporter leaning against a bus stop, talking on his phone.

  “Yeah, never mind,” said Mark, into his phone. “There’s nothing going on here. I’ll be fired by tomorrow.”

  Mark saw Scott coming and hung up.

  “Your girlfriend?” asked Scott.

  “No.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  Mark shrugged. “I’m not involved with anyone right now.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. The wind had picked up and he shivered in his suit jacket. “That was my cameraman. We have about the closest thing to a relationship that I have time for.”

  “I heard that.” Scott tapped out a cigarette and lit it up. He noticed Mark’s dejection and misinterpreted the cause. “Listen, I know you think I’ve been blowing you off, but I’m riding a desk right now. I don’t like it, but I’m trying to do the right thing here and stay behind it as much as possible.”

  “You don’t look like it,” said Mark. “You look like you’re running a lead.”

  “Nah,” said Scott. “I’m just asking some questions.”

  “What I don’t understand is, you’re working on a terrorism task force, right?”

  “Yup.” Scott inhaled. He was thinking about quitting again—this was the longest it had ever taken him to kick the habit, post-deployment.

  “So, why are you running down a robbery lead when I have a perfectly good terrorism lead?”

  Scott inhaled again. Now wasn’t the right time to quit.

  “Come here, check it out.” He motioned Mark to the city map plastered on the wall of the bus stop. He took out the list of incidents from his pocket, unfolded it and smoothed it next to the map. “We’ve got six incidents located here, here …” He jabbed the cigarette against the map, burning small holes into the plastic.

  “Uh … are you…” Mark trailed off. If a large member of the New York Police Department thought it would be all right to deface public property, he was not about to argue with him.

  “So, look.” Scott gestured to the map. The burn holes were spread out, discolorations forming almost a perfect circle. “Someone was trying to be clever here. But I’ll bet we find something interesting right around here.” He burned another hole into the grid.

  “Are you kidding?” asked Mark. “That’s Bayside. There’s nobody there except a bunch of rich people and the Whitestone Bridge.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Scott. “You coming?”

  As they waited for the subway, Scott called Gina to give her an update. Although she had originally shooed him out of the office, she was less than thrilled to find he wouldn’t be coming back for the rest of the day.

  “What should I tell Mac if he comes down here looking for you?” The layers of concrete in the station chopped her voice into static.

  “Just tell him—look just tell him I’ll be in early tomorrow!” Scott shouted over the rumble of conversation and the train on the other tracks. “I’ll be in early!”

  “Fine.” Gina’s voice lowered. Scott pictured her narrowing her mouth, as he had noticed she did in the afternoon when she was ready to leave. “What should I tell him you’re—?”

  Scott tried to listen, but he couldn’t hear anything else on the line. He pulled the phone away from his ear. A blinking screen informed him that the conversation had lasted exactly two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. He folded it shut and put it in his jeans pocket as their train pulled in. The doors opened and people pushed past them.

  “What was that all about?” asked Mark.

  “Nothing,” said Scott. “Just doing a little coverage.”

  “Coverage?” asked Mark.

  “Yeah,” said Scott. “Of my ass. Get on the train.”

  Chapter Nine

  Mark’s cheap digital watch showed that it was getting close to his deadline, and he was beginning to panic. By the time the sky began to darken, sending small chills through his inadequate suit jacket, he had seen more of the outer boroughs than he had ever wished.

  The journey had started with a ride on the Long Island Railroad out to Bayside, Queens. In what was almost literally the shadow of the Whitestone Bridge, Mark and Scott had knocked on the door of a white stone mosque. He remembered thinking that the location would have been ideal for an interview, perhaps with a little sunset coloring. After a brief conversation with the imam, during which Scott stood respectfully outside the door and Mark attempted unsuccessfully to listen in on the conversation, they had turned away and trudged back to the bus.

  From the bus, the two men had walked to the LIRR station and headed back into Manhattan. Mark’s hopes had risen that Scott might actually explain what he was doing, but instead they rode the subway out to Brooklyn, where Mark lost track of which line he was on, barely remembering switching from the purple to the green to the gray to the brown. The trip was punctuated every so often by a stop to get off the bus, visit a deli and walk a widening pattern of streets around the deli.

  At one point, Mark ventured to ask what they were doing.

  “Fishing,” was Scott’s cryptic reply.

  “For what?” Mark had asked.

  “Whatever I can get,” Scott had said. “It’s the middle of the season and I don’t even know if I’m using the right bait.”

  Personally, Mark thought you could stretch a metaphor too far. However, the detective appeared to be doing something related to the series of robberies, even if those didn’t seem to be related to his problem. If worst came to worst, he could probably cobble something together on the NYPD hero solving a string of high-profile, terrorism-related robberies.

  After the third deli stop, Mark broke down and bought a sandwich. As he ate and they walked, Scott finally halted in the middle of his circling. Mark looked up and saw another mosque. Again, Scott knocked on the door. An old man answered it, and Scott spoke to him. Mark realized that his inability to understand the conversation was not just because the cop had spoken in a soft voice, but also because apparently Mabry spoke Arabic—or something foreign and understood by an old Muslim man in traditional dress.

  Scott came back out on the street, and they began heading for the subway again.

  “Do you have any idea where we’re going?” asked Mark.

  “I have an idea,” said Scott. “If you’re bored, you can leave anytime you want.”

  “I just want to know, are you trying to find mosques because of what the perps shouted at the robberies?”

  “Perps?” Scott looked at him with what Mark suspected was a mocking grin. “You mean suspects?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Something like that,” said Scott. “Like I said, I’m fishing.”

  Mark seemed troubled.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Scott

  “Are we profiling?” asked Mark.

  “Profiling?” Scott shook his head. Time for another cigarette. “No. We’re following a very tenuous lead.”

 
Mark shrugged. “Okay, next question. I thought you worked for a joint terrorism task force.”

  “Affirmative,” said Scott. “What’s the question?”

  “Does your boss know you’re running down robbery leads?” asked Mark.

  Scott laughed. “No.”

  “No?”

  “Hell, no,” said Scott. “In fact, Mac would probably flip out if he knew I was doing this with you.”

  “So …” Mark hesitated. “Why are we doing this?”

  “Because,” said Scott. “It’s always easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. You wanted to see what I do? This is what I do.”

  Mark scribbled that conversation almost verbatim into his notebook. He realized it wasn’t fair, but he was starting to get pissed off at Detective Mabry. The personality feature, as a news piece, was never his strong point. He preferred action, a series of events with strong consequences and high stakes. He would rather run into a burning building to get a story on a firefighter, than have to interview that firefighter later about his feelings on fighting fire. He was interested in Mabry’s story, sure, but he was more interested in where Mabry could take him, and what the images would look like in the end.

  By four thirty, Mark knew with a certainty born of pain that he truly hated Detective Mabry, and began scheming ways to excuse himself with dignity. Only the threat of Jefferson Taggert actually following through on his promise to fire Mark if he didn’t deliver a good story kept the reporter climbing up the stairs of the Kingston-Throop station. He followed Mabry six blocks down Throop Avenue to Jefferson Avenue. The streets were lined by three- and four-story brick buildings. The storefronts were beginning to draw their monochrome steel gates against the evening. The neon advertisements of some of the signs glowed against the dreary overcast night that was starting in earnest.

  “Hang on, wait one minute.” Mark stopped. He leaned one hand up against a rough brick wall covered in graffiti. With the other, he picked up his foot. He poked his finger into his expensive business shoe, neatly shined only that morning. The orthopedic inserts that normally allowed him to spend hours on his feet were failing him in the extreme.

  “Feet hurt?” Scott asked.

  “I think I have a blister on my blister,” said Mark.