W. Griffin - Deadly Assets

Smitty didn’t think the tiny pistol could do much damage-he knew guys got hit all the time with a 9, which was bigger than a.380 and what most everyone else packed, and even those bigger bullets just went right through them and the ER doctors stitched them up and sent them home the same night-but he figured Skinny Lenny just might get lucky and hit some important part on him.

Wordlessly, hands above his head, Smitty slowly walked backward to the faded crimson front door.

Five years later-with a growing congregation that had come to include, after he put them on the church payroll as deacons, both Smitty Jones and the elderly man who “miraculously” had forgiven the old Skinny Lenny for assaulting and robbing him-Cross had preached himself into a position in the community that, courtesy of City Councilman (At Large) H. Rapp Badde Jr., was considered worthy of an appointment to the CPOC.

–

Matt Payne looked at Jason Washington and said, “It’s no wonder that Badde bought his old neighborhood buddy. They’re cut from the same corrupt cloth. I won’t go into Badde’s-the list is too long-but the quote Reverend unquote Cross’s hypocritical behavior is nothing short of an outrage. As you well know, there are honest to God nuns and monks and others serving in those hard-hit neighborhoods. They’re the real deal, actually doing God’s work. They’re not making a mockery of it all for personal gain like Cross, starting with his shilling for Badde from the pulpit and essentially turning that bogus church into a campaign office.”

“You are aware that Cross got on camera after your interview. .”

“Yeah, I saw him as I was leaving.”

“. . and when the reporter asked if he felt what he was doing in a place where a young woman had just been murdered was ‘disrespectful’ or ‘disgusting,’ he dodged the query by stating instead that he felt that three hundred and sixty-two murders was ‘disgusting’ and that ‘a trigger-happy cop contributing to the bloodshed of citizens in the city was despicable.’”

Payne grunted. “I guess he’d rather have those murderers still running the streets.”

“It is anyone’s guess what his genuine motives are. .”

“Beyond personal gain, you mean,” Payne put in.

“. . but he then announced that he would be leading a protest rally at his church this afternoon at five. The interview was then drowned out with the chants of ‘No more murder, no more Payne.’”

“Five o’clock?” Payne said, then touched the glass face of his cell phone.

From its speakerphone, a sultry, surprisingly real-sounding female voice practically purred, “What can I do for you, Marshal?”

Payne saw Washington’s eyebrows go up, and that he shook his head and grinned.

Payne spoke into the phone: “New calendar entry with alarm: Protest today seventeen hundred hours.”

“Protest December fifteenth at five P.M.,” the sexy, artificially generated voice confirmed. “Calendar alarm set thirty minutes prior.”

“Thank you,” Payne said, looking up at Washington.

“My pleasure, Marshal.”

“If I did not know better, Matthew. .”

“What?” Payne said mock-innocently. “Technology is our friend.” He looked at the phone a second, then added, “But I should probably change that voice before Amanda hears it. The mechanical robot tone that reads the NOAA weather radio alerts might be safer.” He then mimicked the disjointed droning computer-generated voice: “To-day’s. Wea-ther. Fore-cast. .”

Washington chuckled. “On that side note, how is your bride-to-be?”

Payne raised an eyebrow.

“She called, said she wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me on TV being called Public Enemy Number One. She would be down there marching and chanting with a sign, too, if she thought it would hasten my finding other work.”

Dr. Amanda Law-whose father, Charlie Law, was friends with Washington, dating back to their time together in Northeast Detectives-had made it clear she was not thrilled with the prospect of spending every day, as she had while growing up, wondering if someone she loved would leave in the morning-and not come home alive. That her father took retirement only after taking a bullet to the knee served to strengthen her resolve.

“It’s certainly a reasonable fear,” Washington said, “one my bride, who in decades hasn’t gotten over it, is at least less vocal about after all these years.”

He paused, then added, “But. . I still see it in her eyes. Special indeed are the strong ladies who tolerate the toll this occupation takes on their relationships.”

Payne nodded thoughtfully.

“What I meant a moment ago,” Washington went on, “was, and apropos of that side note: If I didn’t know better, I would take it that you intend on attending Cross’s rally. That does not seem to be a wise idea for ‘Public Enemy Number One.’”

Payne shrugged. “I’ll have to think about it. Tell me no, and I won’t go. We’ll certainly have enough eyes in the crowd-”

Just then his phone vibrated, and he glanced at its screen. Then he looked back at Washington.

“Okay, that’s a heads-up that the casino security camera imagery is finally all in the war room. Will be ready to review in ten. Want to take a look?”

Washington glanced at his wristwatch. “If I can squeeze it in. Speaking of Finley, you are aware that he visibly cringed during his tour of the Roundhouse when he heard you call the Executive Command Center the ‘war room.’”

The ECC, the department’s enormous and enormously expensive nerve center, was outfitted with highly secure communications equipment able to link up local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies, as well as integrate satellite, Internet, radio, television, and citywide fixed and mobile surveillance cameras. It was next to the police commissioner’s office, down the hall from where they now stood.

Payne, his face showing he was unrepentant, shrugged, then added, “Tony’s still working the scene at the casino.”

“Tony” was Detective Anthony Harris, a slight, wiry, starting-to-bald thirty-six-year-old. He had fifteen years on the job, and longer in Homicide than Payne’s entire four years on the force. On the surface, it would reasonably follow that Harris would harbor a bitter resentment that someone younger and far less experienced-it was no secret that plenty among the rank and file complained that Payne was “a rich kid with connections playing cop”-could be his immediate superior, as well as over other veteran Homicide detectives.

But that simply wasn’t the case. Harris had worked with Payne before the promotion. He appreciated that, while Payne may have earned the position by making the top score on the sergeant’s exam, he really had earned Harris’s respect with his intellect and his genuine willingness to learn from those with more time on the job.

“Tony was on the Wheel?” Washington said. “It was my understanding that he finally had a weekend off.”

Payne nodded. “I think he has set a new department record for overtime. For once, he did plan to take the weekend off. But you know him. When he heard Charley Ogden had it, and what the case entailed, he volunteered to take it off Ogden’s hands.”

The Wheel wasn’t actually a wheel, but a roster of Homicide Unit detectives on duty. Whichever detective was at the top of the roster had the job to “man the desk,” which included answering incoming calls. When a job came in, the detective at the top of the Wheel took the case. Then he tapped the detective who was “next up on the Wheel”-the next name on the roster-and he or she then came to man the desk.

With as many homicides as the city suffered, the system did not spare anyone from juggling multiple cases, both new ones and older unsolved cases, including decade-old cold cases. But it came close to taking what otherwise would be an overwhelming workload and distributing it in a more or less equitable manner.