Frank Zafiro - And Every Man Has to Die

“Who put on that school?” he asked, condescension in his voice.

“That one would have been the FBI, sir,” she answered.

Payne paused and swallowed. “Uh, good. Okay, what else?”

Why the hell was she justifying her job to him? She glanced at the chief, but his stony gaze told her that she would have to answer the question. “I read a lot,” she said, anger brewing in the pit of her stomach. “Professional journals, books, bulletins. Whatever I can find on the Internet.”

Payne took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, that’s excellent. But be careful about the information on the web. Anyone can put anything out there, you know?”

“I pretty much stick to official sites,” Renee answered, starting to fume inside. I’ve been using computers since we stored data on cassette tapes, while you were popping pimples and reading Richie Rich comics, you little dipshit. “What’s this all about?” she asked.

Payne took another deep breath and affected a grave expression. Renee waited for him to speak, fairly certain that his tone would have a similar sense of measured gravity.

“What I’m about to tell you is completely confidential,” he said in a rehearsed voice. “It is classified based both upon the nature of the information and the source. Do you understand?”

Renee nodded. “Don’t tell anyone. I get it.”

Payne’s eyes narrowed. “It’s nothing to be flippant about,” he said. “Violations carry federal sanctions. If you can’t be trusted-”

“She can be trusted,” the chief rumbled from his leather throne. He cast a cautionary look at her. “Just let her know what’s going on, Agent Payne.”

Payne pressed his lips together as a slight redness crept into his cheeks. He looked like a schoolboy that had just been corrected by the teacher, but it quickly passed. “Do you know Oleg Tretiak?”

Renee shook her head.

Payne sighed. “Well, you should. He’s been the bookkeeper for Sergey Markov for the last two years. You do know Sergey Markov, right?”

Renee nodded, ignoring his tone. “Markov has been a suspect in a couple cases of fencing property, but he’s more likely in charge of a chop shop operation in town. Last year our detectives raided a garage in Hillyard. His car was parked in front of the house, but he wasn’t there.”

“Did any of the suspects talk?”

Renee gave him a baleful look. “No. They don’t talk. That’s the problem. Even the normal good citizens won’t inform on them. It’s a holdover from the old country.”

“They’ll talk,” Payne said. “It just takes a lot to make that happen.”

“Like what?”

Payne smiled coldly. “Well, if you try to kill a man, that tends to loosen his tongue.”

“Not with the Russians.” Renee eyed him carefully. “Are you saying you have an informant?”

Payne nodded.

“Is it Tretiak, the accountant?”

Payne nodded again.

Renee shrugged. “Well, that’s impressive, but I think you have to consider the odds that he’s not giving you accurate information. Even with an attempt on his life, I’m not so sure he’d turn on his-”

“It was more than a mere attempt on his life,” Payne said slowly. “Someone tried to kill him and his whole family by burning down his house. Only he wasn’t home at the time.”

Renee frowned. “There was a house fire on Grace on Sunday. A woman and two children died. The arson investigator’s initial report said that it was a wiring problem.”

“Oleg doesn’t think so.”

“Hoagland conducted that investigation,” Renee said. “I read his report. He didn’t have any evidence of arson.”

“He had his gut,” Payne said. “He called me yesterday. He said something didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t find anything to substantiate his feeling.”

“Then it is what the evidence says it is,” Renee said.

Payne shrugged. “Oleg knows what happened. He has no doubt.”

Renee shook her head in wonder. “So the ones who died in the fire, that was…?”

“His wife?” Payne asked dramatically. “His son and daughter? Yes, it was. And that was enough to make him decide to switch sides.”

Renee’s mind raced. An informant of this magnitude could fill in a lot of gaps, including how big a player Markov really was. He might even make it possible to break the back of the entire operation. “This is huge,” she whispered.

“It is,” Payne agreed. “And you can’t tell anyone about it.”

For once, Renee found herself in perfect agreement. “The FBI involvement? Or the informant?”

Payne looked at the chief again and shrugged. “Our assistance is probably not confidential. But the informant absolutely is on a need-to-know basis.”

Renee nodded her understanding. “What do you need from me?”

“Intelligence support,” Payne said. “We’re a small office here in River City. Most of our assets are in Seattle, which has its own organized crime problem, and not of the Russian variety. I’m asking your chief for support on a few issues, including using you as an analyst when necessary.”

“All right.”

“You’ll be given temporary clearance into our system,” Payne explained. “And I’d like you to take notes during Tretiak’s debriefings.”

Renee resisted the urge to whoop. This could be the difference maker that uprooted the Russian foothold in River City. It would be a worthwhile assignment, even if she did have to put up with Special Agent Maurice Payne.

“Not quite the CIA,” the chief said, a trace of humor in his gruff voice, “but getting close.”

Renee nodded to him. Maybe he wasn’t quite an orc, after all.

“I’ll be in touch soon,” Payne said.

Renee nodded, rose, and left the office with a smile on her face.

0911 hours

B.J. Carson lifted her glass and drained the last of the beer. The amber liquid slid down easily, the way having been well lubricated by the previous two. She set the glass down on the table carefully, but couldn’t keep it from clunking loudly on the Formica surface. The sound echoed in the near-empty Happy Time Tavern.

“Oops,” she said, and giggled.

Anthony Battaglia chuckled at her from across the table. He emptied his own glass to match her. Then he clunked his own glass on the table.

“Oops,” he said back.

Both officers laughed. Battaglia reached for the pitcher on the table and divvied up the remainder of the Coors Light between them.

Carson reached for her glass, now about a third full. Or, she wondered, was it two-thirds empty? The thought made her giggle again.

“Now what’s funny?” Battaglia asked.

“Nothing,” Carson replied. “It’s stupid.”

“But you laughed.”

“Yeah, but it was stupid.”

“Try me,” Battaglia urged.

“It’s stupid. Really.”

“I’ve got a stupid sense of humor. I’m Italian.”

Carson sighed. “All right.”

“Good.” He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

She held up her glass. “I just noticed that this was about one-third full. Then the thought popped in my mind, is it one-third full or is it two-thirds empty?”

Battaglia lowered his brows and stared at her.

“It thought it was funny,” Carson said, and shrugged.

“No, you were right,” Battaglia deadpanned. “It was stupid.”

“Shut up!” she said, laughing and throwing a balled-up napkin at him.

The wadded napkin struck Battaglia in the forehead and dropped directly into his beer glass.

Carson let out a squealing laugh. She covered her mouth, but her laughter continued.

Battaglia let out an exaggerated sigh. He reached for several other napkins and made a small pile. Then he reached inside his glass with two fingers and fished out the soggy napkin. He held it up for Carson to see before plopping it onto the bed of dry napkins he’d created. Then he peered at the remaining beer in his glass. “Well, now my beer is either one-quarter full or three-quarters empty.”