Frank Zafiro - And Every Man Has to Die

He glanced at his pastry and decided that he wasn’t hungry anymore. He pushed the plate away and a moment later Natalia appeared at his table.

“Are you finished with that?” she asked in a sultry tone.

Val grunted affirmatively.

She leaned over further than was necessary to retrieve the small plate, then turned and walked away, adding a bit of sway to her step. Val took a moment to appreciate the view as she made her way back to the kitchen.

Val’s cellular phone rang. He wasn’t entirely sold on these devices. They were becoming more and more commonplace, if expensive. They would likely become immensely popular with Americans because they represented another luxury. For him, it was a very expedient tool, but he distrusted it from the vantage point of communication security. He discouraged anyone from saying anything incriminating over any telephone, but particularly a cell phone. Perhaps a day would come when he and his crew could purchase scrambled cell phones, but until then he was glad that they spoke only Russian in the clear.

“Yes,” he said into the receiver.

Yuri spoke quickly. “Dinner is arranged,” he said cryptically. “All the guests will attend.”

Val did not answer. He snapped the phone shut and put it back into his pocket. So far, everything was a go. All his strategies were working out. He had done his groundwork. He had the loyalty of the men, he had the tools, and things were proceeding according to plan.

According to plans within plans within plans.

1927 hours

Detective Ray Browning sat at his desk staring down at the case file in front of him. The lights above the desks of his colleagues had been turned off hours ago. The only sound he heard was Glenda’s rapid typing in the foyer as she transcribed one of the detectives’ reports on overtime. Browning found himself envying whichever detective had made enough progress on a case to ship a report to her.

Browning never officially learned to type. He still nurtured his hunting and pecking skills when he was forced to type something. But right now, even he could type up his report without Glenda’s skills.

He resisted the urge to review the contents of the case file again. He knew them virtually by heart already, but if he were to open the file the result would be another hour poring over every detail again, looking for something that he might have missed the first dozen times.

But an empty cupboard was an empty cupboard, no matter how many times he opened the door and peered inside.

Something about the case bothered him. It wasn’t the meddling of Special Agent Payne. It wasn’t even the fact that the victims had been young black men, stirring in him some sort of sympathy born of kinship. Browning didn’t think along those lines. Men were men. Good was good. And criminals were criminals. He barely paid attention to skin color unless it helped him identify the bad guy.

No, what bothered him was the sheer brutality of it. Three dead and one in a drug-induced coma who was likely to be a vegetable for the rest of his life.

The gang member witnesses ranged from unhelpful to flat-out adversarial. Only DeShawn Brown, the apparent leader of this Crip set, had been both helpful and useful. And even his information hadn’t given Browning any particularly powerful or solid leads.

The police database for Russian criminals was shallow, and most of their information sketchy. He spoke with DeShawn very frankly about gang matters, assuring the young man that he could speak freely without concern for criminal matters so long as they were drug or property crimes. DeShawn had been wary nonetheless and avoided anything directly incriminating. When Browning had asked about political issues, the gang leader shook his head.

“Ain’t nobody said nothin’ to me about nothin’,” he’d stated emphatically. “This was a flat-out ambush and we didn’t do shit to piss them motherfuckers off.”

Browning wondered if the move by the Russians was truly unprovoked, but he had no call to disbelieve DeShawn.

Beyond the carnage, what bothered Browning just as much was the setting. It irritated him that the gang members would hole up in a residential area that even by gang standards would have been considered civilian. Their presence was a trouble magnet. But the bulk of Browning’s ire was directed at the men who had fired their automatic weapons in a neighborhood full of working people and children.

He accepted Chisolm’s analysis that they were military trained and that their rounds had been largely accurate, but that didn’t negate the fact that a stray round could have taken an innocent life.

All of this didn’t help solve the case.

Browning examined instead what physical evidence existed. They recovered 106 AK-47 shell cases. According to Chisolm, each of the three shooters probably had a thirty-round magazine and probably carried two or more in reserve. At least one or more of the men had done a tactical reload at some point. Browning hadn’t needed Chisolm’s input to figure that part out. He might not have been in the military, but he understood math.

He’d ordered a fingerprint check on all the casings and was astounded to learn that there hadn’t been a single smudge or smear, much less a print. That meant the shooters had wiped down each round before loading them. Furthermore, they must have worn gloves while doing so. That level of meticulous caution dismayed him.

During any detective’s career, the majority of cases were broken because the detective discovered a mistake that the criminal made. He knew that you could be a brilliant investigator and follow out every lead to its natural end, but if the perpetrator didn’t make a mistake somewhere along the way, you were unlikely to break the case. That sentiment didn’t sit well with some of the more hotshot detectives, but Browning’s days of worrying about image were long behind him, if they ever existed at all. His primary consideration was simple: Figure out what happened, find the bad guy, and build a case against him that’ll stand up in court. Nothing more, nothing less. Although in this case he was coming up with a lot less.

“If this is the way the Russians do business,” he whispered down to the closed case file, “we could be in for a long haul.”

Speaking those words sapped the last of his motivation for the day. His wife, Veronica, and son, Marcus, were waiting at home for him, probably holding dinner. There was nothing more for him to do today except hope that maybe someone made a mistake overnight.

2217 hours

“Baker-122, Baker-128.” The dispatcher’s monotone voice broke into the still night of B.J. Carson’s patrol car as she cruised up Division Street. She waited until Battaglia answered up, then keyed her own mike. “Go ahead,” she said, trying to project a confidence she didn’t entirely feel.

“In Adam Sector at 119 W Central. Male caller states he thinks his wife has committed suicide. She went in the bathroom and he heard a loud bang. He is standing by at the front door of 119 W Central.”

“Copy,” came Battaglia’s unflappable voice.

“Copy,” Carson said, putting on her overhead lights and heading that direction. “Time delay?”

“He called less than a minute ago. Also, medics will be standing by.”

Carson copied that, too. She hung up the microphone. Katie’s words echoed in her mind: just be a good cop.

She pressed down on the accelerator and drove hard. No way were medics going to beat her there. She only had about five blocks to drive.

As she turned onto the correct block she dumped all her lights and rolled to a stop one house east of 119. In the distance she could hear the loud air horn and siren of the fire truck. Battaglia cruised in behind her, lights out.