Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

"I can ask around, but I won't get confirmation, Lou. Not if it's I.I."

"And that lack of confirmation will tell us what we need to know."

"Not necessarily."

"I read this wrong, Phil. Blue on blue. I was thinking we were getting roughed up in order to cut our numbers, strengthen the effect of the Flu. And sure, maybe a brick through a window. Some rookie pissed off his paycheck isn't coming in and drinking too much. But assaults? Sanchez? Schock and Phillipp?" He left himself out of it. "Would we do that kind of damage to each other over guild politics?"

"Don't underestimate what a desperate man will do," Shoswitz cautioned.

"Six months into a strike, maybe. But one week? Does that make sense? And so carefully executed to look like muggings. The things are textbook, Phil."

"Your point?"

"I could use a little help here," Boldt prodded. "I've got two Vice cops poking around a bar and apparently following a Property sergeant. What's that about?"

"I'll ask around," Shoswitz confirmed. "But if they were I.I., about the best we'll get is a denial. We'll be working hunches is all."

"I have another source I can work," Boldt told him. "Sanchez may be able to fill in some of this."

"I thought she's comatose."

"So does everyone," Boldt said. "Right now, that's the one advantage I've got."

It was too late to visit Sanchez at the hospital. She'd be medicated and fast asleep. But it wasn't too late to grab onto a few limbs and start shaking the tree. Whoever had committed the assaults would have fresh blood to hide, might even have defensive wounds to show for their efforts.

Boldt called Gaynes and Matthews and caught them up on the assaults, as well as Shoswitz's alert about the surprise health inspections. He put them onto the task of firing up the departmental phone tree and to start making calls. Gaynes rallied without complaint, a soldier in the trenches.

Daphne, as ever, ferreted out Boldt's true intentions: to question Ron Chapman at his home. She refused to allow him to go at it alone, and informed him she was bringing a stun stick along as backup. He knew better than to argue with her, or to admit that he'd welcome her company. He picked her up at her houseboat, and they drove to Chapman's together, using the drive time to prepare.

"The two of you at this hour, it's not social," Chapman said, shutting the door behind them. He had made no effort to keep them out. Perhaps, Boldt thought, he didn't want to eat alone.

"Little late for dinner, isn't it, Ron?"

Chapman lived in a studio apartment with a partial view of Pill Hill. He had the TV going and a Stouffer's microwave meal on a folding table in front of the room's only chair-a La-Z-Boy recliner. He'd been widowed several years earlier, and the dust bugs and dirty windows confirmed a life of a man turned within. To Boldt, the room felt sad and depressed, crowded with too many snapshots of the late wife. Some people couldn't let go. Chapman suddenly struck him that way, and Boldt found it odd that his attitude about a man he'd known for years could change with a single look inside that man's home. If there had ever been joy here, it now rested in the urn that held his wife's ashes.

Chapman didn't offer them seats, in part because the only two chairs were at a small table that framed the galley kitchen's doorway, and there didn't seem to be any more room for them elsewhere.

"Little late for a house call, isn't it, Lieutenant? Strange times, these."

"You hear about Schock and Phillipp?"

"Rudy Schock?"

Daphne said calmly, "They were assaulted tonight."

"Not far from the Cock and Bull," Boldt supplied.

Ron Chapman carried an extra thirty or forty pounds on his Irish bulldog looks. It wasn't easy for such soft flesh to remain so absolutely still. Then, at once, he returned to his dinner like a dog to its bone.

"You were at the Cock and Bull tonight, Ronnie. What's that about?"

"A guy can't buy himself a drink?" Chapman complained, working on the dinner in the small plastic tray. "Since when?"

"What do Schock and Phillipp mean to you?"

The man glanced up, as hot as his prepared dinner. "Who says they mean anything?"

"Why play games?" Boldt asked. "Are you into something here? Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're wrong."

"Convince me," Boldt said.

"I've got my dinner to eat."

Daphne asked, "Are you afraid of them?"

Chapman stiffened.

She clarified, "I'm not talking about Schock and Phillipp. I'm talking about whoever did that to them. Are you afraid of those people?"

He wouldn't look up from his food. "Way I heard it, they were mugged. A street assault. Why should I be afraid of that? Their bad luck is all."

She said, "You don't have to swing the baseball bat to be guilty of assault. There's conspiracy. There's intent. You want to think about that."

Boldt said, "Next to Narcotics, Property is probably easily the most tempting duty of all of 'em. You guys are carefully hand-picked. Doesn't mean temptation doesn't win out now and then. There's a heck of a lot of goods on those shelves."

"There's cash on those shelves," Chapman said. "Jewels. Weapons. And as far as I know it's all still there, Lieutenant. Go ahead and check."

"You came to that bar looking for someone. Two officers right behind you were assaulted. What if I told you they were following up on a case that was being worked by Sanchez just before her assault?"

Daphne turned her attention to Boldt, angry at not having been included in on this.

Chapman wouldn't take his head out of his dinner.

Boldt said, "Maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe you were doing a favor for Schock, or Phillipp. Wearing a wire? Making a contact?"

"It wasn't like that!" the man objected heatedly, fork in mid-air.

Daphne picked up on Boldt's lead. "The rumor mill is brutal," she said.

"You can't do something like that to me! Label me a squirrel for I.I.?" He thought this over and flushed. "It's not funny, Lieutenant. Especially not the way things are going right now."

"Let's take you out of the equation, Ron. That's what I'm suggesting. Let's put Schock and Phillipp working the Cock and Bull-it isn't their usual bar, or yours either, Ron." He let this sink in. "They're looking to work someone. That leaves me asking who. Who in your opinion, might they have been looking for up there?"

"I know what you're asking," Chapman said. "And you got this all tangled up."

"So help me untangle it."

"I was in for a drink is all."

"And Schock and Phillipp? A drink as well?"

"I didn't talk to them. Wouldn't know."

"Sergeant," Daphne said calmly, "you've stayed on through the Blue Flu. Precious few others have been so… bold as to do so. If you hadn't stayed on, others who've never worked Property would have been assigned to that duty. But you stayed. One could almost imagine you're protecting Property from outside eyes. And now these assaults.. Sanchez, Schock, and Phillipp. Someone even showed up in Lieutenant Boldt's backyard uninvited. You want to talk about mistakes? That was a mistake. You know the lieutenant's reputation as an investigator. Do you think he's going to let this go… four brutal assaults?"

"You two do what you have to. You come to whatever it is by yourselves," Chapman suggested. "Leave me out of this."

Boldt craned forward. "But then there is something, right, Ron? Something to leave you out of?"

"You're tangling this all up."

Boldt repeated slowly. "So… help… me… untangle.. it."

"Dinner's getting cold."

Daphne said, "We can be convinced otherwise. Tell us it was Schock and Phillipp doing the dirty work. Tell us they pursued you into that bar. What do they have on you? What do you have on them?"

"I'd like it if you left now," the man said.