by Sal Bianchi
I blinked in surprise and looked up to find Agent Chloe Summers grinning at me. I’d been on autopilot as I walked and hadn’t even noticed her approaching me.
“Sorry.” I smiled sheepishly. “I think I zoned out for a minute.”
“What else is new,” she giggled. “How was your night?”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I walked over to my desk to set my things down.
“Didn’t you say you were going out drinking with Nick last night?” she asked me eagerly as she brushed a stray strand of long brown hair behind her ear. There was a spark in her eye as she mentioned my best friend’s name. She’d been fascinated by Nick ever since she’d learned he was once affiliated with the mafia, but I also had a strong suspicion that she had a crush on him.
“Oh, yeah, we did.” I nodded as I took a seat in my chair. “It was fun.”
“What do you mean by fun?” she pried further, her eyes practically boring holes into me.
“I don’t know…” I muttered, unsure what kind of answer she was looking for. Chloe was a nice person, but she could be really weird sometimes. She was an anthropology professor before she became an agent with the SDCT, and sometimes it seemed like she viewed other people as some kind of foreign species. “We had drinks and then went home.”
“That’s it?” She sighed. “Why are men so boring?”
That wasn’t really it, but I wasn’t about to tell her about Nick getting hammered and taking a girl home, or about my own inability to do the same. I wasn’t much into gossiping, and that was such a common routine by now that it really didn’t seem noteworthy, anyway.
“Being boring is preferable to being a jerk,” A third, uncomfortably familiar voice butted into our conversation from behind me.
I turned around in my seat and came face to face with Agent Bette Owens, whose desk was right behind mine.
As usual, her face was set into a relaxed sneer. Even so, Bette was stunning. She had the appearance and air of a pissed-off goddess, and people who met her were always shocked by how discordant her prickly personality was with her pretty face.
“You should be careful, Agent Park. You’re a pretty decent guy, and I wouldn’t want you to end up like Nick.” Her expression curdled like she’d bitten into something rotten as she said my friend’s name.
“Uh-huh.” I pursed my lips as an awkward silence fell over the three of us. It was no secret that Bette hated Nick. It would be difficult for anyone in the office not to be aware of it, since she took every opportunity she could to bring up how much she disliked him. It had caused no end of tension in the office.
“How was your evening, Bette?” Chloe asked her in an attempt to change the topic.
“It was fine,” she replied curtly. “I didn’t spend it getting drunk and hitting on women in some dingy bar, so it was time well spent.”
“Were you spying on us, Agent Owens?” I sighed as I turned around and began to organize my desk.
“No,” she huffed behind me. “It’s just that Nick is so predictable. It’s easy to guess what that idiot spends his free time doing.”
“Okay, how about we just get to work?” a fourth voice boomed from across the thin aisle that ran through the center of the bullpen. It was Agent Theodore Duncan coming to rescue us from Bette’s incessant ranting. “You know the director gets annoyed when he hears you badmouthing Nick.”
Bette huffed and rolled her eyes, but took his advice and turned her attention to the paperwork on her desk. I sent a silent nod of gratitude toward Agent Duncan. I was used to Bette acting like that, but that didn’t mean it was any less annoying.
Agent Duncan smiled ruefully at her before turning back to his own work. He was one of the older agents in the office. Unlike most of the rest of us, who had joined the SDCT as fresh-faced rookies, Duncan had a lot of prior experience working on narcotics and organized crime cases. He was a police officer in Miami for ten years before he joined the SDCT, so he had a lot of insight that the rest of us didn’t yet. He was also one of the only people in the office Bette got along with.
“Oh, right, I almost forgot,” Chloe suddenly exclaimed. “Director Flint wants to see you. That was the main reason I came over here.”
“Okay,” I replied as I stood up from my desk. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“No problem.” Chloe beamed before heading off in the direction of her own desk.
Our office was pretty big, but I wasn’t that friendly with most of my fellow agents, aside from Bette and Agent Duncan, who both had desks that bordered mine, and Chloe, who hung out with me because I was friends with Nick.
I was reminded again how busy our office was as I made my way from my desk, which was at the very front of the floor, all the way to the back where Director Flint’s office was. It seemed like people were always walking back and forth throughout the day. There were different departments within the SDCT, like the main field agents, which included me, Bette, Chloe, and Theo, the lab technicians, and the intelligence analysts. Even though the SDCT had already existed for two years, I still didn’t recognize everyone. I spent most of my time investigating out in the field, so I didn’t interact much with the agents who worked exclusively in the office.
I knocked on the director’s office and waited for a reply before stepping inside.
“Come in,” Director Flint called gruffly from inside his office.
“You asked to see me, director?” I asked as I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. He was sitting behind his desk, his back ramrod straight and his expression as serious as ever. Markus Flint was a no-nonsense kind of man, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair and broad shoulders that gave him the look of a linebacker. He wasn’t a mean person, per se, but he wasn’t particularly friendly either, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him smile.
“Yes.” He nodded. “Please have a seat. We have a new case, and I wanted to hear your opinion on it.”
“Mine?” I asked skeptically as I took a seat in front of him. He slid a tablet over to me so that I could look over the details of the case.
“Senator Alexis Rothschild was found dead in her home this morning,” he explained. “It was clearly a murder, but as of now, the police are unsure about who might have done it.”
“Why are we being called in?” I asked. “Do they think it was a mafia hit or something?”
“It’s possible.” Flint nodded. “Senator Rothschild was adamant about cleaning up Miami and was very outspoken against the mafia. She wanted to turn Miami into a more family-friendly destination, which is a problem when every other club is a hub for criminal activity. However, she was also controversial on a number of other topics. Basically, she had a lot of political enemies, any one of whom might have a motive to want her dead.”
“I see,” I replied quietly. “So you want to consult Nick on this one?”
I couldn’t think of any other reason why the director would have asked to speak to me in particular. Any time Nick consulted with us, I was the agent he was paired up with. We’d known each other since high school, so we already had a good rapport, and aside from Chloe, none of the other agents felt all that comfortable working with him, anyway.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Flint confirmed. “Even if this isn’t directly connected to the mafia, he’s good at tracking people down. If anyone can figure out who it was among the senator’s various enemies, it’s him.”
“Okay,” I replied. “I think he’d be up for it. The only cases he doesn’t like touching are the ones that are directly connected to his family, since, you know…”
I trailed off awkwardly. Nick’s family was a pretty sensitive subject, both for him and for everyone at the office. His connection to the mafia was the reason most people were wary of him, after all.
“Right.” Flint nodded in agreement. “Well, I think the chances of that are pretty slim. I’ll give him a call a little later then, after I get some more details on the case from the police. You can go back
to your desk now.”
“Okay,” I replied again before getting up and leaving the director’s office.
I couldn’t help but smile as I headed back toward my desk. Honestly, working with Nick was fun. Even when he pulled me into his poorly thought-out plans, I always had fun when we were assigned to work on a case together. Few people could say they got to spend their day solving crimes with their best friend.
3
Nick
I woke up with a dull pulsating pain at the back of my skull and a dry tongue that felt swollen inside my mouth. It wasn’t the most pleasant sensation, but as far as hangovers went, it was pretty good. I squinted against the beams of light streaming through the windows as I reached over to my nightstand to retrieve the bottle of aspirin I kept stowed there for just such occasions. When my hand met empty air instead of the cool, smooth wood of my table, I sat up in surprise and alarm. This was not my room.
As I took a look around at the room, which was decorated with band posters and had twinkle lights strung across every wall, the events of the previous night came trickling back to me. I’d gone out drinking with my friend Jase. It was a normal enough occurrence for us, especially since we’d started working together. What wasn’t as normal was the shot drinking contest we’d gotten into about an hour into the night. I couldn’t remember who had won, but I could remember that I’d ended the night by heading home with a dark-haired woman I’d impressed by riding a mechanical bull. Considering how drunk I’d been, I couldn’t have been that impressive, but I wasn’t one to turn down a pretty lady, so here I was.
The only issue was that she wasn’t here. I looked around for my clothes, which were scattered in a messy pile beside my bed, and was relieved to find my phone in the pocket of my jeans. I checked the time as I pulled them back on.
It was a little past ten in the morning, so it wasn’t unreasonable to think that she had gone to work already. If that was the case, I wasn’t sure what I should do. It would be rude to leave without locking the door behind me, especially if she’d just popped out for coffee or something.
I finished dressing and left the bedroom. The apartment wasn’t very big, but she didn’t seem to be in the living room or the kitchen either. Though there was a pan with food remnants sitting on the stove, so it looked like she at least had eaten breakfast before leaving. What was the protocol when a one-night-stand sneaks out of their own apartment in the morning?
Just as I was contemplating whether I should take a quick shower first or just duck out, the front door unlocked with a click and creaked open. The girl from the night before stepped through, carrying a large white paper bag.
“Roxanne,” my brain helpfully supplied just as she looked up at me. Her eyes were gorgeous. A stunning clear blue against her caramel-colored skin. I hadn’t remembered that detail when I’d first woken up.
“Oh, hey,” she smiled shyly as she set the bag on the kitchen counter. “I tried to cook breakfast, but I got distracted, and it burned, so I went to get something from the cafe downstairs.”
She gestured toward the pan on the stove, still crusted with blackened bits of an unidentifiable substance.
“Were you about to leave?” she asked, her face falling as she realized I’d been standing right in front of the door when she’d come in.
“I thought you’d left,” I answered honestly. “I actually wasn’t sure what I should do. I’m glad you came back though, I would have hated to leave without being able to say goodbye to those beautiful eyes.”
She blushed and tossed me a small smile as the compliment hit its mark. Good, I would have felt genuinely bad if I’d upset her after she went through the trouble of getting us something to eat.
“Well, let’s dig in while it’s hot,” she suggested as she started pulling things out of the bag and placing them on a small table just off the kitchen. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got some of everything. The woman said that croissants and egg-toast were pretty typical Italian breakfasts, but I also got a panini since I wasn’t sure how hungry you’d be.”
Her consideration for me was undeniably charming, and as she spoke, more details of the night came back to me. She lived above an Italian cafe. That’s how I’d ended up coming here. I’d mentioned being Italian and giving her some corny line about having breakfast with her sometime.
“It all looks really good.” I smiled as I sat down and took one of the croissants. Something light like bread and coffee was probably the best idea while I nursed my hangover.
“I’m glad you like it.” She beamed. “You said you didn’t have to be anywhere, right? That’s why I didn’t wake you up.”
I couldn’t remember saying that, but she was right. I owned my own little business and set my own hours, so I didn’t technically have to be anywhere. Even if I did, a real Italian gentleman would never do anything to disappoint a beautiful girl, so I would have stayed either way.
She set a mug of coffee down in front of me, and I took a long sip as she turned the TV on. The scalding liquid felt good against the faint sting behind my eyes and the throbbing in my head.
“So, what was it that you do?” Roxanne asked as she took a seat across from me with her own cup of coffee. “You told me something about it last night, but I can’t remember.”
“I’m a private detective,” I replied, a little relieved that I wasn’t the only one having trouble remembering the finer details of the previous night.
“Oh, that’s right.” Roxanne nodded. “And you help the CIA sometimes, right? Your friend said something about that.”
“What?” I coughed as I almost choked on my coffee. She must have been talking about Jase. “The CIA? No, he works for a different federal agency. Not the CIA.”
“Oh, how embarrassing.” She smiled sheepishly. “I could have sworn it was something like that.”
“SDCT,” I corrected as I cleared my throat of the coffee I’d inadvertently inhaled after laughing. “That’s probably what he said.”
“That’s right.” She snapped her fingers. “That was it. Man, I’m glad I didn’t say that in front of him.”
“He wouldn’t have cared.” I shrugged. “He probably would have thought it was funny, too.”
I took another bite of my croissant and turned to look at the TV when something the newscaster was saying caught my attention.
“... early reports seem to indicate that there may have been foul play,” the reporter stated. “Senator Rothschild has been making waves since she was elected into office, with many of her opponents calling her a ‘radical-minded dissenter.’ She also became the subject of scandal earlier this year when she filed for divorce against her husband in the middle of the election, a move that many thought would cost her the chance to win. The police were able to confirm that Senator Rothschild’s two small children were in the home during the incident. Both, thankfully, were found to be unharmed. We have Joe Abrahams on the scene…”
My focus drifted from the television as I thought about what I’d just heard.
“I wonder if the husband did it,” Roxanne remarked.
“What?” I asked as I turned to look at her. “You mean if he killed her?”
“Well, yeah.” She shrugged. “They were going through a messy divorce. A public one, since it was all over the news. Plus, the kids were home, but nothing happened to them. Isn’t that pretty suspicious?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. It was an absolute tragedy. Regardless of who had done it or why, two small children had been left all alone without their mother. That wasn’t something that should ever happen.
“So, I have a shift soon that I need to get ready for,” Roxanne muttered. “But do you want to get together again sometimes?”
She looked nervous. Her hands were fidgeting, and she couldn't seem to look me in the eye. It was actually pretty cute.
“Sure.” I smiled as I slid my phone across the table toward her. “Put your number in. I’ll give you mine, too.”
I tended to
stick to flings, but I wasn’t against seeing her again.
She grinned as she passed me her phone before quickly putting her number into my contacts list. I helped her clean the table and then said my goodbyes and left so that she could get ready for work. The sun was shining bright and hot the way it always did in Miami, and the light burned my eyes and worsened the ache in my skull.
I reached into my back pocket as I walked away from the building and toward the sidewalk, but my sunglasses weren’t where I usually kept them. After checking my other pockets, I was dismayed to realize that I didn’t have them at all. I’d either lost them last night or left them in Roxanne’s apartment.
I trudged forward with a sigh. I’d just have to put up with the blinding glare until I could get home. I didn’t immediately recognize which part of the city I was in until I took a few steps and realized I was rapidly approaching the cargo docks. That meant that I was only a few blocks away from the street my family’s bar was on.
I hadn’t been down this way in a while. The bar Jase and I tended to frequent was closer to Miami Beach, so it came as a bit of a surprise that I had managed to end up all the way out here. Now that I was out here, though, I was seized by the sudden urge to go and see Colletta. She was the closest thing I had to a mother, but it had been months since I’d even seen her. It probably wasn’t a very good idea, but if I left now, I was certain that I wouldn’t be back again any time soon.
After a few moments of contemplation, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was already down here and began walking in the direction of the bar.
4
Nick
The bar was a two-story building located in Biscayne Bay near the shipping docks. It was easily the nicest place in the area, but considering the neighborhood it was in, that wasn’t saying much. The Family owned larger and more luxurious bars, hotels, and casinos in Downtown Miami and along the nicer beaches in the city, but those were for tourists or for impressing particularly rich clients and partners. When people wanted somewhere to just relax and hang out, the run-down shack here at the end of the street was where they came.
