10-33 Assist PC

by Desmond P. Ryan

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Mike nodded.

  “Uh oh,” Barb said suddenly, stepping back from the computer screen. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”

  “What?” Mike asked, looking over the counter at the screen.

  “Every keystroke I make is recorded on my employee number. That’s not good. Not good at all.” Her dangling earrings clashed loudly as she emphatically shook her head to accentuate the severity of the situation. “If I key in anything that isn’t legit and we get audited, they’ll be coming to Old Barb to find out why. Can’t have that. It’s a firing offence. I’m one of the few permanents and the pension is shit, but a shit pension is still better than none. I’m sorry, fellas.”

  “What if—” Mike began.

  “Not so fast, partner,” Barb interrupted. “You don’t get to be one of the most senior service providers in this business without stacking a few tricks under your chassis, if you know what I mean.”

  “Clearly,” Mike agreed. Sal did not make a sound.

  “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to use a fake employee number.” She nodded knowingly before continuing. “Not fake. Decommissioned. I’ll use Darlene’s. She retired a year or so ago. Used to be the most senior service provider, bar none. The company had a nice little send-off for her.”

  Mike and Sal watched as Barb’s chubby fingers flew over the keyboard, answering the series of qualifying questions that would allow her to access decommissioned Darlene’s account.

  “They gave her free car rental for life, certain conditions apply. Anyway, she and I used to sub in for one another here and there, and before they got all of these goddamned security cameras—pardon my French—she’d just sign in using my password, and I’d sign in using hers. Let me just press send and we’ll see if it still works.”

  All three of them stood back from the computer at the front desk, staring at the screen in anticipation.

  “Well, kiss my grits and call me Christmas! It does! Gentlemen, we are in business.”

  “Great!” Mike had to admit that he was just the tiniest bit caught up in the excitement of the moment. “We’re looking for anything you have on the person or persons who rented this vehicle.”

  “Oh, that would be person. We don’t rent out to more than one person. You can have more than one driver, but not more than one individual listed on the lease.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And you know the funny thing… Sorry, I didn’t catch your names.”

  “Mike. And this is my partner, Sal.”

  “Mike. Nice name. My brother is named Mike. And Sal. Italian? You look like you eat a lot of pasta.”

  “No, actually. Spanish. Family name. First name is actually Brian,” Sal advised, pointedly ignoring the weight reference.

  “I can see why they’d call you Sal. Never liked the name Brian. Don’t know anyone who does,” Barb said, enjoying her new-found team and the heightened status she presently possessed within it. “So, Mike and Sal, the funny thing is that no matter what people are involved in or who they are running away from, they always use their real driver’s licence to rent a car. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Hysterical,” Sal commented drily, stepping away from Mike before he got another kick to the shin.

  “Hmm,” Barb began, scrolling down screens of data, “here we are. Uh oh, wait a minute...”

  “What?” Mike tried not to groan as he looked at his watch and saw that it was past nine o’clock.

  “Look around you, gentlemen. Do you see what I see?” Barb looked up at the corners of the office like a squirrel looking for hawks in the sky.

  “Closing time?” Sal asked, puzzled.

  “Security cameras. Everywhere. We are being watched.”

  “And?” Mike pressed.

  “They’re going to see me give you this classified information.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” Mike asked, his eyes squinting as he tilted his head to one side.

  “You tell me, Mike. You’re the cop,” she deadpanned, stepping away from the monitor. “Who are these people who are watching the security cameras twenty-four hours a day?”

  “Most cameras aren’t watched twenty-four hours a day. Most of them record over the previous day’s recording.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Do you honestly believe that there is someone sitting somewhere watching everything you do, Barb?”

  “Yes, Mike, I do,” she replied, slowly nodding to emphasize what she was saying, her earrings continuing to nod in agreement even after her head had stopped moving. “This is a large company. We have a huge inventory. A lot of money goes through our hands every day. We are being watched.”

  “Okay, then.” Mike could feel the remaining few productive hours of this project slipping through his fingers.

  “Yep. This could be the straw that breaks this camel’s back, boys. You might as well wave because there is somebody, somewhere out there. Maybe he’s in an office across the country wearing a grey uniform with blue piping and a photo ID clipped to his breast pocket, or maybe he’s sitting in a basement apartment two streets over in his underwear with a bag of Tostitos on his lap. Either way, he’s watching us now.”

  Barb looked up and gave a one-finger salute to each corner of the office. Neither Mike nor Sal could see any cameras aside from the one behind the counter that faced the front entrance, and that one looked as if it might have been installed shortly after the strip mall opened in 1973.

  “Well, we can always come back with a warrant,” Sal suggested, sensing Mike’s disappointment.

  “Or I can always just print off the info and hand it to you and whoever is watching is just going to have to make that decision,” Barb advised, looking Sal up and down as if he were a child trying to play with the grownups.

  “What decision?” Mike asked, trying not to sigh.

  “Is it worth trying to fire me, with all of the dirt I have on this company and everyone who works here, or will they just give me the old Nelson’s eye.”

  “Say what?” Sal asked.

  “Blind eye,” Mike muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  “I’m willing to take the chance. Are you?” Barb whispered, leaning over to Mike.

  “Give ‘er,” Mike nodded.

  “Bingo,” Barb said, her voice a husky whisper. “Here it is. This eight-cylinder, white, extended van was rented out to this gentleman, and this is the address he gave us and—bingo, bango! guitar, banjo!—it’s the same one that he has on his driver’s licence. If you look closely on the licence, you can figure out his date of birth.”

  “Yes, Barb, we know that. We’re cops,” Mike replied, trying not to sound too patronizing.

  “Okay, Mister Smartie Pants, then tell me when and where he’s supposed to return the van,” Barb challenged, shoving the printout into Mike’s face.

  “I have no idea,” he replied as he stepped back, hoping that he wouldn’t be hit by any of the dangling and now highly mobile bangles and bobbles she wore on her washerwoman arms.

  “Says here, right at the bottom of that sheet I showed you. November 1st. Paid extra to return it to one of our sister-companies in Buffalo.”

  “So they’re crossing the border tomorrow night,” Mike mused out loud.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Barb replied, nodding slowly.

  “Thanks. You’ve been very helpful,” Mike said, looking at his watch and seeing that time, however much they had left, was no longer on their side.

  “Thank you,” Barb said, walking back to her desk.

  Mike and Sal turned to go.

  “Wait a minute and I’ll lock up after you.” Barb grabbed her oversized purse from the bottom drawer of the desk and then, looking around the ceiling again, hollered, “This is Barb-with-a-B signing off. Goodnight, To-ron-to!”

  And with that, the three of them walked out the door, Mike and Sal leaving Barb to lock up.

&nbs
p; *****

  “What a fuckin’ weird chick,” Sal said, shaking his head as he reached for the package of sunflower seeds in the glovebox in front of him.

  “Yep, but we got an address with the door we’re going to knock on out of it, so who cares?” Mike smiled, adjusting the driver’s seat as he jammed the key into the ignition.

  “Tonight?” Sal said, shoving a handful of seeds into his mouth.

  “I think we should have a quick chat with Teddy Bear and find out who his associates are first. The last thing I want to do is get ambushed or something stupid like that. Give Julia and Hoagie a call and have them run a check on him and the address as well. Or maybe get everyone to meet at the office just to get caught up.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Sal objected through his chewing. “Tick tock.”

  “I know. We’ve got maybe twenty-four hours left,” Mike said, trying to come up with a plan that would cover all the bases as he pulled out of the parking lot.

  “If our intel is right, which it might not be,” Sal reminded Mike, spitting the shells on the floor. “Let’s just go now. You and me. We don’t have time to bring the others up to speed. That van might already be at the border, for all we know.”

  “No,” Mike objected. “We can call the border and have them do an all-points on the van now, just in case our gang got spooked, but we’re going to find out exactly who we’re dealing with before we go kicking in any doors.”

  “Screw that, Mikey. I’m not letting any border patrol grab our glory. I say we just throw caution to the wind and go in.”

  “And I say we don’t. You want to go in on your own, then go. Leave me out of it. I’m not getting my head blown off because we didn’t do a proper investigation—”

  “Fuck, Mike. You sound like such a wuss. They’re low-level pimps, not—”

  “Not what? I know that these guys are likely good for a few murders, which means that they aren’t going to go without a hell of a fight,” Mike seethed. “Besides, we’re cops, not fucking vigilante cowboys.”

  “You are fucking wasting time dicking around!” Sal shouted, hitting the dashboard with his hand in frustration. “Talking to this one and that one when we should just kick in the fucking door, grab Chelsea Hendricks and whoever else is in there, arrest these fuckers, and be done with it.”

  “Hey, talking to the chick at the rental place was your idea. A good one, by the way, for once,” Mike muttered between clenched teeth.

  “This is fucking ridiculous,” Sal mumbled, looking out the passenger window as he stuffed another handful of seeds into his mouth.

  “We have a plan that we always follow,” Mike reminded him. “And there’s a reason. It works. It’s legal. And every time we’ve followed it, we’ve all gone home at the end of shift.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So what’s your fucking problem now?”

  “We worked to plan yesterday and look what happened,” Sal replied, looking straight ahead, spitting one seed after another onto the dashboard. “We got burned. You almost got shot. We just got lucky with Ron’s intel. Maybe. Otherwise, we’re shit out of luck and back to square one.”

  “But we’re not shit out of luck and we’re probably even miles ahead of where we were,” Mike pointed out, as much to remind himself as to remind Sal.

  The two men drove in silence for a few minutes.

  “Stay the course, my man. Stay the course,” Mike finally said.

  “Soft, Mike. You just got fucking soft.”

  “And you’re cleaning those fucking seeds off of the dashboard before they bake on, you disgusting pig.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sunday, October 30th, 2005 - 11:00 p.m.

  Julia and Hoagie were just getting settled in the conference room when Mike and Sal arrived. Robby was still in his office making an eleventh-hour phone call to try to convince his boss that they were very close to wrapping up this now over-budget project and needed just a little more money.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I am beat,” Hoagie moaned, rubbing the stubble on his usually clean-shaved face.

  “That’s what you get for having four kids back to back,” Sal retorted. Still pissed off with Mike, he glared at his partner as he flopped down in a chair across the table from Hoagie.

  “I should be so lucky,” Julia sighed, holding out a package of breath mints she had just pulled from her purse as she sat down beside her partner. “Anyone?”

  Everyone shook their head. Just then, Robby came in and took his place at the head of the table.“Okay, guys. Let’s pull it together,” Robby said, pen in hand and a pad of foolscap in front of him. “Mike, let’s start with you since you seem to be the only one wanting to do any work tonight. What have you got?”

  “Guy in the mall on the Chelsea Hendricks case is named Theodore LeBaron,” Mike began, running his hand back through his hair towards a tension knot that was forming in his neck. “He’s in custody now at the West for a major fraud bust—”

  “Since when do we ever keep anyone in custody for fraud?” Julia interrupted, placing the mints back in her purse and pulling out her compact and lipstick. “And how do we suddenly know this piece of information?” She flipped open the compact and began touching up her lipstick.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Mike huffed, causing Julia to look over the tiny mirror that she had been focusing on to glance at Mike. She raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Sorry. Long night,” he apologized.

  “For all of us, muffin,” Sal added, rolling his eyes at his partner.

  “People?” Robby looked over at Sal, and then at Julia, trying to nip in the bud whatever tensions might be brewing. “Carry on, Mike.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Mike back-pedalled. “Got a pile of photos of LeBaron off Chelsea Hendricks’s cell phone—”

  “Hold on. I thought we didn’t have her phone,” Hoagie said, leaning in, shaking his head in an effort to keep himself from dozing off.

  “We didn’t. Brenda just gave it to me this afternoon.”

  “Interesting,” Robby said with a smile. “I don’t want to know how, do I?”

  “No. In any event, LeBaron is our lure.”

  “On that case,” Sal jumped in.

  “Yes, on that case.” Mike shot his partner a fierce look. “But that’s a start.”

  “Great work, Mike,” Robby nodded. “And Sal.”

  “Always fucking ‘and Sal.’ Well, Sally-boy has some intel for everyone tonight, too,” Sal gloated.

  “With a nickname like that, you wonder why we don’t call on you first?” Hoagie chuckled.

  “I like it. Kind of hip. Suits you, Sal,” Julia smiled. “Cute. Very cute.”

  “Thank you, Julia. See, Mike?” Sal said with a smirk. “Not everyone thinks I’m fat.”

  “I never said you were fat. Who said you were fat?”

  “Barb Beware.”

  “People?” Robby interrupted. “I do not get paid enough to babysit all of you! Just some of you. Sal?”

  “Sorry, boss,” Sal acquiesced. “Okay, so I met with my old partner for coffee—”

  “You didn’t bring the coffee, I hope, did you?” Mike rolled his eyes at Julia.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tell me you didn’t bring that crayon water you call coffee—” Mike continued.

  “Mike? Please?” Robby cut in.

  “So my old partner, Ron Roberts, bit of an odd duck, but a good copper—”

  “Really?” Mike mumbled.

  “Mike…” Robby warned again.

  “He’s the guy who burned you and almost got you killed, isn’t he, Mike?” Hoagie asked.

  “Yep. But a good copper, says my present partner. Boss, can I have a new partner.”

  “No. Carry on, Sal.”

  “Ron pulls around the corner after the traffic stop involving my partner here—speaking of wanting a new partner—and notices some young girls
being hustled into the back of one of those extended vans by three guys.”

  “And it doesn’t cross his mind to investigate?” Julia asked, reaching into her purse for a bottle of water. “Anyone?”

  Everyone shook their head again.

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “Yes to the water or yes to investigating the girls?” Julia asked.

  “Julia…” Robby cautioned.

  “What? You gotta stay hydrated, Robby. I’m telling you. My Nonna Tramantozi drinks twelve glasses of water a day. She’s eighty-four, still lives in her own house, cooks her own meals—”

  “She must piss like a race horse all night long,” Sal said.

  “Enough!” Robby shouted.

  “I bet it never crossed his mind to stop the van,” Mike said. “That prick is a Traffic man. They don’t want to deal with people. He trained my partner. Obviously, a chip off the old block. Julia, do you want to switch partners?”

  “People!” Robby warned, looking at the three lines he’d written on his notepad since the meeting began. “We haven’t got all night. Go ahead, Sal.”

  “So Ron gets the plate number of the van, runs it, finds out it’s a rental, and calls me with the info.”

  Sal smiled broadly at his colleagues around the table.

  “That’s it?” Julia asked, swallowing a huge gulp of water before putting the cap back on the bottle and returning it to her purse.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, he didn’t go to the rental office, get a name of the renter, an address, maybe…?”

  “What do you expect?” Hoagie laughed. “He’s Traffic. If it doesn’t have a summons with court time attached to it—”

  “He didn’t want to muddy our investigation,” Sal said defensively. “He did, however, give me the name of a contact he had at the rental office who was—”

  “Delightful,” Mike interrupted.

  “—very helpful. Barb, the contact, gave me and Mike a copy of the name, address, and driver’s licence of the guy who leased the van. Said he paid extra to be able to return it to one of their US partners in Buffalo on the 1st.”