Never Go Alone

by Denison Hatch

  Tony had chosen well, leapfrogging managers to become one himself. Jake had chosen in a manner true to himself. He’d stayed in the field. He’d ridden his bike directly into the center of Manhattan—Wall Street—and parked aside the Occupy Wall Street movement. He’d spent four months in Occupy and performed just about as well as everyone thought he would—as the most effective and natural undercover agent that the NYPD had on the streets. He was nothing less than the force’s secret weapon, the cop who couldn’t be a cop but wouldn’t be anything else. His “cover” was hot goods. He had sold stolen cell phones and other electronics to the small percentage of the Occupy set with criminal intentions. A lucrative intel-generating enterprise and rock-solid reputation on the street had developed as a result. Others who needed cheap and untraceable electronics had heard about Jake, Hector Trizzo included. The rest was history.

  ▪

  Jake sat on a couch in the living room in New Rochelle. Susan and Tony sat across from him. He was still having difficulty looking up to Tony, considering that a year ago Villalon had been at his beck and call. But such was the lesson. Politics were critical to ascension, and an aversion thereto could expose one’s career to swift mortality. The paradoxical effect of Jake’s career decisions, which were largely decided for him by his innate nature, was that Tony had vaulted up the ranks and was perhaps leading now. Jake didn’t view his career as dead. It was just that the life he wanted didn’t fit within the box. He was guided by black and white—not regulations.

  Lieutenant Commander Susan Herlihy, well, she was another story altogether. Susan was a disciple of Tom Marks, the police commissioner. She was highly calculated and driven beyond belief. There was no way she slept. She supposedly had two kids, but Jake couldn’t actually believe that. He knew for sure that the children’s father was now long gone, and number two was a house husband. The woman was always politically correct, tough as nails, and perpetually done up to the nines. She was perpetually poised. It was very, very difficult to push her onto a back foot. She was a more aesthetically pleasing version of Hillary Clinton, possessing an impervious attitude that rankled Jake inside his soul. It wasn’t because she was a woman. It was something else. Maybe he was just jealous. She was similar to him in mental toughness but light years ahead when it came to the strategy of it all. He played headbanger music in his spare time. She didn’t have spare time, because she was too busy conducting sociological warfare all over the department. He understood that she was playing the game better than anyone in the entire police department. That’s why she was running all of special investigations, including the major crimes division. And that’s why whatever Susan Herlihy said, was Jake’s law.

  She looked fantastic today. She always did. That was her trademark. For a moment, he thought about what she’d be like in bed. She was probably scary. He wondered about her new man. What was he like? Jake presumed that he was one of those bearded fellows who brings the kids to school then goes home and pursues some sort of nascent creative “career.” Some households have room for two alphas, but no home had room for Susan Herlihy and another one of her.

  Behind him, Jake could hear the hustle and bustle of the house. At one point this mansion in New Rochelle had been a home. But now it was something else—a command center. The second Susan had tasted power, she’d moved the most covert aspects of the special investigations division to the safe house. It was one of the rare decisions that Jake respected. The department was too immense—a wet blanket of loose ends—and information could and did find itself going any which way.

  The house in New Rochelle stopped that problem in its tracks. Most of the living room and all of the dining room consisted of long folding tables set up with flatscreens, scanners, printers, and lockboxes. A number of analysts and other plainclothes and undercover detectives worked throughout the home, including the upper floors.

  “They said you enjoyed it,” Susan began.

  Jake cracked back to reality—and then, all could he do was grunt. His response wasn’t really an affirmation, nor a denial. But then again Susan hadn’t asked a question.

  “You’re not as mysterious as you think, Rivett. I’m well aware that you’re a masochist. But I just don’t want to be around on the day you get yourself offed.”

  “Yeah. That would look bad for you,” Jake said.

  “You really do think quite low of me, don’t you?”

  “Sorry. But . . .”

  “But?” she asked.

  “They’re bad guys. What do you expect? Throw my hands up like a saint and prostrate myself on the floor while the rest of them are gearin’ up for a battle?”

  “I don’t even need to ask you about the girl, do I?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Jake said, then to reassure himself, “right?”

  “I don’t know. Do you care? You gave that poor woman an ear that’s never going to work the same again. You’re lucky she doesn’t know who you are, and she’s not going to find out, but I’m not thrilled . . .”

  “Again, Suse,” Jake started up . . .

  “You can call me Susan, or Herlihy, like the rest,” she said.

  “You either want me to do a job, Herlihy, or you don’t. If you don’t, don’t put me out there.”

  “Jake, c’mon, let’s debrief. Get me in your headspace. Tell us about the scene at the ATM . . .” Tony popped in.

  “That guy, the freak. The skinny one. They call him Shrek. He just starts going apeshit on this girl,” Jake shrugged. “I had to jump in, frankly, ’cause I thought he was gonna kill her. I figured if I took control, Shrek couldn’t take it back from me. But you gotta get it—it’s nothing unusual. That’s what they do, man—Hector, Jonny Diaz—all of ’em. They take it too far because that’s their job description. Otherwise they’d be accountants or bread bakers, not biker thugs.”

  “Well, Shrek’s dead. And Hector’s in a cage now,” Susan confirmed.

  Jake took that in. “So that satisfies the department? Want to know why I really put up a little against the blues? Because the second I heard that megaphone, I got pissed. It was clear. You guys decided to just take the bird in hand. Get the easy caper. Get Hector. Hector ain’t a prize. He’s an idiot. Runs a crew. You know what’s a prize? One word: Leviathan.” Jake leaned in towards Tony’s and Susan’s blank faces. “I was so close. Until you ruined it. Hector opened up to me, man. There’s a big boy out there, some huge force, a power we don’t have a single bead on. He’s above every single organizational crime chart that you’ll find on any wall of this house. And yet, for some reason, you two aren’t interested. What’s up with that?”

  “Look. You bring me proof, then maybe there’s a conversation,” Susan replied.

  “My observation isn’t proof? Should I write it down?”

  “Crime solving is a probability game. It was time to bust Hector. Those guys were violent, horrific criminals.”

  “You threw the baby out with the bathwater.”

  “Don’t question my decisions. You don’t get to do that. That’s why I wear heels every day and you wear boots,” Susan said. She lifted her leg to flash red Christian Louboutin high heels that only a lady cop with a granite constitution would dare rock. “You really want me to speak to you like a child? The only thing keeping you in SID is me,” Susan pointed to herself, “and Tony, who has the godly patience to put up with you.”

  “Just don’t fight cops, Jake. You are a cop,” Tony replied.

  “Thank you, Tony.”

  Jake was a special animal and both Susan and Tony knew it. There was no use in arguing. His effectiveness was binary. You either let Jake Rivett go and do what he wanted, or you shut him down. There was no middle ground. Susan collected herself while Tony placed his hand into his pocket.

  Jake noticed Tony pull a shiny, metallic blue carabiner out of his pocket—and begin to excitedly drum his fingers against it on the coffee table.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “There’s a new case . . . It’s
big,” Tony responded.

  “You can go ahead and refer to it as a blessing. The only thing standing in between you and the guillotine,” Susan injected.

  “How poetic,” Jake replied.

  “Ten robberies in six months,” Tony said. “Some sort of master crew. We didn’t connect the dots ’til we got the last one on video.”

  “What are they jacking?” Jake asked.

  “Small rocks. Cash. Melt down stuff. Anything that’s easy to flip,” Susan said.

  “But Jake? It isn’t what. It’s all about how.” Tony stood up. He paced down the side of the living room and picked up a remote control. He changed the source of the seventy-inch 4K screen above the fireplace.

  Surveillance footage from the crane climbing robbery flickered onto the screen: a view of a penthouse atop a grand limestone apartment building.

  “It took us some time to connect it all. Luckily this time around, the construction company had rigged their whole site with hidden cameras. Every single robbery has been conducted with extremely unusual tactics. They’re climbing in—like some sort of cat burglars mixed with mountain climbers.” Tony pointed to the screen. “Guy lives alone in a fifteen-million-dollar penthouse. Locks the door but never turns on the alarm. Prolly because he’s in the clouds and doesn’t think bad guys can get up there. Wrong.”

  Against the side of the frame, Jake could make out a small, darkened figure slowly ascending a giant construction crane next door to the target building.

  “This gent climbs the crane on the construction site next door. With no ropes,” Tony narrated as the man swung from the crane’s jib onto the balcony of the penthouse apartment. “The crane, as you can see, is actually extended across the street by a few feet—which they did not have permits for, incidentally. The person then swings across the street. He goes through an open window in the arboretum. They got more square feet for flowers than I got in my house. Anywho . . . Crew gets out clean with over two hundred large worth of gold and diamonds.”

  “Crew?” Jake asked.

  Tony switched the feeds. Just a few minutes after the robbery, a few blurry figures were briefly visible near the base of the crane. They seemed to be lugging backpacks, ropes, and other gear.

  “Wait, do you see that? That’s a camera mount. They’re filming?” Jake pointed.

  “Already on that. They definitely seem equipped to film, but it doesn’t look like they did. Not sure why you’d want to memorialize your crime anyways. But check this out. There was one unusual moment. Leads me to believe that we are dealing with younger individuals . . .” Tony clicked on the remote again. The surveillance footage cut back to the top of the crane. The original explorer pulled out his cell phone from his pocket. He turned the camera on himself, took a selfie, and flashed a hand symbol: an upside down V.

  “Are you kidding me? He took a selfie?”

  “Yes. Which is truly unintelligent,” Susan added.

  “Maybe,” Jake thought for a moment. “It’s dumb unless it’s all you know. Unless that’s your culture. Brag it out. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it fall? That sort of thing . . .”

  “Now look who’s poetic,” Susan grinned at Jake.

  “They don’t disable alarms or cameras,” Tony continued. “They wear masks. They move fast. And even weirder, and arguably most importantly, they know how to get away. We haven’t been able to pull any footage of them on the streets. They just appear and then they . . . disappear.”

  Jake noticed that Tony had continued spinning the bright blue carabiner, resembling a figure eight, on the coffee table ahead of him. “Tell me about that thing,” Jake asked.

  “First piece of gear that they’ve left behind. A figure-eight rappel. No prints or DNA. They’re wearing gloves, of course.”

  “They’re climbers . . .” Susan added.

  “What sort of climbers are robbers?” Jake asked.

  “That is indeed the question,” Susan said. She took a deep breath, something else obviously on her mind. “There’s a few more things you should know . . .”

  “Always is,” Jake grinned.

  “Chief Marks has been appraised. But this comes from above him.”

  “Who’s above Marks?” Jake asked, quizzically.

  “Berg.”

  “Ronald Berg? The mayor?”

  “You heard me. That entire building is owned by a man named Arthur Metropolis. Know him?”

  “No,” Jake said, shaking his head.

  “Of course not. Metropolis owns a ton of real estate in the city. He’s like a Milstein or the Zeckendorfs or Trump. The problem for Metropolis is four of the ten robberies we’re investigating were in buildings owned by him. So he’s concerned. And that’s a problem not just for him—it’s a problem for the robbers, and for us. Because Metropolis’ best friend is Ronald Berg,” Susan said.

  “So what you’re saying is he gives the mayor a lot of money?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t care. All I know is that Berg is very interested in this case. It’s gotta get solved—instantly. He’s told Marks to place a whole bunch of resources into play. So you’re off Hector, and you’re on these . . . climbers.” Susan paused. She tilted her eyes at Jake in an oddly menacing way, “Don’t embarrass me.” Susan stood up and walked away without another word. Meeting adjourned.

  ▪

  As the evening took hold, raindrops were falling in New Rochelle. Jake and Tony stood underneath the portico of the grand old home. They watched a guy operating a tow truck. He huffed it through the rain and rolled Jake’s bike back onto the driveway next to the garage, having towed it from Hector’s warehouse.

  “I didn’t want to say something in front of Susan . . .” Jake said.

  “Huh?” Tony asked.

  “She wants me to find these climbers, yea? Infiltrate. Ascertain responsibility . . .”

  “Exactly,” Tony said.

  “Ironic.”

  “Why?”

  “I have . . . some problems. With heights.”

  “Not my issue,” Tony chuckled lightly. “You don’t have to go, like, up there with them. Just need to be you. Make them think you’re the coolest person they know—then rip their hearts out.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Look. Any time you want, you know you can get outta the rain,” Tony told Jake.

  Jake put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Nah. Can’t do that.”

  “How come?”

  “You all like our arrangement just how it is. You’re both afraid of what will happen if I have to sit at a desk.”

  “Hey. I’m with you. We’re solid all the way,” Tony protested slightly, although they both knew there was a ton of truth behind Jake’s statement.

  “She’d crush me in ten seconds if her job depended on it,” Jake pointed to the house.

  “Susan? She’s harmless.”

  He shook his head. “No. No, she isn’t,” Jake said. “I’ll give her a little credit, though. She would never throw a sucker punch. At least she’s the type of person that would stick a knife in my chest while she’s staring me dead in the eyes.”

  “I got your back, Jake. You know that, right?”

  “I want to.”

  “Yeah. I know you do,” Tony said after reflection. “Be careful.”

  “I’m always safe. Check my record,” Jake grinned. Tony chuckled.

  Jake jumped onto his motorcycle. His headlamps blasted on. He revved the bike and churned out of the gate into the grim world.

  FOUR

  JAKE’S PAD WAS IN THE Bronx. It wasn’t in the safest location on Earth, but it was chosen for multiple reasons that did not include well-being. The place was more than a location where Jake lived. Much more. It was the stage from which he performed his show. Appearances matter in all worlds, the criminal one not excluded. Jake had invested his entire life, 24/7, in the part. And if work-life separation was becoming nonexistent in the business world, it was completely blurred in the land of criminal
ity. The hard truth of the new century was that bad guys no longer took anyone’s word for anything—they only did deals with people with whom they’d partied and imbibed, fought against, and slept on the couch next to.

  Technically, Jake wasn’t supposed to actually be living at the apartment. Susan and the city paid the rent. But he’d begun to spend so much time there that he’d decided to strike his downtown lease and move up there full-time. It was a façade, yes. He’d put the parts of himself that he couldn’t expose to the world into storage. But the rest of his reality mixed with the performance. It all swam around him. It was not black and white. His own life was the model for the personality of Jake “Eastie” Easton. Proper undercover tradecraft suggested keeping things simple. That’s why Rivett maintained his real first name for each new legend—to protect himself if, for example, he ran into someone from the music club circuit while undercover. But he didn’t find it hard to keep his stories straight. He’d always been many Jakes.

  Jake entered the apartment. It was an elaborate staged set of a man in the midst of a choking criminal cloud. His shelves were filled with box upon box of stolen motorcycle parts, contraband, and electronics. As a motorcycle enthusiast, Hector Trizzo had proven a perfect target. Bank robberies were just Hector’s side job. His bread-and-butter was a motorcycle repair shop a mile away from Jake’s apartment. Jake had originally appealed to Hector by offering parts at a steep discount—winking in Hector’s direction that there was a less-than-legal explanation behind Jake’s ability to sell the stuff. Maybe it was hot. Maybe it wasn’t. That was Jake’s problem not Hector’s. Needless to say, the approach had worked perfectly.

  Pictures were pinned to the wall and sitting in haphazard frames. They depicted both Jake’s life and his mission: Jake with Hector and the other Dominican bikers. Jake at Palace restaurant with tatted-up gangsters. Jake sitting on the steps of Zuccotti Park, just another Occupy protestor. And finally, a picture of a Jake, his blond hair spiked with gel, standing in front of a microphone—mouth agape and teeth bared as he screamed. That part of Jake’s persona wasn’t undercover at all. Singing was his hobby, something that had taken his mind off his problems since he was a little kid back in good ol’ Albany.