by David DeLee
“You tell me,” she said. “You saw the press conference, right?”
“Yeah, but we haven’t talked to him yet. Goodall’s people have him under wraps. We can’t get near him.”
“You better.” She returned to shoving papers and then gave up, shouldering the bag with yellow and white pages sticking willy-nilly out of her bag.
“Talk to me, Brooke. Why this rush to judgement?”
“You think this is my idea? Come on, Frank. You know me better than that.”
“It’s Gregg,” Flynn said, having already figured. “You need to talk to him.”
“He doesn’t work for me. I work for him, remember?”
If he doesn’t slow this thing down, it’s going to blow up in his…in our faces.”
She lowered her voice even further. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? You talk to him. Maybe he’ll come to his senses hearing it from someone other than me.”
Prescott navigated around the table. “I’ve got to go. Stokes isn’t my only case.”
She pushed through the rail and hurried toward the court room exit, her heels clicking nosily on the hard-wood floor. People were starting to file back into the courtroom for the next session. Prescott pushed past them and disappeared into the crowd milling around in the hallway.
Flynn left, too, only to come up short outside in the corridor.
Levy was in the hallway, texting, waiting for him. She had on black slacks, a shear white blouse under a black linen jacket, and her usual faux fur-lined Burberry trench coat, also black.
She looked up from her cell phone. “Hey.”
“What are you doing here? I thought we were going to meet up back at the house?”
“How’d it go in there?” Levy asked without answering.
“A hundred-thousand-dollar bail. The PBA’ll post it, so Stokes should be out in a few hours.”
“Too bad his troubles are just starting,” Levy said.
“Yeah. Why are you here?”
“Whalen called. We’re to report to One PP. Forthwith.”
Forthwith. Cop speak for right away.
Flynn groaned. “Don’t tell me. The fourteenth floor?”
The fourteenth floor meant the Police Commissioner’s office.
“You guessed it.” Levy headed for the elevator and Flynn fell in step behind her.
“That can’t be good.”
“Can’t imagine it is,” she agreed.
Office of the Police Commissioner
One Police Plaza, Park Row
Civic Center, Manhattan
Tuesday, November 28th 9:35 a.m.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, THEY rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor of One Police Plaza. The Commissioner’s secretary, who was a full ranking detective first grade, stood up from his desk as they strolled down the carpeted corridor. It was library quiet. Levy found it unsettling.
“They’re waiting for you,” the detective said, moving to open the door to the Commissioner’s Office.
Flynn nodded to the detective as they passed into the inner sanctum. If he was nervous about being there, he didn’t show it. In the elevator on the way up he told Levy that in his entire nearly twenty-year career, he’d never been summoned to the PC’s Office. He’d never even a face-to-face with a sitting PC before.
Levy’s palms began to sweat. “I have. This one in fact. Can’t say it was fun.”
The spacious wood-trimmed office hadn’t changed much since she’d last been there, less than a year ago. Now, like then, a fancy knee-hole desk faced out from windows overlooking the city. A matching oak credenza sat behind the PC’s leather executive chair. The credenza was filled with framed photographs of the PC with his family. A pair of oak and black leather padded chairs faced the desk. The rest of the room was filled with a leather couch and four comfortable leather chairs arranged around a glass-top oak coffee table.
The last time Levy had been there, she’d had to justify to a bunch of middle-aged men why she, at eighteen years old, had made the decision to work in the adult film industry—to be an actress and appear in dozens of X-rated porn films. Why for four years she’d worked for a company called BJ Entertainment, performing sex acts before a camera crew and for worldwide distribution.
BJ Entertainment was a legitimate company. There was nothing illegal about the work. They paid well, and the money was all that kept her from being homeless and living on the streets.
She’d explained that if she had disclosed the information during her application, her career as a police officer would’ve been over before it started. She’d said nothing at the time and it wasn’t discovered in her pre-employment background investigation. For ten years she’d kept the secret, lived with it, and worked as a cop. A damn good cop.
Until her past caught up with her.
Her secret discovered, she’d been outed by the target of an IA investigation she was conducting. He’d hoped to leverage the information to get her to drop the case against him, but she came clean with her boss, Captain Sparks Greene.
Levy had retained legal counsel, worked with her union rep, and Greene—God bless him—and with their help she worked out a deal with the department, including the PC, in which Levy was fined, took a suspension without pay, and was re-assigned out of Internal Affairs. That last one hurt the most. After a brief tour of duty in the department’s School Safety Division Task Force, Captain Whalen rescued her by giving her a slot in his squad at the Seventh. There she’d partnered with Flynn until last month when Greene pirated her back to IA.
It had been a whirlwind year, and here she was full circle, once again being called on the carpet in the Police Commissioner’s Office.
“They’re here,” Whalen announced, turning from a group of people congregated around the coffee table. The room fell silent and everyone turned and stared at Flynn and Levy.
The PC’s secretary pulled the door closed behind them with a soft click. To Levy, it sounded like a jail cell slamming shut.
“Everybody knows everybody, don’t they?” Police Commissioner Corey Berens stood up from behind his expensive oak desk. The others in the room were Captains Ray Whalen and Sparks Greene, the Chief of Department, Bureau Chief James Aubry, the Chief of Detectives Glenn Rhodes, while Joseph Gregg sat in one of the chairs facing the Commissioner, and behind him stood his boss, two-term District Attorney Silvia Pace.
Berens came out from behind his desk with his hand extended. “Detective Flynn, we’ve not had the pleasure.” They shook hands. “But I’ve heard good things.”
“Commissioner. Thank you, sir.”
Berens glanced at Levy. “Detective Levy, keeping your nose clean, I trust?”
“I suspect you’d know if I wasn’t, sir.”
“Very true.” He laughed. “And don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t, sir.”
He returned to his desk but didn’t sit down.
Berens had thirty-five years on the job and he’d worked pretty much every kind of gig an NYPD cop could work, from patrol to detective, including narcotics, homicide, ESU, Intelligence, and even harbor patrol. He’d been an inspector in charge of the Manhattan Strategic Response Group when the Mayor appointed him Commissioner two years ago. Considered a cop’s cop, he enjoyed wide support among the rank and file, and had the skill to keep the mayor off his back—and theirs—most of the time.
This situation would surely test both ends of that particular paradigm.
“Damn bag of snakes we’ve got here,” he said.
The group murmured their agreement.
“Let’s start with the Stokes investigation,” Berens said, directing his comment at Joseph Gregg. “What on earth were you thinking, counselor?”
Gregg cleared his throat. “In light of the situation, I felt it best we demonstrate a rapid response—”
“By railroading one of my officers before a proper investigation’s been conducted?” Berens asked. “Without a shred of evidence of wrongdoing against him.”
“That’s not true,” Gregg said.
“It’s not?” Berens challenged. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Corey.” District Attorney Pace stepped around Gregg, clearly trying to divert the flak from her subordinate. The way a true leader would. Levy admired her for the attempt.
“It was damn premature, Silvia, and you know it,” Berens said. “My officers get the same due process guarantees as everyone else. They don’t give that up when they put on the uniform, do they?”
No one answered, so Berens asked again, louder this time. “Do they?”
“No, of course not,” Pace said.
“So, what on Earth made you think you could run roughshod over my people?” He held her with a steely gaze. “I thought we had a better working relationship than that, Silvia.”
“We do, Corey,” she said. “But the arrest does demonstrate we’re being proactive.”
“Short term, maybe,” Berens conceded.
“The decision was mine, sir,” Gregg said, speaking up. “I made it in the heat of the moment.”
“And stepped way out of your lane doing so,” Berens scolded. “Unfortunately, we can’t walk it back now. But I’m warning you both. You better have a damn good backup plan for when Stokes is cleared of wrongdoing.”
“If he’s cleared, sir,” Gregg said.
Berens glared at him. “What are your thoughts on that matter, detectives?”
“It’s too early to tell, sir,” Flynn said. “It’s barely been forty-eight hours. But we do know DeShawn Beach was interrupted in the commission of crime, a burglary and petit larceny. That certainly justifies Stokes’ actions to chase, stop, and make an arrest pursuant to a crime.”
“The press and the community won’t give a shit about that,” Rhodes, the Chief of Ds, injected. “They always ignore that part. Plays better to say a suspect was killed for stealing a pack of gum or running a red light than to admit they refused a lawful command and resisted arrest in a manner that made the officer fearful for his life.”
Levy said, “It’ll all come down to whether it’s reasonable to assume Stokes could mistake the cell phone for a gun. Without a witness, we can’t confirm or deny his version of the events.”
“What about this witness Goodall’s dug up?”
“Kevin Wills,” Captain Greene said.
“We haven’t spoken to him yet,” Flynn said.
“Don’t you think we ought to?”
“We’ve tried, Commissioner,” Levy said. “Detectives have made repeated calls to his home. I spoke to his mother by telephone, but she won’t let us see him. They’re refusing to cooperate.”
“Goodall’s got him under wraps,” Flynn said.
“Then unwrap him, Detective.” Berens looked at him and then Levy. “Find this witness, vet the boy’s story, corroborate it or disprove it, either way, but button this up. Fast. Like it or not,” —Berens glanced at Pace— “and I don’t, but the DA’s actions have bought us some time. If last night’s any indication, this city’s a powder keg on the brink of chaos.”
“Yes, sir,” Flynn and Levy said in unison.
Then Flynn added, “But I’ve got a question.” He glared at Gregg. “I was at the arraignment this morning. The charge against Stokes has been upgraded from negligent homicide to murder two. Why?”
Berens said, “Giving yourself wiggle room for an eventual plea bargain, I presume.”
“A plea to anything less than negligent homicide won’t satisfy the public,” Gregg said. “It ties our hands.”
“So, Stokes is to be your sacrificial lamb, force him to take a plea even if he’s done nothing wrong?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, Corey,” Pace said.
“How would you put it, Silvia?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “You’re painting me into a hell of a corner. If we don’t find evidence of wrongdoing, we look like we’re whitewashing this thing. If we do, you get to say we told you so. To put it mildly, I’m not happy about this, Silvia.”
“We’re trying to do what’s best for the public.”
“And to fucking hell with Stokes!” Berens smashed his fist into his desk, making everyone jump. In the silence that followed, he asked, “How long before you plan to present to a grand jury?”
She looked at Gregg before replying. “Thursday, sir.”
“Thursday!” Flynn shouted. “That’s two days from now.” He looked at the Commissioner. “Sir, they’ve got six months to present. We can’t thoroughly investigate this in that time. Why are they rushing this?”
“It’s in the city’s best interest,” Gregg said. “The swift punishment of Officer Stokes will be seen as a positive by the community.”
“Why bother with a trial?” Flynn asked. “You’ve already convicted him.”
“A speedy resolution would be beneficial, sir,” Chief Aubry said. “Empaneling a grand jury will be seen as swift justice.”
“What if he’s not guilty?” Levy asked. “And due process. What of that? What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“Funny, coming from an IA detective,” Aubry said.
“With all due respect, Chief, I never assume the officers I investigate are guilty. Not until I prove it.” She added, “Sir.”
“You believe Officer Stokes is innocent, Detective Levy?” Berens asked.
“I don’t know, sir. Yet. Isn’t that the point?”
He nodded. “It is indeed.”
“And what of the rest of the city?” Aubry asked. “Every day that passes, more and more people could get hurt or killed while we…investigate.”
“That justifies throwing a cop to the wolves?” Flynn asked.
“If they can’t support the charges, they’ll have to drop the case,” Rhodes said, speaking up.
“And that plays so well with the public,” Flynn said. “We’re just delaying the inevitable and possibly making it worse.”
“Not if we indict,” Gregg said. “Then successfully move to trial. By the time a trial’s over, even if your guy’s found not guilty, everyone will have moved on by then.”
“Not likely. Not in today’s day and age,” Berens said.
“And a man’s career and life are destroyed.” Flynn stared hard at Gregg. “And if you say it’s worth it or a small price to pay, I’ll—”
“Take it easy, Detective,” Berens said. “No one’s saying that.”
By the slight tug of a smile on Gregg’s mouth, it was clear to Levy, he thought it.
“Frank,” Whalen said sharply. “Dial it back.”
Berens raised a hand. “It’s okay, Ray. No, Detective, it doesn’t justify it, nor will I condone such an action. You and your partner have two days to make your case. Whichever way the evidence leads, so be it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Berens looked at Pace. “However this turns out, Silvia, one of us is going to look like shit when this is over and done. In the meantime, I can’t tell you how to run your office, but let me be perfectly clear—when it comes to the men and women in this department, you ever pull a stunt like this again, and you won’t like what comes next. Understand?”
Neither Gregg nor Pace spoke.
Berens pounded his fist into the desk. “Understand!”
“Yes, sir,” they said in meek unison.
“Now,” Berens went on, “where do we stand with the animals who killed Olivarez and Cabot?”
“It’s early in the investigation,” Whalen said.
“Don’t tell me that, Ray. Tell me what you have.”
“Witnesses identified the shooters as two black male youths. We believe they escaped on the F train. We’ve got cops working overtime canvassing the neighborhood, detectives talking to their CIs. TARU’s going through surveillance feeds from the subway and traffic cams, also the nearby park cameras and any footage we’ve secured from local businesses in the area.”
TARU was the NYPD’s technical assistance response unit. They handled all of the department’s technical
equipment and support, and provided investigative services, such as scouring hundreds of hours of video surveillance.
“They’re also scouring social media for clues, too,” the Chief of Ds added, “looking for any chatter that might give us a lead as to the identities of these two scumbags.”
Berens nodded, satisfied. “If they need any additional manpower, let Jimmy know.” He nodded toward Bureau Chief James Aubry. “These cop killers are our top priority, along with keeping a lid on this city.”
He looked around the group. Solemn faces looked back. “I want regular updates. Dismissed.”
Everyone filed out of the office except chiefs Aubry and Rhodes. Levy figured they and the commissioner would be glued to the hip strategizing the department’s response to the escalating violence taking place throughout the city.
At the elevator, Whalen and Greene exchanged scornful glares with Gregg and Pace.
When the elevator arrived, Gregg made a gesture to hold the door.
Despite the car being empty, Greene said, “We’ll wait for the next one.”
Gregg shrugged and Pace looked appropriately uncomfortable. Typically the DA’s Office and the police enjoyed a close working relationship. Not so at the moment. With the attorneys inside the elevator, the doors closed with a ping.
When the next car came, the cops rode down. Greene said, “Frank. Chrissy. You two good?”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“Tough case, Stokes. And now Olivarez and Cabot.”
“Toro and Lovato have that one,” Flynn said.
Greene smiled. “Yeah, right. I know you two’ll be all over it.”
“They’ve got it, Sparks,” Whalen said.
“Not doubting it, Ray. I guess in my bumbling way, what I’m trying to say is if you need any help, anything my squad or I can do, let me know. Even if it’s not IA related.”
“Got anything on Stokes we don’t know about?” Flynn asked.
The elevator landed on the first floor and opened up. Greene directed them to a quiet spot at the back end of the hall.
“Thought the question might come up, so I checked,” Greene said. “Not even a blip on our radar. He’s clean.”
That was good news for Stokes, but reconfirmed Flynn’s assessment that he was probably a mediocre cop, Levy thought. According to Flynn, good cops ruffled feathers. It came with the job. If he wasn’t doing that, he’d been phoning it in.
