by Rob Byrnes
From the hallway, Cop Four called out. “Hey, you guys see these underpants?”
“What underpants?” asked Cop Two.
“Stuck in that window over the door.”
They all looked up and saw the gray fabric.
“Gray underpants,” said Cop Four.
“Nah,” said Cop Five. “That’s what they call ‘dove gray’. See, you’ve got your ‘gray,’ your ‘dove gray,’ your ‘dark gray,’ your ‘storm cloud gray’…”
Enright’s face scrunched up and he looked at comatose Edward with contempt. “What kind of sick junkie bastard are you?”
After the paramedics wheeled the junkie in the red sweater vest—who may have been wearing dove gray boxer-briefs over his clothing, a form of perversion that made even cops who thought they’d seen it all on these mean streets shake their heads in disgust—Cops One through Three and Six thought they’d better have a look around.
Thanks to Enright, they now knew the junkie had broken into June Forteene’s office. Some cops loved her; most cops loathed her; but all cops knew who she was. And all cops also knew that she’d use her blog to rip apart the entire force—from the commissioner to the rookie beat cop—if they came up with nothing but a junkie in a red sweater vest and a ripped pair of underpants.
Ripped pair of underpants. Sick bastard…
“Where the hell is Chase?” Grant asked for the fortieth time in twenty minutes. After spending far too much time loading, dropping, re-loading, and re-dropping their haul, he and Nick had finally managed to stow the computers, paraphernalia, and handcart in a friend’s basement a few blocks away where—for a C-note—no questions would be asked. Grant hated to part with the money, but it was safer than wheeling a load of electronics around the streets of New York all night.
But…
“Where the hell is Chase?”
Nick pondered that. “What if he’s trapped?”
“I worry,” Grant acknowledged.
A twinkle came to Nick’s eye. “It sounds like you’re in love.”
Something less than a twinkle came to Grant’s eye. “Of course I love him. Think we’ve been together for eighteen years just so I don’t have to do my own laundry?”
That sobered Nick, but maybe not enough. “You know who can save him if he’s trapped?”
“I’m listenin’.”
“Cadmium!”
“I’m not listenin’ anymore.”
When Cops One, Two, and Six walked into the storefront advertising Live! Nude! Girls! in full uniform, they couldn’t have killed the buzz more quickly if they’d lit the place on fire. The moment they entered, the music died and the only sound was that of zippers zipping and the clicking heels of a few Live! Nude! Girls! as they ran to the closets that passed as dressing rooms before the lights went up and their patrons realized they were watching forty-eight-year-old grandmothers taking it all off for their carnal enjoyment.
Chase stood away from the handful of other patrons near a rack of magazines featuring women with breasts the size and shapeliness of bags of concrete. He’d only been in the place for a few minutes but had already had no fewer than three invitations to join other men in the buddy booths. So much for posing as a breast man. In any event, he wouldn’t even consider those invitations. He was totally devoted to Grant Lambert. It also helped that two of the asks came from men who reminded him of his grandfather—who’d been dead for twenty years; at least one of the guys looked like he might have died at the same time—and the third came from a guy who was maybe thirty-five but probably hadn’t had teeth in twenty years.
The cops seemed nice enough, though, so he was happy to talk to them. Not that he had a choice. He shelved the copy of Mega-Mammaries Monthly he’d been browsing and flashed them a smile.
“Name?” asked Cop Two.
“Charles LaMarca.” He hated his birth name—hence his almost exclusive use of “Chase”—but this was not the time to object. And he wasn’t going to lie, which had far less to do with morality than the repercussions of being caught in a lie.
“And why are you here, Mr. LaMarca?”
“Why does anyone come here?” Chase nodded at the magazines. “I like breasts.”
“Mmm-hmm.” The Cop Six made a few notes on a pad. Chase didn’t like the fact they had his name and didn’t seem to believe he liked female breasts, but he had no priors and there was nothing illegal about hanging out in an adult video store. It was skeevy, maybe, but perfectly legal.
“Have you seen anything suspicious tonight, Mr. LaMarca?”
Chase pretended to think about that. “This probably has something to do with that ambulance, right?”
“We’ll ask the questions.”
“Of course.” He pretended to think again. “No, I can’t really think of anything.”
The cops nodded. “Okay, thank you, sir…”
“Except…”
They turned back to him. “Go ahead.”
“Except there was this guy wandering around outside acting sort of strange. He might’ve been drinking. Or…” Chase pantomimed shooting a needle into his arm. “That.”
“Can you describe this man?” asked Cop Six, who already had his notepad out again.
“Hmm. Glasses…red sweater vest…”
The cops looked at each other knowingly. “Thank you, sir. That’s helpful.”
Chase shrugged. “So am I free to go?”
They said he was, and so he did. As quickly as his bruised, aching body could get away from Live! Nude! Girls!
“Where the hell is Chase?” Grant asked for the forty-ninth time. But then he saw him across the street outside one of the many Thai restaurants that weren’t the one where they were waiting and called out to him. Soon he had his answer.
“What took you so long?”
Chase didn’t say anything. He just sort of glowered, even staring down Grant.
Grant finally caved. “I take it something went wrong.”
Nick happened to glance over at a moment when Chase moved his legs and noticed something was off. Or at least off center.
“How come you’re not wearing underwear?” Not that Nick didn’t approve; but since he’d noticed…
Grant’s brow furrowed. “You’re not wearing underwear?” Chase always wore underwear. Even to bed. Furthermore, Grant disapproved of Nick’s approval of this situation.
Finally, Chase spoke. “Long story. Someday—if I ever decide to forgive you—I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Fair enough.” Grant didn’t really agree—he wanted to know what happened to his partner’s underwear—but he swallowed his jealous impulses and glanced at his watch.
“We’d better get over to the East Side and take care of the second half of this job.”
“Let’s go,” Chase agreed, and he managed to hobble a few yards before reeling into the side of yet another Thai restaurant.
“You okay?” There was a hardness to Grant’s voice that didn’t sit well with Chase, who was in no mood to placate him.
“Fine as a guy can be after he was abandoned.”
Grant knew there was more to that. “And?”
Chase sniffled. “And therefore had to crawl through a teeny tiny transom window.”
“And?”
“And ended up ripping his underwear off and falling to the floor. And then had to run into Live! Nude! Girls! to try to avoid the cops, ’cept they found him there anyway so he had to lie his way out of the place after they interrogated him and got his name.”
Grant finally got it. He patted Chase on the shoulder. “Sorry.”
Chase sniffled again. “Thank you for finally understanding.”
“Yeah, I get it now.” Grant’s eyes darted around and then returned to his watch. “But, you know…”
Chase took a step away from the wall. “The East Side job. Yeah. I’ll do my best.”
“I’ll try to make this easy on you.”
Chase hadn’t quite forgiven him but still kissed
Grant under the garish yellow awning advertising Pad Thai. “Thanks.”
Grant smiled. “Next leg of this job, we’ll make Nick do the hard stuff.”
Chapter Nine
While Chase had been hanging upside down by his underwear—and then crashing to the floor not in his underwear—June Forteene had been having a much less memorable evening. The crowds and traffic congestion that accompanied the annual United Nations General Assembly made her neighborhood practically uninhabitable between early morning and late evening for two weeks at the end of each September, so she decided to wait it out by seeing a movie.
Which meant her phone was turned off when Captain Enright called…and for quite a while afterward.
It was only when she was walking back toward her apartment that she finally picked up the message in which Enright informed her that a junkie had broken into her office, and his follow up message reporting that the police had said junkie in custody. He had also, she noted, managed to pat himself on the back repeatedly for designing and installing the alarm system that had detected the perp. No doubt he was fishing for more publicity on her blog.
Maybe she’d give it, maybe not. That would probably depend on what freebie extras he’d throw in to ensure this never happened again. In any event, promoting Enright’s business was one of the last things on her mind when she called him back.
“What do you mean there was a break-in?”
“Just that. There was a break-in.”
“Did they take anything?”
Enright was standing outside the building hunting for an empty on-duty cab, so he wasn’t in the position to take inventory. But he had to tell her something.
“I couldn’t really tell, but since we caught the perpetrator on the premises I can’t see how he would’ve had an opportunity to steal anything.”
She fumed at the corner of Park Avenue and East Forty-second Street, across from Grand Central Terminal. “And how, exactly, did someone get into this fortress you designed for me?”
Since his client deserved an answer, Enright waved off the first free cab he’d seen in seven minutes of waiting. “The transom.”
“The transom?!” Rage was making her shake; in turn, the shaking was making other pedestrians swing wide to avoid her on the busy sidewalk.
“We didn’t wire it. Figured it wasn’t big enough for a human being to get through it.”
“Well…how do you know that’s the way he came in?”
Enright swallowed hard. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Tell me!”
“We found his underwear snagged on the transom frame.”
June braced herself against a light pole. “You mean this burglar was naked?”
“No, ma’am. Fully clothed.”
“But…”
“We figure he was wearing the underwear on the outside of his clothes.”
June Forteene closed her eyes tightly. She felt violated. “What kind of sick bastard…I should come over there.”
Enright sat himself on the same fire hydrant Chase had sat on less than an hour earlier. “You can if you want, but I’m sure we nailed the guy before he could steal anything. Just another pathetic junkie who passed out before he could commit the crime.”
The cold metal against the light pole seemed to calm her. “In your professional opinion, he didn’t steal anything?”
“In my professional opinion, if he did it’d have to be in the ambulance with him. Meaning he couldn’t have taken much but—if he stole anything—it’ll be waiting at Roosevelt Hospital in the morning.” He chuckled. “That or The Tombs.”
She was wavering. She wanted to be reassured, but she was also so used to being in control. “You’re sure?”
Enright nestled his butt into the fire hydrant cap. “Listen, I’ve been in this business—in one capacity or another—for over thirty years. Nothing’s ever one hundred percent, but trust me when I tell you this feels like ninety-nine-point-nine percent to me.”
June didn’t like that stray one-tenth of one percent. “But—”
“Go home,” Enright pleaded as another empty cab passed him. “Anything that has to be cleaned up can be cleaned up tomorrow.”
So she did. Not happily, and not contentedly, but she did it.
Worst-case scenario, she thought, I still have my laptop. With my tools, no one can stop June Forteene.
If she’d known who was plotting against her, she might have felt even more self-confident.
The super was wasting time in the lobby by the time she weaved a path through the mob of cops and people hanging around to see what the cops were doing and reached her building.
“Evening, Hillary.” He said it politely, but it still made her cringe. June Forteene had so taken over her identity that she barely remembered there was a Hillary Morris buried somewhere inside her.
She nodded pleasantly and went to collect her mail, since there was nothing to be gained by lashing out at her super for using her legal name, and wasn’t really paying attention as he talked to her.
Not until she heard the letters UPS.
Her eyes were focused like lasers when she turned toward him. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Just that there’s been a lot of craziness around here today. Glad you got through the—”
“There’s always craziness during the General Assembly. But what did you say about UPS?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Someone stole a delivery truck right off Second Avenue this afternoon. Can you believe it? The driver doubled-parked and ran into a building down the block. Wasn’t gone for three minutes, but then the truck was gone. You’d think with all the cops around here…”
She stopped him before he could ramble off on another tangent. “What did this UPS driver look like?”
He had to think. “Young black woman. Short hair.” That sounded right to him. “Why?”
As soon as she heard “young,” “black,” and “woman,” June lost interest. “No reason. Just curious.” She added a shrug. “Just wondered if I could use the story on my blog as another example of lawlessness in this liberal city.”
The super shook his head. “It’s big news for the block, I suppose. Especially for the folks who didn’t get their packages. But I don’t think the nation would care.”
She pushed the button next to the elevator and tuned him out again, which is how she almost missed hearing him say:
“And then there was the other UPS driver today. The one who came looking for you.”
The elevator opened but she didn’t step inside.
“A UPS driver was looking for me? A different one? Not the young, black woman?”
“Nah, this guy was white. Maybe mid-fifties…hard to tell. Needed a shave. Nice guy, but kind of seedy. Maybe he’s a temp or something.”
Her eyes darkened. “By any chance, was that driver—the seedy one; not the young, black female—wearing an old uniform?”
He blinked a few times, as if conjuring up the image. “Now that you mention it, I believe he was. Yeah, it had some loose threads and it didn’t fit right.” He thought about that a second. “Yeah, I guess he was a temp. Poor guy, probably starting his life over at an advanced age…”
The super prattled on and June stabbed at the elevator button, not listening. It was impossible to believe all of this—the seedy UPS driver showing up at her home and work, and then the break-in—was a coincidence. She’d get Enright on the phone again as soon as she was back in her apartment and safely locked behind a sturdy door.
Minutes later, Grant’s face looked through that lobby window. The super was still puttering around.
“That’s a guy who needs a hobby,” he said, motioning Chase and Nick to the stoop next door.
He’d filled them in on his plan on the shuttle train that ran from Times Square to Grand Central and fleshed it out on the walk downhill to Second Avenue. It sounded easy enough. Chase would get June out of her apartment and down to lobby under some pretense—the UN Gene
ral Assembly offered them a multitude of excuses, so they might as well try to use it to their advantage—and Grant and Nick would break into the apartment and grab her laptop, cell phone, and anything else they thought might contain that photo of Austin Peebles being indiscreet. And then they’d get the hell out of there.
Chase had decided he should pretend to be a cop, so they stopped at a shop in Grand Central Terminal and picked up a cheap tie. He looked more like a crook wearing a tie—and no underwear—than detectives on the screen, but since it didn’t make him look much different from most real-world NYPD detectives, it’d do.
But first they had to get the damn super out of the lobby. A few minutes passed, and it didn’t look like he was going anywhere.
After another few minutes, Chase had an idea. He walked into the lobby and flashed his wallet at the Guy Who Obviously Needed a Hobby. “Bailey, NYPD United Nations Special Detail.” His fake badge gleamed in the lighting, which was no surprise since the super seemed to have time to dust the fixture every day. “I’m looking for the building superintendent.”
The man pointed to himself. “That’s me.”
Chase’s expression was severe. “Do you know the name ‘General Abudhabi’?”
The super scratched his ear. “Can’t say I do.” He scratched again. “Should I?”
Chase’s expression deepened from “severe” to “life-and-death.” “General Abudhabi is in charge of United Nations General Assembly security, and he needs to talk to you.”
“Me?” The super was confused.
“You.” Chase leaned close to his ear. “You didn’t hear this from me—because I’m not supposed to tell a soul—but tomorrow night the leaders of the world’s superpowers will be having a secret meeting at the United Nations Building. It’s very hush-hush, and won’t even be announced to the public until days after it’s over.” He scowled. “Maybe weeks. Maybe never.”
The super was still confused, but now at least understood he was somehow becoming involved in perhaps the biggest single event in world history. That sure beat polishing and re-polishing the brass handrail on the lower level of the staircase.
