Accomplice
Romano Brothers Book Three
Samantha Cade
‘Accomplice’ Copyright Samantha Cade 2017
All Rights Reserved
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Chapter One
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Harley
While Patty runs into the corner store to grab us coffee, I decide to try my new tube of cherry red lipstick. Using the visor mirror, I carefully line my lips, then fill them in. The cool undertones of the shade go well with the deep blue of my uniform, and also make my teeth look pearly white.
“Why are you putting on lipstick?” Patty asks, sliding into the driver’s seat. She hands me my coffee, thick black sludge in a flimsy plastic cup. It’s not the best coffee around, but it’s the strongest, and only costs a buck.
I scoff at such an obvious question. “Because I want to look hot. Duh.” I rub my lips together, smacking them. “What do you think? Don’t you think my teeth look whiter?”
I’m looking forward to Patty’s answer, which will probably be mildly insulting, and idly amusing. But before she can snap back, the radio crackles to life. The operator says there’s a domestic disturbance not far from where we are. I jump up in my chair and grab the mike. I’m pretty green, as my colleagues would say, since I’m only a few months out of the police academy. I get the most intoxicating thrill when a call comes through, not because I want to hear of people in trouble, but because I’m eager to sweep in and help them.
“This is Officer Redding. We’re on our way,” I say.
Patty glares at me. “We’re on a coffee break.” She gestures at her nearly empty cup of coffee.
The radio operator streams the information to the console laptop.
“Come on, Patty, we’re close,” I say. “The address is only a few blocks away, though it’s kind of strange. This says 3511 Unit A. 3511 is a closed down warehouse. Why would it have a unit?”
Patty squints at the screen. “That can’t be right.”
We watch a little longer. The operator brings up a map, and drops a pin at the exact location. It looks like an outbuilding, a shed, maybe, behind a defunct warehouse.
I look at Patty, tilting my forehead towards her, and saying in my most dramatic TV cop voice, “Let’s go to work.”
Patty nods approvingly. “I think that’s the best catchphrase yet.” She drains the rest of her coffee, turns on the lights, and off we go to take the call.
We can’t pull right up to the outbuilding because a chainlink fence is blocking our way. Patty parks in front of the warehouse, and we continue on foot. I search the fence for vulnerable areas, and find a section where the links are rusted and weak, allowing us to pull the fence up just enough so we can slide underneath.
The outbuilding is behind the warehouse, and completely blocked from street view. It’s a rectangular, squat structure that appears to be a new construction. The vinyl siding, windows, and roof all look new.
We hear a man’s voice booming from inside. His tone is frenetic, distressed. But it’s his voice alone. No one else makes a sound. Patty taps on the door, and the voice stops.
“Who the fuck is that?” we hear him ask.
“Police,” Patty says, pounding on the door more loudly.
There’s silence, and footsteps ringing through the air. “Which one of you called the pigs?” the man asks.
There’s a terrified shriek, and I decide not to be polite anymore. I kick in the door, which isn’t difficult because of the flimsy material it’s made from, and charge inside. There’s a man with slicked back black hair standing in the middle of the room. He’s shirtless, his pants are unzipped, and he’s wielding what looks to be a kitchen knife. Also in the room are about ten women, all of varying ages and races, squeezed tight against the walls, as if trying to get as far away from him as they can. The man run his eyes over my uniform and sneers.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asks.
“Officer Harley Redding,” I say, calmly. I lift my hands in the air and approach him slowly. “Put down the knife. Let’s talk.”
I feel Patty’s presence behind me, watching my back. The man’s eyes close, and he sways back and forth on his feet. I can smell the liquor wafting off of him. He’s obviously very intoxicated.
“You don’t tell me what to do,” he mumbles, drunkenly.
“Sir,” I say, sharply. “I’m going to ask you one last time to put the knife down.”
The man laughs. “And then what are you going to do?”
“Allow me to show you.” I pull out my taser, point, and shoot. Two probes fly out and grab the skin of his shirtless waist. His screams are silent as he spasms, then hits the ground.
Patty and I are on him in a second. Together, we flip him to his stomach and pin his hands behind his back. I cuff him in one fluid motion. The man blinks his eyes open, and grumbles something I can’t understand. It takes both of us to get him on his feet. He’s so drunk, he’s practically dead weight. Patty takes him out to the car while I stick around to get witness statements.
Once they’re gone, it feels like the the air’s been sucked out of the room. I have a look around. The place is sparsely decorated with old furniture that’s seen better days. I’d consider it squalid, except it’s impeccably clean. There’s no dust, dirt, or strewn laundry anywhere, which is much different than my apartment. The women keep their distance, eyeing me warily.
“What is this place?” I ask them.
“It’s hell, bitch,” someone says, which is followed by scattered laughter.
The comment comes from a young woman with long, wavy hair, and dark, almost black, lipstick. An older woman standing a few feet away from her reprimands her with a searing look.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
No one answers. Most of them look at the floor, like I’m not even there.
“Is anyone hurt?” I ask. “Does anyone need medical attention?”
I’m met with more silence. I don’t see anyone in terrible pain, so I continue.
“I’ll need to question all of you, one at a time,” I say, pulling out my notepad and pen.
“We don’t need you anymore,” the older woman says. “We thank you for your service.”
She walks towards me as if to lead me towards the door. I shake my head sharply.
“I’m not done doing my job.”
I scan the room, and see one woman looking at me. Woman, if you could call her that. She looks very young. She’s making direct eye contact, like she wants to talk to me.
“I’ll start with you,” I say.
The girl betrays nothing in her deep brown eyes, but nods, solemnly. The older woman steps in front of me.
“We’ve done nothing wrong. Why question us?” she asks.
“Ma’am, step aside, please. I don’t want to arrest you for impeding police business.”
The woman huffs. “She’s a minor,” she says, gesturing towards the girl.
“Who’s the legal guardian?” I ask.
The woman squares her shoulders. “I am.”
I look between the two of them. They are obviously not related. They’re not even the same race. Still, I acquiesce, and allow the ‘guardian’ to join the interview. The woman leads me to a neighboring room. It’s a kitchen, with all standalone appliances. This isn’t an actual home, but it’s set up like one. The three of us sit at a spotless round table.
“What’s your name?” I ask the girl.
“Honey,” the woman answers for h
er.
“Honey, what?”
“Honey Linden. Same last name as me.”
I jot this all down. “And what’s your first name?” I ask the woman.
She gives me a wicked smile, then stands and retrieves something from a nearby drawer. She hands me a very real state ID.
“Jean Linden,” I say, writing it down. “How old are you, Honey?”
Jean starts to answer, but I hold my hand up, stopping her.
“Sixteen,” Honey says in an unexpectedly strong voice.
“Do you live here?”
She nods.
“For how long?”
Jean stares at her hotly, but the girl answers anyway. “Two years.”
“Is ‘Honey’ your real name?” I ask.
“That’s enough questions,” Jean says. “You’re upsetting my daughter.”
I lean towards Jean fiercely, making her cower back.
“There are more questions,” I assure her. I turn back to Honey. I decide the issue of her real name can wait. “Do you know that man?”
Honey shakes her head.
“We don’t know him at all,” Jean says. “He came over to fix the air conditioner.”
“Is he with a repair company?”
Jean shrugs. “An independent contractor.”
I make a mental note that the temperature in here feels fine. It’s perfectly cool on this hot day.
“Describe to me what happened,” I say. “Include as many details as you can remember.”
Jean shrugs, dismissing the question. “I didn’t see anything. I was in the other room.”
I ask Honey, and she gives me another version of the same answer.
“Who made the call?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Jean says. “Do you know, Honey?”
Honey shakes her head.
Something’s going on here. I know it. There’s more to this situation than a drunk man with a knife. The women here are already suspicious of me. I can’t let on that I suspect something, or it will be even harder to get information.
I question the rest of them, one at a time. Jean doesn’t sit in on the other interviews, but she’s there, flitting around the door, listening. I get all of their names as best I can. I can tell many of them have fake aliases. And, miraculously, no one saw anything regarding the man with the knife. They were all conveniently out of the room.
I know better than to push it. Before leaving, I address all of them, one last time.
“Is there anything else anyone wants to tell me?” I ask. I’m met with crickets. “You do realize that without witness statements, we won’t have a case against the guy? He could come back.”
They all look at their feet. I nod to them, silently saying goodbye. But I’ll be back.
While we drive, our perp falls sound asleep in the backseat. I prefer that to drunken yammering, but he’s snoring so loud it rattles my ears. When we pull up to the precinct, I open the back door to get him out. He’s out cold.
“Wake up, buddy,” I shout. “Your destination awaits.”
He answers with shattering snores, not budging. I blow the hair out of my eyes, then reach inside and smack his face. His eyes fly open.
“Redding,” Patty scolds. “You’re not supposed to touch the suspects.”
“It always worked on my college roommate,” I say. “Give me a hand, will you?”
Patty and I drag the guy out of the car and walk him up to the station. While he’s taken in for booking, I sit at my desk to vet what Jean and the others had told me. I run Jean’s name through the system, and cross reference with the adoption center database. The adoption papers pop right up, and everything seems above board. Jean Linden is the official adoptive guardian of one Honor Linden, formally Honor Guerre. The information on Honor’s birth parents are sealed, and would require a warrant to access. Jean Linden is squeaky clean. She doesn’t even have a speeding ticket on her record.
I comb through the rest of the names, going through the tedious process of sorting through the real and the fake. So far, everyone checks out. The ones that aren’t American born have all the proper paperwork.
I’m a couple of hours into my research when I see our perp walking down the hall, chatting with the police chief. Peter Connell is the guy’s name. He’s holding a cup of coffee, and no longer in handcuffs. My internal bullshit meter starts going off so loudly I can’t ignore it. I spring from my seat and march right up to the chief.
“Can I talk to you, Sir?” I say.
I have the power of surprise on my side. The chief is taken off guard, and stutters out, “Sure.”
Chief Rodel takes me into the nearby conference room. It has a glass paned window so we can still see Peter outside. Once Chief Rodel closes the door, he seems annoyed.
“What’s this about?” he barks.
“There’s something strange about my last call,” I say. “I think we stumbled onto something big.”
“Evidence?” he asks, curtly.
“None yet.” I clear my throat. “It’s just…odd. So many unrelated women living together in that strange building.”
Chief Rodel waves his hand. “Lots of people are experimenting with offbeat living arrangements these days. Who are we to judge?”
“But, Sir, my gut’s telling me-“
Chief Rodel laughs, raucously. “You don’t have gut instinct. You’re just a rookie.”
Hearing that pisses me off, but I don’t let it show.
“Don’t let that guy go,” I plead. “He could know something.”
Chief Rodel lays his hand on my shoulder. “You have a lot to learn, rookie. Here’s a tip, don’t be so eager.”
With that, he walks out. I watch from the conference room as the Chief resumes his conversation with Peter. They shake hands, and part ways. Before leaving, Peter looks at me through the window, narrows his eyes into slits, and salaciously licks his lips. I see my reflection in the glass pane. My reaction is one of utter disgust. Peter sneers at me, then walks towards the exit.
Peter walks outside, a free man, permitted to walk the streets after threatening several women with a knife. I’m left with an empty rage and profound helplessness, but I embrace these bitter emotions, resolving to use them as motivation.
Chapter Two
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Vince
Leo lays out three shot glasses on the desk. Mateo fills them to the brim with tequila so clear it looks like nothing’s there. This is top shelf stuff. Pop refused to drink anything else. I lift my glass into the air and my brothers follow my lead.
“To Pop,” I say.
“To Pop,” Vince and Mateo say in unison.
I throw the shot down my throat. It’s not my first this morning, so it barely makes a difference. I slide my glass to Mateo, and he fills it up again.
The three of us sit silently in the office. I notice my brothers occasionally glancing up, with this look in their eyes that Pop is up there, magically floating above us. When I look up, all I see are water stains on the ceiling, reminding me that I still haven’t taken care of that.
Mateo chuckles out of nowhere.
“What?” Leo asks.
Mateo grins, then launches into his story. “I was just remembering this one time, I went on a camping trip with the baseball team. Pop was a coach, so he was there. I was in seventh grade, thought I was hot shit, and macho and all that. We were having a campfire one night, and a couple of girls from the softball camp snuck over. I was putting the moves on one of them by the lake, when this idiot came up behind me and pushed me in the water. I was so pissed. I wanted to take the kid out right there. By the time I got out of the water, he’d run away.
“The next day, Pop stopped me in the cafeteria. I’d just gotten out of the line. I was holding my tray and walking towards the tables. I was still stewing about the night before, but I didn’t think Pop knew anything about it.
“‘Stick your foot out when I tell you to,’ Pop said to me. I was
like, ‘what are you talking about?’ He said, ‘just do it.’
“So when when told me to, I stuck my foot out. I felt someone trip. I looked down, and saw that fucking kid from the night before. He was lying in a pool of milk, and he had spaghetti in his hair. He looked up at me with this helpless fucking expression.”
Mateo can barely talk for laughing, but he struggles through.
“The other counselors ran over, asking what happened, and if I tripped what’s-his-name. Pop just kept saying, over and over again, ‘I didn't see nothing. The kid just tripped. He’s one of those uncoordinated ones.’”
I can see this so clearly, Pop maintaining his plausible deniably so stubbornly. I can’t help but burst into laughter. Leo does too. Soon the three of us are wiping our eyes. Leo follows up with a story about his twenty-first birthday, when Pop took him to a bar for the very first time. He let Leo buy them drinks, top shelf tequila, of course. They sat at the bar and drank like equals. Leo said he could’ve gone out with his friends that night, gotten wasted, and gone home with a random girl. But sitting at a quiet bar with his father, two men sharing a drink, is something he’d never forget.
We meditate on Leo’s memory, letting it hang in the air over us. After a few minutes, I can feel them glancing at me, waiting for me to share something. But I don’t have any stories like that. Pop treated me differently than my brothers. I’m the oldest. It’s been a known fact since I was born that I’d someday take over this family. Pop was constantly grooming me for the position, making me observe the other bosses, to see where they failed, and where they succeeded. Even when I was young, he never spared me the gruesome details. I’d have nightmares about it sometimes, people burned alive in their cars, children chopped up to get revenge on their parents. But I was supposed to be tough, to never let it get to me. One day I’d be in charge, and have to shoulder it all, just like him.
“It’s almost time.” I fill my glass one last time and shoot it down. “We better get going.”
We walk outside of the office into the main area of the pool hall. There, Mia and Lily are waiting with their kids. I walk up to my nephew, Nico, who’s almost four years old now, and give him a hearty handshake.
Accomplice: A Dark Mafia Romance (Romano Brothers Book 3) Page 1
