Badge of Evil (15 page)

“Ooooooh, I love it when you talk dirty. But I don't know what you mean.”

“Whatever,” Lucy replied, rolling her eyes and shrugging her shoulders.

After a few minutes of quiet, they filled the rest of the forty-five-minute ride into New Jersey with meaningless chatter about politics. They agreed on practically nothing but managed to keep the conversation pleasant. Bishop was amazed that someone so hot could be so smart—and not be jaded. Lucy was optimistic in a way he hadn't seen in a long time.

At Lucy's direction, they pulled off the highway at a very expensive, upscale suburban town and drove to a large, meticulously kept municipal park. In the front area where you drove in, there was a gleaming public pool, basketball courts, a roller-hockey rink, and eight tennis courts. “Keep going past the last tennis court,” Lucy told Bishop. “The fields are in the back.” There were three baseball diamonds and two softball fields, all of them buzzing with activity. Bishop drove out to the farthest field, where A. J. was standing at home plate and hitting grounders to the infielders. As he and Lucy got out of the car and walked toward the field, they could hear him giving instructions to the girls. He was direct but encouraging, demanding but with a deft touch. It was easy to see he cared about the girls and they hung on his every word.

“Ash,” he said to a girl playing third base, “make sure you stay down on the ball and look it all the way into your glove. And remember, on a hard-hit ball like that you've got plenty of time to make the throw.”

A. J. saw Lucy and Bishop walking toward the field, but he didn't acknowledge them for more than fifteen minutes. His focus was on the girls. Finally, he told the team to take a couple of laps and then get some water. Only after the girls started running did he walk over and say hello. He looked at his watch and then at Lucy.

“Weren't you supposed to call me?” he asked her. Lucy began to stammer. “And what time were you supposed to meet me?”

“You said six fifteen at your house,” Lucy responded haltingly.

“And where are we now and what time is it?”

Bishop tried to interject. Without even looking at him, A. J. held up his hand and said, “Am I cross-eyed? I didn't think so. I'm talking to Lucy, not you.”

Bishop laughed it off, but Lucy, who usually had all the self-assurance and poise of someone with twice her experience, suddenly looked like one of the teenage girls on the field trying to please the coach.

“I'm sorry, A. J., it's my fault,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure there was no confusion about my instructions. Let's move forward.”

A. J. was wearing warm-up pants and a Brooklyn Half Finisher T-shirt from the previous year's race. He looked warm, dusty, and sweaty. He went over to the dugout and picked up a water bottle.

“We need to talk,” Bishop said.

“Okay. Lucy, do me a favor and hang here till the girls are done running. When they finish, tell them to get a drink, take a little breather, and then do the over-under drill. They'll understand. I'll be back before they're done. Bishop, let's take a walk.”

A. J. and Bishop headed toward the other field. Bishop was amazed by how many girls were out practicing on a Tuesday afternoon. And they all looked like ballplayers. They threw hard, they hit screaming line drives, they dove for grounders, and the pitching was downright frightening. He couldn't believe how fast they threw. He knew girls played, but not like this.

“They're pretty good, aren't they?” A. J. said. “People who've never seen athletic teenage girls play softball are always amazed. You play ball in school?”

“Me?” Bishop said. “No. I was awful. I had to play ball in shoes when I was younger. My father said I was so bad it was a waste of money to buy me sneakers. My brother was the athlete and he got all the equipment. It's one of the reasons I started working out.”

“Listen,” A. J. said after an awkward pause. “You didn't have to come all the way out here to apologize. A phone call would've been sufficient.”

“That's funny,” Bishop said without a smile. “This is a nice life you've got here. I never would've taken you for a girls' softball coach.”

“Why would you assume anything about me? You're an investigator, but you have no clue who I am. You don't know anything about me.”

“You lived in the Bronx until you were five,” Bishop countered. “Then you moved to a modest two-family house in Queens, which your parents could only afford to buy by renting half of it. Your father had a nondescript office job with the city and making ends meet was always a struggle. Your intellectual gifts were recognized early and you skipped fourth grade. You also skipped eighth grade. You went to Stuyvesant High School, which meant you commuted by subway for an hour and fifteen minutes each way. You were basically a lazy student, bored probably, who got by on natural ability. You went to City College, lived at home, and mostly skipped classes and hung out with your friends. You dropped out after your sophomore year and worked at odd jobs for a while before talking your way into a bottom-rung job at the
Daily News
. That lasted about four years—”

“Okay, okay, I get the point,” A. J. said, cutting him off. Now it was his turn to be surprised. “You know how to use Google and did some homework. I stand corrected.”

“Not exactly the preppy, Ivy League, top-tier background people probably assume the buttoned-up, accomplished journalist A. J. Ross would have, right?”

“Are you gonna continue with this?” A. J. said, starting to get a little annoyed. “Besides, people who live in half–Puerto Rican, half-Polish houses shouldn't throw stones.”

Bishop laughed. “Good comeback,” he said. “Let's call it a draw. Besides, I didn't come out here to talk about you. Or me, believe it or not. I came to talk about the case. I appreciate what you did in Brooklyn, calling in the cops. You didn't have to help me. Especially after the way I treated you. I gave you no intel at all and I'm sure you figured I was just winging it. But my guys did some legwork in the neighborhood—they ran Jafaari's phone bill and his credit cards—so the places I went and the people I talked to weren't random. I had a plan. Not a very good one, I'll admit, but it was a plan. I went out there intending to shake things up a little. I just left the blender on too long.”

“Way too long,” A. J. said.

“I shouldn't have gotten you in the middle of it. Anyway, I'm here to tell you that even though I'm under orders to work with you, I want to voluntarily cooperate on this.”

A. J. was watching the action on the field while he listened. He didn't say anything for a few minutes after Bishop finished. Bishop thought maybe he was still pissed. Then he stood up and stepped off the bleachers. “You see that girl at shortstop?” A. J. asked, stretching his legs. “Watch how she gets ready on every pitch. Her knees are bent, she's on the balls of her feet, and both of her hands are low to the ground and a little out in front of her. She's balanced, focused, and ready to move. When a ball's hit to her, there's no excess motion, no showy maneuvers. On a hard grounder she doesn't have to waste time getting her hands down to where the ball is and then bringing them back up to throw. They're already in position and the only direction they go is up, when she brings the ball into her body after she catches it. She hasn't missed a ball since we've been here. It's all about fundamentals. Doing the little things right. You want to be a real player, that's how you build your game.”

“So, is that an ‘Okay, Frank, good, I want to cooperate on this too'?” Bishop asked, aware of what A. J. was saying.

“I guess,” A. J. responded without much enthusiasm as he started walking back to the other field. “But no more bullshit.”

“Okay,” Bishop agreed.

“Something's not right about this case. I'm not even talking about the fact that Brock participated in the raid. I mean, the police commissioner has us both brought to the Sheraton, where he's introducing Mayor Domenico at a major fund-raiser, just so he can tell us to back off? What the hell was that?”

“There's more,” Bishop said. “When I held that fat guy's head to the fire in the hookah bar—”

“The expression,” A. J. interrupted, “is to hold someone's
feet
to the fire.”

“I know the expression,” Bishop said, “but I literally held his fucking head to the fire. After you bailed on me when the fighting started, I took care of the thugs from next door. Then, in the little time I had before the mob overran the place and the cops showed up, I wanted to persuade that fat fuck that it was in his best interest to talk to me. So we had a brief chat over the kitchen stove.”

“And?”

“Well . . . ,” Bishop said, watching a vicious line drive rocket over the left-center-field fence. “Shit, did you see that shot? One of your girls hit that?”

“It was my daughter. Remember, focus. So what'd he say?”

“I can't believe a girl hit that. I mean, no offense. Anyway, when I asked him why he'd immediately taken such a hard line, he said it was ‘my people' who told him he better not talk.”

“Hold on,” A. J. said, waving one of his players over and telling her to bring the team off the field. Practice was over. “What the hell's that mean, your people?”

“The cops.”

“He said the cops told him to keep his mouth shut?”

“Yup.”

“Okay,” A. J. said. “That takes this to a whole new level of strange. Did he say anything else?”

“No, that's when all hell broke loose.”

A. J. told the girls to get all the gear together and then take a seat in the usual place. They dutifully rounded up three buckets of softballs, the bases, two mesh hitting screens, batting helmets, bats, orange cones, and some other miscellaneous items. Without being told, they picked up the empty water and Gatorade bottles and tossed them, and when they finished, they sat in a little circle on the grass in right field. A. J. went over what they needed to work on, told them what they had done well, and answered a few questions. Then he said he'd see them Friday.

With that, he turned to Bishop and Lucy and said, “Let's go, we're gonna be late for dinner. I'll meet you at the house. Lucy knows the way. Annie,” he yelled to his daughter, who'd already rounded up several teammates she was bringing back to the house for dinner. “You ready? Good, let's rock.”

None of them noticed the dark blue sedan with New York plates and tinted windows parked on the street just beyond the left-field fence. Someone inside was watching them.

“COMMISH, YOU SURE
you don't want me to drive? No? Okay. Lemme know if you change your mind.”

Lawrence Brock was on the New Jersey Turnpike heading toward Washington, DC. His moment had finally arrived. He was going to the White House to meet with the president, who was set to ask him to become the nation's chief of Homeland Security. “A fucking cabinet post,” Brock kept repeating to himself. He still couldn't believe it. There he was, with his GED and his murdered, drug-addict father, about to become a member of the president's cabinet. God bless America. Even though he felt like he'd spent thirty years training for this moment—and it was part of his
plan
—he was still shocked and amazed that it was actually happening. Most of the candidates for these jobs were groomed to go this route from very early on. They went to the right schools, clerked for the right judges, worked at the right law firms and investment banks, and schmoozed the right political people. Brock's resume included none of the classic qualifications. He was like someone from a parallel universe: the tatted-up bad boy the debutante takes home to meet her parents.

Of course, to see the president, he actually had to get to Washington, which, as he sat in turnpike traffic that was barely moving, was starting to look like no small task. A steady, heavy rain had been falling for several hours and the roads were a mess. Brock had already been in the car for nearly three hours and he was still only in some unidentifiably ugly part of South Jersey. Though he was in his personal car, a Lincoln Navigator, rather than his official city car, he had two detectives with him. Sam Cho, Brock's number one and his main bodyguard, was, as usual, in the front passenger seat, while Chester Mickens sat in back. He'd brought them along more for companionship than anything else, and he hadn't yet decided if the city was picking up the tab.

Brock had been the subject of Homeland Security rumors for weeks, at least a month or more before he'd initially heard from the White House. The first contact was an e-mail, which directed him to call someone on the president's staff the next day. This message was very clear that no commitment was being made and he should tell absolutely no one, not even the mayor (who had virtually engineered the whole thing, collecting on the favors he was owed for tirelessly campaigning on behalf of the president in last year's election). The exchanges between the White House and Brock rapidly progressed from an e-mail and a short phone call to a résumé, completion of a tedious sixty-four-page application, ten years' worth of financial data, and excruciating details about every hangnail, hiccup, and untraditional event in his very untraditional life. Given Brock's motley, unlovely background, this was a significant undertaking. The phone calls and paperwork were endless. He had spent nearly two hours on Sunday afternoon sitting in the back room at Fat Jack's Steakhouse, talking on his cell phone to the Attorney General.

Considering how sensitive presidents had become to the embarrassment of having a nominee forced to withdraw as a result of some unexpected revelation, it was hard to believe that Brock could even make it through the background check. But there were two huge factors clearing his path. The White House staff naturally assumed that as New York City's police commissioner, Brock had already been heavily scrutinized and picked apart by the toughest, most rapacious media in the country. More important, the president really liked Brock, specifically because of his up-from-the-streets, take-no-prisoners, regular-guy personality.