Badge of Evil (37 page)

“Hey, motherfucker, are you gonna move your car or not?”

A. J. opened his eyes. It was just after eleven in the morning, and he and Bishop were in the car in midtown. A cabdriver behind them screamed again in a slight Middle Eastern accent.

“The light's green, motherfucker, MOVE!”

Bishop and A. J. looked at each other and smiled. Then they both looked at the cabbie. “Absolutely,” Bishop said. “Have a great day.”

Bishop hit the gas and they sped downtown on Fifth Avenue. They were on their way to police headquarters. In a very compressed period of time, their relationship had matured the way all good ones do—there was no longer a need for constant forced chatter. They were comfortable enough to sit together in silence. Bishop's XM radio was playing—what else?—the sounds of the seventies, specifically “Easy,” by the Commodores. A. J. was happy to be lost in his thoughts.

Since they'd been back, the papers were filled almost every day with coverage of Fitzgerald, Anderson, Supreme, and Oz. And, of course, Brock. What started in the headlines ended in headlines:
CORRUPT CHIEF COOKS BOOKS,
read the
Daily News
.
AIDE TO COMMISSIONER IN DRUG SCAM WITH CHIEF
, the
Times
wrote. And the
Post
, more playfully, ran with
NYPD'S CHIEF WAMPUM.
The stories were all interesting, but they were woefully incomplete. More often, however, they were just wrong. Fitzgerald and Oz took the rap. Terrorism, the Middle East, and the raid were never mentioned. And no one blamed Brock for anything except being a lousy, distracted manager. The op-ed columnists carped that he should've known what those close to him were doing.

After about fifteen minutes, Bishop pulled up in front of One Police Plaza. They sat in the car for a moment and neither one of them said anything. “Let me come up with you,” Bishop protested halfheartedly. “We should do this together.”

“I don't think so,” A. J. said. “I think we've done more than enough together lately. People are starting to talk.”

“Seriously, I don't wanna be accused, yet again, of not stepping in to help,” he said as A. J. opened the car door. “You're always telling me I need to care about things, to actually give a shit. Well, most people wouldn't have lifted a pinky to help you.” Bishop purposely didn't look at A. J.'s bandaged hand.

“I'm glad to see you haven't gotten any funnier,” A. J. said without smiling. “This is something
I
need to finish. I'll catch up with you later.”

“You sure you don't want me to wait for you?” Bishop asked, making one last attempt to change A. J.'s mind. “The last time somebody dropped you off here alone things didn't turn out so well.”

This time A. J. smiled. “Now that's amusing. See you later.”

A. J. cleared security and stepped off the elevator on the fourteenth floor. Against the advice of his doctor and his wife, A. J. had stopped taking painkillers. They made him feel light-headed and foggy, like his brain was working in a lower gear. But his hand was throbbing now as he held up his visitor's pass and was buzzed in through the security doors to the area outside the commissioner's office. “Good morning,” Brock's secretary said. “He's expecting you.”

She led A. J. into Brock's office and said the commissioner was on his way.
He's still playing games
, A. J. thought as he sat down on the couch.
Fine. This time I'm ready.
The pain kept him focused as he looked around the office at the trappings of power: enormous mahogany desk, huge thronelike leather chair, large windows overlooking lower Manhattan and the East River. And, of course, the mementos. Dozens of vanity photographs with politicians and celebrities: the president, two popes, stars and starlets, athletes, and at least half a dozen foreign heads of state.

A. J. started thinking about North Carolina again. When the shooting had stopped, Zito wanted to contact the local authorities. A. J. agreed. But Bishop convinced them that dealing with the local cops would create too many complications, raise too many questions, and get them entangled in a never-ending web of legal issues. Instead, they called Victoria Cannel and had her get in touch with the Feds. When they returned to New York, they were fully debriefed by the FBI, the CIA, and Homeland Security over several days of fairly intense interrogations. Once the interviews were completed, they assumed Brock was finished. Not only would he lose everything, he'd be facing very serious criminal charges. They waited with great anticipation for him to be dragged out of his office in handcuffs—and the subsequent explosion of headlines. When that didn't happen, Zito, Bishop, and A. J. used their contacts to find out what was going on.

The answer didn't satisfy anyone. It was beyond anything any of them could've anticipated. Homeland Security had thrown a blanket over the entire affair. Beyond murder, corruption, and drug-dealing charges for Oz, Chief Fitzgerald, and Kevin Anderson—all of whom were dead anyway—everything else was now classified until further notice. Using the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a federal crime to release classified information that could harm the government's foreign intelligence activities, the Feds had completely shut them and everyone else down. A. J., Bishop, and Zito were forbidden, under threat of federal prosecution, from talking about any aspect of what had happened—other than the claims and charges that had already been made public. And there was no definitive evidence tying Brock to any of these activities. It was an incredibly bitter pill for them to swallow.

And while there might have been a time earlier in A. J.'s life when he would've considered writing the story and defying the Feds, his days of being a renegade—of believing in telling the story no matter the costs—were behind him. He had a family, and a lifetime of experience as a journalist had taught him that telling the truth was not always the best thing. Sometimes the consequences could be devastating.

Suddenly the private door behind Brock's desk flew open and the commissioner walked in wearing warm-up pants and a sleeveless T-shirt. He had a towel draped over his head and was soaked in sweat. He'd just worked out, and his hands were taped like he'd been boxing or maybe working the heavy bag. Brock was just about finished unwrapping his right hand as A. J. stood up.

Without a word, Brock stepped around the desk toward A. J. and, in one uninterrupted movement, threw his towel in A. J.'s face, pushed him back down on the couch, and removed a Walther PKK/S from the back of his waistband. Racking a round in the chamber, he pointed the gun in A. J.'s face.

“I could just splatter you all over the couch right now and be done with it,” Brock said with little real malice.

A. J. smiled. After all he'd been through, it was going to take more than this bullshit bravado to rattle him. “Go ahead, tough guy,” he said, staring directly into Brock's eyes. “Who're you gonna blame it on? All your patsies are gone. No more Oz, no more Fitzgerald. You're all alone now.”

Stepping back and putting the gun on the desk so he could unwrap his other hand, Brock shook his head slowly in disgust. “This has been a fucking spectacular pain in the ass. But make no mistake, shithead, that's all it's been. The Feds don't have anything on me and neither do you. It's all circumstantial. The president's sent word that he thinks my services would be better utilized outside the confines of a federal post. I really did want Homeland Security. But I'll survive. There'll be other opportunities. I let the president know that I'd rather stay in New York as police commissioner. After all, A. J., if I left, who'd be here to keep an eye on your beautiful little family, right?” Brock said with a wink.

The commissioner went to his chair and sat down heavily. He took a cigar out of an ornate wooden box near the phone. As he leaned forward, A. J. smoothly grabbed the gun off the desk and pointed it at Brock's face. Brock was a little surprised and he almost smiled. A. J. was angry but in control.

“You deluded son of a bitch,” he said. “Are you nuts? You really think there's any way you're going to remain PC after everything you've done? You think I'd let that happen? Make no mistake, motherfucker, you're going to resign immediately.”

“And why's that?”

A. J. was squeezing the gun so tight that his bandaged hand had started to bleed. He was in a shooter's stance, feet shoulder-width apart, both hands on the weapon. Drops of blood were dripping on the commissioner's carpet.

“You're gonna resign as police commissioner because I say so.” A. J. took one hand off the gun, reached into the inside pocket of his blazer, and pulled out a book covered in ornately engraved black leather with a zipper around the outside. Brock recognized it almost immediately. It was the pocket-sized Koran that Oz always carried.

“It's funny, you know,” A. J. said. “With everything going on and all the excitement, I forgot to give this to the Feds. I took it out of Oz's pocket, right after Zito blew his brains all over me and the North Carolina dirt. Did you ever get a chance to look at it? Really interesting reading. Especially all the handwritten entries detailing his various activities. Oz was very organized. I had it translated by an imam I'm friends with uptown.”

A. J. slipped the book back into his pocket and walked around the desk so he was standing over the commissioner.

“Get up, asshole,” A. J. said to him. Seething, Brock complied. He wanted to put his hands around A. J.'s throat and choke the life out of him, but A. J. had the gun stuck in his chest and pointed directly at his heart.

“You don't have the balls to pull the trigger,” Brock said finally.

A. J. took a small breath and adjusted his position slightly as if he were about to shoot. Instead, he delivered a hard, swift, perfectly aimed knee to Brock's balls, giving it everything he had. The commissioner crumpled instantly, curling up in a ball on the rug. A. J. decocked the gun, dropped the magazine on the floor, and racked out the round in the chamber.

“Fuck you, Brock,” A. J. said as he turned to leave. The commissioner, still curled up on the floor, teeth clenched, reached out and grabbed A. J.'s pants leg. Swiftly, and stunningly, A. J. swiveled, reached down, grabbed Brock's hand, and bent the pinky completely back, breaking it instantly.

“That doesn't exactly even the score, but it's a start.”

A. J. strode past Brock's assistant and into the elevator, where he could still hear the commissioner howling.

THE POLICE COMMISSIONER'S
secretary was nothing if not loyal—especially to Mayor Domenico. While the mayor had a long history with Brock and basically trusted him, he also knew the commissioner could be difficult to control. So he had taken a few precautions—trust but verify. This meant skillfully placing someone at the center of Brock's activities—a highly recommended, experienced secretary the commissioner was happy to hire, who would dependably and quietly report to Domenico on the commissioner's activities.

A. J. had barely walked out of Brock's office when the commissioner's secretary phoned the mayor, as requested, to let him know the meeting was over. Brock had no idea Domenico had given the encounter his blessing less than twenty-four hours earlier in a clandestine, late-night meeting with A. J. and Bishop underneath the one-hundred-year-old Hell Gate Bridge in the South Bronx. With his sense of the dramatic, Bishop had chosen the desolate, almost ghostly spot, a place he was familiar with from his days in the Fortieth Precinct. Cops sometimes went there to disappear for a while or engage in off-the-books activity while on duty.

It didn't take much convincing to get the mayor to agree to a meeting. The Feds had filled him in, so when A. J. called, he immediately said yes. A. J. barely had to mention he had information that could affect Domenico's presidential ambitions.

It was a short meeting. Domenico came with only a small security detail in his official black Chevy SUV. Though the mayor had no idea who Bishop was, he'd met A. J. on many occasions and detested him for dogging his administration in the magazine.

“Nice fuckin' location,” the mayor said as he climbed out of the car. “A little creepy for my taste, but whatever. Okay, you got me here, now you've got ten minutes. Start talking. And this better be worth my time.”

“Are you kidding me with that—” Bishop snapped before A. J. cut him off.

“Understand,” A. J. said, “we're beyond angry. But that's not why we're here. Nevertheless, I suggest you show us a little more respect.”

Now it was Domenico's turn to snap. “You arrogant little cocksuckers. Who the fuck do you think you are? Get to the point, A. J. I don't have all night. I don't like you, you don't like me, and a little courtesy's not gonna change that. What do you have for me?”

“If I were you I'd throttle it back,” Bishop said. “We're holding all the fuckin' cards here.”

“If that were true we wouldn't be having this meeting, tough guy,” Domenico said. “I know you can't nail Brock, so let's get on with it.”

“Look,” A. J. said, losing his patience. “It's true our hands are tied here by every goddamned agency in Washington. That is, up to a point. We can't kill your guy, but we can kill your national political ambitions. So I suggest you listen to me carefully. You already know I've agreed not to write about this for the sake of the national interest. Officially. But hey, I can't be held responsible if rumors start to pop up on the Internet. Regularly. People will begin to ask questions, maybe do a little digging. You understand where I'm going with this? I want that sick motherfucker out of public life.”

To make sure Domenico understood the stakes, A. J. took out Oz's pocket Koran. The mayor quickly saw the light and they made a deal.