Choked Up (5 page)

The Grims were a team of eight middle-aged men and women wearing black scrubs working glowing phones and computers inside tinted glass cubicles. A few looked up. No one smiled.

The semi-darkened room had been plucked from an
NCIS/CSI
television handbook of what secret law enforcement headquarters ought to look like. Mesh-paneled floors were interspersed with strips of textured carpet, LCD monitors and tables laden with electronic equipment were illuminated by high-powered micro task lights.

The farther I walked into the L-shaped room, the larger I realized it was. It spanned the entire end of the Onyx Alzheimer's wing. Six black steel doors, each about twenty feet apart, ran the length of the rear wall.

Anita stopped me in front of the fourth door, rapped twice, and left.

A mechanical
click
popped the door open a sliver. I pushed it wide and stepped inside. My feet sank into luxe carpet as I faced a floor-to-ceiling expanse of windows overlooking the Chicago skyline. The door closed and locked on its own behind me.

An insect-thin Japanese woman sat behind a scarlet lacquered desk the size of a Fiat Abarth. Her heavy dark hair stopped a precise inch above the shoulders of her celadon silk suit. “I'm your handler, Danny Kaplan.”

“Excuse me?”

“For what?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Your surprise at my unisex name or the archaic mind-set that an American named Kaplan should be Caucasian?”

“Neither, ma'am,” I said mildly. “I thought Mr. Sawyer was my handler.”

“Walt Sawyer?” Her laugh was as harsh and sharp as the whine of wet birch through a wood chipper. “Lord, save me from yet another recruit as raw as steak tartare.”

I smiled politely and glanced around the room, letting her have her fun. Whoever had designed the outer office had pulled out all the stops. The remaining three walls were filled with black lacquer bookcases and file cabinets. The only break in the shiny ebony were six art-lit pottery pieces encased in glass boxes. I recognized one—an Oribe ware dish and lid that probably belonged in a museum.

“Special Unit is funded from a variety of private sources as well as federal and state. Our results are exemplary, and as Special Unit finds discretionary income to be the better part of valor, we are amply rewarded.” Kaplan raised a chic pair of rim-free glasses and after a long and careful inspection of me, set them down with a sniff. She picked up a micro-digital recorder. “Maisie McGrane. Five-seven, one-twenty, natural redhead currently a bottle-blonde, eyes green, small frame, fit. Twenty-four. Could pass for nineteen. For now.” She lowered her hand. “Fresh-faced naïveté doesn't last long in our business. Sit.”

A single straight-backed chair held several oversized black binders labeled
O-S-T
. I picked them up.

“Those are yours to memorize.”

And sat down with the ten-pound homework assignment on my lap.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Ms. Kaplan tipped slightly back in her chair and tapped her pewter-polished nails together. “The Italians are outsourcing. They've green-lighted several of the Belgravian clans of the Srpska Mafija, the Serbian Mafia, throughout the United States. The Srpska aims to become a leader in the lucrative world of arms trafficking. And they're financing their expansion in part via car theft. The Slajic Clan is working Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, St. Louis.”

A spark of excitement jumped in my chest.
Oh yeah. Welcome to the Majors.

She continued, “Auto thefts are already up twenty-three percent from last year's watermark of shame. The ripple effect of these thefts is hundreds of millions of dollars, hence insurance companies are crawling all over the CPD, demanding federal investigations.” Her dark red lips twisted in a cynical smirk. “Never mind the body count, which, in the low teens, remains relatively unnoticed.”

Kaplan raised a remote control from a desk tray and pointed it at the bank of windows. A large screen slid down. “The Srpska are cloning, shopping, and chopping simultaneously.”

She clicked through several slides. “Cloning. Thieves change the VIN numbers, apply for title with fraudulent docs, and resell them. Shopping means they steal an order of desired vehicles, load them into containers, and ship them overseas. Chopping is the process of completely dismantling and selling the parts, or partially hijacking vehicles for high-dollar items such as air bags and side panels.” Danny Kaplan leaned forward, a smile just shy of a sneer on her lips. “So why do you think the CPD's Auto Theft Department is so incredibly inefficient?”

Neato. A pop quiz.
“Three guys can strip a Honda Accord down to frame in eight minutes.” I shrugged. “You don't need an operational base for eight minutes. Steal a car or truck, drive it a couple of blocks away, and strip it in the back of an outfitted semi or an abandoned building.”

“That's . . . correct.” She tapped the remote and the screen lit up with the words
Operation Steal-Tow
. “The common denominator of all three methods is the theft itself. They're using tow trucks—some rogue, some from legitimate companies.”

She pressed the remote button and a photo of a gray-haired man with a cruel and bloated face flashed on the screen. “Goran Slajic.” The picture had been taken through the window of a Serbian restaurant. “Never leaves Serbia. His Chicago proxy is his nephew, Stannislav ‘The Bull' Renko.” The pale face of the man who rescued me from Gap Tee appeared on the screen. “Cruel, capable, and competent. A triple threat.”

“Stannis,” I whispered.

“What?” Her voice snapped like a whip. “What did you say?”

“I know that man as Stannis.”

“Enlighten me.”

Heat crept up my neck. “I was working and some mope on the street assaulted me. Stannis stopped him.”

“Renko? Really?” Her fingers separated then intertwined. “How unlike him . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you pals now?”

“No. But you could say I owe him a favor.”

“Which you'll repay, by showing him the error of his ways.” She took a folder from the desk drawer and opened it. “Ground intelligence has been difficult to amass. We have enough evidence to arrest a few of the low-level members of Renko's crew, but not enough to flip anyone. Yet.” She scribbled a note as she spoke. “Your assignment is to collect photographic evidence of every possible illegal tow. Nothing more, nothing less. This is not an infiltration.”

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear to you, Miss McGrane. In the Bureau of Organized Crime, you are a rank-and-file police officer. Within Special Unit, you're barely a grunt.”

I nodded, itching to salute. “Yes, ma'am.”

“If your aim is to become a specialist, investigator, detective, or field agent, you earn it with years of proven service. There is no room for grandstanders.”

I kept nodding, feeling like a bobblehead on a dirt road.

“Don't think being hand-selected by Walt Sawyer makes you special,” Kaplan said. “Every one in Special Unit was.”

I bit back a smile. If that was supposed to sting, it didn't.

“After some deliberation with Walt, I have decided the most innocuous course of action is for you to maintain your present employment with the Traffic Enforcement Bureau using your own identity.”

Something sucked the air from my lungs. “What?”

Danny Kaplan's eyes glinted. “Maisie McGrane, you're still a meter maid.”

 

I spent the next three hours in a glass cubicle, reviewing known crimes attributed to Slajic's and the other Belgravian clans, looking for patterns and commonality amidst torture, murder, rape, and assault. The Srpska Mafija liked to leave messages and preferred them gory. From what little information I could find on Stannislav Renko, the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree.

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, trying to focus on Stannis and not the fact that I was still a goddamned meter maid, only now I was armed with a camera and a license to stalk.

Detective RN Anita rapped on my partition. “Lunchtime, Rook.”

I pushed back from my desk. “Sure.”

We returned to the main hallway of the Onyx wing, stopping short of the elevators, and entered the room labeled Dining Room off the nurses' center. It had the look of a well-to-do country club: damask-upholstered armchairs, cherrywood tables, even a short stocked bar at the far end of the room.

“Pretty deluxe cafeteria,” I said.

“Special Unit is all about the perks.” Anita nudged me with an elbow. “C'mon. Time to meet Uncle Edward.”

A cherubic man in his late sixties with an infectious smile waved us over to the only occupied table in the room. He had thick alabaster-white hair and a matching goatee and wore a hunter green cardigan over a shirt and tie. “Thank you, Anita dear.” Anita exited via what looked to be the kitchen doors at the end of the room.

He held out a hand. “Miss Maisie McGrane. Me-oh-my, if I had one like you at home, I'd never leave the house.”

I'd heard that old line of blarney from the time I could walk, but from him, it sounded as though he'd composed it on the spot.

We shook hands. “Sir.”

“It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I'm the CFO of the BOC, Edward Dunne. Take a load off.”

I did. Edward smiled at me. “How are you finding your first day?”

Something about him loosened my tongue. “A bit anticlimactic, sir,” I said wryly. “I'm still a meter maid.”

“Ah, but you're an undercover officer
masquerading
as a meter maid.” He chuckled. “The job is what you make of it.”

“Yes sir.”
Not like I haven't heard that one before.
“About that. How exactly does one become a field agent?”

“Not easily,” Edward said thoughtfully. “Hard work and desire, naturally. And a leprechaun's worth of luck.”

“That I've got.” I grinned and raised my palms. “In spades.”

“And how did you find Ms. Kaplan?”

“Er . . . intense, sir.”

“Sweet saintly Jesus! Intense, you say.” Edward chuckled. “She brings new meaning to the words ‘bitch on wheels.' Don't take Danny's animosity too personally. Her promotion from field to desk, while physically necessitated—shot in the line of duty—has been a bitter pill. Not to mention”—he leaned forward and spoke confidentially—“you're Walt's sole female field recruit since he brought her on years ago. Poor thing must be as jealous as all get-out.”

I tried unsuccessfully not to smile. “Thank you, sir.”

“Enough with the formalities. You're forbidden to call me anything other than Edward.”

A stocky waiter with a laden tray emerged from the door Anita had disappeared into. “Tomato bisque soup with sourdough brie and fig paninis.” He placed two plates in front of us and two bottles of Pellegrino. “I'm Frank. Kitchen staff and floor security. Welcome aboard, Maisie.”

“Thanks. Nice to meet you, Frank.”

Frank left and Edward took a bite of grilled cheese. He closed his eyes, savoring it. “Glorious. One of the reasons half of Special Unit resides here.”

My sandwich stopped halfway to my mouth. “Really?”

“Oh yes.” Edward nestled back in his chair and nibbled away at the panini triangle. “Most of us are, well . . . unable to leave the job alone anyway, so it proved prudent to have our headquarters where we don't need to leave, don't open ourselves up to exposure.”

“It's rather like living in an extremely secure hotel. Laundry, food, gym, medical. No one is ever caught in traffic. Work is ten months on, two months off. Makes for lovely vacations.”

Holy cat.
My knee started bouncing. “How did this come about?”

“Walt Sawyer's brainchild. Of course, he was well-heeled enough to fund it. And a hard enough bastard to secure our unusual system of quid pro quo when it comes to busts.” He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a stack of $100 prepaid Visa cards, and set them at my elbow. “Every girl needs a bit of walking-around money. Never mind receipts. An e-mailed summary of how it was spent is all that's required.”

His fingers strayed to his goatee. His tone grew serious. “You may not feel this is an important assignment, Maisie, but everything that comes out of Special Unit has been carefully considered.”

I nodded. I had the eerie feeling that I was wading neck-deep near a drop-off. Maybe meter maiding would make for a successful transition.

“Are you ready to ground and pound, Officer McGrane?”

“Yessir.”
Am I ever.

Ragnar's faded blue pickup, still in the Silverthorn Estates dropoff circle, started as I approached it. The Norse guardian was observant.

I'd crammed a week's worth of learning into eight hours. I had the faces down, the names, and the rest of it. After my meeting with Edward Dunne, I now had an unregistered, untraceable Remington R51 9mm pistol in the waistband of my pants, fifteen $100 Visa prepaid cards, and a second preloaded retrofitted iPhone chock-full of little tricks.

Ragnar reached across and pushed open the passenger door. I climbed in. “Sorry I took so long. You must be starving. And bored.”

“Nah. This is light duty.”

“Guy, you've spent over thirteen straight hours in a truck. When's your guard duty shift over?”

“When I see Bannon's fucking mug.”

“And when will that be?”

“Hell if I know,” Ragnar said. “How's your friend?”

“Okay.”

He put the truck in Drive. “Where to?”

“Wherever you want to get something to eat.”

“Kid.” He ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair. “I'm not the goddamn problem you need to be fretting over.”

“So?” he said. “Where to?”

“My parents' house. Please.”

A half hour later, Ragnar turned onto my street. Daicen's silver Audi gleamed in the driveway. Which meant Mom and probably Declan were there, as well. “Argh. Keep going,” I said. “The legal eagles have landed.”

He drove to the end of the block and turned the car off. “What the hell?”

“I live in that house with four cops and three attorneys. None of whom are stupid or blind.” I raised my palms. “Decision time, Ragnar. You are cordially invited to dinner as my buddy from the gym or, unlike last night, you find a way to keep you and your truck out of sight.”

He frowned. “I don't like this.”

“I know.” I got out of the truck. “You're more than welcome for dinner if you change your mind. Just ring the bell.”

“Hang on.” He hopped out of the truck and pointed his index and middle fingers at his eyes. “I'll watch you in.”

I let myself in through the front door. Mom's voice, then Declan's and Daicen's, went around and around in their usual sort of muted argument. A case. Probably a big one. I slipped upstairs and into my bedroom, where I stashed my new gear and the Kimber Solo in the nightstand and changed into yoga pants and an old Jameson Whiskey T-shirt.

I felt fuzzy and hot. I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes.

Stress reliever number one: Avoidance Nap.

A car door slammed and I jerked awake. The digital clock read 6:00 p.m. I got to the window in time to see the twins pull out of the driveway in Daicen's car. Two less people to lie to. I took a shower, dried my hair, and spent an inordinate amount of time applying war paint. I hadn't seen my father in almost three months.

I stared at my reflection and said, “Today I am a police officer.” And my traitorous dark side snarked,
Maybe, but you're still not a member of the Table Club.

Comical, in a sick way. My whole life I wanted to be a part of my da and brothers' world, and now that I was, I still couldn't say a goddamn thing.

I marched into the walk-in closet and looked for something edgy and still girly enough to make Da feel guilty. As if that was possible. I stepped out wearing leggings, a Marc Jacobs tunic, and knee-high Frye boots.

I went downstairs. Toots Thielemans's “Old Friend” played through the sound system. Which meant one thing: Belgian night. I followed the music into the kitchen.

“'Allo, Maisie!” Thierry, our French housekeeper, stood at the sink, noisily washing mussels. One of my all-time favorites.

“How'd you know I'd be home?”

He pointed a paring knife at a dark wooden crate on the opposite end of the granite counter. Burned into the wood were the words
Normandy, France
. I unlatched and opened the lid. A small brown envelope with
Maisie
on the front lay across two cloth-wrapped bottles surrounded by excelsior. I freed one from its gray cotton sackcloth. A 1972 Christian Drouin Dom
coeur de lion millesime
. Calvados brandy.

“Very good,” Thierry said. “Very hard to get, Maisie.”

I set the bottle of French brandy on the counter. “Moules and frites from this?”

“Half of Belgium is displaced French,” Mom said, coming into the kitchen. She hugged me tight. “Read the card, baby. Give us some joy.”

I opened it and read aloud,

“Dashiell Hammett,” I said, missing Hank like hell.

Mom's café-au-lait fingers plucked the card from my hand, and she fanned herself in mock swoon. “Mmm-mm-mmm. If the man's taste in fiction wasn't enough to love him, his propensity to quote it sure is.”

“He's sweet that way.”

She raised a delicately winged brow.
Uh-oh.
I shook my head to clear away the love haze.

Mom tapped the card on the counter. “Clever, too. Bribing you to come home to us now.”

“The vic on the car was a random killing.”

She poured herself a large glass of chardonnay. “Tell that to your father.”

“Maybe I would if we were speaking.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “It's exhausting and unproductive to be angry all the time, Maisie. Not to mention you're the one coming up short.”

She had a point. Da scuttled me and yet I was the one who lost the family. And while living with Hank pretty much mitigated any loss ever, I missed them terribly.

I tried to clear the fist-sized lump in my throat. “Forgive and forget, is that it?”

“Nothing so simplistic. What your father did was wrong.” Mom laid a hand on my cheek. “But carrying around anger and hurt as a shield isn't nearly as effective as wielding it like a straight razor, slicing at will when the moment presents itself.”

Thierry waved a mussel at me. “Your mother, Maisie. She has the Corsican heart.”

Mom laughed, but her eyes were serious. “How about we try to find a way to live with this?”

I nodded.

“Let's start with you staying here whenever Hank's out of town.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'd like that.”

Mom and I crossed the hall and walked into the dining room. Da, Flynn, and Rory sat at one end of the long walnut table, drinking whiskey, wearing expressions hotter and blacker than liquid tar. Cash, his chair balanced on two legs, was texting, oblivious. Mom and I sat down on either side of Cash.

“How do, Snap?” Flynn said. “The roughneck let you out of the kennel, huh?”

“Careful . . .” Mom lifted her wineglass in caution.

Da shot me a small smile I couldn't return.

Flynn reached over and ruffled my hair in apology, which he knew I hated. “Sorry, Snap. It was like goddamn
Deliverance
today.”

Thierry came in bearing crusty French bread, herbed butter, spinach salads, and serenity. Cash returned the front legs of his chair to the floor. “You can't believe what they're trying to do in Vice. On Friday—”

“What makes you think we give a good goddamn?” Rory said.

Da raised a palm. “Easy, now.”

“The bloody BOC,” Rory muttered and threw back his whiskey.

My ears swiveled like a NSA tracking dish. “What?”

“Bureau of Organized Crime,” Flynn said. “We've been working four homicides. All mutts with records from here to eternity, all iced in different ways. But each one had things . . . missing.”

Rory sloshed another three fingers of Jameson into his glass. “And they all traded in wheels.”

Mom tapped a fingernail on the rim of her glass, interested now, the former prosecutor in her never far from the surface. “What were they missing?”

“Fingers, for one thing,” Flynn said. “But the other pieces were different. One without toes, another an ear, and one poor bastard had an ice cream–sized scoop of flesh carved out of his ass.”

Rory gave a mirthless bark of laughter. “Goddamned Sawyer tells us we don't know what the feck we're doing and he's got it now and it's all VICAP and coordinating with the Feds, that sanctimonious son of a—”

“Sawyer?” My brain pinged inside my skull like Speedy Gonzales on nitrous.

“Aye,” Da scoffed, sliding into heavy Irish, “Walt the-black-hearted-bastard Sawyer.”

“That's enough, Conn.” Mom sucked in her cheeks. “Walt is a good friend.”

Da circled the whiskey in his glass. “He was a helluva lot more than that to yeh.”

Wow. What you don't hear at the dinner table.
The nasty little part of me, the cruel vengeful bit I pretend doesn't really exist, whispered,
Talk about taking a straight razor when the time is right.

Flynn and Rory went still. Cash quit texting.

Mom took a measured sip of wine. “I think marrying a widower and adopting his six small children is testament enough to my preference.”

Da laughed. “That it is, darlin'. That it is.”

Thierry removed the salad plates and returned with plates of moules, frites in paper cones, and icy Stella Artois.

I dipped a frite into spiced mayonnaise, and took a bite. “Best ever.”

“You say that every time.” Cash flipped one into the air and caught it in his mouth. “But when you're right, you're right.”

“Jaysus, Mom,” Rory groused, unable to let it go. “Do you've any idea how hard we've worked these cases?” He stabbed a mussel out of its shell.

“Ultimately, it's four less for you to clear, isn't it?” she asked.

“A feckin' comfort, eh?” Rory's dark eyes blazed. “You know as well as I do, the BOC's in bed with every lowlife skell and politician in Chicago.”

“Yeah,” Flynn said. “They've got all the objectivity of the IRS at a Tea Party rally.”

Mom gave a snort of laughter into her wine. Which set Da to chuckling and Rory to smile. A tiny, relieved giggle burst from my chest.

No matter what, we were still a family.

The doorbell rang.

“I got it.” I stood up so fast I almost knocked over my chair.

Great. Just when things were calming down.