A person can change and not show it on the outside, but inside, this same person is different. Elaine changed after her meeting with Weiss, in subtle, small ways, like altering the direction of the investigation into Cecil’s abduction. She just waddled into the detective’s office, and asked them, “How you coming with contacting Victor Weiss?”
“Progress is slow, but we’re getting there.” Lan said, holding the phone.
Stuart said something into the receiver, then told them, “I think I’ve got something.”
“I’m pulling you off Weiss,” Elaine blurted out. “It’s much more important we find the Junk Yard Dogs first.” She looked around the office. Everyone was too stunned to speak. “Where’s Carlos and Woodman?” She asked.
“Out in the field, pursuing their own investigative leads.” Lan answered hollowly.
“You mean they’re out there, trying to talk to Weiss directly?” When she found the answer to that question was yes, she left abruptly.
Moore waited for her to leave the room, before asking Lan, glancing at Stuart. “She seem a little erratic to you, lately?”
The oriental man nodded in agreement.
Surrounded by men in dark glasses and black suits, Weiss strode by the two detectives, making for his stretch limo, after a short speaking engagement. A muscular man, with a beard and 20/20 vision, sun tanned complexion and hazel eyes, wearing a tight fitting t-shirt and baseball cap, jeans and tennis shoes.
“Hey, are you Victor Weiss? We have a few questions for you! Would you mind…?” Carlos shouted.
“Hey,” Woodman added, taking a tough stance, “we just want to talk with you.”
The billionaire looked over at the two men, “Contact my lawyers office.”
Carlos and Woodman kept pace outside his security detail.
“Yeah, we’ve been trying to do that,” Carlos explained. “Listen, we just need to ask you a few quick questions. It won’t take long.”
Weiss kept walking, got into his limo and the driver took off. His security men got in the car behind him.
Carlos turned to his partner and said eagerly, “Let’s follow him.”
Carlos and Woodman followed Victor Weiss into town, on Lytton Avenue, lined with an array of businesses, restaurants, banks, churches, laundry mats and tailors. His limo pulled along side the curb and a window was lowered when a Chinese man came out of a shop and handed him a medium sized package, a bundle wrapped in butcher paper, smaller than a laundry box and Woodman and Carlos were both thinking the same thing: drugs, probably cocaine, or china white: a powerful form of heroin.
They both wanted to have a look inside that parcel.
“Let’s pull him over,” Carlos said.
Woodman got on the radio, “Suspect seen with a suspicious package, in the process of pulling him over.”
As he turned on lights and siren, a call came over the radio that gave them pause.
“Cease and desist. Repeat: do not follow, or intercede with Weiss at this time.”
Woodman was about to pick up the mike, when Carlos grabbed his hand. “Come on, we’re taking this guy down.”
“I repeat: Do not follow Weiss.”
“What about the order to cease and desist?”
“We didn’t hear that.”
“Come in black fox.” The radio squawked.
“Are you out of your mind?” Woodman hollered, “They told us to leave him alone.”
“You saw the package. Don’t you want to know what’s in it?” He was grinning, his eyes beaming bright, “If it’s drugs, then he’s compromised. And if you ask me, he’s involved with drugs.”
“You’re involved with drugs!” Woodman cried, trying to talk some sense into a madman.
“This is a career making move! This could be it for us, make us into something more than a couple of stooges!”
The limo pulled over the side of the road. The security men’s car pulled up behind them.
Elaine was in communications, talking with the operators. When she realized, Woodman was not responding, she asked a plump woman, “What’s their last known location? Let’s send a couple of units out there now.”
Meanwhile, at the scene of the pullover, the driver lowered his window.
Carlos proceeded with caution and Woodman had his gun drawn, ready to shoot.
They looked at each other, the driver wondering what this was about, Carlos sizing up the suspect: you’d fit nice in an eight by ten jail cell. “You mind telling me what that was about?” He asked the driver, who was at a loss. He had no idea what Carlos was talking about.
“The package, the package I saw you accept through this window. You mind telling me what’s in it?”
“In a word, laundry.”
Carlos didn’t believe him. He was hiding something, him and his bullshit story. “I’ll have a look at that package if you don’t mind?”
Handing it over, the driver heard someone tap on the tinted glass that separates the different compartments in the car, and it lowered. Weiss was sitting in back and he wanted to know what was going on.
Meanwhile, Carlos was squeezing the package and sniffing it, like a drug sniffing dog. It was semi-soft, yet firm, felt like a pound of cocaine. It had to be, and to prove it…
“No, don’t do that,” said the driver.
The parcel burst open, as Carlos pulled at it from opposite corners, in an effort to tear the paper. However, instead of seeing a baggie of white powder, a bundle of delicate undies sprang out like a jack in the box. Men's underwear made from the finest imported silk, silk Latin briefs, and G-string pouches, the micro thong, requiring special dry cleaning instructions only. A roll of forty or fifty of these delicate undies for men came unravelled and flew on a breeze, up in the air and down on the street, with the cars going by at thirty miles an hour.
“Noooo,” Weiss shouted, ready to kill Carlos.
His men had to restrain him.
“I will get you for this. I will end your career. Say goodbye to your life, because it’s over. It’s over!” Weiss shouted.
As this was being said a couple of squad cars pulled up, lights and siren, followed by the newspaper men, with their flash photography.
Later, Elaine saw Carlos and Woodman in her office. They stood at attention before her desk, wincing from the pain of her words, as she shouted in their faces.
“When I give an order, I expect it to be obeyed. What the hell did you think you were doing when I said cease and desist?”
“We had just pulled the suspect over and we were both outside the vehicle when the order came through. We saw a suspicious package…”
“Bullshit! You’ve made a laughing stock of the police department and one of the richest men in the world as well. The man has enough capital resources at his disposal to bury the department and the city in legal paper work that could last for decades-” She bowed her head in thoughtful silence, then looked them square in the eye and said, “You’ll be answering a lot of questions in the coming weeks at a lot of meetings and a disciplinary hearing, so if I were you, I would seek legal council.” They started to leave. “Oh,” she said, “until further notice, I’m taking you off active duty.”
Detective Moore was in a chair by Cecil’s hospital bedside, listening to his prognosis.
“The doctor said I could go home by the end of the week, but I will require one or two more weeks of bed rest.”
They looked at each other and they both knew, Cecil could never wait that long before getting back to work.
“You’ll be back in a week.” Moore said, looking forward to it.
Cecil laughed, then grabbed his chest in pain.
Moore said, “I thought that only happened in the movies.”
Playing down the seriousness of the situation with a hand motion, Cecil’s voice was horse, “What’s happening on the case?” He coughed.
Moore didn’t know. “I’m so outside the loop, I hardly know what’s happening anymore.”
“That’s all right. Lan dropped by and told me everything.” Instead of finding Cecil’s joke funny, Moore found it depressing, which made Cecil think his old friend was having difficulties of his own. “How’s it going with Internal Affairs?”
Moore said reluctantly, figuring, he better hear this from him, “Now I have a real problem, makes Stuart and her food tampering accusation look like a joke, which it is; I mean, it’s the top brass in the department going after me now, considering sanctions for the way I handled the investigation into your abduction and assault.”
When Cecil heard this, he said, “Oh, my God, what have you done?” Sure Moore really did it this time, really blew it somehow.
Frustrated, Moore blurted out, “They wanted me to sit at my desk and do nothing, while you were God knows where.” His anger flared up and diminished.
Cecil understood. “Just one thing, tell me you didn’t break any laws getting me back.”
Refusing to make eye contact, Moore pursed his lips, considering his best defense, “Depends on what you consider breaking the law?” The joke didn’t land well. Then he was angry again, “Damn It! I did what I had to do to get you back!”
On Moore’s way out of Cecil’s hospital room, he ran into Elaine. Neither one seemed very glad to see each other and they passed by each other silently.
Cecil perked up when he saw what Elaine had for him in a small box, a new pair of glasses and the specks were just like the last pair he owned.
“Wow, these are great. Thanks Elaine.”
She nodded, then said, “And don’t worry about paying for them. They’re completely covered by the department.”
An awkward silence followed. She decided it was time to go and patted his shoulder, as some sort of comfort gesture. “Get some rest,” she said.
Cecil wasn’t feeling tired. In fact, he was thinking about his abduction case. “When they searched Mike Aaron’s Daly City home, a motorcycle was found in the suspects garage. Were they able to obtain a make and model of the bike?”
“I have no idea,” Elaine said. “What motorcycles were the Junk Yard Dogs riding?” Her question had an ulterior motive. Cecil could tell by the inflection of her voice. He said, “I saw a lot of Indian motorcycles, and a few Harley’s as well, why?”
Acting innocent, Elaine said, “I’ll check into it myself.”
At first decided he was worrying for nothing and said, “I saw 3, at least 3 men that attacked me.”
Elaine nodded as if she was listening.
With a suspicious eye, Cecil said, “Mike Aaron name any of his co-collaborators?”
Elaine tried to comfort him with a hand on his shoulder. “Not as yet, but he will.”
Staring into space, Cecil said, “Something has been bothering me about this case.”
“What?”
“The cafe, taking out the dry wall and some floor boards, why?”
“The manager said it had to do with dry rot.”
“Did you get some confirmation on that?”
Balking, Elaine chuckled, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving it a little massage, “Relax, we have it under control.” She said, picking up her purse to leave.
“What about Moore? What’s happening with him?”
“We’re not having this conversation.” Elaine said jovially as she left.
Cecil called after her, “He’s a good man, Elaine. Don’t flush a man’s career down the toilet, because he disobeyed an order once…”
Back at the station, Elaine ran into Lan and Stuart in the hallway. They had some urgent news: a new development in the Mary Donovan slaying: a second body.
Lan was saying, “In Half Moon Bay, a dead body floated ashore near Devil’s Slide about a week ago and the ME’s office in Redwood City took a blood sample and it was a match to the blood found in Nigel Mann’s basement. DNA tests results are pending, of course, but it looks like she’s our second vic. The report described many injuries on the unidentified woman, a massive amount of blunt force trauma to the head, which would explain all the blood we found at the crime scene in the basement and the back of the shovel blade.”
Copyright 2016 William Leslie
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