Chapter 13

The aftermath of the vicious assault on the police headquarters left a lousy taste in my mouth and made me more attentive to possible threats close enough to cause me harm.

My Uncle was in a rotten mood and was staying mum on the investigation.

That did a lot to increase my sense of paranoia about who was a good guy and who was worth a second look.

The day started badly and got worse when my cute secretary with whom I had had some special moments announced in a stage whisper as she was pouring my coffee that her pregnancy test had come up positive and she might have to spend more time in the office and behind the desk.

To say the least, it left me a little dumbfounded because I had always been careful about using protection with her and did my level best to only hit on her on extremely rare moments.

Julie must have been reading my thoughts because she hastened to reassure me that she was fairly certain it was her military active duty boyfriend that had spent an entire weekend with her just before departing on an overseas assignment. They were just waiting for the opportunity to get hitched as soon as he got discharged and got a job driving a truck. His father was a big-wig in the Teamsters Union and was pissed he volunteered for the draft when there was money to be made pushing a rig cross-country. It surprised me a bit because I always considered Julie to be a bit of an innocent and not prone to spreading her legs easily.

On the plus side, she didn’t seem to be overly upset by the bewildering news and told me that her “Ralph” would be getting out in less than six months and they could get married with plenty of time before the birth. I certainly didn’t want to put a damper on her attitude and took a positive note in the whole affair. Still, I had a worry in the back of my mind that with the military, you never could be quite certain that everything would fall into place without some sort of difficulty.

Her main worry was that her parents upstate might get upset and she asked me to keep silent about her being in a family way and not spill the beans on the phone to her mom or her dad. She told me the first few months she could still do a lot of the regular legwork for me and I figured I could get one of her roommates to help out with that chore because they were always looking to make an extra buck to help pay the rent. They were sort of opposites in the looks department and that was why I had tagged them as “Betty” and “Veronica” without their permission. Julie thought it was amusing that I referred to them that way but she kept it a secret because they might be sensitive about the difference.

Julie handed me a large manila envelope that had been delivered by messenger to the office.

Since it was marked “Personal” for my attention, she had not opened it and I was glad because it was thick enough to make it a suspicious package and I wanted to wand it first to check it out. Everything seemed fine and I opened it with my little Swiss Army knife being careful about how I did it.

I spread the files on my desk and looked at no less than two dozen Internal Affairs investigations of suspected dirty cops with recorded payoffs from organized crime figures and attorneys representing gang members. I knew some of these guys and I guess I was a little shocked to see them in this hall of shame. There was enough guilt to go around for any of them to have taken down Raymond before he could inform on them and I was beginning to think the assault on the police headquarters was payback for the investigation.

It was easy to deduce that someone in Internal Affairs was unhappy with how the details were being shoved under the carpet and had sent them to me knowing I would have no problem with passing this stuff onto the right authorities for corrective action.

I got Julie out of the “feeling sorry for herself” mood and directed her to make at least ten copies of the file and put them into different envelopes. Then, I told her to take them over to the railway station and put them into ten different safe deposit boxes with a 30 day paid status on each. We placed the keys into bank safety deposit vault for safekeeping. That would keep her busy for the rest of the day and would allow me time to head uptown to the State Attorney General’s office to meet my former Army buddy and fellow veteran who was low level but inside the Attorney General’s office and a good contact to test the waters about his bosses attitude on prosecuting a case against the corrupt city bureaucracy. The fact that he was from the opposing party was a big plus in this case, but you never knew who was in bed with whom in politics.

We met at the local Irish pub and deli across the street that still had sawdust on the floor like the old days. Jimmy was minus one leg just above the knee and he had one glass eye from an explosion of unknown origin overseas. We were in different units but got to know each other in the VA hospital system that moved slowly but actually spared no expense in helping out combat injured veterans. He didn’t drink a beer like me but he was on the government payroll and needed to keep a good profile in case any higher ups were snooping around checking on the worker bees. The roast beef sandwich was first rate and I forgot about my bad tooth and dug in with gusto until it had disappeared inside my belly. I gave him an extra copy of the file and told him to guard it unless he met with a receptive frame of mind from the office.

A girl who must have been from Jimmy’s office came over to the table took some of his French fries from his plate. She was sort of plain looking and had a strange gap in her front teeth that made you look there and overlook her lack of beauty.