The Storm Protocol (16 page)

‘Who are you, Mr Mystery Man?’ I asked
, in a whisper.

13
th
May 2011 – Three Days after the Storm.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead. – Carl Von Clausewitz.

‘Hey Dale, get the fuck off my couch!’

He felt the hands
grab his clothes roughly, before he was viciously spun towards the ground. He dropped about a foot and a half, to land with a thud on the hard laminate floor. Dazed and disoriented, he staggered to his feet. A large coffee cup was thrust into his bemused hand.

‘Stop fucking sleeping on the job, Foster,’ his boss said. ‘It pisses me off. I have to kick my drunken slob of a student son off the sofa every second morning. I don’t see why I should have to do it at work
, too.’

‘Sorry
sir, it won’t happen again,’ said Dale groggily.

‘Anyways; seeing as you are here, go and get a shower, and then hook up with Dodds. I’ll tell him to wait for you; he’s checking out what came in last night.’

Dale walked slowly back to his desk, ignoring the polite round of applause. As he headed for the showers, he gave them the finger, prompting lots of kissing noises and shouts.

‘Bring that over here, baby!’

He smiled to himself; where would you be without friendly office banter.

He returned to his desk, refreshed, a few minutes later. It was amazing how something as basic as a stream of cold water on the skin
, could affect such dramatic changes.

‘Sobered up yet?’ asked Dodds.

‘I wasn’t drunk,’ replied Dale defensively.

‘What a waste of the boss’s couch,’ said Dodds disgustedly.

‘Don't start on me, Dodds, I’m not in the mood,’ snorted Dale shortly.

‘Come
back to me when your PMT is over,’ said Dodds gruffly.

‘Just let it go, Dodds, will you,’ said Dale resignedly.

‘Sure, just give me back all those cigarettes you stole from me over the last two years and we’ll call it quits,’ replied Dodds, with a thin smile.

Dale looked at him, stunned.

Dodds said nothing more and went back to his files, as if no bad tempered exchange of words had ever happened.

‘Are you going to join me or what?’ he asked at last
, in exasperation.

Dale studied him surreptitiously across the desk
, as he put away his shower things and draped his towel over the radiator. He had a brief flicker of déjà vu; that feeling that he’d been in this moment before.

And then he realised it wasn’t déjà vu. Dodds was him, just older, greyer and more alone. It was a depressing thought. His body craved a fix; was screaming for nicotine, but he couldn't feed the craving without giving away his secret, which wasn't a secret anyway
, it seemed. What a pointless existence. He really needed to get something into his life, other than work.

‘Ok, pass a few of those over
here, will you,’ said Dale.

Their field office was based in Westchester, NY, but as part of the task force they were assigned to, Dale and his team had temporarily moved to the DEA New York divisi
onal headquarters on 10th avenue. They co-operated very heavily with local law enforcement.

As part of that teamwork and co-operation, Dale had helped broker a deal with the local law agencies. If any cases came in to them that were remotely drug related, they would pass them along to the DEA task force. Dale and Dodds, as the task force liaison officers, would go through all the files that had been flagged to them. If any of the referrals led to further busts, the credit was shared between the DEA and the referring agency. It was a good system and so far it had been working very well. Both Dale and Dodds were special agents, but both preferred to refer to themselves as just agents;
special agent
tended to get up the backs of their peers and colleagues.

Dale flicked open the first file and started scanning down. After reading the top couple of lines
, he knew this one was a no hoper. He recognised the perpetrator; a lonely delusional man, who had quite literally blown his brains out long ago. Apart from the obvious physical addiction, he had so many mental issues, paranoid schizophrenia, manic depression, you name it. He was the sad and depressing face of the fight they were losing on the streets. Dale cast the file aside, much as the addict had done with his life. They wouldn’t be getting any information from this one.

He picked up the next file; two students this time, arrested for possession outside a nightclub. It was highly unlikely that they would be able to provide anything of any value. He was just about to pick up a third
, when Dodds threw a file across the desk at him.

‘Take a look at this one,’ he said. ‘It could be interesting.’

The arrest was for a violent altercation outside a bar; the officers had been particularly struck by it, as it appeared the originator of the aggression had been a recent victim of violence himself. In a subsequent search, they had found a significant quantity of cocaine; certainly more than was required for personal use.

‘Yep, that looks like a good one,’ said Dale. ‘Is there anything else in your pile?’

‘Nothing else worth looking at,’ responded Dodds.

Dale took the remaining four files on his desk and split them in two.

‘Here you go,’ he said, handing one half to Dodds. ‘Have a skim through these and then we’ll check this guy out.’

An hour later, they were heading towards the 5
th
Precinct headquarters. Dodds generally drove. He’d told Dale once that he was a very nervous passenger. Dale had only experienced it a single time, but didn’t ever want to go through it again. He had never seen terror etched in such precise detail on someone’s face before. He was no great passenger himself, but he’d live; he didn’t think Dodds would survive another journey riding shotgun.

They drove in silence, but a su
rprisingly companionable one. Their occasional spats were part of the fabric of working closely together and quickly forgotten.

Halfway to the station, Dodds flicked a button on the centre console
, and the next thing, Tony Bennett was telling them that he had left his heart in San Francisco. Dodds was a sucker for the old crooners. It was still early morning, so the sun was quite low. Dodds pulled the visor down to shield his eyes and slipped on a pair of mirror shades. Dale noticed a picture of a young woman stuffed into the webbing of the sun visor.

‘Who’s the girl?’ he asked, subtlety never having been one of his strong points.

Wordlessly, Dodds extracted the photo from its nylon nest and handed it across.

‘She’s a looker ain’t she,’ he said.

For once Dale had to agree; she most certainly was a looker.

‘Obv
iously not related to you,’ responded Dale, with a smile.

‘She's my daughter,’ said Dodds seriously.

Dale was taken aback.

‘I didn’t
know you were married?’ he queried.

Even though they had been working closely together for over a year, they never discussed personal business.

‘I'm not,’ said Dodds.

Dale waited, sensing there was more to come.

‘We were very young,’ he said at last. ‘Both of us were. We had been going together less than a year, when she told me. Of course, I immediately offered to marry her, but she was having none of it. Even if I’d loved her, she didn’t love me. So, we decided to bring our daughter up together, sharing the responsibilities.’

His expression softened
, as he became caught up in the memories.

‘Her mother married when Joanie was about seven.
She gets on great with her step-dad. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have it any other way; it’s important for her that there is no conflict in the home.’

This time he smiled broadly.

‘But I make sure every day that she knows who her father is; that she is my little girl.’

He paused.

‘Her step-dad is very well off; I could let things slide if I wanted to and she would still be well taken care of, but probably because of that, I make sure I pay my way and then some. Steve understands and respects me for it, I think. He knows me and he knows her; she is my daughter, after all.’

Dale handed the photograph back.

‘She's gorgeous,’ he stated truthfully.

Dodds looked at him for a few seconds, searching for the punch line and eventually finding none. Putting the photograph back in its place, his expression softened
, as he patted it gently.

‘You know something
, Dale,’ he said.

He rarely called Dale by his first name.

‘In this job, I don’t think I could have been married. It hardens you; desensitises you. But do you know what? There is not a day goes by that I don't think about that girl. I have absolutely no regrets; to be honest she's kept me sane. She is the one person who accepts me for who I am and lets me be me; if you can follow that and understand what I mean?’

Dale nodded; he understood it alright, and wished fervently tha
t he had something like it too.

They pulled up across the street from the station. As Dodds parked, Dale managed to get across the road with only two horns and one hand gesture from the rush hour
drivers. Oddly enough, his older and slower partner got none; it seemed Dodds was more nimble than he looked.

As they walked into the foyer
, they happened to bump into Detective Dempsey, their liaison officer from the fifth. As Dempsey ran past, he held up his hand with his fingers apart, and mouthed the words silently; the universal gesture for the phrase,
give me five
.

The two colleagues waited patiently, shuffling their feet and looking down at the floor. Dempsey catapulted through a door on the other side of the station and rejoined them, just before the five minutes had elapsed. He shook their hands vigorously as he always did.

‘Agent Foster, Agent Dodds, good to see you,’ he said, as he indicated an ante room.

Dodds and Dale settled themselves down into their chairs
and Dempsey busied himself at the coffee machine. He placed two mugs of steaming black liquid in front of them, without asking whether they wanted anything to drink; they were policemen after all. He banged the sugar, sweetener and creamer in the middle of the table and then sat down opposite them.

He eyed them thoughtfully across the rim of his
own mug, as they busied themselves with the ritual of coffee preparation, sipping occasionally as he did so. Dale placed his copy of the file, the one he and Dodds had discussed earlier, on the table in front of him. He gently slid it across to Dempsey, who picked it up and scanned it quickly.

‘Ah yea, this dude,’ said Dempsey. ‘I thought I might be hearing from you fellas on this one.’

‘So, what’s the story?’ asked Dodds. ‘Anything more you can give us, other than what appears in the file?’

‘
Yea, interesting one this,’ replied Dempsey. ‘He gave his name as Sam Balboni. He was causing a scene outside a bar-nightclub; throwing his weight around, but apparently not exactly Mike Tyson, if you get my drift. To be honest, our guys, the patrolmen who were called to the scene, were of a mind to let him off with a caution. But our friend jerk-off continued to mouth off to them, and coupled with the fresh injuries to his face, it just made the patrolmen bloody-minded. They brought him in, routinely searched his car and, bam, one kilo of cocaine.’

Both Dodds and Dale raised their eyebrows.

‘So, definitely not for personal use,’ stated Dale. ‘I always wonder when it says that in a report. How much is too much?’

‘Anyway
, we figured we definitely had him for possession, and maybe intent to supply, too,’ said Dempsey. ‘So, we left him stewing in the cells for a few hours. He didn’t seem to be the most robust of criminals, if you get me. We thought it might soften him up a bit. But when we eventually got around to processing him, we realised very quickly that the little weasel had given us a false name.’

‘Really?’ inquired
Dodds, his eyebrows coming together in the middle.

‘Well, not so much a false name, as a misleading name,’ Dempsey finished. ‘Balboni is his mother’s maiden name. His real name is Rudino.’

They collectively let that statement lie fallow for a minute or so, until Dale broke the silence.

‘So
, why lie about your name?’ he asked. ‘That is, unless you have something to hide.’

‘That’s exactly what we thought,’ said Dempsey. ‘So we took a look into his background, and that’s when it all started to make a little bit of sense to us.’

Dale raised his eyebrows in a questioning manner; almost a carbon copy of his colleague moments earlier. Dempsey reached behind him for the plate of cookies. He placed the dish in the middle of the table, took one and bit it clean in half.