Maelstrom

Chapter 11: Everything's Good Here

DiMarco slid into the booth and picked up the only menu.

"What's good here?" he asked.

I gave him a dead stare. "It's IHOP." I let the rest of the thought go unfinished.

"So ... everything, then." I was resigned that we would agree to disagree on this one. My C.O. continued to peruse the laminated pictorial representations of the restaurant's offerings as the waitress approached our table carrying my large grapefruit juice and a pot of coffee. She flashed DiMarco a plastic smile. "What can I get you, honey?"

The lieutenant, dressed in a white undershirt and black pants that identified him as a recently off-duty food service worker from almost any restaurant, bar, club, coffee shop, or hotel in the city, barely looked up from the menu. "I'll take the Bacon Temptation Omelette with blueberry pancakes, plus a side of hash browns, bacon, and some coffee."

The waitress nodded and took the menu. "Anything else for you?" she asked me, pouring DiMarco's requested coffee.

"No, just the juice. Thank you," I replied. The woman left without another word.

"You're getting a side of bacon with your bacon?" I observed.

He vigorously shook three packets of white sugar before tearing them open and dumping them all at once into his coffee. "The wife won't let me eat it at home anymore. Something about it causing cancer, like it causing heart disease wasn't enough."

I smiled and got to my report. "He was there tonight," I said, taking a sip of the sour juice. DiMarco barely checked his surprise. "Although according to another employee, he's already been to the club several times before this. He came in the front door this time and used the owner's box for a few minutes, but apparently he usually enters through the back and stays in the office."

DiMarco nodded. "Okay. We'll put a tail on him now that we know he's in town, and maybe someone dressed as a vagrant watching the alley when he's there."

I was glad I didn't have that assignment. I briefly wondered how many of the thousands of homeless in New York were actually undercover cops. Given the multitudes thronging the soup kitchens and shelters every day, and the huddled figures I saw in alleys and under bridges, I knew that however high that number was, it could only amount to a small fraction.

"If he's using the alley and working in the back, I won't see him at all; I don't know how much use I'll be to you working the bar." I tried to conceal my reluctance to make that assessment. I did not want to go back to Vice, or to traffic; I ignored the part of me that was also savagely disappointed that I might not lay eyes on Alkaev again.

"Surveillance outside will track his comings and goings," he said, dismissing my concerns. "Your job is to observe who's coming to do business with him, how his security works, what kind of deliveries are being made, if anyone is coming or going with anything ... interesting."

"Like big black duffel bags stuffed to overflowing with cash?" I asked.

"That would qualify as being of interest, yes, among other ... less obvious things," he confirmed. "I know that Wu had you do some studying before you went in. We'll have some copies of files delivered to you – some additional players in the New York drug world and the cartel that you should familiarize yourself with, in case they should ever darken your doorstep."

He watched me staring into my juice glass. "Don't worry, Lex." It was strange to hear the lieutenant use that name. "You're a very small part of a very large operation, gathering a lot of intel. You don't have to bring this guy down all by yourself."

The waitress came by with the ordered breakfast, a refill of coffee, and the check, which DiMarco calmly took. "And while I'm explaining your job to you," he said after the woman had left, "We're going to stop meeting like this."

Now I was really surprised. I tried to cover it with a flippant comment. "Is it the food? I'm sure your arteries would appreciate fewer early morning bacon binges."

He ignored that. "It's the risk. No matter how careful we are, every time we meet is a chance for someone who knows one of us, either from our real lives or our previous covers, to spot us together and wonder." He was polishing off the omelette between phrases like he expected someone to snatch it from him. "I had planned to send someone in every week or so to check on you, arrange for a debrief. But we've been talking a lot with Miami PD, and the more I learn about our guy, the more careful I see we have to be. It's not worth blowing your cover and putting you in danger for some basic surveillance data."

I suppressed the quivering in my stomach that DiMarco's warning set off; it was a timely reminder of what sort of guy the godlike Alkaev actually was. "So the one-on-one's are over? How will I contact you? Or you contact me?"

"We'll check on you again maybe next week, and after that, if an emergency comes up on our end, we'll still use the 'blue' drink ruse," he said, cramming more omelette into his mouth. "Otherwise, keep a log of what you see; use file numbers instead of names for anyone you see that you recognize. Don't leave anything out, and be as specific as you can; we'll decide what's important and what's not. Send them every week to this address." He slid a scrap of paper across the table with a fake business's name and a post office box address on it.

I took the slip and slid it into my front jeans pocket. This assignment was not turning out to be quite as ... glamorous ... as I'd imagined it would be. As their only person on the inside, I'd expected to be pivotal to the OCCB's investigation. As it was, my role was starting to look decidedly more ... marginal.

"What if I have an emergency, like I learn something that requires a meeting but can't wait for the US Postal Service?"

DiMarco paused in mid-bite, then stopped eating long enough to dig a pen out of his coat and motion me to give him back the piece of paper. When I did, he wrote a phone number on the blank side.

"That's for a burner phone. It's not traceable to the Bureau, and no one will answer it." He went back to eating his breakfast. "If you call, leave a message or just text. Don't leave any information other than a time and the number of one of the rendezvouses. Someone will meet you that day."

I nodded and stifled a yawn. I was starting to come down from the buzz of working at the club. The blow to my ego was probably hastening my descent.

"Anything else?" DiMarco asked.

For a fraction of an instant, I considered mentioning Alkaev's notice of me, and how the car I presumed was his had seemed to be waiting for me in the alley after work. But that all seemed rather silly now. It was probably nothing, just a false sense of my own self-importance feeding my imagination. And anyway, if it were true, DiMarco would not be pleased.

I shook my head, not trusting my voice. The lieutenant nodded and mopped up the last of the syrup on his plate with the final bits of blueberry pancake. "Keep your head down. Don't attract attention. Don't do anything to risk getting noticed. We want you in there building up cred until we can use you to get an actual detective inside the club to monitor our target, so you need to be both invisible and very trustworthy." He looked hard at me, and I struggled not to look sullen or disappointed.

"I know this may not be what you want to hear, but it's the way it is. I didn't bring you on board so you could make a major career move or land a big fish. I put you in that club because I had no other way in, and I needed someone to be the thin end for what will probably be a very long, slow-moving wedge."

DiMarco crammed the last bit of pancake into his mouth and pulled a billfold from his front pocket. "I don't think I have to tell you not to call or come by the precinct, for any reason, job-related or not," he said. "If you do, you're terminating your assignment. I'll pull you, even if it looks like you weren't seen."

I noted sardonically that for the head of an undercover division in the NYPD, L.T. seemed rather risk-averse. I immediately chided myself for the uncharitable thought. He was just careful with himself and his people; it was probably how he'd made it out of his own assignments alive and why he was now in charge of the lives of so many others.

He paid the bill and we stepped out into the chill of the predawn January morning. DiMarco gave me a good-natured clap on the arm. "See ya around, Lex."

I gave him a half-mocking salute and trudged off to find my bus stop.