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NORCESTOR AND IMPERIAL,
LINCOLN PARK
10:18 AM PDT
LT. MARCUS WAS HEADED OVER, and while they waited for a pow-wow, Pope watched Rose text away. Deep into it and having at it with a furious speed equal parts anger and fear. From the way Rose was muttering to himself, Pope believed it was a personal situation, rather than a Doomsday Virus situation, notably, his frequent exhortations of “C’mon, motherfucker, buy, buy, buy!” and “Fill that gap!!”
Al had noticed and was not happy.
“That fucking guy, he’s trading the Apocalypse. Or something else, I have no idea but he sure as shit does.”
Rose knew something; kid was threatening to wear his fingers out the rate he was going, and Pope would swear he saw the kid drool on his expensive tie at least once.
“Total, one-hundred percent government insider bullshit that gets a regular guy like me fired. Bang, my ass straight out the door, pension and all. But that SOB over there, that guy? Totally bulletproof behind a veil of national security. Bulletproof. Look at him, wouldja? S’gonna have a seizure over there with all his buying and selling, sweet mother Mary, that Wall Street shit knows exactly what this virus is all about and he’s using grade-A black-ops government intel to make a killing. A killing, Gideon. I mean, imagine the stock tips DNS gets from CIA, NSA . . . Us . . . all those sweet government wiretaps and file-sweeps, the email sniffers, let alone being inside a case itself . . . Goddamnit, I got 9 kids to feed, I need the government juice, too!”
Normally, Pope’s brother-in-law was mostly full of crap when it came to his government suspicions, but it certainly looked like he was onto something with Rose. There was a rumor of this sort of thing already going around, not in small part due to the fact that, where FBI preferred to hire accountants and lawyers, and CIA ex-Ivy Leaguers, DNS hired strictly Wall Street analysts. And you couldn’t even say ex-Wall Street analysts, at least not yet. Given DNS was less than a year old, who knew if Deputy Inspectors like Rose considered government work a career or an internship before heading back to Silverman-Fuchs or from where ever Rose hailed. Point was, if Al was right, they were witnessing illegal insider-trading most-likely protected by the very Writs of Secrecy they’d been instructed to sign just back at the cafeteria.
Pope could report his suspicions to Gil Streets who could in turn speak to his DNS liaison, but in these days of the New FBI, would it even matter?
Frankly, Pope was just happy to be retired and decided to let it pass, instead electing to change the subject and get Al something else, if not the case itself.
“You remember that homicide detective, Jimmy Francisco? Claimed Dominic Ducroix murdered his girlfriend?”
Al’s angry expression grew wary. “Yeah, I remember. Why? What about it?”
“It just crossed my mind Francisco was released this year.”
“Exactly. Because of the goddamn revolving door that is the US Justice system— Oh, puhleeze, don’t give me that look . . . Jesus Christ on a go-kart, Gideon, he pistol-whipped the bastard half to death three days before Awalt was convicted.”
Pope shrugged. “The evidence was circumstantial.”
Al glanced around, before saying in an incredulous voice, “Circumstantial? They found Awalt’s skin under the woman’s nails, how in the fuck is that circumstantial?”
“Awalt claimed he was assaulted the night after the Chambers girl’s abduction. And DocuCorp failed to show proper chain-of-custody. The judge should’ve suppressed.”
“Oh, c’mon, Gideon. The chain was good and Awalt’s got no corroboration of the assault— Awalt did that to himself. Sorry, it wasn’t the evil rich guy this time, it was the evil poor kid who broke that girl’s neck and dumped her in the garbage. You gotta operate in the real world, alright?”
“Yet you think Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon was faked.”
“You see that moonscape? Pure Hollywood bullshit.”
That’s when Lt. Marcus came up with an Asian cop to say, "You wanna talk to my Gangs guy? This is Detective Chen.”
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