Bloody Sunday 5
Dec. 29th, 2005 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardI refrain from comment on this chapter. That is all.
His phone was on the third ring. Come on, Val, pick the fuck up. You never go anywhere without your cell; you’re kinda like a teenage girl that way. Pick up.
It cut off midway through the fourth ring. “Danny, what in hell –” Val demanded, sounding angry. “This better be good. I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
“I’ll do it,” Danny said.
“You’ll – what?”
“I’ll do it,” Danny said again, before he could back out. “I’ll go Chicago and do whatever the fuck it is the Commission wants. I’ll be your heir. I want in, Val.”
There was a moment of silence. “What happened, Danny?” Val finally asked. “Not three hours ago you were telling me that – how did you put it? – you don’t want any part of the Mafia, the Commission, or the Constantine Family. What. Happened?”
“I quit,” Danny said. “I don’t want any fucking part of what Mac wants. You were right, Val. Blood wins out. Thicker than water or wine.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“I never expected to.” He was silent for a minute. “Uncle Val – whatever hoops you want me to jump through, whatever you want me to do –” Murder, he thought, and remembered Andrew O’Malley, Curly Sassone, nameless faces and faceless names. Murder, Inc. Is this what the Mob is today? It’s never changed. It’s always been about the blood. In the vein or spilled from it. “– I’ll do it. Whatever it is you want.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Where are you? Do you want me to pick you up?”
“I thought you were in a meeting.”
“What you just said just voided everything I was about to say. Pagliuca can wait.”
Danny glanced around. “I’m in Manhattan. I can catch a cab –”
“Don’t. Rule one of this Family. You don’t trust anyone who’s not okayed by me. There’s too many people out there who want our heads on silver platters. Uptown, downtown, midtown?”
“Midtown,” Danny said. Christ, Val, I knew you didn’t trust anyone, but you don’t even trust the civilians?
“Address?”
“The Hilton. Val, you don’t haveta –”
“Carmine and I are just a couple blocks away. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Danny said slowly. “Val –”
“We’ll talk in person,” Val said, and hung up.
Did I do the right thing? Danny wondered briefly, and shoved the thought aside, sliding his cell phone back into his pocket. It doesn’t matter whether I did the right thing or the wrong thing. I did something. If I look back, I’m lost.
*
Aiden listened to Flack relieve his bad temper by yelling at the civilians gathered around the edges of the crime scene tape, then went outside to look for Danny. She’d seen him go that way when he stormed off, and Danny always went outside when he was pissed. She saw him a couple buildings down, standing in front of a china store with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the road. Most of the squad cars had either left or gone around to the Hilton’s parking garage and the street was almost clear, unless you counted the usual New York traffic squirming by at a snail’s pace. Aiden lifted her head and went for Danny.
“Are you insane, you dumb fuck?” she demanded, and he turned toward her with surprise in his eyes. Then his look hardened and turned stubborn. Aiden bulled over him before he could say anything. “You’re a cop. You’re a New York City police detective, and you throw that away for a bunch of wannabe gangsters? Are you fucking crazy? You worked for that badge. You’re a detective, and you’re a goddamn good detective, and how many murderers have you pulled off the streets? How many rapists –” Not Regina George’s, her mind whispered, and Aiden shoved the thought fiercely away “– how many thieves, how many criminals have you put away? How many victims have you done justice for? If it’s justice you fucking want, then you can get it here. This is lawful justice. And it’s the truth. It’s not some goddamn lie a mob boss will feed you just because he wants someone hit.”
“And what the hell do you know about the Mob anyway, Aiden?” Danny demanded when she paused for breath. “Not Val. Patriso, Lancione, Pagliuca – any of the Families. But not Val. The courts decide wrong, Aiden. They’ve sent innocent men to jail, to death row – and they’ve let murderers go free.”
“And if you kill them on the streets, you’re a murderer yourself,” Aiden snapped. “You want that label, Danny?”
“Add it on to traitor, then, if you want to call me murderer. You know what they call me on the streets?”
“I don’t give a fuck what they call me on the streets as long as you’re not there too.”
“The wolf-gone-over,” Danny said.
“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Aiden demanded, curiosity bleeding through her anger.
“The Constantine family sigil’s a black wolf rampant, standing on a pair of antlers, on a field of gray. On the streets, they call Constantine the wolves.” He took a step back and spread his hands. “I am a Constantine, Aiden. I got more wolf blood in my veins than a good half of the family.”
“Then let the other half take your place. Go apologize to Mac. You’re a cop, Danny, not a gangster.”
“And what, Mac’ll just say, ‘oh, sure, Messer, here’s your badge back, go swab that table’?”
“You’re an idiot, Messer.”
“Like I haven’t heard that before.” Danny stepped back towards her, glancing over his shoulder as a black Jaguar pulled to the curb on the other side of the street. “My ride’s here. Aiden – I made my bed, and I got no choice but to lie in it. I –”
“You have a choice, Danny. You always a choice.”
“Not this time.” He met her eyes. “If I look back, I’m lost,” he said. “Aiden – it –” He was silent for a moment. “It was a good ride,” he said finally, “while it lasted. But we can’t have good things, because what’s good isn’t always – isn’t always best for us.”
“What the hell are you trying to say? This is good, Danny. This is what’s best for you. This is what you were made for.”
“No,” Danny said. “I wasn’t made to be a cop. That’s my brothers. I was made for the streets, and for my uncle. I wasn’t made for justice.” He raised his eyes upward, and they narrowed suddenly. Aiden glanced up, but there was nothing there, just a flash of sunlight off glass in an upper window. “I was made for vengeance. You haven’t heard the Brasi words. Blood and fire.”
“You’re crazy,” Aiden said. She took half a step back.
And fire roared out of the winter sky, and blood spattered her chest. Danny staggered back,
lifting a hand to touch his chest. His blue shirt was rapidly turning red. There was another crack, and he took another step back as another hole, another spread of bright blood, appeared on his shirt.
Someone was screaming. It took Aiden a moment to realize that someone was her.
*
Someone was screaming. Stella heard the sound from inside the Hilton, and it didn’t take her much longer to get outside, gun drawn and in her hands. Mac and Flack were right behind her.
Aiden was standing. Danny was down on the ground, hands raised to his chest. Across the street, two men with drawn guns had flung themselves out of a black Jaguar with silver scratches tracing their way across the hood. A familiar car; so were the men familiar. Val Constantine and Carmine d’Alessandro, and Stella didn’t want to think about what they were doing here.
“No!” Stella yelled.
The next bullet caught Aiden square in the chest.
*
Shep Newcombe was a charming conversationalist, and the restaurant he’d taken her to was excellent. Lindsay was having a fantastic time, much better than she’d had either at the Hilton or at the lab, which was more confusing than she wanted to admit. It was just a crime lab, just like back home, but it – wasn’t. Thirty-five stories up from the ground, with huge glass windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, and huge. None of the techs had been particularly accommodating, either. Oh, they’d offered to help, sounding oh-so-condescending to the little country bumpkin and they’d taken the time to point out that this and that were actually here, not ever there, but none of them had been what Lindsay would call friendly. Dear God, does everyone in this city want to see me go home?
She glanced across the table. Everyone but Shep.
He’d said he was a writer, spoken modestly of an finicky editor and a persnickety agent, and even dug in his wallet for pictures of the proposed ARCs.
“It looks good,” Lindsay said.
Shep tucked them back away. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m not sure about them – I’m especially not sure where they plan to put the subtitle, but otherwise they look good, I guess.”
Lindsay glanced back down at them. “Did you say your book was true crime?”
“History, I’d rather say,” Shep said. “There’s a lot of that in this town – especially of the not-so-lawful type. I’m sure you’ve heard about the Five Families.”
“The name sounds familiar,” Lindsay said after a moment, digging through her archival memory. I learned about this at the U-Dub –
“Six Families now, I guess,” Shep corrected himself. “I bet this is one thing you don’t have back in – where did you say you were from? Helena?”
“Rohana,” Lindsay said. “In Bozeman County, Montana. But I went to college at the University of Washington.”
“Good school?”
“Very. What are these Five Families? Six Families?”
“The Mafia,” Shep said. He watched her face.
Lindsay blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, right. I learned about them. I just didn’t think – well, they don’t really have a presence in smalltown Montana.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said Shep. “They like to think big. My book’s about the early Mafia, before it became the Five Families.”
“I thought you said there were six,” she blinked. “Actually, I only remember there being five.”
“The newest family’s – quite new. I’m not sure they’ll last, though. Back in the early days of the last century – during the Roaring Twenties – Prohibition – it’s fascinating.” He spoke with real conviction. “Most of those are gone now. The Brasis, the Caponigros, the Venettis – most of them are either gone, bred into today’s families, or they’ve been reduced to minor families sworn to the Commission.”
“The what?”
“The Mafia’s governing body, if you can call it that. It’s formed of the bosses and underbosses of the Families.”
“It sounds interesting,” Lindsay said.
Shep laughed. “It’s confusing, that’s what it is. The New York mob’s more inbred than the royal families of Europe. You can’t go five words with a guy without one of the other Families coming into mention.”
Something about the way he phrased that that tugged at the edge of Lindsay’s mind. “You’re not – a reporter, are you?”
“Wouldn’t I have told you that?” Shep said, grinning brightly at her.
“You are a writer, then?”
“Always.” He turned his chin up cockily. “It’s one of the few things I’m good at.”
“What are the other ones?”
“I can’t tell you all my secrets, can I?” He grinned and picked at his lasagna to defuse the rebuke. “Heck of a way to start your first day on the job, isn’t it?”
“I was hoping for something the scene of which I’d actually be able to work on.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Shep said. “Someone else will die, sooner or later, and they’ll send CSIs out to that.”
“CSIs?” Lindsay said, sighing.
“Well, they’re hardly going to trust you all on your own,” Shep said mildly. “You’re a rookie, after all. At least to the NYPD.”
“I’m not a rookie,” Lindsay said, hurt. “I’ve been a sheriff for five years. I’ve been a CSI for three. Bozeman County only had two before I came. Back there, you worked alone or you didn’t work at all.”
“How many now?”
“Four,” she admitted. “After McGinty last year – we almost didn’t get a conviction, you know. The sheriff’s department decided it was better to be safe than sorry after and started hiring. That’s the only reason I could come here.”
“And are you enjoying it?”
“The people leave something to be desired.”
He laughed. “I’ve heard that said about New Yorkers. We’re a little rough around the edges, I guess. What about the scene? You can’t have worked anything like that in Montana.”
“Oh, I’ve had bigger crime scenes,” Lindsay said confidently.
“What about more important vics? You can’t have gotten many of those…”
“Well, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies don’t really come out to Middle of Nowhere, Montana,” Lindsay grinned. “So I guess a vic like Jacqueline Shaw is a new experience for me, but I don’t think it’ll be any different than working any other case. I mean, a stabbed woman is a stabbed woman, no matter what her name is. I just wouldn’t have expected a Fortune 500 CEO to be on drugs.”
“Drugs?” He sounded surprised.
“Cocaine,” she said. “And painkillers, and alcohol, but those are to be expected, I guess. Tox already came back. The lab here’s really fast – it would have taken a couple days for a result like this back home. You know what tox is?”
“Enlighten me?”
“Toxic substances.” She tossed her hair back, dug in her purse for her cell phone as it trilled. “Like drugs, or alcohol – you have to test the blood for it.”
“Ah.”
Lindsay finally found her phone and flipped it open. Caller ID read unavailable. Frowning, she put it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Lindsay Monroe?”
“Um, yeah. Who is this?”
“Dr. Sheldon Hawkes, from the Crime Lab.”
“Oh – oh, right, Hawkes. I’m sorry. I’m on my break. Do you need something?”
“You need to get back to the Hilton,” Hawkes said. His voice sounded worried. “Aiden Burn’s been murdered.”
*
“Lieutenant Taylor, I need you to step back. You too, Stella, Flack. Yes, you. Give him some air.”
Mac didn’t budge. “Is he going to make it?” he demanded, Chicago leaking through his voice like spilled wine.
“I don’t know,” Zeke snapped. “Get back, Lieutenant, otherwise my partner and I won’t be able to get him to the ER on time.”
“I’ll go with him,” Flack said, moving forward.
“The hell you will,” Val Constantine snarled, bristling like an angry hedgehog. “He’s my nephew.”
“He’s my partner!”
“Not anymore!”
Stella grabbed Flack before he could fling himself at Val. Over Val’s shoulder, Carmine glared angry green daggers. “You fucking Mob bastard –”
Mac didn’t move. “He’s not yours,” he told Constantine.
“He said it himself –”
“I don’t care what he said, he’s still one of mine.”
“No –”
Mac leaned between Zeke and Devin to clip Danny’s badge back onto his belt. Devin swore at him. “Danny’s NYPD,” he said. “And if he dies? He’ll die NYPD.” He turned cold blue eyes on Val’s icy brown eyes. “Not Mafia.”
End Part One.
Feedback much appreciated.
His phone was on the third ring. Come on, Val, pick the fuck up. You never go anywhere without your cell; you’re kinda like a teenage girl that way. Pick up.
It cut off midway through the fourth ring. “Danny, what in hell –” Val demanded, sounding angry. “This better be good. I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
“I’ll do it,” Danny said.
“You’ll – what?”
“I’ll do it,” Danny said again, before he could back out. “I’ll go Chicago and do whatever the fuck it is the Commission wants. I’ll be your heir. I want in, Val.”
There was a moment of silence. “What happened, Danny?” Val finally asked. “Not three hours ago you were telling me that – how did you put it? – you don’t want any part of the Mafia, the Commission, or the Constantine Family. What. Happened?”
“I quit,” Danny said. “I don’t want any fucking part of what Mac wants. You were right, Val. Blood wins out. Thicker than water or wine.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“I never expected to.” He was silent for a minute. “Uncle Val – whatever hoops you want me to jump through, whatever you want me to do –” Murder, he thought, and remembered Andrew O’Malley, Curly Sassone, nameless faces and faceless names. Murder, Inc. Is this what the Mob is today? It’s never changed. It’s always been about the blood. In the vein or spilled from it. “– I’ll do it. Whatever it is you want.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Where are you? Do you want me to pick you up?”
“I thought you were in a meeting.”
“What you just said just voided everything I was about to say. Pagliuca can wait.”
Danny glanced around. “I’m in Manhattan. I can catch a cab –”
“Don’t. Rule one of this Family. You don’t trust anyone who’s not okayed by me. There’s too many people out there who want our heads on silver platters. Uptown, downtown, midtown?”
“Midtown,” Danny said. Christ, Val, I knew you didn’t trust anyone, but you don’t even trust the civilians?
“Address?”
“The Hilton. Val, you don’t haveta –”
“Carmine and I are just a couple blocks away. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Danny said slowly. “Val –”
“We’ll talk in person,” Val said, and hung up.
Did I do the right thing? Danny wondered briefly, and shoved the thought aside, sliding his cell phone back into his pocket. It doesn’t matter whether I did the right thing or the wrong thing. I did something. If I look back, I’m lost.
*
Aiden listened to Flack relieve his bad temper by yelling at the civilians gathered around the edges of the crime scene tape, then went outside to look for Danny. She’d seen him go that way when he stormed off, and Danny always went outside when he was pissed. She saw him a couple buildings down, standing in front of a china store with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the road. Most of the squad cars had either left or gone around to the Hilton’s parking garage and the street was almost clear, unless you counted the usual New York traffic squirming by at a snail’s pace. Aiden lifted her head and went for Danny.
“Are you insane, you dumb fuck?” she demanded, and he turned toward her with surprise in his eyes. Then his look hardened and turned stubborn. Aiden bulled over him before he could say anything. “You’re a cop. You’re a New York City police detective, and you throw that away for a bunch of wannabe gangsters? Are you fucking crazy? You worked for that badge. You’re a detective, and you’re a goddamn good detective, and how many murderers have you pulled off the streets? How many rapists –” Not Regina George’s, her mind whispered, and Aiden shoved the thought fiercely away “– how many thieves, how many criminals have you put away? How many victims have you done justice for? If it’s justice you fucking want, then you can get it here. This is lawful justice. And it’s the truth. It’s not some goddamn lie a mob boss will feed you just because he wants someone hit.”
“And what the hell do you know about the Mob anyway, Aiden?” Danny demanded when she paused for breath. “Not Val. Patriso, Lancione, Pagliuca – any of the Families. But not Val. The courts decide wrong, Aiden. They’ve sent innocent men to jail, to death row – and they’ve let murderers go free.”
“And if you kill them on the streets, you’re a murderer yourself,” Aiden snapped. “You want that label, Danny?”
“Add it on to traitor, then, if you want to call me murderer. You know what they call me on the streets?”
“I don’t give a fuck what they call me on the streets as long as you’re not there too.”
“The wolf-gone-over,” Danny said.
“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Aiden demanded, curiosity bleeding through her anger.
“The Constantine family sigil’s a black wolf rampant, standing on a pair of antlers, on a field of gray. On the streets, they call Constantine the wolves.” He took a step back and spread his hands. “I am a Constantine, Aiden. I got more wolf blood in my veins than a good half of the family.”
“Then let the other half take your place. Go apologize to Mac. You’re a cop, Danny, not a gangster.”
“And what, Mac’ll just say, ‘oh, sure, Messer, here’s your badge back, go swab that table’?”
“You’re an idiot, Messer.”
“Like I haven’t heard that before.” Danny stepped back towards her, glancing over his shoulder as a black Jaguar pulled to the curb on the other side of the street. “My ride’s here. Aiden – I made my bed, and I got no choice but to lie in it. I –”
“You have a choice, Danny. You always a choice.”
“Not this time.” He met her eyes. “If I look back, I’m lost,” he said. “Aiden – it –” He was silent for a moment. “It was a good ride,” he said finally, “while it lasted. But we can’t have good things, because what’s good isn’t always – isn’t always best for us.”
“What the hell are you trying to say? This is good, Danny. This is what’s best for you. This is what you were made for.”
“No,” Danny said. “I wasn’t made to be a cop. That’s my brothers. I was made for the streets, and for my uncle. I wasn’t made for justice.” He raised his eyes upward, and they narrowed suddenly. Aiden glanced up, but there was nothing there, just a flash of sunlight off glass in an upper window. “I was made for vengeance. You haven’t heard the Brasi words. Blood and fire.”
“You’re crazy,” Aiden said. She took half a step back.
And fire roared out of the winter sky, and blood spattered her chest. Danny staggered back,
lifting a hand to touch his chest. His blue shirt was rapidly turning red. There was another crack, and he took another step back as another hole, another spread of bright blood, appeared on his shirt.
Someone was screaming. It took Aiden a moment to realize that someone was her.
*
Someone was screaming. Stella heard the sound from inside the Hilton, and it didn’t take her much longer to get outside, gun drawn and in her hands. Mac and Flack were right behind her.
Aiden was standing. Danny was down on the ground, hands raised to his chest. Across the street, two men with drawn guns had flung themselves out of a black Jaguar with silver scratches tracing their way across the hood. A familiar car; so were the men familiar. Val Constantine and Carmine d’Alessandro, and Stella didn’t want to think about what they were doing here.
“No!” Stella yelled.
The next bullet caught Aiden square in the chest.
*
Shep Newcombe was a charming conversationalist, and the restaurant he’d taken her to was excellent. Lindsay was having a fantastic time, much better than she’d had either at the Hilton or at the lab, which was more confusing than she wanted to admit. It was just a crime lab, just like back home, but it – wasn’t. Thirty-five stories up from the ground, with huge glass windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, and huge. None of the techs had been particularly accommodating, either. Oh, they’d offered to help, sounding oh-so-condescending to the little country bumpkin and they’d taken the time to point out that this and that were actually here, not ever there, but none of them had been what Lindsay would call friendly. Dear God, does everyone in this city want to see me go home?
She glanced across the table. Everyone but Shep.
He’d said he was a writer, spoken modestly of an finicky editor and a persnickety agent, and even dug in his wallet for pictures of the proposed ARCs.
“It looks good,” Lindsay said.
Shep tucked them back away. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m not sure about them – I’m especially not sure where they plan to put the subtitle, but otherwise they look good, I guess.”
Lindsay glanced back down at them. “Did you say your book was true crime?”
“History, I’d rather say,” Shep said. “There’s a lot of that in this town – especially of the not-so-lawful type. I’m sure you’ve heard about the Five Families.”
“The name sounds familiar,” Lindsay said after a moment, digging through her archival memory. I learned about this at the U-Dub –
“Six Families now, I guess,” Shep corrected himself. “I bet this is one thing you don’t have back in – where did you say you were from? Helena?”
“Rohana,” Lindsay said. “In Bozeman County, Montana. But I went to college at the University of Washington.”
“Good school?”
“Very. What are these Five Families? Six Families?”
“The Mafia,” Shep said. He watched her face.
Lindsay blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, right. I learned about them. I just didn’t think – well, they don’t really have a presence in smalltown Montana.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said Shep. “They like to think big. My book’s about the early Mafia, before it became the Five Families.”
“I thought you said there were six,” she blinked. “Actually, I only remember there being five.”
“The newest family’s – quite new. I’m not sure they’ll last, though. Back in the early days of the last century – during the Roaring Twenties – Prohibition – it’s fascinating.” He spoke with real conviction. “Most of those are gone now. The Brasis, the Caponigros, the Venettis – most of them are either gone, bred into today’s families, or they’ve been reduced to minor families sworn to the Commission.”
“The what?”
“The Mafia’s governing body, if you can call it that. It’s formed of the bosses and underbosses of the Families.”
“It sounds interesting,” Lindsay said.
Shep laughed. “It’s confusing, that’s what it is. The New York mob’s more inbred than the royal families of Europe. You can’t go five words with a guy without one of the other Families coming into mention.”
Something about the way he phrased that that tugged at the edge of Lindsay’s mind. “You’re not – a reporter, are you?”
“Wouldn’t I have told you that?” Shep said, grinning brightly at her.
“You are a writer, then?”
“Always.” He turned his chin up cockily. “It’s one of the few things I’m good at.”
“What are the other ones?”
“I can’t tell you all my secrets, can I?” He grinned and picked at his lasagna to defuse the rebuke. “Heck of a way to start your first day on the job, isn’t it?”
“I was hoping for something the scene of which I’d actually be able to work on.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Shep said. “Someone else will die, sooner or later, and they’ll send CSIs out to that.”
“CSIs?” Lindsay said, sighing.
“Well, they’re hardly going to trust you all on your own,” Shep said mildly. “You’re a rookie, after all. At least to the NYPD.”
“I’m not a rookie,” Lindsay said, hurt. “I’ve been a sheriff for five years. I’ve been a CSI for three. Bozeman County only had two before I came. Back there, you worked alone or you didn’t work at all.”
“How many now?”
“Four,” she admitted. “After McGinty last year – we almost didn’t get a conviction, you know. The sheriff’s department decided it was better to be safe than sorry after and started hiring. That’s the only reason I could come here.”
“And are you enjoying it?”
“The people leave something to be desired.”
He laughed. “I’ve heard that said about New Yorkers. We’re a little rough around the edges, I guess. What about the scene? You can’t have worked anything like that in Montana.”
“Oh, I’ve had bigger crime scenes,” Lindsay said confidently.
“What about more important vics? You can’t have gotten many of those…”
“Well, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies don’t really come out to Middle of Nowhere, Montana,” Lindsay grinned. “So I guess a vic like Jacqueline Shaw is a new experience for me, but I don’t think it’ll be any different than working any other case. I mean, a stabbed woman is a stabbed woman, no matter what her name is. I just wouldn’t have expected a Fortune 500 CEO to be on drugs.”
“Drugs?” He sounded surprised.
“Cocaine,” she said. “And painkillers, and alcohol, but those are to be expected, I guess. Tox already came back. The lab here’s really fast – it would have taken a couple days for a result like this back home. You know what tox is?”
“Enlighten me?”
“Toxic substances.” She tossed her hair back, dug in her purse for her cell phone as it trilled. “Like drugs, or alcohol – you have to test the blood for it.”
“Ah.”
Lindsay finally found her phone and flipped it open. Caller ID read unavailable. Frowning, she put it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Lindsay Monroe?”
“Um, yeah. Who is this?”
“Dr. Sheldon Hawkes, from the Crime Lab.”
“Oh – oh, right, Hawkes. I’m sorry. I’m on my break. Do you need something?”
“You need to get back to the Hilton,” Hawkes said. His voice sounded worried. “Aiden Burn’s been murdered.”
*
“Lieutenant Taylor, I need you to step back. You too, Stella, Flack. Yes, you. Give him some air.”
Mac didn’t budge. “Is he going to make it?” he demanded, Chicago leaking through his voice like spilled wine.
“I don’t know,” Zeke snapped. “Get back, Lieutenant, otherwise my partner and I won’t be able to get him to the ER on time.”
“I’ll go with him,” Flack said, moving forward.
“The hell you will,” Val Constantine snarled, bristling like an angry hedgehog. “He’s my nephew.”
“He’s my partner!”
“Not anymore!”
Stella grabbed Flack before he could fling himself at Val. Over Val’s shoulder, Carmine glared angry green daggers. “You fucking Mob bastard –”
Mac didn’t move. “He’s not yours,” he told Constantine.
“He said it himself –”
“I don’t care what he said, he’s still one of mine.”
“No –”
Mac leaned between Zeke and Devin to clip Danny’s badge back onto his belt. Devin swore at him. “Danny’s NYPD,” he said. “And if he dies? He’ll die NYPD.” He turned cold blue eyes on Val’s icy brown eyes. “Not Mafia.”
End Part One.
Feedback much appreciated.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-30 07:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-31 12:04 am (UTC)Flack...will not deal well. Not that any of them will, but Flack will deal worse than most.
Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-30 07:20 am (UTC)what do you mean end of part one.....your just trying to torture us right......
Seriously loved this chapter. Talk about elevator to hell it just keeps spiraling out of control and getting worse...but in a good way *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-31 12:08 am (UTC)I'm so glad you like it. Things should get much worse...and not in a particularly good way.