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CHAPTER 19

By the time Corbett left the tenement, the sun was going down. Preparations had been made, and plans had been set in motion, and now all he had to do was pull them all off without Lewis and his goons finding out about them.

He pulled his car over the bridge, being careful not to go back the same route he went in and he watched his rear view closely, looking for any sign that the men in the old beater had found some backups or replacements. Nothing followed him out of the slums, and he breathed a little sigh of relief as he drove over the bridge again, back to his normal part of town. As much as he had befriended some of the people when his beat was down there, there were a great many others who would have seen it as a badge of honor to have bagged a cop. Thankfully none of them seemed to be around.

As he drove through the more upscale streets, he watched the signs of the shopping centers that he went by, looking for one that had a branch of his bank. He was going to need money, and he didn't know how far up Lewis' influence went, and he didn't want to get stuck without some funding. Finally, he found a place a little ways away from where he started. He pulled the car into the lot and around the building to the drive through.

After a couple of minutes of pressing buttons, he was thanking his stars that there wasn't another car behind him waiting on him, but it was the wrong time of day for that to be the case. He had enough cash in his wallet and stashed around his car to make it through a little while if Lewis managed to freeze his accounts or make his money otherwise inaccessible. He and his wife were frugal, and there was a good deal of savings that he could draw on. It was about the only thing that made his plan completely workable.

When he finished at the teller machine, he pulled back around the building and parked the car in the lot. Watching the street lights for a moment, he tried to figure out why he was doing this for a girl he hardly knew. Duke was right. There wasn't any connection between him and the girl. She wasn't his daughter, and going through all this gained him nothing. But then his eyes caught his reflection in the rear view mirror and he answered the question right then and there. If this were his daughter, he would expect that a good man would do what he needed to do to ensure that what Lewis wanted didn't happen. And that's what he was. A good man. His wife looked up to him and his daughter idolized him, and there would be no way that he could live with himself or look either of them in the face again if the Kincaid girl died.

He took a deep breath and nodded to himself in the rear view, satisfied with the answer and prepared to do what he had to do. He opened the door and moved around to the trunk, pulling out the silver bag with his tablet and his cell. He slid them both out of the bag and into his hand, then put the tablet back in its holster before he took the phone back into the car with him. It vibrated in his hand after a moment, telling him of missed calls and messages left on his voice mail. A quick check of the screen told him that at least one of the messages would be from Jennifer.

There was one missed call from the station and one other from a number he didn't recognize. He'd be willing to bet that it was from someone associated with the senator. There was no way that the sleaze would have been bold enough to call him directly. He didn't want his name associated with any of this at all.

He dialed his voice mail and just as he suspected, the first message was from his wife asking where he was and why he wasn't home for dinner. He could feel the guilt rising in him for not calling her from Jimmy's house, but he didn't want that number in any way associated with him. He'd make it up to her eventually, he promised himself, if it took the rest of his life, because what he was about to do would be so much worse than missing dinner.

The next message was from the dispatcher with a quick check-in call. They'd noticed that his tablet had gone out and as was protocol, they called to ensure he was all right. He checked the time code on the message and found that he only had another five minutes to call in before they started the emergency procedure for an unaccounted for officer.

He quickly skipped to the next message and his heart skipped a beat when he recognized Sylvester's voice.

"Hey Corbett, it's Sylvester. We need to talk. Give me a call on this number when you get my message. Dispatch seems a bit freaked out and they say you went off the grid for a bit. So if you're not dead, call me."

Corbett looked at the display and made a note of the number. He'd call in a minute, but first he had to make sure that the whole precinct wasn't looking for him. He dialed a number from memory and pressed the call button.

The phone rang twice before a bored sounding dispatch operator picked up on the other end. "County comms," he said.

"This is Corbett, badge 7453. Missed a check-in. I'm alive, I was just out of range for a bit."

"Corbett..." there was a pause on the other end and the sound of typing on a keyboard. "All right, Inspector, I got you checked in now. Corner of Duckett and Fifth."

"That's right. I'm signing off for the night."

"Inspector, there's a message for you from an inspector Sylvester for you to call when you can. I routed it to your tablet."

"Thanks, you have a good night," Corbett said, and then he hung up the phone.

He set his phone on the seat next to him and pressed a few buttons in the dashboard that paired his phone with the onboard electronics, then took out his tablet and fitted it in to the slot where the radio would usually be. Both pieces of electronics beeped and signaled their readiness.

Two taps on the screen had him pulling up the number that Sylvester had given him and he started the car as he tapped the 'dial' button on his tablet. Shifting into drive, he pulled out of the parking lot and started to make his way home. There was a lot of things that he needed to do, and if he wasn't going to tip off anyone, there was only so much time to do them in.

Sylvester picked up on the third ring and Corbett couldn't help but smile at the youth in the man's voice.

"Sylvester."

"Sylvester, it's Corbett, got a message saying you wanted a call."

"Corbett," Sylvester sounded surprised and there was a pause. "Give me a second, Inspector."

There was a beep and then a group of mechanical noises that sounded over the line before Sylvester came back on the other end.

"I don't know what kind of shit you've gotten yourself into, Inspector, but we need to talk. Not on the phone. I assume that you're in your car."

Corbett frowned and wondered just what the hell was going on. "Yeah, I'm in the car."

"All right," Sylvester said, "I'm at Dell's Diner downtown. You know how to get there?"

"What the hell-" Corbett started.

"Not now, inspector. Two three, Inspector."

Corbett's eyes widened in shock at the last three words and he floundered for something to say, turning the wheel sharply to avoid crossing the middle line in the road.

"Dell's downtown, inspector," Sylvester said and then hung up.

Corbett tapped a button on his tablet to disconnect the call and he drove silently for a few minutes, trying to rearrange his entire view of the world. Things were not making sense. There was no way that the innocent kid that sat behind him in the squad room could have known that code. And yet he did, and he'd used it in just the right way, too.

He turned the wheel and took the next turn that would take him into the heart of the city, into the downtown core. It was time to figure out just what was going on.

---

Dell's Diner was an old throwback to the past, or rather it was an imitation of a copy of a fake diner that someone had once seen in a movie with Bogart. But it was quaint and everyone in the city knew about it. The owner never had to advertise because he'd made a fortune buying an old, mostly abandoned skyscraper and leveling it to build a crappy burger joint straight out of a low-budget movie. Everyone thought he was a mad man until they came in for the burgers. Now people came from all over to the place, which had gotten so exclusive that reservations had to be made weeks in advance.

The fine dining places never got as full as this place on a Friday night, and all they served were burgers, fries and milkshakes. What was even stranger was that the prices were downright reasonable, and most of the cops in the city assumed that the diner was some sort of mob front because there was no way that a restaurant like that made anywhere near the amount of money it would need to stay open. But when Corbett pulled up at full dark, the line was still out the door of people hoping that one of the reserved guests wouldn't show.

Angry looks followed him when he walked up the ramp ahead of all the people waiting in line and then through the door. A cute little thing in a little miniskirt and halter top smiled up at him from inside the door and he couldn't help but smile back.

"I'm looking for a Sylvester," Corbett said.

The girl smiled and pulled one of the single-sheet menus from the holder on the side of her little desk, then gave Corbett a quick little toss of her head that invited him to follow along. "Lenny said that he was expecting someone. He usually comes in by himself."

Corbett watched the back of her head with a look of confusion on his face, but it was gone by the time she turned back around and smiled at him again. Sylvester apparently spent so much time here that the waitress knew him by his first name. That was something that he hadn't known about the other officer.

Corbett looked up from the waitress and saw Sylvester sitting in the corner booth facing the door with a little smile on his face. Every day in the office, he wore a suit that looked like he'd bought it off the shelf at the local discount store, but here, he wasn't dressed in anything that would have made him seem like a cop. He sat there in loose fitting khaki trousers and a black shirt under a Hawaiian shirt that was colored black with extremely bright green.

There was something a lot more relaxed about the officer here in the restaurant, too, and without the off-the-rack suit surrounding his body, Corbett could see the telltale signs that he'd missed that showed a definite affinity for physical fitness.

He sat when the waitress stopped in front of the table and he took the menu that she offered with a smile.

"Thanks, Billie," Sylvester said with a smile.

"No problem, Lenny. Anything I can get either of you right now?"

Corbett looked up and saw that she was looking at him first. "Just a coffee, please."

"Another iced tea, Billie, thanks," Sylvester said.

The waitress smiled again and almost bounced off to the kitchen to get them their drinks. Sylvester looked across the table at Corbett and raised an eyebrow. "I take it from the shocked look on your face and the way your jaw's going to hit the floor any minute that you didn't have any idea that I knew Stringbean."

Corbett shut his mouth and laughed, reaching up to run a paw along the back of his neck. "No. I didn't even know you were a vet."

"You really should do your homework, Corbett," Sylvester said with a bit of a patronizing smile. "Or did you forget that old axiom, 'Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.'"

Corbett shook his head, "Honestly, it didn't really occur to me to check. I don't look up everyone that I work with for heaven's sake."

"Well that's your problem. Bean was right when he said you aren't careful enough."

Sylvester stopped speaking for the moment when Billie came back with their drinks and gave her the most winning smile Corbett had ever seen. He tried to think back and remember if Sylvester was married or had any kind of girl, but he couldn't remember. There wasn't a ring on his finger, but that really didn't mean much anymore. A lot of people just let that affectation go and didn't worry about it.

Billie returned the smile and set a batch of cream and sugar next to Corbett's coffee which he studiously ignored.

Sylvester noticed and laughed. "Black coffee man still, huh? I keep wondering when you're going to burn a hole in your gut with the shit the station serves."

"Gets the job done," Corbett said with a grimace. "All right, you're proving Bean right, I get it, I need to be more paranoid. Now, how the hell do you know Beanpole, and what is going on?"

"Beanpole? Is that your word? I like Stringbean, myself," Sylvester took a sip of his tea, chuckling to himself. "Well, same diff, right? He's my uncle. He's the reason I got into the twenty third. Well, not the only reason, but I suspect he had some pull."

"Wait, your uncle?" Corbett suddenly felt old. "He never even told me that he had a brother."

"Sister, actually," Sylvester said with a laugh at the look on Corbett's face. "Don't worry, you're not that bad. Mom's almost ten years older than uncle Duke. Made his life hell growing up. He says that's why he recommended me to the twenty third, to get back at her by putting her boy in Special Forces."

Corbett couldn't help but laugh. Just that little bit of knowledge that they were part of the same unit was putting a sense of friendship between him and the younger officer. "Okay, you've got the cred. Now, tell me why we're here."

"Well, fresh out of the blue about an hour ago, I got a call from good old Uncle Stringbean, and he tells me the most interesting story. Now I'm not going to tell it again, because I suspect you know it. Anyway, he tells me that a fellow two three got himself in a heap of shit and would I go help him out of it." Sylvester leaned back in the booth as he spoke and Corbett could see his eyes wandering around the room, watching the other diners and the waitresses. He did the same on his side out of habit, and didn't see anyone paying undue attention to them.

"He know you work with me?" Corbett asked.

"He does know. That made it kind of easy to say yes. You're a two three and you're an inspector, so we're twice on the same side, and you know the code. I ain't about to leave you hanging."

"That's nice of you, but if Bean talked to you then you know what you're getting into."

"And you're all noble and everything, right Corbett?" Sylvester scoffed. "Look, I got less to lose out of this whole thing than you do. Only family I got is my mom, and she doesn't even live in country any more. You? You got a wife and a daughter, so get off your little noble steed and we'll get to work."

Corbett regarded him for a moment without speaking, wondering if he could trust what he was saying, but he had all the words right, and there was a sincerity about him that he just couldn't shake. Finally he nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, but Billie came back to take their orders.

Once they'd ordered and she'd gone away, Corbett looked back at Sylvester. "All right, we'll get things going. Did Bean tell you the plan?"

"Yep," Sylvester said with a nod. "The question that I have for you is if Jennifer is going to go for it. You're asking a lot of her."

"She will eventually," Corbett replied. "I have something that I'll show her and it'll get her along with it."

Sylvester nodded and pulled a tablet out of his pocket. "You still have the bags that Bean gave you?"

"You mean for the electronics? Yeah, they're in the trunk."

"Good. I did a little modding on this tablet for you." Sylvester handed the tablet across to Corbett. "When you get outside, you'll put yours in the bag and turn this one on. They'll think that it's just a quick network hiccup, but there's a program on here that will let you tell the GPS chip to send out any location you want. It'll even let you specify the route you want to take for it to get there."

Corbett took the offered tablet with some wide eyes. "You were tech squad, weren't you? What did you guys call yourselves? Geeks with an attitude problem?"

Sylvester laughed and nodded. "That was us. Crazy attitude problems all around."

"All right, what about the phone?" Corbett asked.

"Thing that a lot of people don't know is that dispatch doesn't keep track of the phones. There's something in the law that makes it really hard to get a legal order to watch the phones, even for officers, but that little law doesn't apply to the tablets. So once you've got the tablet all set, you're golden."

Corbett frowned, "How do you know that?"

"I used to work in the information department for the station before I got promoted to Inspector," Sylvester replied. "There's more than just the Patrol way to get into the investigations department. They needed computer geeks for the high tech crimes unit, and they rotated me to investigations on my way up there."

Corbett nodded and frowned again, "You know that you're not going to be able to come back to that if the senator finds out that you helped."

"Yeah, I know, but Uncle Duke has a place for me if that happens. I'm not really worried about it. I can be on one side of the law or the other. I've got skills both sides want, and after hearing what kind of shit you got yourself involved with, I'm kind of thinking that the other side might need someone with a little grudge and a bit of inside knowledge if you know what I mean."

"You're talking about going all the way," Corbett said. "Look, all I want is to get this Kincaid girl out of the way and keep my family alive."

"Corbett, when are you going to wake up? If they can do this to one girl, what's to say they couldn't do it to your daughter, your wife? The system's broken, man."

"Lewis said the same thing," Corbett said with a dark look.

"But he's working it, Inspector. I'm talking about tearing it down."

Corbett watched the officer across the table with a wary eye and he couldn't help but look around to see who was paying attention, maybe see if someone was listening in. There weren't any cars outside that looked like they didn't belong, no people paying undue attention to the two cops sitting in their booths, even the waitress hadn't come back with their food yet.

"All right, look," Corbett said, "I don't know how far this is going to go, but I'm in as far as getting my family away."

Sylvester nodded and leaned over the table. "All right, we'll take it one step at a time. First, though, you get to convince your wife."

"Yeah," Corbett said. "That's the part I'm not looking forward to."

Billie returned with their food just as the last words were out of Corbett's mouth, and he sat back, moving his coffee saucer to make room for the plate that was put in front of him. He wasn't concerned about the food at the moment, though, more with the man across the table from him.

Dinner went quickly and quietly and before long, there was nothing left to discuss and only so much small talk they could make before Corbett had to face up to his next task.

"I'll call you when I'm ready," he said to Sylvester.

Sylvester nodded and sat back in the booth, looking as unconcerned as Corbett imagined he would if they'd just been having a discussion on the technical merits of the new computer system at the office. Sighing inwardly to himself and wondering again what he'd gotten himself in the middle of, he took the tablet that Sylvester had given him and walked out the door.

When he got to his car, he hit the trunk release and pulled out the bad he'd just used. He took a breath and gave himself the one final chance to back out of this, then took out his tablet, turned it off, and then he slid it into the bag. Once it was safely stowed out of sight in the trunk, he pulled out Sylvester's tablet and started it up.

It didn't take much time for it to boot up and log into the police system, and there in the upper right corner, Corbett saw something that he'd never seen before. A little icon in the shape of an antenna. When he touched it, an interface appeared on the screen and he took a minute to familiarize himself with it, quickly learning where the functions he would need were located.

Once he got it all in his head, he brought up the police interface and signed himself out for the day. Then he put the tablet to sleep and slid it into the familiar holder. He couldn't avoid it any longer. It was time to go and talk with his wife.