Page 72 of Under Cover
He looked around the room today to see who was there and let out a sigh of relief. He’d been taking covert photos of everybody who’d appeared in Creedy’s flat while he’d been there over the last six weeks, and thank God, he knew everybody’s names and jackets today, because he was not in the mood to pull his phone out and play with it and get tricky right now.
His pretend job was hard enough, thank you—having to do his real job was not on his agenda.
“How you doin’, Ricky?” Junior asked, and Crosby wanted to groan. Junior was sitting next to Kinsey Sizemore, a fucking behemoth who liked to turn around randomly and whale on Junior for fun. It was like little kids wrestled sometimes, but Crosbyhadbeen a flatfoot for two years, and he recognized the actual pain on Junior’s face when it happened, and he also recognized the short, feral bursts of fear that seemed to wrack Junior on the regular.
Kinsey Sizemore was probably doing more to Junior than socking his arm, and Junior was not exactly thrilled about it, either. Crosby didn’t think Kinsey was gay so much as he wasviolentand a bully, and he’d bend Junior over and fuck him bloody just to hear him whimper.
Because the look on Junior’s face told Crosby he’d stopped screaming a long time ago.
“Not so bad,” Crosby answered. “Just, you know—working backup for a veteran and a rookie. The rookie’s a good kid, but wet behind the ears.” Crosby had lost track of the number of times he’d run drills with the kid for following your partner through a house, one hand on the shoulder, looking behind you so nobody got caught by surprise, but Crosby had gotten there just in time that day, right before Sweeney had almost gotten jumped by a guy spiraling on meth. The meth seemed to be everywhere, and Crosby had needed to use his baton on the back of the guy’s head to get him to drop off Sweeney’s back.
Thank God there’d been no knives or guns involved or Sweeney and his partner, Barnes, might have been dead, and Crosby would be eyeball deep in paperwork too.
Junior gave him a slight smile, the kind that made Crosby’s stomach bunch up like it had been for the last six weeks. He’d been running hard, taking pictures, planting bugs, getting called in for extra shifts. There’d been no time to visit Queens in the last six weeks, and Crosby could feel Garcia’s absence like he’d been torn from Crosby’s skin.
No time to talk about his misgivings regarding Junior, how he thought maybe the kidwasgay and needed to be extracted from this situationnow, before it was too late. Crosby had caught him the other day about to do a line of the meth that sat fuckingperpetuallyon the table at Creedy’s.
“That shit’ll rot your brain,” he’d said harshly, and Junior had dropped his hand.
“I just….” He’d shifted where he stood, obviously in a little pain. “Everything hurts,” he’d whispered, giving Kinsey and his smaller, meaner buddy Pidgeon Smalls a surreptitious look.
“Take Advil,” Crosby had advised, also quietly. “Learn to run faster. Maybe don’t hang out in your father’s apartment so much, Junior. But don’t start with that—man, I don’t know how these guys hold down jobs at the warehouse with all they do!” It was true. Kinsey and Pidgeon and their buddies always seemed to be in Creedy’s apartment whenever Rick Young visited, and they always seemed to be high.
At that moment, Kinsey had looked up from his huddle around the table with Pidgeon and the others. “C’mere, Junior,” he’d said, laughing meanly. “We want you to help us settle a bet. Maybe your buddy Rick can hang out too! C’mon, Ricky, have a snort and come play poker!”
That had been Crosby’s intention that day—minus the “snort”—but looking at Junior’s anguished, terrified face, he realized he was going to have to improvise.
“Me and Junior gotta go down to the bodega and get some water and shit for my mini fridge. Sorry, guys—I got a double shift tomorrow, and I need some stores.”
There’d been protests as he pulled Junior out into the corridor and down the stairs. He’d discovered the tiny elevator on the south side of the building, but it stank like shit, just like McEnany had told him. The stairs kept him fit, he told himself virtuously.
They also kept him off McEnany and Creedy’s radar, because they were lazy bastards, just like the thugs who hung out in Creedy’s flop.
That day, Junior had told him that his father, while not the union president, had pull with the union. Kinsey, Pidgeon, and their friends were night security at the warehouse, but they seemed to be able to miss a lot of days without anybody caring.
The thought teased at his brain today as he watched Junior try helplessly to distance himself from Kinsey and Pidgeon again.
Shit. Well, it wasn’t like he was going to be able to see Garcia tonight, or tomorrow either. He knew the teams were working on the info he’d been feeding them. He’d gotten jackets on all the criminals, with everything from sexual assault to manslaughter behind their names, but so far they couldn’t figure out the connection between Creedy, his goons, and the higher-ups that McEnany was trying to cozen up to.
And it wasn’t going to happen today, he decided.
“Junior, got another shopping run to make,” he said, which flat out wasn’t true. He had noodles, waters, even apples, bran muffins, and yogurt, which he tried to eat every day no matterhowbad his stomach felt, but God. He couldn’t see Garcia. He couldn’t fix the whole situation in just this minute.
The least he could do—the very least—was get Junior out of this apartment, where Kinsey or Pidgeon or Rod or Clyde or any of the other assholes might pull him into his own bedroom and work out their meth boner on his poor, abused, scrawny body.
“Yeah?” Junior popped up from the couch, moving nimbly from Kinsey’s clumsy grasp. “Sorry guys. Gotta go!”
And with that, Crosby led him to the stairwell, but as soon as the door had closed, he started to go up instead of down.
“No groceries?” Junior said, sounding depressed.
“Cup-o-noodles and a salad in my flop?” Crosby asked. “I got some mac and cheese.”
“Hot dogs?” Junior asked.
Crosby grimaced. “No room for hot dogs in the mini fridge,” he said.
“I’ll run and get hot dogs,” Junior told him, sounding excited. “Don’t worry—those guys were really fucking stoned. They won’t be looking for me for a good two hours.”