Authors: Joseph Badal
Brand could see where the blame for this fiasco was about to be placed. “Well, that’s about right, Mayor. Except”—and here his tone was thick with sarcasm—“don’t forget we found a stash of heroin.” His voice rose. “But it sure as hell wasn’t enough to fill a panel truck, as the DEA guy told us.”
The mayor gave him a squint-eyed look and said, “How the fuck will I explain all this to the press? And wait ‘til the animal rights people find out my S.W.A.T. team hurt a couple puppy dogs.”
In a perverted, vindictive sort of way, Brand enjoyed every bit of the mayor’s discomfort. Although Commissioner Sullivan had yet to say anything, Brand could tell from the anguished look on his boss’s face and his continual shifting in his chair that Sullivan was in agony.
The mayor’s mood suddenly changed. “Hey, we can tell the media we had intelligence about a stash of drugs at Bartolucci’s place. No one says a thing about the dogs. The story will be that Bartolucci’s gangsters fired on our men first and wounded several brave police officers.”
Sullivan gave Brand a pained look and finally said to the mayor, “I don’t think any of that will pass muster.”
Brand felt he had no choice but to further ruin the mayor’s brief moment of optimism. He held up a hand, fingers spread, and ticked off the points he felt needed to be made. “First, about the drugs,” he said. “We had no probable cause for the raid. You’ll remember it was the DEA that put us up to this. But my guess is the DEA will pull a Sergeant Schultz. They won’t know nothing. They’ll never admit to having anything to do with any of it. So, a defense attorney right out of law school could get a case against Bartolucci tossed out of court—if it even got past the DA’s office. Second, why would a wily old Mafia Don who’s been around forever have a couple hundred pounds of heroin on a dining room table? Why would he take that kind of risk? Third, what about the DEA undercover agent we were told was on the property? There was no one there. Bartolucci’s people had no clue about a DEA agent when we questioned them. Fourth, when I confronted Bartolucci’s men and told them to lay down their guns, they were honestly surprised we were cops. Now, why would a bunch of supposed drug runners be surprised that the cops raided their place? They seemed to expect trouble, but not from the police. Right now, Bartolucci has a potential lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia. If you go to the press with some story that smears his name, he could own the City. Fifth”—he wiggled the little finger on his raised hand—“we found a bank of busted windows on the south side of the house. We never went near that side of the house. Something really stinks. Oh, and by the way, we found this envelope taped to the basement door when we searched the house.”
Brand pulled an envelope from an inside pocket of his tactical vest and waved it at the mayor. “It’s addressed to Rolf Bishop, the recently confirmed CIA Deputy Director.”
“Why in God’s name would anyone in that house leave an envelope for a top CIA guy?” Sullivan asked.
The mayor’s face sagged. He had an expression as though he finally realized he’d been scammed. “What’s in the envelope?”
Brand pulled the note from the envelope and handed it to Katz. The mayor read it aloud: “When you play ball with the wrong people, you get the bat shoved up your ass. Bend over, Rolfie Baby, your time has come.” The mayor read the message aloud a second time.
Brand could barely contain his laughter.
The mayor refolded the note and returned it to Brand, who put it back in the envelope. “Captain Brand,” Katz said. “I think the commissioner and I will figure out how to deal with this mess. While we do that, why don’t you go out to my living room and try to get CIA Headquarters on the phone. Tell them we need to immediately talk with Deputy Director Bishop. When you reach him, tell him we found a letter addressed to him. Don’t tell him we’ve looked in the envelope.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor, I’ll get right on it.”
“Oh, one other thing,” Katz said. “Why don’t you call that asshole DEA guy, Morton, and see what he has to say?”
“I already tried. The DEA night duty officer checked his computer for me and discovered Timothy Morton retired from the agency. No forwarding address.”
It took Brand fifteen minutes to connect to the Langley duty officer. She told him to leave a recorded message for Deputy Director Bishop. Brand waited for the beep and then spoke into the phone: “This is Captain Abraham Lincoln Brand of the Philadelphia Police Department. We found a letter addressed to you. If we do not hear from you soon, we will open the letter.” He added his telephone number and hung up.
Brand rejoined the mayor and the police commissioner who had brandy snifters in hand.
Katz fixed his gaze on Brand, pointed at a chair.
“Linc, Clarence and I have decided we have only one course of action. We’ll call a press conference for ten this morning. We’ll announce that the Philadelphia S.W.A.T. unit executed a surprise raid on an estate in Chestnut Hill that is secretly owned by the former head of organized crime in Philadelphia. We’ll say we had information that a significant amount of illegal drugs was hidden on the estate and we will display the drugs your team captured. We’ll say Bartolucci’s guards opened fire on the S.W.A.T. officers. We will also say the guards at the estate were heavily armed. We will announce that each of the men who took part in the raid will receive the Medal of Merit.”
The mayor turned to his police commissioner. “Did I cover everything, Clarence?”
“Sounds like you got it all, Mr. Mayor.”
The mayor returned his attention to Brand. “You have any suggestions?”
Brand first looked at his boss and then at the mayor. “No disrespect intended, gentlemen,” he said, “but you’ve got to be kidding. You go out and tell that crock of shit to the press and it will come back and bite us all on the ass. You tell that story and you’ll have to bring charges against Bartolucci and every one of his men. Their lawyers will rip those charges to shreds. I believe Gino Bartolucci was as much a dupe in this scam as we were. I think the agenda of that DEA son-of-a-bitch, Tim Morton, had nothing to do with the story he gave us. There are way too many unexplained things about this whole operation. And what about that busted bank of windows I mentioned earlier? And what about that note addressed to Rolf Bishop? Until I saw that note, I thought the DEA had orchestrated this clusterfuck. Now, I’m not so sure. Maybe the CIA used Morton to play us. This whole thing stinks.”
“Maybe stray bullets knocked out the windows,” the mayor said, although without much conviction.
“I don’t think so, Mayor. Those windows were on the far side of the house, away from the action. Another thing that puzzles me is the amount of debris we found beyond the south wall of the property. Leaves and small branches were scattered on the golf course a couple hundred yards from the back of Bartolucci’s property. I thought I heard a helicopter in the area after Bartolucci’s men surrendered, but I didn’t think anything of it. I knew we didn’t have any aircraft deployed on the mission. With all that debris beyond the wall, I suspect a chopper landed there and picked up men who were not part of my team. The same men who drugged and tied up four Philadelphia policemen who were assigned to guard the back wall of Bartolucci’s place.”
“What!” Katz shouted.
“Yeah, we found them trussed up, unconscious on the edge of the golf course. They couldn’t tell us a thing. None of them saw who attacked them. That sounds like a Special Ops team to me. And another thing, what happened to Bartolucci and the undercover DEA agent? When we questioned the guards, they said they had no idea where Bartolucci might be, but that he’d been asleep in an upstairs bedroom. They were as confused about his whereabouts as we were. And one of the guards told us there had been three other men and a woman in the house. And get this: One of the men and the woman were cops.”
“Cops!” Katz shouted. “Were they ours?”
“No, I don’t think so. One of Bartolucci’s men told us they were from someplace out of state.”
Brand waited to see if Katz had any more questions, and then continued. “The other two men were Bartolucci’s son-in-law, David Hood, and Hood’s father, Peter. All four people were Gino Bartolucci’s guests.”
Brand paused to allow the other two men to fully process all he’d said. Then he added, “I checked on David Hood and learned he has a sterling reputation. He heads up a highly respected international security firm. And Hood’s wife and two children were killed in a bomb blast at their home in Bethesda on April 12.
“Mr. Mayor, Commissioner, I don’t think we gain a thing from a press conference and we potentially lose a lot. There are only a couple of small groups of people who know about this operation. There are my men, who won’t say a word about it. They’re not about to blab about a raid that turned into such a mess. Bartolucci’s men could spill the beans, but I really don’t see that happening. Who would believe them anyway? The neighbors think all the noise they heard was from fireworks, so there’s no worry on that front. We maintained strict radio silence on our side, so no one could have monitored the raid on a scanner. I’ll come up with a reasonable story for the wounded officers to tell their families. And one other thing. Your story won’t stand up to press scrutiny. If your media friends discover you lied to them, they’ll turn on you like rabid dogs.”
“Aw jeez,” the mayor groaned. After a few seconds, Katz added, “We need to find Gino Bartolucci. And the minute you hear from this guy Rolf Bishop, call me. I want to know what he might have had to do with this fiasco.”
“If I was Gino Bartolucci,” Brand said, “I would get away from Philly as quickly as possible.”
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Katz shouted.
Not up to the mayor’s usual eloquence, Brand thought.
CHAPTER 36
Bishop slouched in his government Towncar and tried to sleep on the trip up to New York from D.C. But the gears in his brain spun at a thousand miles an hour. Sleep just wouldn’t come. When his cellphone
brrred
, he sat up straight, breathed in a great quantity of air, exhaled slowly, and hoped for good news. He pushed the TALK button on the phone.
“Mr. Bishop?”
Bishop recognized the voice of the leader of the CIA black ops team he’d sent to the Bartolucci estate. “How did it go?”
The man recited what had happened. The news was not good. The team had basically accomplished nothing.
Bishop cut the connection; he was wide awake now. He wanted to scream. Nothing was going well. And now he had to get to New York to meet with the President for the G-8 meeting that would include a series of briefings scheduled for the leaders of some of the world’s most powerful economies. Bishop’s assignment was to personally update the heads of state and their intelligence agency directors on information the CIA had gathered on several hot spots around the globe: Syria, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan. CIA analysts, specialists on each of the subject areas, had prepared his script. Bishop estimated his driver would get him to The Plaza by 3 a.m. He could then, hopefully, catch four or five hours sleep before he had to take part in a 10 a.m. practice briefing session. Lunch with the President and the other G-8 leaders would follow, and then his part of the briefing, set for 2:30 p.m. After that he would have the rest of the day free to decide what he should do about Hood.
Bishop cursed the black ops team and thought about his options. Then the car phone beeped. He picked up the receiver.
A woman said. “Copley here; verify ID, please.”
Bishop punched in his seven-digit identification code on the telephone receiver.
“Sir, I have message traffic for you. Hold while I play it back.”
A series of beeps and tones played in Bishop’s ear. He heard a voice say he was Captain Brand of the Philadelphia Police Department and had found a letter addressed to him.
“Now what?” he muttered.
Bishop cut the connection and dialed the number Brand had left.
“Sergeant Moynihan. How may I help you?”
For some reason, the sergeant’s crisp tone aggravated Bishop and put him in a worse mood than he was in already.
“What you can do for me, Sergeant, is get Captain Brand on the line immediately.”
Moynihan hated the graveyard shift while the rest of the world was home in bed. Now he had an asshole on the line giving him a ration of shit. “Why don’t you give me your name and a little less attitude, mister, and maybe I’ll see if I can track down Captain Brand for you in the next week or so.”
“You listen to me,
mister
. This is CIA Deputy Director Rolf Bishop. You get Brand on the line or I’ll have your ass demoted to some friggin’ backwater precinct where the natives are always restless.”
Moynihan knew how to handle crank callers. “Hey, I think maybe you should go back to whatever cage you escaped from. Or maybe just haul your butt down to the closest police station. I’m sure your friendly neighborhood cop would just love to talk with a CIA Deputy Director.”
Moynihan laughed boisterously and hung up.
Bishop took the phone away from his ear and stared at it open-mouthed. He took a couple of deep breaths until he’d regained his composure, and hit the TALK button again. The phone automatically re-dialed Philadelphia Police Headquarters. This time, a female cop answered.
“This is Officer Wilson of the Philadelphia Police Department, how may I be of assistance?”
Bishop tried charm this time. “Officer Wilson, my name is Rolf Bishop. I received a message that Captain Brand needed to talk to me A-S-A-P. Do you think you could connect us, or perhaps take a message for him to call me back?” He gave the officer his cellphone number.
“Mr. Bishop, give me a moment to see if I can reach Captain Brand.” After a moment, the woman came back on the line. “Mr. Bishop, I have Captain Brand. Please hang on while I patch you into his car.”
There were a few seconds of dead air and then, “Mr. Bishop, it’s Captain Brand. Thanks for calling me back at such an ungodly hour.”
“That’s okay, Captain. What’s up?”