Page 46 of Under Cover
“Seriously?” Denison asked, holding her hand delicately in front of her mouth like a debutante at tea.
“It was epic,” Garcia said, nodding like a bobblehead. “Crosby was at his best today. I mean, I don’t think McEnany has ever seen traffic like we got in Queens, but our shop swapped numbers with a couple of cars and maybe got a delivery truck pregnant.”
Denison dropped the hand into her lap and threw her head back and laughed, as did Harding.
“Oh, Crosby,” she said when she could talk again. “Do you really think we’d let you go?”
“Garcia’s the one with the good lines,” Crosby told her, and the look he sent Garcia was so full of gratitude Garcia thought he might actually melt into a puddle. Right there. In front of the two best AICs he’d ever had.
“But you’re the one with doubts,” Harding said astutely. “What’s troubling you, son?”
Crosby’s cheek ticked, and he let out a breath. “The fact that he’s here. We never got a chance to ask him why he’d come when you were right. You were the one who ordered the shoot, and the shoot was good. Everything I know about chain of command says they should have sentyourfestering asshole and not mine. McEnany waswaitingfor a chance to crawl up my ass, and I’m not going to rest easy until I know what he’s got planned.”
Harding let out a long noisy breath. “That’s fair,” he said, and Denison sobered instantly. “That’s fair,” he repeated, “and you’re right. Look, you two were supposed to spend the day doing paperwork. I say we get back to the office, you check outa newshop, and then you move into Garcia’s house while I make sure that’s the address on all your paperwork. That way if anybody shows up to interview your roommate….”
“He shows up at my place,” Garcia said. “Not the Magic Mystery Tour—we hear you.”
“Fair enough,” Harding said. “In fact, I may have to make you two have your little moving party without me and Tal. The others can help you, but we’ll do your paperwork, and after that we all may be doing some investigating of our own.”
Denison nodded. “McEnany’s bad shoot shouldnothave gotten him promoted this far up the food chain. He had to have help, and that help might have it in for you. We need to look.”
Harding made an affirming sound. “Chadwick worked in the FBI as an analyst for a while before I tapped him as a field agent. He might know the ways and means that asshole became everybody’s asshole.”
“What if we can’t make him go away, sir?” Crosby asked, and Garcia could tell the question came from the depth of his fear.
Aw, Crosby. C’mon. Trust us, buddy. Trust us.
“We find out what’s driving him,” Harding said without compromise in his voice. “And we makethatgo away. But first, he’s got to interview you in front of me, and he can’t do that until tomorrow. If our luck holds and we can go without calls for two more fucking days, we might be able to get a jump on him or whoever he’s working for. So I repeat, Crosby—”
“Don’t lose hope,” Denison said softly. “I know you’re thinking this is the best team you’ve ever worked with and you don’t want to lose that. Well, you need to know, this is the best teamanyof us has worked with, andnobodywants to lose that.”
Crosby swallowed. “Thanks, ma’am,” he said, the humility in his voice hitting Garcia right in the feels. “It would be a shame if I ended up someplace they didn’t give me coffee mugs to remind me of my fuckups.”
Everybody in the car laughed softly, and Denison and Harding went on to list avenues of investigation they could take. They ended up picking Crosby’s brains for names and connectionshemight know about, and Garcia listened to this part avidly. Crosby had given him that bare bones explanation on the first day they’d met, and after that most of Garcia’s knowledge had been in breadcrumbs, most of those Crosby’s skittish behavior regarding friends, colleagues, or anything, really, reminiscent of the day he’d lost everything by standing up to do the right thing.
And now, listening to him talk, Garcia was struck by something that surprised him.
“You’re hiding something,” he said, and the look of anguish Crosby shot him was enough to make him almost regret that he’d said anything.
Almost.
“I noticed that too,” Denison said. “Something about the way everybody in your precinct reacted—it was almost choreographed. You were told to do the right thing, and you did, and your story has always been you thought that’s what they meant. To tell the truth. But the minute you told the truth, the death threats started flooding in. I mean, Harding was calledthe dayyou were deposed. What gives?”
Crosby grunted and threw a glance at Harding through the rearview. Harding was busy negotiating traffic around the Shake Shack, but he nodded.
“Say it now, Crosby, before we’re out in the open and anybody can hear you.”
Crosby grunted. “I hope your department issue’s clean,” he said apologetically, meaning bugs, Garcia presumed, and then he spoke. “You all ever hear of the Sons of the Blood?”
Garcia’s veins iced over. “That racist cop group that everybody’s saying doesn’t exist but you always have the feeling it does?”
Crosby grunted. “It does. It’s… it’s almost like the Elks, right? But guys tell their wives it’s poker night, and the wives all get together and decide that any cop who’s not invited to ‘poker night,’ well, that cop’s wife doesn’t get invited to dinners and lunches and stuff. It’s… it’s generally a bunch of old farts sitting around a table and telling each other stories of the good old days, when they could just round people up and hold them indefinitely and nobody could say boo to a mouse.”
Garcia tried not to shake all over. “That… that was how they—”
Crosby looked him in the eyes. “That was how they kept people of color in line,” Crosby said grimly. “I know that. And the reason I know that is because my father was one of the Sons of the Blood, and McEnany was his trainee.” He grunted. “A thing I did not know until McEnany invited me to ‘poker night’ three days before he shot a kid in the back.”
Garcia sucked in a breath, trying not to gag. “Did you know?” he asked, trying to trammel up the betrayal until he knew if it was a thing.
