Davis had his own office in the Detroit police building where he was stationed. This was not the mark of distinction that one might think it to be, Davis had explained on the way over. He had driven the battered cruiser capably and with a heavy foot, perhaps energized by the idea of getting to the bottom of a mess he thought was making him look bad. He was young enough still, Bolan thought, that he took it personally. Maybe he thought that Agent Cooper was looking down on him for his failure. That was if the failure was unintentional, not something planned to screen the fact that Davis was working with the opposition. The soldier did not believe that to be the case. He did not accept that someone who had shown the mettle Davis had thus far demonstrated could be a traitor, a dirty cop. But Mack Bolan had not lived as long as he had, while fighting his endless war, by giving his trust fully or easily.
Davis’s place of employment, for most of cops at his rank, was a bull pen of desks in a large, open area on the second floor of a badly aging, seventies-era multistory building downtown. The decor of the office had not been updated since the seventies, and the space—intended to look “mod” and sleek decades earlier—just looked tired and threadbare.
This was fairly typical of working station houses in Bolan’s experience, and he did not hold it against the building’s occupants. Men and women of law enforcement, especially in high-crime areas, did toiled at difficult, risky and mostly thankless jobs.
Davis explained that there simply was not enough room to wedge yet another desk into the bull pen. As the junior-most detective assigned here, then, he was given his own private so-called office shoehorned into what had been a storage closet adjacent to the open floor space. More than one officer, including the lower-ranking uniformed ones, commented on this as Davis made his way through the building with Bolan in tow. “Hey, party at Davis’s place” was the most frequent taunt.
Davis took all this in stride, and the ribbing seemed good-natured as far as Bolan could tell. He led the soldier to his office, moved a stack of books on the second chair wedged into the space and invited him to sit down. Bolan left the door open and watched the hallway as Davis booted his computer.
The detective bumped the bookcase against the wall as he worked. He did not seem to notice each time his elbow came in contact with the textbooks there. Bolan scanned the titles; they were obviously from a college career spent pursuing criminal science. Had there been any free wall space not covered by the door when it was open, Bolan imagined that Davis might have hung his diploma there.
Davis muttered to himself as he worked. He was searching through the list, Bolan gathered. He also seemed to be checking that list against the source files from which the names were drawn. He did not seem satisfied in what he was finding. As the younger man worked, the soldier kept his attention fixed on the hallway outside. Something was nagging at him, some feeling of anticipation. He realized, then, what it was. The officers passing by Davis’s closet were looking in with something strange in their expressions. On most of the men, it was a morbid sort of curiosity, as if they expected something bad to have befallen Detective Davis. On a few, it was almost disappointment, as if the expected bad news was not forthcoming and it was something they considered a loss.
If they think something bad is going down, Bolan thought, then it’s only a matter of time before—
There was a knocking on the door frame.
There were three men standing in the doorway. Two of them were detectives, their shirts rumpled, ties at half-mast. The tall one, his features creased with a lived-in scowl, wore an equally rumpled gray trench coat as if he thought he was the star of a detective noir movie. The short, fatter one, who was balding and trying to cover it up with a comb-over, had a jowly face dominated by deeply set, hostile eyes. The third man was a young uniformed officer with a flattop buzz cut.
“Hey,” the fat one said. “Looks like little Adam’s got a buddy. Hello, buddy.” There was no mirth in the man’s tone. He leaned on the door frame with what he probably thought was calculated menace. Bolan eyed him curiously.
“Slate,” Davis said. He sounded tired, as if Slate were someone whose presence he were tolerating under protest. “Agent Cooper of the Justice Department, meet Detective Brian Slate. His tall friend is Detective Bill Griffith. I’m afraid I don’t know the name of the officer with them.”
“Glase,” the uniformed officer said. “Tim Glase.”
“Nice to meet you,” Davis said. He did not sound very sincere.
“Yeah, yeah,” Slate said, brushing Glase’s hand out of the way. He pointed a thick index finger at Bolan. “You, pretty boy,” he said, dropping any pretense of civility. “You’ve been pokin’ your nose in where it don’t belong. You may think you’re pretty hot shit back in Washington or wherever. But we’re real cops here. We don’t need your kind muckin’ about.”
Bolan said nothing. He remained in his seat, surveying both Griffith and Slate, wondering if Glase was hanging back out of some kind of strategy or simply because he deferred to the other two. Bolan was an apt and experienced student of human nature. Their words, their body language, and their choices of conversational tacks were all pieces of data to Bolan, who was studying them as a lion might study its next meal.
“He thinks he’s some kind of computer expert,” Griffith said. His hands were in his pockets. Bolan watched him closely. “He thinks he can out-detective senior detectives.”
“Look, you two,” Davis said, apparently judging Glase beneath notice, “I’m a little tired of this game. You’ve done your hazing. You’ve had your fun. We’re all cops here. I have work to do, and you’re interrupting an agent of the Justice Department while on official duty. Please go.”
Griffith and Slate traded expressions of mock awe. “Well, well,” Slate said. “That sounds damned official. Maybe I should put it another way, little boy,” he said. His voice grew harsher, and there was no joking in it, even by the lame standards of humor that amused someone like him. “I’m not asking you, kid. I’m telling you. You’re going to conclude that your investigation is going nowhere. So a few losers got stabbed. Detroit is full of crime. You need to focus on something a little more productive. Like right now.”
“And you,” Griffith said, poking Bolan in the chest, “are out of your league, pal. Go back to your boyfriend in the big city, if you have one, or whatever bathhouse you hang out in, and find somebody else to do. Davis here already has a top bunk. He’s spoken for by us.”
Davis looked irritated. Bolan looked down at the finger poking him in the chest.
He looked up, slowly, at Griffith, his eyes full of cold, blue lethality.
“So, uh,” Griffith said, “you’re, uh, gonna leave town. Like, soonest.”
Bolan looked down at the finger again, then back up at Griffith. “Take your hand off me.”
Something about that made Slate angry. His face turned red. “You listen good, you asshole,” he began. “If my partner says jump, you say—”
Bolan struck, as quick as a rattlesnake. He grabbed Griffith’s index finger and squeezed his hand into a fist. Griffith’s finger snapped with an audible crack.
“Oh my God!” Slate blurted. His hand disappeared into his jacket, going for his gun.
Bolan wasn’t finished. He opened his hand, positioned his fingers on the stricken Griffith’s wrist and twisted in and down. The detective went to his knees in front of Bolan’s chair. Simultaneously, the soldier snapped a kick, still seated, from the knee, catching Slate just behind his own knee joint. The leg buckled and Slate lost his balance, toppling forward. The Executioner shifted slightly in his chair, grabbed the back of Slate’s head as the man pitched over, and slammed the fat detective’s nose against the wooden lip of the chair.
Blood spurted from Slate’s nose. Bolan gave him a shove, planting him in the corridor beyond on his ample posterior. He sat there in a sitting position, his gun forgotten, grabbing at his nose and bleating like a sheep.
“By…by noge!” he said through the blood and his broken beak. “You broge my noge!”
Bolan twirled Griffith’s captured wrist, torquing the man over so that he faced the corridor. He kicked Griffith in the butt, sending him sprawling. He landed amid the drops of blood still leaking from Slate’s face.
Glase had his hand on his holstered sidearm. “You, sir, just assaulted a pair of Detroit’s finest,” he announced. “I’m going to have to put you under arrest.”
Bolan shrugged aside his leather jacket so the butt of his Beretta was visible. He very slowly, deliberately put his hand on the weapon. “You want to take me in, kid,” he said, “you’re going to need more than a trumped up charge backed by a pair of dirty cops.”
“Hey!” Griffith protested. “You can’t say that!”
“He just did,” Davis said. Bolan looked over. The detective had his Glock out and was covering the three men. “Now get the hell out of here, all three of you. If anybody goes filing any reports, I just might have to remember a few irregularities in some of the fine casework I know you two sad sacks have worked. Nobody sees anything around here,” he reminded them. “Unless they do.”
Slate managed to stumble to his feet, his nose still streaming blood. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pushed it at his bent nose, trying to mop up the mess. Griffith cradled his hand and shot Davis and Bolan a hateful look.
“You’re dead,” he said. “Both of you. You’re fucking dead men.”
Bolan stared him down. He said nothing in response. He snapped open the retaining strap on his shoulder holster.
“Go, go,” Slate said through his bubbling, bloody nose. The three men retreated.
Bolan reached up calmly and snapped his holster shut. “You find anything?” he asked Davis.
Davis looked at him. “You just…you just beat up two men while sitting in a chair. With one hand.”
Bolan waved that away. “I said, did you find anything?”
Davis blinked. “Cooper,” he said, “I don’t know what kind of pull you think you have in Washington, but it may not be enough for two like that.”
“You keep forgetting the third guy,” Bolan said.
“I’m serious, Cooper,” Davis said. “You know as well as I do that rumors float around the force. There are some who say those two have murdered suspects in the past and covered it up. That they’re on the take from the Mafia.”
“I’d say that’s pretty much a given, wouldn’t you?” Bolan said. “Why else would they be leaning on us? The Mafia just fielded a football team or two trying to put bullets in our heads. The attempt has failed. Now these two just coincidentally show up to tell me to get out of Dodge and throw a scare into you. You don’t have to be good at math to put these numbers together and come up with dirty cop.”
“Can you call in some backup, Cooper?” Davis said. “I’ve done what I can, and I’ll keep doing that. But with Slate and Griffith breathing down our necks we may be facing a new level of difficulty here.”
“And you were offended that I thought you might be dirty,” Bolan said.
“Low blow, Cooper,” Davis said. “Low blow.”
“It gets better,” Bolan said. “I was bluffing.”
“What?”
“You need to know something,” Bolan said. “I won’t kill a cop, if it comes to that.”
“You…you broke a cop’s nose and a cop’s finger!”
“They’ll heal.”
“Cooper, you mean to tell me that if Slate or Griffith meant to shoot you—or me—you would let them do it?”
“I won’t kill a cop,” Bolan said. “Not even a dirty one, if I can help it.”
“That’s very comforting, Cooper.” Davis sighed.
“Now that we’ve gotten the bad news out of the way,” Bolan said, “did you find anything?”
“Well, that’s where things get interesting,” Davis said. “All of our files are indexed with a file number. The file numbers and the information, things like addresses, relevant information, and the like, are kept in separate fields in the database. It’s why we have to abbreviate so much that it’s almost shorthand, because the fields are only so big.”
Bolan nodded. “And?”
“Somebody did a relatively crude job of swapping out the file numbers and the case data,” Davis said. “They didn’t hide it very well. I checked the master database that tracks file numbers by date entered. Using that I was able to find the files that those numbers were supposed to go with, instead of the ones they are paired with now. It was a one-to-one replacement, not something that sent me hunting among multiple files.”
“Meaning…” Bolan prompted.
“Meaning that whoever wanted to throw off an investigation into the knife killings didn’t try very hard to do it. They just made sure the case numbers each led to a single dead end. Basically they assigned the wrong names, the wrong addresses, or both, to the file backup data I researched. Once I knew which file numbers to look for, I was able to find the one that was supposed to be matched to it. It was a simple set of crossed wires.”
“So whoever did this didn’t think anyone was going to look too hard.”
“Cooper?”
“Think about it,” Bolan said. “If they thought a deep look was likely, they would have taken more time. Careers are on the line here. Prison time, possibly. Life and death. Yet they did a simple file switch that you found in minutes.”
“Well,” Davis said. “I’m not an amateur.”
“Trust me,” Bolan said, thinking of Kurtzman and his team of computer specialists at the Farm, “you may not be a rank amateur, but I know people worlds better at this than you. A real investigation would involve personnel like that. So the way these files were hidden tells us something.”
“What?” Davis asked.
“Power,” Bolan said. “The arrogance of power. The person or persons behind this think they’ll be able to deal with anyone who does stumble across this information.”
“By hiring Mafia hit men to ice them?”
“Yeah,” Bolan nodded. “Just like that.”
Davis tapped a few more keys. “You’d better escort me to the shared printer,” he told Bolan. “Although I hate to make you get up out of your chair to do it. There might be some angry, wounded detectives waiting out there.”
“There might, at that.”
Davis paused to close the door and lock his little closet. “I’m in deep shit on this, Cooper,” he said quietly. “Slate and Griffith have a lot of friends in this place.”
The two men walked to the printer. Davis retrieved the list data, finally corrected. They were, unfortunately, starting from scratch, at least insofar as finding the source of the knife killings was concerned. Bolan, however, was impressed with what they had managed to shake loose so far. Even the misdirection that had begun this little escapade was itself a hint at the source of the corruption and crime here in Detroit.
Davis made a detour once they were near the printer. He stopped to talk to an attractive young woman at one of the computer stations in the adjacent records processing area. Bolan wasn’t sure what that was about, but the exchange was brief. Davis might simply have been flirting for all he knew. The detective returned quickly enough and grabbed his printout.
“Come with me,” Bolan said when Davis had folded and pocketed his sheaf of papers.
“Where are we going?” Davis asked.
“To see your lieutenant.”
“Oh, boy. Try not to gouge out his eye or something.”
They paused at Sumner’s office just long enough for Bolan to walk up to the man’s desk. “Lieutenant Sumner,” Bolan said. “I’m lodging a formal complaint.”
“Oh?” Sumner said. “About what?” He was a tall man, in good shape. He stood toe-to-toe with Bolan, separated from the soldier by only his desk. He did not look cowed in any way. Bolan admired that. He hoped the man wasn’t dirty.
“Griffith and Slate,” Bolan said.
A shadow crossed Sumner’s features. Those names, Bolan concluded, didn’t bring Sumner a great deal of pleasure. That meant the lieutenant wasn’t stupid. He knew, or suspected, what was going on in his domain.
“They’re clumsy,” Bolan said. “Had a little accident outside Davis’s office. Whoever waxes that floor should put out a sign.”
“Waxes that floor…” Sumner said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“It’s a hazard,” Bolan said. “Those two are lucky to have gotten out of it with only some minor damage. A broken finger and nose. Next time, it might be much more serious.” He paused and gave Sumner a hard stare. “I wouldn’t want to have to call Washington about this. My boss can be very unpleasant when he’s interrupted.”
“Yeah,” Sumner said. He was quiet, surrendering without saying the words. “Yeah, I bet. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Good,” Bolan said. He turned and left. Davis followed.
“You’re making friends fast around here,” he said.
“I believe in burning my bridges as I get to them,” Bolan said.
“Explains a lot,” Davis said.