Good Guys, Bad Guys, Fence Walkers: Detective Thriller

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© 2011 by J.P.Holmes. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 04/26/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3132-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-5775-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009913163

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Contents

4

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43

I leaned against the unmarked police car and watched as my partner of three months was getting the hell beat out of him. Hey it’s not like I wasn’t doing anything to help him I had an ambulance on its way. When i thought he had enough i shot the punks in the leg, there was some scrap iron pipes in the alley I put one in the hand of the punk that had passed out the other punk sat like a Buddha and watched the blood run out of his leg. My rookie partner and i didn’t see police work the same way. He was full of all the stuff they teach at the academy. Twice he had turned me in to the Watch Commander for what he thought was excessive force. It didn’t matter much now I had put my early retirement papers in and was just waiting for them to clear. Two other detectives have done the same thing. We plan on starting our own detective agency. We have an office rented and have bought three used desks and chairs. Had a phone line put in, phone setting on the floor. Meager start but we have high hopes, none of the three of us are held in very high esteem among our fellow officers. To say we bent the rules would be a gross understatement. lets get back to my partner getting beat up, we have been watching the two pucks selling drugs in the alley for two hours. He looked at me and said he would handle the two. I said ok, hey there’s nothing like on the job training he walks over to them and flashes his badge they jump him right away. How would I have handled the two punks, I would have shot them where they stood then loaded them up with the drugs they were selling I have needles in the car. I would have left them there to die and taken their money. No judge would get the chance to slap them With a fine and send them back on the streets to sell more drugs, the jails and prisons are loaded with drug pushers I don’t arrest them I dispose of them. By now you have a good idea of me. I’m 6’2 and two hundred and ten pounds work out three nights a week at the local gym can drop you with a Billy club across your knees thirty feet away. Veteran of the first Gulf War and have been on the police force for fifteen years. Have as many citations as I have disciplinary warnings. Follow the ambulance to the hospital and wait around until a doctor comes out and says the rookie will be ok nothing broken just a lot of bruises go back to the precinct and do the paper work then go home. Next day the retirement paper work comes down and my fifteen year career comes to an end. There’s a party for the three of us most all the precinct cops attend but not all as I say there are those that don’t agree with the way the three of us got the job done. None of the brass attend we laugh at that. It wasn’t planned but our first names all start with a J, John, James and Joseph so is formed the Triple J detective agency. The office we have rented has two rooms a large one and a smaller one. Rooms are divided by smoked glass paneling and a smoked glass door. Our first fight both Jimmy and Joe want the window. I listen to them for a minute and then push one of the desks length wise up to the middle of the window then butt the other desk against it. Now both Jimmy and Joe have half a window, all our problems should be that easy to solve. Nothing much happens the first week, two of us work out at the gym while one of us stays in the office in case the phone does ring. Jimmy and I are in the gym when Joe comes in. Councilmen Ryan would like for us to come to his house this evening. Councilmen gets right to the point he is being blackmailed has received photos of him at a downtown club fondling a very will endowed waitress that didn’t seemed to be minding it at all. We ask him the name of the club he was at, he tells us and that will be our first stop. Place is full and when we walk in there is a rush for the door which Jimmy has pretty well blocked. One of the patrons tries pushing Jimmy aside, Jimmy puts his limp body in a chair by the door. No one remembers the councilmen or anyone with a camera. Joe asks the bartender where the owner is, there is no reply. Joe lifts the bartender up and over the bar and sets him on a bar stool. Joe gets really close to the bartenders face and asks him again where the owner is. Bartender leads us to a back room office from the angle of the photos the pictures were taken from a security camera above the entrance door. Owner says the camera is part of a security agency he has hired. Ask him the name of the security service he tells us it is Apex Security. We are there when Apex opens at eight thirty in the morning. We show the owner the pictures and he is not happy when the pictures match the ones on his camera tapes. Owner knows if word gets out that his security service isn’t so secure he is out of business. Owner gives us all the tapes and asks that we square things with the Councilmen we tell him we will do what we can but he needs new employees, he agrees. By noon councilmen has the tapes and is every happy we tell him there should be no connection between him and us. We give him a post office box number we tell him to pay us in cash whatever he thinks the job was worth. Two days later a very large envelope is in our lock box jammed with hundred dollar bills. Wooden chairs get replaced with plush leather chairs three more phones and an intercom system connected to the desks and one to the new desk in the other room. Hey we may have a secretary someday. Our second case is a beauty about 5’9 with all the stuff in the right places. She is a top fashion model and having trouble with a boyfriend she no longer wants around. Doesn’t want to go to the police or have a restraining order placed against him, worried about the publicity she might get she says the guy really scares her, gives us a picture of the guy and the names of the places the guy hangs out at. We watch the guy for a week and agree with the model, the guys is a little off center. We pick him up coming out of one of the taverns the model had given us. Jimmy taps him with a black jack and we take him to the train yard and tie him to an idling diesel there we watch as his screams bring him help, sign around his neck telling him to leave town tonight. He runs the eight blocks back to his house and comes out a half hour later with two suit cases and jumps into a cab he must have ordered. We follow the cab which takes him to the airport, guy runs in and Jimmy follows him. Jimmy says the guy buys a ticket on the next flight out and doesn’t ask where its going. We watch his hang outs for a week and never see him, model doesn’t hear from him either. Model so happy pays our fee and offers us a bonus, herself and two of her model girlfriends which we except. Girls really like us no one hits on them when they’re with us we’re thinking about changing our line of work to a male escort service. So far the work has been right up our alley but there’s a lot of paper work that has to be done. Joe has an aunt that has just lost her job at a bank she has worked at for twenty eight years we hire her and Joes aunt Irma has a son that has just graduated from college, he has majored in computer technology we hire him too. Office now too small rent an office in a downtown bank building with four rooms and a plush waiting room put Danny, Irma’s son in one of the rooms and make our first mistake with him, ask him what he needs he rattles off words we have never heard before let alone know what they mean. Give him a blank check and tell him to get whatever he needs now the room we have given Danny is twelve by twelve and when he gets done putting all the stuff he has bought into it the only open spot in the door way. Some of the stuff is stacked on top of each other. Aunt Irma knocking herself out trying to please us ask Joe to tell her she is doing a great job but to slow down a bit she is making us nervous. Councilmen sending a lot of work our way everyone wants results but no publicity and we are getting a name for doing that. Need more help we put a note on the precinct bulletin board you will never guess who our first applicant is my rookie ex-partner. Take him to lunch want to break it to him as easily as I can that he won’t fit in with the way we do things before I get a chance to tell him he starts talking, says he never really understood what a beat cop goes thru on the streets. He believes he has learned a lot in the past few months and thinks he can work well with us I tell him I will give him a shot at the job but not at quit his job just yet. Two more detectives join us they are a little older than I am but I know their work and I like them. They also have been known to bend the rules at times and aren’t liked much at the precinct house. They are expert interviewers and know when someone is lying to them. Put them in one of the empty rooms and furnish it and put in file cabinets really moving along now send Joe and his aunt to the Caribbean on vacation. While they are there will have them open a couple of bank accounts there. Danny taking extra computer classes at the local college and has got himself a girlfriend he met there. She is majoring in business administration we hire her, don’t make the same mistake we did with Danny we give her a blank check and tell her to get whatever she needs. Her name is Jenny, note is the lock box Councilmen wants us to help him with a union problem seems the Clerk Typist unions contract with the city is up in another month and a rival union putting pressure on the people to vote out their union and vote the rival union in. Have threatened the union president and the business agent have Eddy and Mike watching the business agents house and Jimmy and I are watching the presidents house. Third night of watching and a Caddy starts circling the block and stops in front of the presidents house four guys get out of the car and Jimmy and I are on them before they know what’s happening we hit them with shockers and while their thrashing on the ground we torch the caddy. That night the rival union hall has an electrical fire in the basement, pretty much guts the place. Newspapers don’t connect the two events Clerk Typist union gets their people a good raise in pay and additional vacation time. Rival union not heard from again, another large sum of money goes into an off shore account. Now we know pretty much what a Councilman is paid and we’re getting a little nervous over the amount of money we are getting from him. I leave a note in the lock box asking him to meet me someplace he says he will meet me in Springfield, I believe there’s a Springfield in every state of the union. Councilmen lays it out for me, there’s this club that most of the businessmen in Colton belong to and pay dues to the purpose of the club is to do whatever it takes to keep the city’s name clean. The Councilmen handles the dues money and has a website that the members can access with numbers they make up in the website the councilmen tells them where the money is going and what for. Club has been around for many years, Joe and his aunt come back from the Caribbean and there are now three off shore bank accounts. Note in the lock box from the councilmen with a job we come close to turning down our ex precinct commander thinks some of his men are on the take and wants it stopped. Doesn’t want to fire them just stop taking the bribes a beat cop meets a lot of people some good and some bad once you take money or gifts for turning your head when a law is broken your hooked. The crimes get bigger and so does the money now we all have friends still on the police force, some of us with fewer friends than others at our agency but still friends. Tell the councilmen this goes against the grain with us. Councilmen says just think what the newspapers will do with this thing. What it will do to the honest cop on the beat that’s really trying to enforce the laws. My detectives say the Councilman has a point, how do you spy on guys that know you on sight and will see you coming a mile away. Irma comes up with an idea, why not let her and Danny and Jenny do the spying we kick it around for a while and agree its the only way it will work. A week of training with the cameras and audio equipment we have let them drive around the vans we rented, vans have the glass all the way around them. We know where the cops hang out it’s a place call Hogan’s Hang Out, cops have a tendency to hang together. Have hand held radios so we will always be in contact with our rookie spy, want to be close enough where if they get into trouble we will be close enough to help them. We’re looking for cops that spend more money than their salaries would normally permit six cops jump out at us after about three weeks of surveillance. We know where they go and who they see and how often they see them have too much stuff for the lock boxes. so we box the stuff up and send it to the councilmen. We watch to see what happens to the six cops the six quit the police force, not unexpected some of the people they were taking money from were connected people. A watch commander also takes an early retirement we contact the seven and ask them to meet us downtown at a restaurant; they all show up with their wives. Have the feeling these boys in some deep trouble with their wives we tell them we are starting a security agency and would they be interested. They don’t answer but their wives do, how much does the job pay and is there a risk to it I tell them we will pay more than they are making now and yes there is a risk to the job. One of the wives says this one will take the job no matter what it pays, guy stares at the floor would rather be out shooting it out with the bad guys than where he is right now. Other wives say when can they start I tell them to be in my office in the morning at nine o’clock. I get there at eight thirty and the seven guys are in the hallway waiting. Might have been there all night but didn’t ask, our fourth room we have turned into a conference room large oval table with chairs all around it. I tell them the security agency is there’s to run and we will bank roll whatever it takes to get it started. I tell them I have rented an office the same size as this one on the floor below this one. They can lay it out anyway they want all we ask is the name be The Triple J Security agency, they say that’s not a problem. I say us ex cops have to stick together, break out a bottle and we toast the Triple J Security agency. They tell me that I saved their lives by offering them jobs, tell them I thought yesterday they were in trouble with their wives. Needless to say all my guys felt better.

4

Models are bugging us to go to a fancy up state party with them, Joe, Jimmy and I get fitted for tux’s. Place is a palace, you walk in and are greeted by this massive staircase with rooms on both sides of it. We are ushered into this huge ballroom; have my breath taken away have never seen so much beauty in one place. Nicole squeezes my arm and reminds me that I came with her. Guess who is handling the security Triple J Security service, they all have tux’s too. Girls tell everyone they can that we are detectives, draws a lot of interest from the crowd. Get home around three in the morning phone ringing off the hook. Its Jimmy, Irma has been hit