All By Himself
Pretending to catch a football lobbed to him from his partner Danny, Tony sprinted his way into the squad room and comically threw himself down in his desk chair, sprawling like an overgrown ragdoll.
Danny Price, his partner and buddy, followed directly behind him and collapsed as well, grinning at his buddy as he caught his breath.
Noting the noisy entrance, Trayson Gates, a beat policeman, crossed the room and sang out warningly. "Yo- Tony, Captain says he wants to see you now." To emphasize the importance of the command, he motioned emphatically, thumb pointed towards the glassed office assigned to their boss.
Tony cast a questioning glance at Danny, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders in response, admitting his confusion over the request. Neither could guess the purpose of the summons.
Ok, then.
Straightening his shoulders, Tony raked his hands through his hair. Normally brown, his recent vacation in Mexico had lightened it blond throughout, and combined with his tan, he resembled a surfer. Certainly his physique supported the athletic, outdoorsy look. At over six feet, muscled, with sparkling green eyes framed by long lashes, he never failed to turn female heads.
They always wanted a second look.
Despite masculine competition, he remained popular with males because of his athletic prowess. No matter the game, they could count on Tony to participate, and to play well.
Tony knocked softly on the glassed window by the door, and waited for permission before proceeding.
His captain was not alone when he entered. Beside him sat Tobias Fornell of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), a good friend of his dad's. Another man stood to shake hands, and introduced himself as Matthew Forbes of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
Ushered to a seat, Tony perched nervously on the edge of his chair, and his curiosity got the better of him. "Captain, what kind of trouble am I in?"
The three men laughed loudly, and Tony nervously joined in with them.
Fornell finally waved them to silence and reminded the others that Tony had voiced a legitimate question. He, Tobias Fornell, had watched the boy grow, and could assure the rest of the room that because of Tony's curiosity, Jethro Gibbs had his hands full as Tony's father.
The nervousness abated as the men put him at ease, and DEA Agent Forbes addressed him. "Son, what do you know about Athens, Georgia?"
Tony brightened, "You did identify Athens, Georgia, right? What kind of question did you need to ask? Football- football and sports aficionados across the whole United States respect Vince Dooley's coaching and those Georgia Bulldogs, a great team right alongside another Southern one, the Ole Miss Rebels. Then music wise, just in the past few years Athens nurtured for us the talent of REM and the B52's. The University of Georgia there holds the title of the oldest land grant college in the United States. I remember that from American History in tenth grade. My advisor at Ohio State told me it had proved itself a leader in its research and in its business school. Oh, wait! Let's not forget the beauty of those Southern females- all magnolia blossom beauty layered over fearless femme fatales. Besides that, buddies of mine tell me the city itself is stunning, a great place just for the landscape." Pleased that he could recite so much information, Tony smirked and executed a bow from his seat.
"Right," Forbes confirmed, but let the rest of the sentence dangle.
It created an awkward silence.
He turned to Fornell expectantly.
A bit worried then, Tony licked his lips and slid back in his chair, resting his hands on his thighs and tapping his fingers to calm himself.
The strategy also released some of his pent up extra energy.
After an interminable wait, the conference began. Fornell kicked off with the purpose of the command audience powwow, but Tony's captain and Forbes interjected comments, and eventually, the three men joined voices.
All assured him that they shared the same motivation in speaking with him.
The FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), and NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) currently worked a case which thus far, spanned a couple of years. One nasty drug cartel run by homegrown criminals operated a pipeline which ran through most of the midsection of the country. The DEA had designated the cartel the Black Widow Cartel because of the frequency with which its own workers turned against and killed one another.
The government agencies frothed at the bit to shut down the operation, an insidious one which muscled its way into the heroin, pcp, and meth markets. They finally caught a break. Six months earlier the DEA had apprehended and managed to crack a mid level operative ensconced in the cartel, and through him, had begun to make inroads both up and down the cartel's chain of command.
The FBI teamed with the DEA once evidence surfaced that the cartel had kidnapped and murdered a number of lesser drug lords. Not long after merging the bureaus executed a bust which roped in three Marines, specifically two corporals and a sergeant, a Navy seaman, and a Navy petty officer, adjunct cartel players who had worked to distribute the drugs throughout their respective Bases.
From those five arrests, the enforcement agencies staged a series of raids which crippled, but did not annihilate, the cartel's drug operation. However, within the resultant spoils, agents managed to lean on the prisoners enough to obtain details of future hits, past hits, and the targets of hits.
Listening intently, Tony synthesized the details, storing his inquiries to ask at the end.
The Black Widow Cartel would topple, the men assured Tony, but not for another couple of months. Enough damage had ensued to knock the foundation out from under it.
In the interim, they admitted, new considerations arose. Now, for example, they addressed the practicalities of ensuring the safety of innocent victims to the whole illegal operation, the fallout victims.
That, they stressed, counted as the sole motive for their meeting with him.
Governmental agencies requested his help. Their represented governmental agencies requested his help.
Finding himself suddenly expected to speak, the young policeman immediately voiced his cooperation, but admitted that he could not ascertain a way in which way he could help.
Straightening, his captain fixed his gaze upon Tony, and stood and stretched before grabbing a thick file folder off of his desk. Sliding around the perimeter, he perched on the edge of the desk and soundlessly handed it to Tony.
Cracking it open, Tony focused upon the contents.
A photograph of a young boy took up all of the inside cover. The first adjective Tony's brain registered was haunting. Dark brown hair best defined as unkempt obscured parts of his thin face, while eyes a medium blue reflected an incomparable sadness, or perhaps hurt.
Tony glanced up and stared at the window several seconds, channeling his impressions.
Regarding the photo a second time he confirmed his earlier first adjective, but added devastated as a second.
Devastating and haunting- that packed a wallop when describing a child.
He pursed his lips and sucked in a deep breath. The boy's image stopped at the waist, but Tony sized up the little figure as lithe and tall, though considerably underweight.
Setting the open file down in his lap, Tony prodded his superior. "Ok, Captain, talk to me now. You have my undivided attention."
"That young man just passed his ninth birthday, and I need to add that the past few birthdays occurred with him homeless. Notice his clothes? When authorities located the kid, what you see there in the shot is all the clothing he had."
Taking a closer look at the photo, Tony tapped a finger against the boy's eyebrow. "I see a thin scar right above his eyebrow. What happened there? Abuse?"
"No, not at all," the Captain contradicted. "That scar, though, gave NCIS the confirmation in identifying him within a group of other kids."
"Read me in on him," Tony directed, pivoting in his seat to look from the Captain to Fornell and then to Forbes. "Why did you give me this file? Tell me the angle, ok?"
Instead of answering immediately, Fornell rubbed his chin and countered, "Let me ask you something. Looking at the boy, Tony, what do you see there? What's the first blush?"
A response came without hesitation. "Someone who needs some socio economic help, a child lacking basic needs."
"Ok, now let me introduce you." Fornell turned his chair so that he faced Tony. "As you hear it, though, I want you to compare this boy's life to your own, his situation to the advantages and love you have received all these years. Plant yourself in the kid's shoes."
Scooting back in his chair, Tony nodded rapidly.
"First of all, let me hold off on supplying you with the name, because the boy entered witness protection some time back, and we lost track of him for a period of time. Not that we don't trust you, but he has another name on the horizon. This little chap's father worked as a minor player, a small time drug dealer in Arizona who had the Black Widow Cartel providing his salary, though he worked off and on legitimately as a musician. The wife stumbled across evidence of his criminal life, divorced him, and took their only child, then three years old, with her. They moved in with family in Washington State, devastating our dealer, according to the intelligence gathered. After a year, though, the longing for the wife and son proved overpowering. Aware he had to prove he had chosen a different life to have the woman fall back into his arms, he approached the local police, turned state's evidence, and ratted out what he knew of the cartel."
Fornell paused there and took a deep breath, randomly focusing on a spider navigating her web in the corner of the ceiling. "So the Black Widow group waited until he led them to the wife and kid before blowing him away, execution style."
Tony felt his stomach lurch, his emotions exploding. He bit the side of his lip to keep himself quiet until the biographical sketch concluded.
Glancing back down at the boy's photo, he used a finger to smooth over the forehead.
Forbes stood and stretched at the waist before he pointed towards the file. "Good news is that Washington troopers got to the wife and kid in time and took them into protective custody. It spooked her so badly, though, that she hit the road with the boy the second she could give them the slip, and took a series of waitressing jobs from California to Kansas. As soon as she felt she had them safe, kaput! Along the way the cartel sent her little reminders to let her know they had her and the boy in their sights. The mental anguish alone just devastated her, as can be imagined, fighting to keep them going and realizing she couldn't outrun a cartel out for vengeance."
Tony asked, "Why did they let them slide, threaten instead of just going ahead and killing them right away?"
Forbes leaned against the filing cabinet. "Yeah, well, that would hide behind door number one, the million dollar question. Why? We concluded that the cartel's head honcho kingpin enjoyed the psychological torment, that the cat and mouse approach probably entertained him. He'd certainly earned a reputation as a sadist. Eventually she settled in Shawnee, but could not support them, failed to earn a living. At that point her mental state disintegrated and she turned to drugs. How ironic is that? They ended up homeless, one of a group of homeless souls in the area. Our wife and mother, well she overdosed on heroin."
A silence enveloped the three listeners, along with the narrator, a posthumous show of respect for the deceased woman.
She had fought and lost.