"You hear about Major Case's Major Meltdown?" Cal set down her coffee and sat at his desk opposite hers. He was late, as usual, while she'd already been in with the boss this morning. She could feel the headache starting behind her left eye socket.
Augusta Santelli reached for the cup and took a sip, wincing. Another five minutes in the chilly basement air and it would be perfect. She put her Queen Rodent mug down and looked over the rim of her glasses at her partner of nine years. "I have the case file right here." She said tapping the folder in front of her.
"The Spec gave this one to us?" Cal asked. She nodded and he punched his fist in the air. "Hell yeah." He leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, knocking some files over and spilling their contents to the floor. He sat back and locked his hands behind his head. He smiled pleasantly, no doubt playing some version of the inevitable interrogation in his head. His foot was dangerously close to his mug of herbal tea.
"You don't have to look so pleased," Gus admonished. "It's already a cluster fuck and we haven't jumped in yet." She continued perusing the notes and clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Given how he operates, I shouldn't be surprised that everybody's favorite overachiever overachieves when he looses his mind, but holy shit. He appears to have completely lost the plot."
Cal smirked and looked at her. "Plot, hell. I heard he set fire to the whole damned library."
Gus closed the file and shoved it across their desks to him. His chair creaked with his shifting weight as he reached for it, grabbing his cup with the other hand since it had begun to tip. He scanned the first page. "I'll be damned," he whispered.
"Cluster fuck," she repeated.
"I'll say. How the mighty fall," he said and continued reading.
"Like the Wyle E Coyote, right over the cliff." Gus grimaced, but Sharpie didn't notice. She'd begun thinking in cartoon metaphors lately since all her boys were now old enough to be regular watchers. It made grown up conversation an act of concentration. "Let me know when you get to the end of page two." She reached for her coffee again, but still too hot. She wrapped her hands around it and used the heat to warm her fingers. The basement of 1PP stayed cool in the summer but was never warmer than sub-arctic in the winter. Some days she had to keep her scarf and gloves on.
The Goren case was a class A migraine waiting to happen. The Chief Inspector made it clear when she handed over the file that her two best inspectors had carte blanche on this one, since no matter how IAB played it, someone somewhere very high up was not going to be happy. "Do what needs to be done, Santelli. Everyone else," Chief Inspector Annie Leech had said, "can fuck right off. We're independent for a reason."
"He altered his fingerprints?" Sharpie asked incredulously. "Obtained fake documentation?"
"Yeah, hints at inside help, but no names given. So that's what, abuse of departmental resources so far? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Keep reading." She put the mug down and leaned forward, her chin in her hand, her elbow on her messy desk.
"Grapevine says Moran refers to Goren as 'the whack job,'" Sharpie said, still scanning the file and sipping at his tea.
"About his own guy? That asshole has no sense of loyalty," she scoffed. "Chief of Douchebags."
"If you can believe water cooler talk," said Sharpie dismissively.
"Cops," she declared, "out gossip my mother-in-law's canasta club any day of the week."
"Arrogant son of a bitch," he muttered absently as he continued to read.
"Alleged arrogant son of a bitch," she corrected. "All we've got is the preliminary report from the hearing and some prelim psych evaluations." She chewed the inside of her mouth. "I dunno, Sharps. Here's a guy who knows better. Good cop, solid, and one day he just up and pisses all over everything."
"Allegedly, Augusta," he corrected her. "Ah yes. Here's the bit about Alexandra Eames, second half of the MCS Dream Team, bottom of page 2." He thought about it for a minute, staring at the ceiling as if all the answers were written up there. Cal "Sharpie" Forester had been in Internal Affairs fifteen years to her nine. He worked with some of New York's best to prosecute some of New York's finest. He had refused the offer to head the department twice, opting instead to continue to work cases. He liked the work and hated the world of departmental politics. He remembered almost everything that came through the door, even cases closed by his colleagues. He was nosy but good, often giving newer Inspectors the benefit of his expertise, (whether they asked for it or not). Sharpie always said that one never knew with simple misconduct would lead to out and out corruption, and he was very good at connecting the dots. "She had a courthouse shooting a couple of years ago. Some old timer's son attempted to shoot the wife and Eames got two in before anyone knew which end was up. Very clean, very tight. Definitely legit."
"Right. I remember that." She reached for her danish and started nibbling. "We overlapped some in Vice, but I didn't work with her much. She did the street corner thing. I was mostly in the titty bar scene." She chewed thoughtfully. "Not as much crossover as you'd think. But she's a good cop, comes from a family of cops." She tossed down the pastry, having eaten around the weird fruit goo in the middle.
Sharpie winked at her. "All the best do, right?"
Gus raised her brows skeptically. "Yes. We do. Stop sucking up. My father already said you could have his antique gun collection."
"Won't stop until he actually adopts me," he said as he continued reading. "The partner thing bugs me. Imposes on the closeness of the relationship."
"But ingratiating yourself to your partner's father so that said partner's husband gets cheated out of his legacy doesn't?" she chided.
He flashed a grin, the one guaranteed to thaw the most icy of hearts. "What can I say, Dad likes me better. Is Greg whining about it?"
"Greg and Phil are both pissed." She and her sister knew that their respective husbands weren't going to win. Sharpie had her dad eating out of his hand. Her partner had a way with people.
"Whatever. Greg's a foreigner and Phil refuses to humor the old man. Plus, neither one of them is a cop. I listen to his stories from his days on the force, repeatedly. I work hard to be his favorite."
"Maybe you should work that hard on your actual job," she said and pointed at the file in his hands.
He rolled his eyes at her in mock annoyance. "OK, do we have a statement from the partner?"
She shook her head.
Goren and Eames: the foundation of Major Case and practically the gold standard of partnerships within the department. Some of their cases were now studied in criminal justice courses. They had the respect of their peers and the disdain of higher ups who didn't like their methods but couldn't argue their results. Detective Eames had a double dipping cop for a father, which on the IAB sin chart ranks somewhere between lying in confession and having an impure thought. Eames the younger built her own reputation on a dedication to her job and her ability to work flawlessly with the prickliest of partners, Detective Robert O Goren. Goren was unorthodox and had his share of critics. Having never met the man, Gus couldn't give much credit to the crazy rumors but she had heard a lot of stuff over the years. His Narcotics record was spotless, however, and his Major Case run was nothing short of legendary. Fundamentally, they were the kind of cops that didn't require a lot of wiretapping or babysitting from IAB because they knew how to skirt the line between good detecting and questionable conduct. The DA's office in particular was very supportive of them.
The Chief of Detectives, on the other hand, was screaming for Goren's head on a platter as the Chief Inspector fielded calls from the Mayor who was under pressure from department heads and concerned civic groups worked up over the loose cannon in Major Case or worked up over what the loose canon at Major Case had discovered. Everyone had their own agenda and no one agreed what should be done. Hell, no one really agreed what had happened. This was going to be a category five shit storm and she wasn't sure who would be left standing in the end. Damn
Cal wasn't worried. He shrugged off her obvious stress. "Well, good cop or not, she's mired in the shit now." He went back to reading the case file, his lips occasionally moving as he read along silently to himself.
"So are we." She said sardonically and reached for her coffee. Her husband could not prepare her coffee exactly the way she liked it, but Calvin Forrester brewed a damned perfect cup every time. He just might deserve her father's collection after all. "We question him tomorrow," she informed him.
"Cheer up, Champ" Cal flashed her his million watt smile again. "Maybe after all this, the Mayor will stop referring to us as the Goren and Eames of The Rat Squad."
"I'm the Eames," she muttered.
