The Red and The Black
A Homicide Fanfiction
Written by DavidB226Morris
Summary: Baltimore, November of 1996. The drug war continues to rage. The bodies continue to fall. Al Giardello's shift seems to be falling apart with each passing week. When a rookie detective transfers from QRT to 'help', everyone is cynical. They should be. The new detective has a rabbi with an agenda. Craig Worden will soon have to choose a side - the bosses or the murder police.
Disclaimer: Frank Pembleton, Tim Bayliss, Al Giardello, and all the other characters are the property of Tom Fontana, David Simon, Barry Levinson, and the rest of the geniuses who labored on Homicide: Life on the Street for seven glorious seasons. Craig Worden is a character I created (mostly) out of full cloth. Everyone else, I'm just borrowing for a little while.
Rating: If you watched this series regularly, you know damn well how little violence or sex was on this series. I'm mostly going to stay within that realm. The language - well, those of you who saw OZ and The Wire know just how much those cops and criminals alike could really curse, so I'm finally going to allow all the detectives on the show to use the language they probably would've if they hadn't been bound by the censors. We'll start around T, but my guess is this will fairly soon edge into 'M' territory.
Timeline: This story will start around Season 5, just around the time the investigation into Kellerman for bribery is starting to unfold, Pembleton is still chained to his desk, and Juliana Cox and Terri Stivers have been introduced. We will stay fairly close to canon for some of the stories. Eventually, though, we will branch into new directions.
This series will also focus on certain episodes, seen from the perspective of Worden. This will cause ripples of their own.
All Right, let's begin.
Chapter 1
Lieutenant Al Giardello normally liked to look over his squadroom. In the face of the overwhelming chaos of being in charge of a Baltimore Homicide Unit that had to investigate anywhere from a hundred to a hundred twenty of the city's two hundred fifty murders a year, in a city where more and more of the murders were becoming stone cold whodunits, looking over his command seemed to give him control, or at least the illusion of control.
Now, however, as he stared at the squadroom, he was beginning to think that illusion was becoming more obvious with each passing day. It seemed clearer and clearer that there was some kind of curse over his squad.
The problem had begun last year. After being shot while trying to serve a warrant on a pedophile named Glenn Holton, neither Stan Bolander or Beau Felton had truly been the same. In an effort to provide some kind of therapy, he had sent the two of them to a convention in New York. The two had repaid his trust by acting like children, getting drunk and mooning other hotel guests. Both men had been handed six month suspensions. But part of him had known, somewhere deep inside that neither man was coming back. Why else had he been so quick to take their names off the board and reassign their open cases? Stan had quietly retired two months ago. Felton had been more mysterious, just sending in a letter that he wasn't coming back. His squad had been short staffed ever since.
Then there had been the chaos with Megan Russert. He'd managed to get along with her while she was Captain, but she'd been doing a slipshod job ever since she'd been promoted. Somehow, he'd known the bosses would make her pay - he hadn't expected her to get busted all the way down to Detective, though, much less end up working for him. She was still good police, though, which is why her decision to disappear of to Paris had been nearly as big a blow. He'd didn't think for a moment that Megan would be foolish enough to get knocked up, but her disappearance from the shift had made things even harder for an undermanned squad.
That hadn't been nearly as big a body blow as what had happened to Frank. The images still haunted his dreams - he'd been watching Frank deliver another one of his textbook interrogations, and then he'd started seizing, collapsing right in front of Bayliss and half the squad. Giardello had never pretending that he lived the healthiest lifestyle, but he'd been certain that Frank, more than twenty years his junior, would be at this job long after he was gone. The fact that Pembleton had been struck with a stroke, and had lingered in a coma for more than two weeks before regaining consciousness seemed just another sign as to how unfair the world was.
He hadn't lied to Frank. It had taken all of the goodwill that he had earned with the department over the last twenty-five years just to keep Pembleton on administrative duty. The fact that Pembleton had come back, stumbling over words, shuffling along, barely able to string a sentence together, almost made Gee think that maybe the bosses were right and he should be in Evidence Control.
But he had spent his whole career standing up to political animals like Barnfather and racist stooges like Gaffney, so he pushed for Pembleton like he had so many times before. But he had to qualify on the range. And Frank had always been a lousy shot. That he'd come so close to passing was a major victory, but Giardello couldn't push any further than he could. Pembleton had tried to summon his powers to chew Gee out, and it had been pathetic. Enough to almost make Gee consider pushing. Almost.
And now, apparently he'd used so many chits trying to help Pembleton, he couldn't do anything to help his newest detective. There was a federal investigation into Kellerman. He was under heat for the possibility of taking a bribe from Matthew and Mitch Roland. Kellerman had denied it, but there was clearly more to the story than he was willing to give. There were other detectives from Arson who were under investigation as well, and he'd been unusually quiet about that part. Which in Gee's mind meant that he had to have known something about it, and was protecting his fellow detectives. Whatever it was, a grand jury had been paneled.
So now, he had a shift with four detectives that for some reason had already caught a hundred murders this year. Two of his detectives were chained to their desks. Only the fact that their clearance rate had been high for half the year was keeping them from drowning in red. But neither the Colonel or the Captain had been his biggest booster before his shift started to collapse. Every time they talked to him, he could hear the sound of the gallows being built. One more thing fell apart, and those remarks about how 'tired' he looked would start being a push for him to take his pension and leave before he was pushed.
"Excuse me?"
Sergeant Kay Howard looked up. A man who looked he couldn't have been more than a couple of days over thirty was staring down at her. He was just a tad over six feet tall, had a scraggly haircut and a fringe of a beard, and was wearing narrow glasses. He was wearing a button down shirt and dress slacks that looked like they'd been purchased less than a week earlier. He was carrying a small cardboard box in which seemed to mostly have books and was taped up with Orioles stickers/
"Who are you?"
"Detective Craig Worden. I just got assigned here."
This should have made sense. This was, after all, the same way that Tim Bayliss had shown up in Homicide three years ago. Kellerman had come by a similar method last year. This was what a new detective showing up on their doorstep tended to look like. Yet instead of offering a word of welcome, she said what automatically came to her head first. "What are you talking about?"
Worden blinked a couple of times. "I was just assigned to Homicide. Lieutenant Jaspers signed off this."
"Well, Detective Worden, I'm Sergeant Kay Howard. Which means I have to go through an enormous amount of paperwork before anybody transfers in or out of this department. And if you really were assigned here, believe me, I'd been filing the green sheets for the past week."
Worden had the good grace to look a little embarrassed at this. "I know what you mean about paperwork. I had to fill out a shit ton of it just waiting for the transfer request to come in. I've spent nearly two weeks in limbo before I caught the call to come in today. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked that the Baltimore P.D. is even more badly run than I thought."
Kay had to admit that this was more than likely. The red tape and bureaucracy that surrounded just about everything, from requests for more overtime to getting a new copy machine could be ridiculous. Still, given the amount of headaches she had to go through in order to clean out Russert's desk little more than a month ago, she would have hoped that there would've been a little reciprocity when it came to announcing they were finally getting a new detective.
"Where did you transfer out of?" she asked.
"QRT. Spent the last two years there."
Howard raised an eyebrow. She knew how vital QRT was for a lot of the work in the department - she'd just witnessed their work on the school shooting in September. But generally, the people who worked there were the kind of cops who preferred to operate a pure adrenaline rush - not a lot of them would be willing to trade that in for a cushy desk job, even if it was among the department elite.
"And you left the fine mental work of breaking down doors and rounding up bad guys to come among us little people?" Apparently, the conversation wasn't as private as Howard had hoped. "I suppose we should consider ourselves honored."
"Munch. Could you give us a moment?"
The detective whose cynicism was high even for murder police gave no sign he heard, just went back to reading the Sun. None of the other detectives appeared to even react, mercifully.
"I'm sure that its just a clerical error." Kay wasn't sure of that at all, in fact, but she knew just as well as Gee did how much the squad was crying out for extra help. If they were about to get thrown a life preserver, she wasn't going to frown at it. "Lieutenant Giardello's in the office at the end of the hall. Go in, and I'll see about clearing this up so we can get you set up around here. In the meantime, just put yourself over there." She pointed to Russert's old desk.
"Thank you." He put his stuff down, and walked into Gee's office. Exactly two seconds after the door closed, Munch lowered his newspaper again.
"I know we're short on help, but why the hell when they send us one of those knuckle-draggers from Quick Response?" he asked.
"Damn idiot probably shot his desk up and they pushed him on us to fuck us over." Meldrick agreed.
"Why do you guys always have to be so negative?" Brodie, who'd been busy changing the lenses of his camera. "Every since I came to this unit, all you ever do is complain."
"You've been here a year, Brodie, you're only picking up on this now?" Everyone chuckled a bit at this.
"All I hear is that the squad needs more manpower. How else are we going to clean up the clearance rate?" Brodie pressed. "The bosses finally listened to you, and sent us an extra detective."
"I think that hat has finally cut off the oxygen to your brain," Munch countered. "If there's one indisputable fact I've learned as a murder police, it's that the bosses wouldn't stop to piss on us if we were on fire."
Meldrick nodded. "Only reason they'd send any extra help is if this gut royally screwed up."
"Thanks a lot!" Kellerman told him, pushing his chair away from his desk.
Everybody winced as if they had just remembered why Kellerman was in the squad. "Hey, I'm sorry, Mikey, you know me, my mouth just runs ahead of my brain some time."
"No, I think I got your message loud and clear. You know, I'm actually glad what's-his-face transferred in." Kellerman told them all belligerently. "Now that he's the new guy, someone else can make the damn coffee, file all the paperwork, and order all the fucking office supplies! "
He walked out of the squadroom.
Everyone considered this for a moment. "Kellerman did order me a cheesesteak instead of cold cuts yesterday," Munch finally said.
Lewis considered this for a couple of moments, then got up after his partner. Around the same time, Pembleton came walking back into the squadroom.
"How'd it go?" Howard asked.
"I-I-I was shooting a-at a target, not-not brain," He paused. "surgery."
No one in the squad bothered to mentioned that Frank wasn't exactly in the position to be doing either in his condition. "Well, while you were out, we got another new guy." Brodie told him
Pembleton turned his head. "Th-that's not funny."
"Why everyone think this is bad news?" Brodie asked again.
"B-because we've been a d-d-detective short going on," Again Pembleton struggled, "since Crosetti died. T-t-the bosses won't give help until h-hell freezes over."
"Well then, somebody turned on the AC in Hades because he's in Gee's office right now." Howard told Frank gently.
Frank seemed to be processing this for a few seconds. "G-good," he finally said. "He can get the d-damn doughnuts from now on."
He went back to his desk, and picked up his own copy of the Sun.
"Am I the only one who think this is good news?" Brodie asked/
"You would." Brodie turned to Munch. "You've moved in and have been kicked out of half the squad already. If this Worden guy stays around long enough, maybe you can convince him to bunk at his place."
"That's not why I said it was good." Munch just raised his bushy eyebrows. Fortunately, the discordant blare of the phone interrupted any further snark.
"Homicide, Munch." He reached for a pad, took down the vital information, and hung up. "Dead body in Fells Point. Where's Bayliss?"
"He's in court, testifying on the Radcliffe stabbing." Howard reminded him. "Just take Brodie and get down there."
Munch snapped his fingers. "Come on, my fair Zapruder. I'll get us a Cavalier."
Brodie stopped by Howard's desk. "Um, you don't happen to know if this does live alone, do you?"
"You know, Al, sometimes I feel like it's not even worth the effort."
As he did every time he had to talk with Gaffney, Al mentally counted to five before he opened his mouth. There was something about the man that he'd always detested, long before he'd gotten the promotion that had made him his boss. Everything in his speech seemed to ooze contempt, racism, misogyny, and just plain disdain for everything that Al had spent his entire career working for. As a result, even when something that seemed beneficial for him, Al just knew that it would never be for free.
"I'm not saying I'm not grateful for the help," he said slowly. "I'm just saying it would've been nice to get a little notice."
"Al, you've been begging for help ever since Bolander and Felton humiliated themselves at that convention," Gaffney reminded him. "I just figured now that Kellerman's all but got one foot out the door, you'd finally be able to have some extra manpower."
There were all kinds of gibes and slurs in that statement. "Kellerman hasn't even been indicted, much less convicted," Al started.
"I'm just saying, after all the shit your shift has been through the past couple of years, you were entitled to some good news." Gaffney said just as smoothly. "I wasn't expecting a bouquet, but a thank you might at least be warranted."
A broken clock was right twice a day. And the truth of the matter was, Gaffney was right. He'd just gotten a look at Craig Worden's jacket. The kid seemed like something of a wonder boy. He'd done fine as a patrolmen for five years, including three commendations for valor. He'd been transferred the quick response in '93, where he'd excelled. On one occasion, he'd personally saved three lives in a hostage situation in Canton. Commendations from Jaspers up the yin-yang, which was even more remarkable - Jaspers threw compliments around like they were manhole covers. When he'd gotten his detective shield six months earlier, it had been with one of highest scores possible. On paper, Worden seemed like a perfect fit for Homicide.
So why did he feel his ulcer acting up again?
Maybe it was simply because he didn't like the idea of owing Roger Gaffney anything. And there was no way, after more than a year of haranguing his department, that he could see the Captain willing to hand over another detective, much less one this qualified.
"There are no strings attached to this particular gift," Gee finally said.
"Well, you could manage to close some more cases, get some of that red of the board, but since that's your job on a normal day, I wouldn't really call those strings."
Insulting but pertinent. A rare combination for Gaffney. "And hopefully Detective Worden can help me do just that."
"I wouldn't have sent him to you otherwise."
Howard was not having a particularly good day, even by the admittedly low standards of a sergeant in an overworked homicide unit.
First, there had been the arrival of a new detective that neither she nor Gee had apparently known was about to be transferred here. His paperwork had finally come through, albeit in Baltimore PD fashion a full week late, but it was there.
Then there was the problem that Munch had gone out on an investigation of suspicious death that the new M.E. had no clear idea was actually a murder. Munch, who rarely seemed to get involved these kinds of things, was just as sure that Philip Engle was lying about something, and he had taken the husband into the box to see if there was anything that they could sweat out of them.
Then, for reasons that not even she could comprehend, she had asked Brodie if he wanted to crash at her place for a while. She knew that she was asking for some kind of trouble with this, but the fact was she had more sympathy for the man than just about anybody else in the unit.
And now, just to make everything perfect, the news about the FBI investigation had made the front page of the Sun. Kellerman had apparently gone into another upheaval, had done something insanely stupid involving Mitch Roland, and now wasn't even on administrative duty anymore. This shift really seemed to be cursed.
Worden, in the meantime, had been looking around the squad, trying to get accommodated. The one benefit to the squad being so short-staffed was that there were a lot of options for him to set up. Pointedly, though, Kay hadn't let him set up at Felton's seat. She knew that Beau wasn't going to come back - she hadn't seen him since he resigned six months earlier - but there was still some part of her that just wasn't ready to see another face across from hers.
"Where are you with Philip Engle?" she said to Munch as he came out of the interrogation room.
"Three hours and the guys sticking to his story. He came home and found her dead." Munch told her.
"Well, maybe the guy's telling the truth." Bayliss told him.
"You've been here three years, and you still don't get it?" Munch said pointedly. "Everybody fucking lies. This guy may be a business man, and not a skell from Hagerstown, but he's still lying."
"Maybe he is, but not about killing his wife," Meldrick said. "You ever think about that?"
Munch didn't answer that. Instead, he walked straight over to his desk, and stared at the one across from it. "I'm sorry, who are you?"
"Craig Worden. I just transferred here, remember?"
"I know you just transferred. So what makes you think you're worthy of a desk, much less the Big Man's?'
Kay had really hoped that Munch was finally over Bolander's retirement. Then again, this could just be Munch being Munch.
"I'm a member of this unit. I'm entitle to have a desk."
"When I first joined Homicide, they made sit in the men's room for three months before Stan allowed me to sit near him. When Bayliss transferred here, he didn't get a desk and he was thrown a red ball the first week. Have our standards on new guys dropped so badly that we're forced to treat them as equal?"
Okay, so it was the latter. "You do have a point, Munch." Kay looked at Worden. "I think you need get everybody coffee."
"Yeah, I could use a glucose boast." Lewis told him.
"Me too."
Worden blinked a couple of times. Lewis and Bayliss were in the middle of drinking coffee right now. It was clear that he understood this was some kind of ritual. He reached for his pad. "How do you take it?"
Munch blinked. "Earl Grey, two Splendas, splash of non- fat."
Bayliss asked for decaf with non-fat milk and sugar. Lewis asked for black coffee with lemon. Howard was nice enough to ask for nothing.
"Oh by the way, don't forget to ask Frank for his order."
This was going a bit too far, but before Howard could stop him, Worden walked up to him. "So you're the all-mighty Pembleton. It's a honor."
Pembleton turned slowly. "A-and you are?"
Kay couldn't tell whether this was a legitimate memory issue or whether Frank was fucking with the new guy. Worden clearly didn't know how he was supposed to react, because he introduced himself, and asked him how he took his coffee.
"T-this is a joke right?" Pembleton turned around. "A-another way to f-f- humiliate me?"
Now Worden was stumbling over words, not sure what to say. Pembleton, naturally, took this as another insult. "K-kiss my ass," and walked off again.
Worden clearly knew he'd been set up. "You didn't have to do that," he said slowly. "You think I didn't know that Pembleton had a stroke last May?"
"Oh, so now you're an expert on medicine. You should get a residence at Hopkins. They're looking for work, too." Bayliss told him. "For all you know, Frank could be having as much coffee as he wants."
"Besides, if you know Pembleton as well as you say, you also know that was him in a good mood." Munch pointed out. "Now, he might now want coffee but the rest of us still do."
Rigidly, Worden walked over to the coffee room. "Where do you think you're going?" Munch demanded.
Now Worden was confused. "You want coffee or not?"
"That's the squad's coffee. It's swill, masquerading in caffeine form. We want the Daily Grind, nectar from the gods, you know, actual coffee."
Worden was doing a yeoman's job of keeping a poker face, but Kay could pretty much tell that his fuse was burning pretty low. "Does anybody want any change to their order?" he said patiently.
Munch paused deliberately, before finally saying: "Nope, I'm good."
After everybody else acknowledged as much, Worden ran off. "How much are you going to fuck with the guy?" Meldrick asked.
"Well, considering that you made me go running after the key to the fishbowl the first month I was here, I'd hope at least that long." Bayliss told him, clearly looking forward to it.
"At least until he sees his first decomp and can order the meat lover's at Jimmy's for breakfast." Munch said with authority
"The guys from QRT, not the Mayor's protection detail," Howard reminded them pointedly. "You have to figure he's seen a body or two."
Everybody considered this. "Fifty bucks says he washes out after three months." Lewis put forth.
Howard rolled her eyes. Ever since she had come to Homicide, the unit would always take odds as to how long the new stiff would last. She had a feeling, even with her 100% clearance rate, that there will still some guys betting on her. "Has anyone ever told you mopes how juvenile you are?"
She looked at Frank, hoping that he would inject some of his former gravitas into this discussion.
"T-two months." He looked at Howard. "I-I lost my shirt on Kellerman. I w-want to make it back."
"I've only been there two days, Captain. Did you really think I would just walk into a Roman orgy?"
"Given the way the Lieutenant runs Homicide, I wouldn't put it past him."
Craig had only known Gaffney since they had worked a couple of missing persons cases together. While they had gotten along, the man's meteoric rise up the Baltimore chain of command - Detective to Captain in less than six months - had come as much of a shock to him as it had everyone within the Baltimore P.D. Clearly, there was something going on behind the scenes, but Craig had never asked.
When Craig had gotten his detective shield six months earlier, he had passed on a trip to narcotics and vice and signed up for Homicide in the Eastern, knowing that there had been a shortage of manpower, and there might be a chance for advancement. But despite all that, no one wanted to transfer any new blood there. When six weeks earlier, Gaffney had offered to juice the process for him, he had been so frustrated that he had been kept in bureaucratic limbo that he had agreed to it.
He was beginning, however, to realize what the consequences might be.
"Look, I know the shift's been a mess for awhile, but do you really think these guys are going to just bare their souls to me on day one?"
Gaffney didn't like arguments, even when they were logical. "Yesterday, Mike Kellerman busted into Mitch Roland's office and tried to beat him to a pulp while a federal attorney was on the phone. Pembleton's basically office furniture, and Giardello basically just lets it happen. This is not the kind of leadership this department needs."
"If you wanted someone to get dirt on Giardello's detectives, why didn't you just go to IAD?" Craig pointed out.
"IAD loves dirty cops. They don't give a shit about incompetence. Believe me, they've got a file on everybody in arson, now. Anything else, they say I'm wasting their time."
Craig had heard Gaffney say shitty things about Homicide ever since he got kicked out. He'd say his promotion was giving him a chance to settle old scores, but that would've been on the other shift, so that made no sense.
"Captain, I appreciate what you did for me. And certainly, if I find anything that looks suspicious, I'll report it." he said carefully. "But I want to work murders."
"And you will, Craig. Just remember. There are all sorts of ways to be an effective cop. Keep that in mind."
The last statement from Gaffney bothered Craig for days after he hung up, and it didn't take a wordsmith to figure out why.
Gaffney had used the word 'effective' instead of 'good'.
