The Kingpin Summary had ended bloody; it had also ended prematurely.
An undercover agent is never given a deadline, is never pressured into pushing something that needs to be acted out at its own pace. The job takes as long as the crime does, sometimes even longer if constructing a setup (or in the name of gathering hard evidence, which was more dangerous). Micky had been half a year in blackout, and Salvatore was only just getting antsy that maybe his gang was being compromised from the inside.
Ah, fuck, how to describe the Salvatores. Ruthless. A little too proud, too vain. All in all, supercool. Sharp, classy, confident. They had a code, too, something that made them respectable in the community. Untouchable. It was a big case, and Micky was at the top of his game.
The drug trade was a young man's pursuit; all the old Sicilian blood had gotten fat on bootleg and gambling and immigrant extortion. Isaac Salvatore was at the top of his game, too, running the market with the Columbians. Micky was just the bum who drove the car. There was no good reason for Salvatore to ever take an interest in Micky, no possible way he could have known about the wire and the recorder and the late nights rifling through offices for laundering evidence (and there was always evidence when you had to clean that much income). They hardly knew each other but as coworkers. Fuck, Micky didn't even know the guy was Kingpin until his brother shot a man for errant disrespect.
And there was no real reason for Kingpin fucking Salvatore to take an interest in Micky, but he did. And when the gang boss you're pretending to work under takes an interest in you, you fucking play it out like the career opportunity it is. They got close. Micky was just doing his job, rifling up any and all information for the wire transcripts to nibble out.
It wasn't smooth sailing exactly, but it was work getting done. Until one night maybe Micky rifles a little too deep, asks unimportant questions, is a little too nice, a little too much of a friend. It wasn't any sort of suspicion by then, not yet, not for him anyway, but it was a slip-up. He should have moderated himself, kept shit professional and unattached.
To this day, Larry can't figure if getting that close to Salvatore had saved his life or not. As said, the Salvatores were vain; Isaac willing to believe more readily that he was an object of desire to those that he, well, desired. Micky didn't like Isaac. The man was kind of a bastard, on top of all the drug dealing and bullying and sociopathic disregard for human life. But hell if Micky didn't want to fuck the guy.
They fucked eventually; not that night but a few weeks later when it had become evident that continued use of the wire was too risky. Salvatore's suspicion on the crack-down at the Columbians' warehouse had everyone tense. His brother had taken the numbers to the crematorium, and all Micky had to do was weather the scrutiny until things went back to normal.
A month, he'd been told. Give it a month, and when Kingpin pokes his head out of the sand they'll have half the station waiting on the bust. Micky just had to give a time and a place, and stick to using payphones.
In the meantime, he was fucking Salvatore's pretty Italian brains out; because there was no reason not to, because it would be suspicious if he didn't, because he was young and overconfident and shallow. It was like crossing the street and getting broadsided by a taxi, bam, bright yellow pain, out of nowhere, Isaac - fucking Kingpin Salvatore - is in love with Micky the Bat (you know, baseball bat, as in that's what he used on punks what thought laying pipe made you some sorta fag).
It was a breakdown, Isaac out alone (he never went alone, wasn't safe, christ his brother was going to kill him if the competition didn't do it). He caught up to Micky's elbow in the crowd on Main and Fourth. Needed to talk, could they go to his apartment, it was cold. Nobody was prepared for it.
Micky had been in blackout for seven months and counting. Lawrence Dimmick was from a long line of Irish beat cops. Haverd Dimmick was his father. That day in September was Micky's twenty-eighth birthday.
Micky had unlocked the apartment building. They stalled in the atrium, intimate and reassuring. Isaac's guns heavy and familiar at his shoulder holster, nestled in the crook of his hip.
Micky's folks had been visiting family in Canada that fall. They didn't know about the blackout. They were supposed to be in Canada.
You know where this is going already, but the DA head and his wife and all his parents' friends didn't know, couldn't know; they sprang up when the lights came on to scream about a happy birthday and it all just ended in blood.
The only one who died? Society wouldn't miss him. Case drew to a close, evidence turned in and a trial was conducted, dragged on, got bought out. Isaac's brother inherited the sentence, skipped bail and the east coast wasn't safe for Micky anymore so Micky traded the freezing dockside warehouses of the Atlantic for stifling dockside warehouses of the Pacific.
And that was that.
"I see." The therapist sits forward at his desk, reviewing the contents of a manilla medical folder. "How are you sleeping these days, agent?"
Larry sighs, fighting for comfort in the overstuffed armchair. "Better." It was going to be a long weekend.