Chapter 11

Bracken's story...

New York, early 1990s

I was a young assistant district attorney who'd beaten out hundreds of people for a job in Manhattan. I thought I had a chance to be the best there ever was, so I was hungry, aggressive, but trying to be smart too.

I hadn't been at the job long before I heard the rumors about a bunch of kidnapper cops. We all had. I didn't like it, but I didn't want to make my reputation on being the guy that went after cops, so I kept my mouth shut, just like everyone else.

After about a year though, I had enough cases under my belt that I got assigned something juicy. A guy, Carcetti, was rumored to be a comer, a sort of hedge fund manager for the Five Families. He'd been pulled on laundering charges and I wanted to get other stuff to stick too. I'll admit it, I was young and dumb and thought I could make a name for myself. I wanted to be the guy that took down the Five.

So I started working connections, but every time I'd get somewhere, the guy I was after would get kidnapped by the NYPD. My chance to get anybody but Carcetti was falling apart, and I needed someone to get a handle on Raglan and McAllister. I didn't know who they were, then, just that they were out there. But I needed them gone. So I went to Internal Affairs and asked them why they weren't doing anything about it. They told me they wouldn't move without my boss's approval.

My boss.

My boss was scary, even then, even before I knew … the rest. She was my age, but she'd gotten through undergrad and law school in something like five years total. Made CADA by the time she was twenty-eight. Second highest person in the office even though she was younger than almost everybody. But she was faster, smarter, worked harder, and frankly, scared the shit out of all of us. No one went to her unless we needed to, and no one begrudged her her position.

But I went to her that time.

"I need to talk to you," I said, one night, near the end of the day. She was always the last one there. I figured it would be a safer conversation if no one else was there.

"I've wondered when you'd get your 'fraidy ass into my office. Morrow over in IA called me thirty seconds after you talked," she said, not looking up. I took that as invitation, and sat in her guest chair.

"I have a real shot here at Carcetti..."

"Yes," she said, interrupting. She looked from her paperwork to me. She wasn't overly tall or pretty, other that her red hair. But her eyes... it's been years since I saw her last, but I can still remember the way Taffet could stare her blue eyes through your soul and drop your body temperature twenty degrees. She pinned me down with that stare, and I had no choice but to shut up.

"Yes, you have a real shot at Carcetti. But you keep fucking up and thinking you are going to destroy organized crime as you know it. And somehow, you've gotten it in that pretty little head of yours that the only thing stopping you is a few freelancing cops."

"It's more than..."

"Look, Bracken. You're smart, though not as smart as you think. You're pretty enough, in a nice masculine kind of way. You're ambitious, and blue-blooded. You could have a pretty decent career in front of you if you're smart enough not to fuck it up by actually trying to get something done."

I didn't have any idea how to respond to that. I felt like I was being insulted, in some odd way.

"You play your cards right, you're not going to sit in this chair, but you could get yourself elected to Drake's chair. From there, I can see you being a Congressman, a Senator, hell, maybe even a Secretary of something, someday."

Taffet stood up, and came around her desk. She leaned against it, but curled down to get in close to my face. "But you're only going to get there if you shut up and let the real money and power use you as they see fit."

"Are you telling me to..."

"I'm telling you to stop dicking around, bring your laundering case against Carcetti to trial. He'll plead out, we'll get him off the street for eighteen months, you'll have a nice little win under your belt for when you run for Congress in a few years. Or you can keep pushing and get to see what real power is."

"I can't do that. There's more here than just Carcetti. We have a real chance."

"Fine, Bill," she said, like she'd already known what I was going to say. "Let's go for a drive."

"Where are we going?" I asked standing up. She was reasonably big for a woman, but still, I dwarfed her.

"What? You afraid of little ole me?" she asked. In retrospect, I can see that I should have been. I really should have been.


We drove her Honda out to Queens. I tried to talk, but something about her said to keep my mouth shut, so I just waited her out. We ended up at some little dive Italian Restaurant straight out of the Godfather. I expected to walk in and see Michael killing Sollozzo. But Heather lead us straight through the restaurant into some back room.

It was dark, sorta like here, and I started to wonder what the hell she was getting me into.

"Sit down," she said, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see some chairs a few feet away. I grabbed the one nearest me and sat.

"Is this the big bad wolf that wants to take out Raglan and McAllister? Who wants to bring down all the families? Who thinks he can do what no one has ever done, not in two hundred years?"

I couldn't see who was talking, and like I said, I had no idea who Raglan and McAllister were. But I still got the sense, very very quickly, that I was in trouble.

"He is that indeed," Taffet said. She looked behind me at something, and a pair of large hands came down on my shoulders. I tried not to flinch, and failed.

"So you have ambition and not brains," the voice said, this time to me.

"I... I..." I'd like to say I was more articulate, but was struck dumb.

"Normally I'd like that. There is some value in that. But not in a district attorney. However, my associate here is right. You are pretty, and that has its own uses. The question is, are you willing to be useful?"

"I can't be bought off," I said, finding a little bit of voice at last.

"Oh, oh," Taffet said, "we're not going to buy you off, poor boy." She walked up to me, and lifted my shirt. The hands on my shoulders tightened, and more hands grabbed my wrists, holding them behind my chair. I tried to struggle, but failed.

"Oh good," she said, staring at my stomach. "You still have it."

"You are familiar with the appendix?" the voice asked. He continued without my answering. "Terribly useless thing, but unless it causes problems, we leave it alone. That was you, this past year. Just an appendix. But now … now that you seem to insist on making trouble, you've become inflamed. And you know what we do with an appendix that's become inflamed?"

I sort of felt the knife in Taffet's hand more than I saw it. I'll never forget that first moment, when it broke my skin. Hot and cold, all at once. I want to say I was brave and strong, but I … I cried and screamed like a little girl. I screamed until I passed out.


I don't know how much time past before I woke up. It was still night, so it couldn't have been too long. Taffet had finished her bloody work, and taped me up. I was on my side, on the cold concrete, and it hurt horribly to try to prop myself up into a sitting position, but I did it. I looked around. They had left my appendix for me, sitting on a white cloth, just a foot or two from my head.

"You're thinking about revenge now," the voice said, seeing that I was awake. "You are thinking you'll go to the cops. You'll tell them about this, get them to come after Taffet and me. Let me dissuade you of that notion right now. You aren't the first person who has come here. You aren't the first who has thought those thoughts. But all the others who chose to act on them are dead. I suggest, instead, that you concentrate on how you can become useful to us. I promise … it will be more rewarding than the alternative."

I was drunk on my pain, and scared. And maybe I still should have said no. I know I should have said no. Maybe that will be my eternal shame. But I couldn't.

"What do you need?" I asked, looking at Taffet. She smiled, and I realized it was the first time I'd ever seen her smile with any real warmth. This bloody killer - that was the real Taffet. CADA Heather Taffet was all a ruse.

"Good boy," she said. "We're going to make you famous."

And they did. They made me famous. But I was also completely trapped.