"Lieutenant Stone!"
He pretended not to hear the voice and continued down the hallway, grasping the bag of takeout dinner under his arm a bit tighter.
"Lieutenant Stone."
The footsteps behind him echoed through the wood-paneled walls and sped up significantly, as Antony Wahlberg, reporter for the nightly news was trying to catch up with him.
"Lieutenant Stone!", the young man said when he arrived by his side, visibly out of breath and holding an oversize audio recorder in his hand.
"Lieutenant Stone, you are a tough man to catch."
"I don't have any comments for you at this time, Tony."
"Oh, come on. Lieutenant, we all saw the coroner vans drive away from the docks this morning. There were two bodies. Word has it you suspect one of the bodies to belong to Eugene Scalino. Is that true?"
Facing the young man with the long blonde hair tied up in a neat ponytail, Mike grunted, before clearing his throat.
"Like I said, you will have to be patient. We are preparing for a press conference early tomorrow to inform everybody of our findings."
"What about the second body, Lieutenant?", the man continued to press, starting to raise Mike's temper, "Do you think it was his brother? Or perhaps his bodyguard Julio?"
"Now, how is it you seem to know all these things, Tony?", Mike finally barked and watched the younger man take a few steps back, "Because if you are getting information that could be helpful in our murder investigation, I sure hope you know that it is your duty to bring that information forward."
Smiling at him arrogantly, the young man pointed his nose at the nearby Office 450 of Homicide.
"Well, how about we sit down and share our findings, Lieutenant? You tell me what you know, and I will tell you what I know."
Snorting at the cheap trick, Mike shook his head before walking toward the door.
"Get out of here, Tony, before I have the guards escort you out."
Not waiting for a reply, he entered the office, ensuring that the door closed behind him. Letting his eyes drift across the busy bullpen on this late afternoon, Mike saw both, his partner and an equally well-dressed and good-looking Marc Dixon at the young Inspectors desk.
Despite their physical similarities, there was a world of a difference in the characters of those two young men. Ever since he practically ripped Steve out of the partnership with Marc, there'd been an underlying animosity between him and the Vice Inspector. Some might argue that Dixon felt threatened by Mike's presence. Or perhaps, he'd hoped to turn a gentle soul like Steve into his own cocky and pushy carbon copy. Mike didn't care either way. The only thing that mattered was that he'd pulled the young Inspector out in time before any of that horrible attitude rubbed off on him.
"Gentlemen…", Mike said dryly and cocked his head as he walked past Steve's desk and into his office. Several notices reminded him of phone calls from the Coroner's office, an appointment with Rudy to prepare for the news conference, as well as a court appearance tomorrow afternoon on a previous murder case.
Sighing, he set the bag of sandwiches down he'd bought for both, Steve and himself. Slipping out of his black overcoat and grey fedora, Mike glanced back out at the sky that was beginning to change color as the darkness of the winter days encompassed the city.
Outside his office, he could overhear his partner having an irate conversation with the Vice Inspector, as both young men rattled off names of local mobsters.
"There's no way Chimmy Chi is in on this. As a matter of fact, he helped us book a child rapist and killer some six months back. Crooked or not, Chimmy does not fit the bill on this.", Steve argued exasperated and pointed his finger on a list of names they had spread out on his desk.
"Then what about Hoskins? I still think you're too hung up on them doing this thing on their own. What if it's some local contractor? Hoskins has been trying to get a handle on the east side for four years. The recent power struggles in the Scalino house would only serve as a great way for him to rattle their cages and get that family to crumble like a house of cards. Plus, Hoskins has more bookies under his belt than the Embarcadero has whores."
Mike's head snapped up when he heard the derogatory word. As did those of several of the other detectives sitting at their desks. Undoubtedly, Dixon hadn't changed one bit from the ill-tempered, rude cop he got to know two years ago.
"It doesn't figure. Hoskins does the races. Why would he want to enter the Heroin market? The man's been into racing his entire life. Now you're just grasping at straws, Marc."
Deciding to interfere when Steve's voice reached an unhealthy pitch, Mike stepped out of his office and smoothly slid in between both young men, smiling cordially.
"You two sound like you need a referee…", he said calmly and noticed the flush of agitation working its way up the sides of Steve's neck.
"No. No we're good.", Dixon replied, argumentative as ever, maintaining stern eye contact with the Lieutenant. His recently long black hair had now been shaved short, and a three-day beard decorated his edgy face.
His dark brown eyes were cold and calculated as they scanned him for any insecurity but found none.
"Well, then how about a compromise.", Mike said cordially, reminding himself that he was talking to a man in his early thirties with the mental maturity of a spoiled toddler, "How about you lower your voice and keep the language down. We're here to catch criminals, not to lower ourselves to their level."
Managing a fake smile, Dixon shook his head before looking back over at Steve.
"It's all good, Stone, just relax. We're done here anyways. Do what you want, Stephen. But don't say I didn't warn you. You haven't got the background that I do on these guys. Heck, you haven't been working the streets dealing with living and breathing people in a couple of years. You're losing your touch."
Mike felt a certain sense of pride when Steve didn't answer, refusing to lower himself to Dixon's level.
Keeping a keen eye on the rude Vice Inspector until he left the office, the Lieutenant sighed in dissatisfaction, before turning his attention back to his partner. Steve had his jaw clenched, his breaths coming in short gasps as he tried to control his temper. Beneath his flushed cheeks, Mike could see the anger slowly dissipating.
"Still the old charmer, isn't he?"
"Yeah.", Steve mumbled quietly before glancing back down at the paperwork, "I…ehm…I heard back from R&I. They did confirm that our body is Eugene Scalino. The other one was his bodyguard Julio Esteban. Estaban used to run with the K-87'ers back in the day, using his sobriquet J'Est'O. Highly active in gangs up until ten years ago when Frankie Scalino picked him up for his services…didn't help much this time around."
"No. No it didn't."
"I checked on LaPlaz to see if Johnny is around but I was told he's out of town on business. Whatever that means for him these days. I think we should check it out regardless."
"Mhm…hm.", Mike absent-mindedly rubbed his chin, before glancing back up at his partner, "What about the DMV? Did you have any luck there?"
"Marginal.", Steve said and subconsciously rubbed his injured back, "Sorensen's street patrol found their limousine parked a couple blocks back. No sign of tampering. It's registered in Eugene's name but nothing special about it…oh and the ID on the prints of our witness came back. Walter Morse. Used to be an insurance broker with Whitney and Hughes before he got into a drunk driving wreck. Killed a three-year-old girl. Lost his job and been living on the streets ever since. No other priors beyond that. I added his information into my report. It's in the file on your desk."
"Well, it looks to me as if we have two different scenarios on our hands here…"Mike suggested and leaned back against Steve's desk, before pursing his lips, "Either our Scalino friends met with their eventual murderer for some drug deal…or…and this is by far what I am suspecting…the Scalino gang was there to meet with somebody entirely different and our killer knew about it…waited for them to show up and killed them. The question is…who did they try to meet?"