September 17, 1939
Nick got settled in Brownsville without much trouble. Once he actually was able to get there. The plan was for Nick to be back undercover in about three weeks after he and Jen were picked up in Bushwick. The FBI would get him an apartment and furnish it, and he'd have his briefing and then get to work.
Only no one anticipated that three weeks after the Claybournes were arrested, Lepke Buchalter would surrender to J. Edgar Hoover himself on a Manhattan street in front of a hotel. Nick Buchanan was very low on the list of priorities. He had to stay put in that seedy Lower East Side hotel until the FBI was ready to deal with him again. Not to mention that Buchalter turning himself changed the top ten most wanted list pretty abruptly. Having the head of Murder Inc. off the streets was a lucky break but it left the whole of the organized crime unit of the FBI floundering, trying to figure out what to do next.
Where it left Nick was being told he might be turned loose and the undercover operation was off and then the next day being assured it was all still going forward but no one knew when. Nick was a pretty patient person for the most part. He didn't have any kind of anxiety about the uncertainty, but after two weeks of on-again-off-again, it was starting to get a little frustrating.
Nick was still working with Supomo, but another agent had been assigned to be on the ground with Nick and to help him keep his cover. Dick McCallister was more of a bastard than Supomo. Supomo was brash but respectable for the most part. McCallister had the fire of ambition, wanting to succeed to be promoted. Nick never liked that type much. But he could get along with just about anyone, so he kept his mouth shut and just did as he was told.
But now, finally, he was in back in Brooklyn. He'd never really been to Brownsville before, but he settled in easily. Easier than in Bushwick. He knew Wesley Claybourne now. He was comfortable in this skin. Well, maybe not comfortable but he was at least used to it. And Brownsville felt comfortable, too. It was a Jewish neighborhood, like Williamsburg where Nick had grown up. It wasn't exactly the same, but the kinds of people walking down the street and the shop signs in English and Hebrew and the sounds of Yiddish in the air, all of it was very familiar to Nick. He knew how to navigate this.
He knew what he was doing in this place and in this identity, but this job was going to be more difficult than the last. Intelligence gathering was one thing. Flipping a criminal to be a government snitch was another thing altogether. This was going to take a lot more focused effort, particularly to keep from blowing his cover when he was trying to sidle up to Kid Twist and get him to sing like a canary.
The toughest thing about the job was going to be the thing that Nick wanted very much to ignore. He was going to be alone on this one. The only person in Brownsville who knew Nick Buchanan was that bastard McCallister. That was all Nick had to rely on. Having a handler wasn't the same as having a partner. And Nick knew that no partner would ever again be like Jennifer Mapplethorpe.
It had been more than a month since Nick saw Jennifer. He missed her. He didn't kid himself that he didn't or that he'd expected anything else. She had been his wife for six months. Nick had never thought about marriage and domesticity before her. He'd lived with her and loved her and then she was ripped away when they were set free. Jen was still free, out there somewhere, while Nick volunteered to be dragged back undercover. Jen was probably back on the street already for some clients. He'd seen her at crime scenes a time or two before they met at the FBI, and Nick imagined that she was probably at crime scenes again already. He wondered if Matt had seen her around. They probably gave Matt a new partner in Nick's absence.
Funny, Nick hadn't thought about Matt Ryan in months. His old partner on Homicide. He was a good partner. Reliable and friendly and easy to work with for the most part. Though no partner would ever be like Jennifer for Nick. Working with her had been the best experience he'd ever had. And he'd figured that out before he'd fallen in love with her.
A movement caught Nick's eye and reminded him what he was doing. Abe Reles had just walked into the deli where Nick had been waiting for him.
October 10, 1939
"There, I think that'll about do it," Jen said aloud. She held a hammer in her right hand and stood back to survey the apartment around her.
To Jen, this place was a dream come true. It was small and old, but she was used to that in Harlem. This new place in Midtown was a world away. She could see the Empire State Building from her window, a beautiful beacon of this new life for her. It had been hard to go back to Harlem and close up her office and tell Bernice that she'd be moving out. The tearful goodbye to Bernice and her son, Josh, had been difficult, but worth it. It had been worth it, too, to leave everything she'd ever known in Hell's Kitchen to go uptown to start with. Now, she was back on 40th Street again. Only this time she was on the east side. Another opportunity to start new.
A brush against her pantleg made Jen look down to see Jerry, her cat, weaving his way through her ankles. "Alright, I've finished hanging the pictures. I'll feed you now," she told him. She put the hammer down on the coffee table and bent down to pick up the cat.
As Jen poured the food for Jerry, her mind wandered away from the joy of her new beginning and went instead to the nervous excitement of what would be coming for her tomorrow. She'd be starting a new job and learning to be a new person. Again.
Jen had not liked being undercover. It had been easy to learn all the facts about Trish Claybourne, but living as another person and having to keep secrets and lie to everyone had been exhausting. Nick seemed to have the exact opposite problem. He'd been Wesley so effortlessly, even if the details slipped out of his memory far too quickly. She missed him.
She shook her head. Now was not the time to think about that. It had been more than two months since she'd seen Nick Buchanan. And that's how things would stay, it seemed. He had promised they'd go out for a drink and see where things led them as themselves instead of as the Claybournes. But Nick hadn't come for her. She had found his address, actually, through her old private investigator skills, but there had been no answer at his door when she'd gone by on a Sunday afternoon in September. She'd tried and when it hadn't worked, she put it out of her mind. She had other things to be getting on with.
Things like the new job she was starting tomorrow. As a favor from the FBI, Jennifer had been given all the proper qualifications needed to get her a job as a police officer. A detective, to be precise. She had the experience and capabilities, she just didn't have the right resumé. And now she did.
Starting tomorrow, she would be Detective Mapplethorpe of the NYPD. The FBI had gotten it all arranged for her 'transfer' from another precinct. Apparently Midtown needed a new Homicide detective. Jen was just the person for the job. She wasn't the first female Homicide detective, but she was the second. The first had been chained to a desk doing paperwork for six years before she got married and left the job. Jennifer had hopes of getting to go out in the field. She knew what she was doing, and hopefully she could use her experience with the fudged qualifications to convince her captain to let her actually put her skills to the test.
But that was a problem for later. She hadn't even met her new captain yet. Or any of the other detectives. She'd be able to prove herself once she knew who she was working with.
"Here you go, Jerry," Jen said, setting the food bowl down for the cat. She watched the orange feline eat for a moment before deciding it was time she figured out her own dinner. Unpacking and decorating a new apartment was hungry work. But at least she was all moved in now, and she could settle into the new place while she settled into the new job.