As the sun started to drop down below the cityscape, Ramus leaned forward, watching the man in the baseball cap on the far corner carefully through his binoculars. The man stood up, stretched his arms, and took another lazy, seemingly aimless walk, ten steps up the street from the stoop on which he had been sitting, then fifteen steps back, and then five steps to return to his stoop. In the three hours they had been sitting and observing, the man had made that same circuit roughly six times every hour. The other man, stocky and heavily built, leaned back against the wall of the apartment building, his eyes tracing up and down the street at ground level before glancing up to do the same to the roofs. Leaning back in his seat, Ramus dropped his binoculars down to his lap as the bodyguard's eyes turned in the direction of their unmarked car, though the man made no move to indicate that he had noticed the car.
Ramus raised his binoculars once more as the baseball cap returned to his seat, yawning and rolling his shoulders before leaning back against the steps. He glanced up at the bodyguard and said something Ramus couldn't make out, to which the bodyguard chuckled. Ramus frowned. They had watched a half-dozen or so customers – mostly men – visit this particular corner over the course of their stakeout. Each time, the baseball cap had leaned into the car for a moment before dropping something small into their car's back seat. The bodyguard, who had hardly moved in the three hours, would focus his attention on the side streets closest to the dealer while the transaction too place. In all, the operation seemed to run remarkably smoothly, no different from the dozens of other drug corners that the Lynchpin's men had operated throughout the city before the Tarasque and the Chaos which had ensued.
The only difference was that this particular corner was new. Although this neighborhood had been spared when the Tarasque came through, evidence of looting and vandalism was still plain to be seen in the broken windows and empty buildings lining the street on either side. Apart from the cars stopping in front of baseball cap, the neighborhood had been almost free of traffic. Fortunately, a handful of vehicles lined the road, allowing the two unmarked police vehicles to blend into the surroundings. As another car pulled up to the dealer, Ramus took a quick picture of the license plate and sent it through the computer back to headquarters. The screen flashed once to indicate that it had been received, and again with the owner's information. Ramus hummed: another with an otherwise-clean record.
"It didn't take them long to get back to it," Wilson observed from the passenger seat, popping a couple kernels of popcorn into his mouth. "I figured we'd get at least a couple weeks of peace before the dealers started up again."
"I'm not sure that they ever stopped," Ramus pointed out, not taking his eyes off of the transaction as the baseball cap paused with his head inside the car's front window. "Even with the chaos, druggies were probably still looking for their fix." He frowned. "We just had too much to deal with otherwise to worry about the dealers."
"It couldn't have been easy for them to get their supplies, though," argued Wilson. "With how much trouble we had getting legitimate supplies into the city, it must have been even harder for them to do it without anyone seeing."
"I don't know…" Ramus mused. "Considering that we didn't have the resources to search every shipment entering the city…"
Wilson hummed darkly. "Coming out of the whole debacle shorthanded didn't exactly help matters."
Ramus gritted his teeth. The Superhero Liaison Department had only suffered a few casualties during the fight against the Tarasque, but with how small the department already was, they could ill afford even those losses. Although Roux's seemed to have improved in the weeks since the Tarasque's defeat, every so often he would catch him muttering to himself, looking at Moreau's former cubby back at Headquarters. He let out a breath. Perhaps it would be good for Roux to do and see the counselor… though calling little Sabrina a counselor still boggled his mind.
Wilson raised an eyebrow. "Has the Prefect said anything about recruiting?"
Ramus shrugged. "I suppose he's always looking for possible recruits," he answered.
"And yet we haven't brought in anyone new since the department was formed."
"You remember how much of a challenge that was last time, right?" Ramus asked rhetorically, letting out a breath.
"How could I forget?"
That had been one of the most intense recruitment processes that Ramus had undergone – far more so than when he had first applied to the police academy. Although it had been close to a year since he joined the newly-formed Superhero Liaison Department, he could still remember the intense interview process. When he had met him in the hospital after he lost his arm, Prefect Raincomprix had all but assured him that he wanted him to lead his team, but even so Ramus had been grilled for over an hour about every aspect of his police record. That had been exhausting enough. It hadn't been until months later that Roger had revealed the rest of the process, that the Heroes of Paris had combed over all of the prospects' financial records to look for – and find – inconsistencies. At the time, Ramus had been shocked at the invasion of privacy; only moments later he had remembered the absolute shitshow that had resulted when another officer – one he had even trusted – had sold them out to the Lynchpin and enabled him to prepare for the police raids. And according to Roger, that interview process had discovered a further three possible recruits who either were working for the Lynchpin or were at risk of compromise.
Now, Ramus wasn't sure which was worse: the knowledge that he had been subjected to such scrutiny, or the knowledge that such scrutiny was ultimately so necessary.
After waiting a moment for Ramus' response, Wilson sighed heavily. "Yeah, I know," he acknowledged. "But if the Prefect is looking to start recruiting, I may have a couple leads."
"Police officers?" asked Ramus, watching as the dealer stepped back away from the car and went inside the building to get something. He emerged a minute later and brought something down to the car. Ramus furrowed his brow. Could this be the money runner, about to report back to the Lynchpin? Ramus leaned forward, his hand hovering over the ignition, ready to call in the new information. And yet, the car remained sitting exactly where it was, directly in front of the baseball cap.
"Not police." Wilson shook his head. "A few guys I knew from the Army are actually looking to retire and find new work. One or two of them said they would be interested in policework."
"How well do you know these guys?"
Wilson furrowed his brows in though. "A couple of them were just entering as I left," he admitted. "But a couple served with me the whole time."
Ramus looked away from the dealer and raised an eyebrow. "Do you trust them?"
Wilson nodded firmly. "Absolutely. They don't have much investigative experience, but they're good in a scrape." He grimaced. "Especially if we have any more missions like that one in Bayonne…"
Ramus furrowed his brows in thought. Currently, the department had a good mix between those with more investigative skills and those with skillsets more suited to patrolling and responding to dangerous situations. If he had his choice on whom they would recruit, he would almost certainly prioritize those with police experience, who could help them run down leads and stake out criminal activities such as this one. But if he was being honest, could they really afford to be so selective with their recruits? The SLD had never been especially large; Roger had preferred to keep the department small and secret to avoid the Lynchpin's notice, and while that had worked at first, was it still so necessary today? They had been spread so thin during the Chaos, trying to coordinate between the regular police and emergency services as well as arrest the super-powered escapees. Had it not been for the regular police – and especially for Chrysaor and the "New Heroes of Paris" – they might never had been able to bring as much stability to the city as they had. If they were going to carry out more missions like the ones that Mayor Bourgeois had been volunteering them for, they would need more personnel. And even without that, they needed to replace their losses. If Wilson's prospects didn't have police experience, perhaps that wasn't the end of the world – especially if they had military training and experience. "You can suggest it to the Prefect," Ramus finally answered, nodding slowly. "I suppose investigative skills can be learned through training, though I don't know how happy he will be about recruiting from outside the Paris Police Prefecture."
Wilson shrugged. "It was just a thought."
"And it's not a bad one," Ramus allowed. Finally the car pulled away from baseball cap, racing down the street away from him. The bodyguard muttered something, and baseball cap shook his head, watching the vehicle until it was out of sight. "We are still pretty shorthanded. And we could use a few more officers who know how to handle themselves."
The car's radio clicked, and Ray's voice came over it. "It looks like another customer is incoming," he reported. "Any word from on high?"
Ramus picked up the handset and responded, "Nothing yet. Keep us appraised."
"Will do," Ray answered. "Plain brown car, white male driver with no other occupants."
"And the other vehicle?" asked Wilson.
"It passed us a couple minutes ago," Roux reported from the other car. "Headed north."
"I passed the information along to the regular police," Élodie Carré interjected. "They will pull him over for a 'routine stop' in the next arrondissement. With luck, no one will be able to connect the stop back to us."
Ramus hummed pensively.
"Have we got enough evidence on the dealer yet?" wondered Roux.
Ramus frowned. "We haven't seen him handling any money yet… he's a little too much of a pro to make that mistake."
"No, he just handles all the drugs," Ray pointed out.
Wilson gave Ramus a look. "I'm not sure how much more they expect us to get."
He shrugged. "I suppose we will keep going until we find something we can actually act on," Ramus replied, raising his binoculars and taking mental not of the license plate on the car just pulling up in front of baseball cap.
"Actually," Élodie's voice came through again, "Prefect Raincomprix just received the green light. The police are just about to stop the last customer. You are now authorized to move in."
