Disclaimer: Zootopia stories, characters, settings, and properties belong to the Walt Disney Co. This story is written under Fair Use Copyright laws.
The Fire Triangle
Part Two:
Oxidizer
Chapter 2—Finding Conor
(Continued…Part 2)
"Wel-l-l-ll," Nick chewed his lip for a second. Dangit, but this red-panda lady wasn't one for beating around the bush. She must have been a force of nature, back in the day when she'd carried a detective's shield. "Well, I guess we should start with the obvious question. Did you…did the Zoo York Police Department have any idea as to who might have been the Company's diamond mule?"
The corners of Claudia's mouth went in two different directions.
"Honestly, we didn't even know there'd been a blood diamond shipment scheduled for that day; didn't learn it had gone out until three days after the raid. But then yeah, we thought we knew who the mule was—although it's pretty darn obvious now that it wasn't him, seeing as he's dead."
Nick sighed and rolled his eyes. He had known right away that this interviewer wouldn't be a cakewalk, but still…
"Mmmm, all right, who was it, then?" Bogo beetled his brows as he spoke, a sign of impatience that Nick Wilde knew all too well.
Claudia Nizhang either didn't know or didn't care.
"The Mister's son, James McCrodon Jr.," she said, shrugging unconcernedly, "or just plain Junior, that's what everybody called him...to his face. Anyway, he up and whacked himself after his dad burned up with Finagles, took a swan dive off the Furrizano Narrows Bridge. Something like a dozen witnesses saw him do it; bolted out of his limo, ran to the railing and buh-BYE, never said a word to anyone; just ran and jumped."
Nick felt his tail tense up and had to fight to keep his face from following suit, talk about your hard-boiled cop. Claudia Nizhang had just described a young animal's suicide, while offering no more compassion than she would have wasted on a pill-bug she'd crushed underfoot.
He wasn't the only one to take note of this.
"Am I correct in assuming that you don't have very much sympathy for that young sea-mink, Councilmember?" It was Chief Bogo.
Claudia's voice promptly iced over.
"No Chief, I have NO sympathy for what happened to that punk; probably nobody would who ever knew him. Both of his uncles couldn't stand him and neither could anyone else in the Company. I'm telling you, if Junior hadn't been The Mister's only son, he'd have been whacked-out long before he took that sayonara leap He was smart-mouthed, arrogant, whiny, sniveling; the kind of guy that talks the talk, but when it's time to walk the walk, he doesn't walk, he turns and runs...usually to his father. He just loved to pull sick pranks on other mammals…knowing they couldn't even think about getting back at him, not as long as dear ol' dad had his six." She growled softly, adding, "And oh boy, what a loser; that kid could mess up a cup of coffee."
Nick looked at Bogo, raising his eyebrows as if to say, 'Will you ask her, or shall I?'
It was Bogo who asked, "If that's true, then why the Devil would The Mister have entrusted him to deliver that diamond shipment?"
"Because," Claudia answered, raising a brow of her own, "Like I said, he was The Mister's only son; as far as THAT guy was concerned, his kid could do no wrong. You know the type."
"I do," Nick answered, figuring he'd better get back into this conversation while the getting was good, "But what I still don't understand is, where'd the Zoo York PD ever get the idea that HE was the diamond courier?"
A deep frown creased Claudia's muzzle. When she spoke, she was tapping her fingertips together, as if keeping time to a song that only she could hear.
"I have to admit, I was as surprised by that as anyone…but when they fished Junior's body out of Gravesend Bay, he had something like a fifty thousand bucks' worth of uncut stones sewn into the lining of his trench-coat. And then we found out he'd been on his way Zoowark Airport when he made that jump; had a first class ticket to Cancoon booked, with a stopover in Ft. Leopardale. Ergo, HE had been the diamond mule; elementary my dear detectives."
"Maybe to everyone else...but not to you." Nick almost said it, but held his tongue in check; that was a question for later. And in any case, he didn't need to know who the diamond courier hadn't been; he needed to know who it HAD been.
And with that in mind, he raised finger and drew an invisible 'X' in the air. "Oh-kayyyy, scratch one Junior. Then who else might The Mister have recruited to deliver those diamonds?"
Claudia made a soft grumbling noise, "Ahhh, that's a toughie, lemme think for a minute." She sank into a short, brooding silence.
Unperturbed, Nick settled back to give her some space. He hadn't expected an immediate answer—not to this, nor to any other questions. After all, it was more than three years since ZYPD Detective Sergeant Nizhang had last crossed swords with The Company. And at the time those blood diamonds were being picked up by Ismael Rafaj, she'd been on her way to the ER with a bullet in her leg.
Finally, she looked up, "Well, it's not an entirely satisfying idea, but McCrodon might have used an outside contractor for the job. He was always doing that; hiring independents for out-of-town work. That way, if things went south, it would be that much harder to pin it on him."
"Makes sense, but why is it unsatisfactory?" Chief Bogo asked, while Nick Wilde nodded in concurrence. He himself had once served Mr. Big in a similar capacity; it all made perfect sense..
"Because of the size of that shipment," the red panda explained, "more than $200 grand worth of blood diamonds. Believe me; McCrodon would have been very reluctant to put that kind of temptation in front of someone he wasn't 100% certain he could trust." Her face screwed up into a wry expression, "by which I mean, someone over whom he had some leverage."
"Leverage," Nick repeated the word, feeling his head tilt sideways. Something was telling him that this was a key point.
It was.
"Yep," Claudia nodded, "leverage was always a huge thing with The Mister. He used to say, 'I don't never trust nobody I can't destroy with a single phone call.' It's a big reason we had so much trouble getting the goods on that dirt-bag; no one wanted to testify against him because he always knew something about our witnesses that we didn't."
Listening to the red panda's reminiscences, Nick realized instantly that she had been swept away by her memories; she was back with ZYPD again, working to take down The Company. The transformation was so complete, he would have been unsurprised to see her stand up and walk without the aid of her cane.
Then Chief Bogo spoke again.
"Leverage aside, what sort of animal might The Mister have chosen to deliver those diamonds?"
"I'd have thought an older mammal," Nick ventured, and immediately wished he hadn't; Claudia swiftly shook her head; so did Chief Bogo.
"Noooo…that gag went out more than ten years ago. It was popular for a while, but then everybody started using retirees to run contraband and Big John Law caught on to it REAL fast."
"Right, and so after that, they started using kids as couriers," Chief Bogo nodded, "but now we're on to that trick as well."
Thoroughly chastised, Nick shrank down into his seat; a gaffe like that one was no way to start an investigation.
But then something occurred to him, a thought that was almost an itch, although he couldn't have begun to say why it was so important.
"Wait, hold up…we may be on to the trick of using kids to mule contraband now, but this particular diamond shipment was delivered more than three years ago. What about back THEN?"
Once again, Bogo and Claudia Nizhang looked at each other—but this time their expressions showed that the fox had scored a bullseye.
"Point…that's right," the red panda said, cocking finger in the fox's direction. "We weren't onto that scheme back then; at least the ZYPD wasn't."
"Neither were we," Chief Bogo added.
"So then, would The Mister have used a kid to deliver those blood diamonds?" Nick had no idea where he was going with this, only a sense that this was where he needed to go.
Claudia's mouth pulled off to one side again.
"Well-l-l, he certainly wouldn't have had any moral compunction about it—but then there's still the issue of trust. Honestly, would you trust a kid to handle more than $200 thousand dollars?"
"No," Chief Bogo admitted, "but then would a child have known the package he was carrying was worth that much?" To Nick's considerable surprise, the big Cape buffalo was coming in on his side. "I've seen my share of uncut diamonds, Councilmammal. To an untrained eye, they look like something you'd find in a gravel pit."
"Maybe so, Chief," the red panda rejoined, raising a finger, "but don't forget, it wasn't only diamonds. There was also the money paid for them...all of it in cash. Want to bet even a kid wouldn't know what that was worth?"
"Ahhh yes…true that." Bogo raised his hooves conceding defeat.
Claudia, however, wasn't planning on taking a victory lap.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm not completely dismissing the idea," she said. "Junior McCrodon was pretty much still a kid himself after all. And God knows there were always plenty of little wiseguy wannabes hanging around The Company's headquarters, kids who'd run into a burning building if The Mister asked 'em...just so they could tell their friends that they'd done some work for the guy."
That brought up another memory for Nick.
"Yeah, Mr. Big always had a few kids hanging around, too. He used to call them cuginetti, little cousins." He frowned thoughtfully, adding, "Never had much use for 'em, though; he'd give one a message to deliver now and then, but that was about it."
His words seemed to ignite something in Claudia Nizhang; for half of a second, her eyes flashed.
"Hm, now that you mention it, there was ONE kid The Mister might have trusted to deliver those diamonds…if he hadn't had some other issues, that is."
"Who?" For no reason that he could fathom, Nick could feel his pulse rising. This was going to be a dead end, the same as Junior McCrodon.
And yet…and yet…
"He was this kid The Mister used as his own, private bike messenger." Claudia's mouth curled into an ironic twist. "For a guy that was as deep into cybercrime as that sea-mink, he stinking hated to use computers himself. Same thing with cell-phones; he wouldn't take a call on anything except a disposable and then, when he was done," she brought her fists together and then twisted them apart, "crack, right in the garbage."
"Yeah," Nick nodded; this was another thing the deceased arms trader had in common with Mr. Big. "Tell me more about this kid. Who was he?"
Claudia's reaction to this could hardly have been more bewildering. Sighing roughly and looking sideways for a moment, she flexed her fingers against the side of her cheek.
Then she turned towards Nick again, leaning forward with her paws on her knees.
"'Kay, before anything else there's something we need to get out of the way. Yes, the kid was a silver fox; no, it wasn't the Lewis boy."
Nick's ears shot up in spite of her qualification, "What, now?"
"How d'you know this, then?" Chief Bogo asked, even more nonplused than his officer.
"First of all, I keep up with the news," the red panda informed both him and Nick, "and I've seen the pictures. Believe me; those two don't look anything like each other. Her head tilted sideways and her eyes narrowed into slits. "But since I know you're going to ask, that other fox kid's name was McLeod, Sean McLeod, although we were pretty sure that was an alias. Not that it mattered, since nobody in the gang ever called him by that name; he was always Z-Face or just plain Z." She drew a jagged line in the air with a pair of fingers. "He got stuck with that handle because his jaw was all bent out of shape—and even without that, his muzzle was still longer than the Lewis kid's. His fur was lighter in color too, and his ears were also bigger, nearly too big for his head."
"Mmmm, yeah, my grandmother had ears like that too, when she was a kit," Nick scratched thoughtfully at the back of his neck. Although outwardly calm, his mind was racing at full tilt. There were a couple of things he knew that Claudia Nizhang didn't—but he also knew better than to bring them up in front of Chief Bogo. The last thing he wanted right now was to give the big Cape buffalo a case of buyer's remorse for having promoted him. With that in mind, he couched his next question very tactfully. "Well okay, it's not Conor Lewis, but…why would you suggest that the Mister would have used the...um, the Z kid to run those diamonds in the first place?"
"First of all, there was that face of his," Claudia explained, "One look and even my boss couldn't help feeling sorry for him—and lemme tell you, they didn't come any tougher than that guy. So imagine what'd happen if those minimum wage MSA geeks got a look at the kid; probably wouldn't have even made him go through the metal detectors."
Nick almost snickered, but stifled it at the last second; this wasn't funny. And besides, he wasn't entirely certain he agreed with Claudia on that last point. Yes, a broken face might generate some sympathy for the kid—but it would also make him easy-peasy to pick out of a crowd, something you absolutely don't want in a smuggler.
Then Chief Bogo grunted, "What else makes you think he'd have been a good candidate to mule those blood diamonds?"
"Two things," Claudia cupped one paw on top of the other, "We must have pulled the McLeod kid in for questioning a dozen times—and he never cracked; never got scared, never froze up on us. But at the same time he never mouthed off to us either; he was always polite, but he was also about as helpful as a set of IKEA instructions. By that I mean he could talk up a storm, but he'd never give you anything useful. I swear, he was like a pint-size version of the Danaconda."
"Danaconda?" Bogo was staring with his ears flicking.
"Danny Tipperin, I'm sure you know that name," the red panda told him, "known on the street as the Danaconda, maybe the most lethal gunsel in the history of Zoo York. One time on a stakeout, I saw a full grown jaguar break down and cry at just the mention of his name. Anyway, he was always Mr. Yadda-Yadda whenever we pulled his tail in; always courteous, NEVER helpful."
"Tipperin...oh yes, I've heard of HIM." Bogo was nodding grimly.
Nick wasn't nodding; he was finding it hard to meet either Bogo or Councilmammal Nizhang's gaze. But then he noticed that she too was averting her eyes, as if she'd caught herself speaking out of turn. Hm, what the heck was that all about?
Whatever it was, it took her all of half a second to recover.
"But now you see what I'm talking about; the Z-kid was practically the definition of grace under pressure—except when it came to the Mister. He was absolutely terrified of that sea-mink; whatever McCrodon told him to do, he couldn't do it fast enough. For all practical purposes, that boy was his slave. He never went to school, never played with any of the neighborhood kids; spent all of his time doing jobs for The Company."
"I'm surprised you never tried to pull him in for truancy," Chief Bogo ventured.
"We did," Claudia told him, "But before we could even finish booking the kid, along came the Mister's lawyer with a writ granting permission for Sean McLeod to be home-schooled. It was obviously bought and paid for, but there was no way we could prove it. We tried giving the kid an IQ test to prove he wasn't actually getting any schooling, but he turned around and aced the sucker. After that, the only thing we could do was let him walk."
"Hmmm," Nick was tapping his chin with a pair of fingers. "Either that boy's services were very valuable to The Mister, or else he genuinely cared about the kid."
Claudia eyed him sardonically. "What do you think, foxy? That crooked-faced boy was a regular Artful Dodger. He could lose a police cruiser on that messenger bike of his like he was ditching a stinking sloth."
At this, Nick was unable to keep from grinning. Obviously, this lady had never met his old buddy, Flash. (Say-y-y, what was that sloth up to these days anyway?)
Meanwhile, the red panda continued with her story.
"One time, the McLeod kid even managed to get away from a motorcycle-cop, although that was mostly just dumb luck. But even when we were able to pull him over, we never found anything incriminating on him; nothing except a few bucks and change. Know why? None of the messages he was given to run were ever written down; he had to memorize everything. And from what I heard, he almost never messed up on that part of his job." Without warning, her paws flared out and she slapped them against her knees. "But…all this is academic; he's dead too."
The edges of Nick's mouth pulled back in a fast fox grimace and when he happened to look in Bogo's direction, he found himself sharing a rare moment of commiseration with the Chief of the ZPD; now she tells us!
"Sorry should have mentioned that to begin with," Claudia said, sounding not even the least bit apologetic.
"What happened to him?" Nick asked her. He didn't really care, but she was going to tell him anyway, so he might as well give her an opening and get it over with quickly.
Claudia puffed out her cheeks for a second.
"This pack of Russian wolf-punks from outside the neighborhood—the Uzhashki I think they were called—was beating up on Junior McCrodon, The McLeod kid jumped in to help and they turned on him instead. He ended up DOA at Zoo York Methodist Hospital and by the time we found out what had happened, he had already been planted in Potto's Field, out on Hart Island."
A long frown wrapped its way around Nick's muzzle. Either the Zoo York Health Department had reacted with remarkable efficiency, (as IF!) or the ZYPD had been asleep at the switch; not a good thing either way.
In fact it was neither one.
"In case you're wondering," Claudia said to both him and The Chief, "the animals in The Mister's neighborhood were none too big on calling the cops for help. McCrodon may have been a lowlife jerk to the rest of the world, but to them he was practically a folk hero. If you lived on his turf and you found yourself in a jackpot, forget about calling anyone else, he was your guy."
"Like a few other gangsters I could name." Nick concurred bitterly, and for once, he wasn't referring to Mr. Big or even The Red Pig. In his time as boss of the Lambino Crime Family, John Goatti had also developed a reputation for rogue civic-mindedness. When he'd finally gone to jail, the residents of his home turf, Furzone Park, had treated it almost like the passing of a saint. Knowing that, the red fox began to weave a theory. For whatever reason, The Mister had let it be known that he didn't want the police to know about the McLeod kid's death until after the body was buried—and the responsible animals had dutifully complied. Whether they had acted out of fear, the expectation of reward, or simple loyalty didn't matter; 'The Mister commands, we obey.' That was how things had worked in his territory while he lived.
"Thank God that jerk's gone," Nick reminded himself with a shudder—before remembering that one of the deceased sea-mink's associates was still very much alive...and running a loan-shark business right here in Zootopia. He cleared his throat, at the same time clearing his mind. "But listen, we're kind of getting off-topic here."
"Agreed," said Bogo. "If the diamond courier wasn't him either…well, can you at least give us a profile of who it might have been?"
Leaning forward in her chair, Claudia answered with a short, earnest nod. "That I can help you with; at least a little bit. Something else the Mister used to say, a lot, was 'Professionals bring in professionals.' If he HAD decided to go outside the Company to find a diamond courier, he would have almost certainly hired someone with...A, experience in smuggling contraband, and B, a reputation for getting the job done. It would have cost him; pros don't come cheap, that's the downside, but he might have thought it was worth the extra expense. He was dealing with a new client and the newbies are always the ones that mess things up."
"Which they did," Nick pointed out with a foxy smile, "the Rafaj Brothers messed up bigly when they paid for those diamonds in bills with sequential serial numbers."
The smile Claudia gave back to him was of the caustic variety. "Tell me about it; if The Mister wasn't dead, THEY probably would be."
"What about that uh, leverage business?" Bogo was asking. "How would the Mister have gotten some of that if he'd hired a pro?"
"He wouldn't have needed any," Claudia told him, with just the merest hint of condescension in her voice. "Professional smugglers never double-cross their customers. It's against their code."
"You said if he'd decided to go outside the Company," Nick interjected, "Does that mean McCrodon might have decided to er, keep it all in the family?" Sitting back in his chair again, he had to wonder what the heck he was doing. Was he actually trying to give Big Chief Buffalo Nickel some cover? Holy foxtrot, that detective's shield really HAD gone to his head!
Claudia tilted her head and scratched at an ear.
"He might have…though it's hard to say for sure. Towards the end, nobody was entirely sure what the heck was making that sea-mink tick. But if he had gone for someone inside The Company…well obviously he would have wanted an animal that was big and strong enough to handle that package of diamonds, and especially the cash. Even in stacks of hundreds, $200k carries some pretty decent weight. At the same time, he wouldn't have wanted someone TOO big; the larger the animal, the more difficult they are to seat on an airplane. And they're much more likely to attract attention than someone of a smaller size. With that in mind, I'd suggest he'd have gone for a medium-sized mammal. He'd have wanted a fairly common species, too; something we're used to seeing every day. And last but not least, he'd have wanted a courier with a non-threatening appearance."
"Non-threatening," Nick suggested, "so I guess that eliminates predators?"
"Mmmm yes…and no." Claudia frowned and chewed her lower lip, "An apex predator...yeah, you could cross that off the list, but not all predators. You see, while the Mister wouldn't have wanted an aggressive-looking mammal to mule those diamonds, he WOULD have wanted someone who looked like they could handle themselves ifthey were attacked. Keep in mind it wasn't just the law that the courier would've had to look out for; there were also thieves and take-off artists. As for the rest of it…" she tapped at her cheek again. "He would have wanted his guy to look like a business traveler rather than a tourist, preferably someone with 'frequent flyer' written all over him; those animals always get less attention from airport security than other folks. He'd have also wanted someone neatly dressed and more or less the quiet type; the kind of animal that won't start a conversation, but who won't shy away…from one…either..."
Her words had ground to an uncertain halt and then she was turning an eye upwards at a corner of the ceiling, her mouth compressed into a sideways half-pucker.
"What?" Nick and Bogo asked simultaneously.
She turned to look at them each in turn, wagging a finger as she spoke.
"I was just thinking; you know who that describes almost perfectly? Half the guys in Kieran's crew."
"Kieran?" Nick was lifting an ear and tilting his head, "You mean Kieran McCrodon, The Mister's nephew?"
"The sea-mink in charge of the Company's cyber-crime rackets," Claudia nodded, "Yep, that's exactly who I mean."
Bogo looked at her with his left ear flicking.
"What, now? Are you seriously suggesting Ms. Nizhang…that a hacker might have been the Mister's diamond smuggler?"
Visibly grimacing, the red panda let out an airy groan. "Ohhh boy, here we go again." She shot him a piercing look. "Don't tell me, let me guess; right now you're conjuring up either some fat blob, living in his mother's basement, or a skinny chick in a hoodie with Che Guanaco's picture on the front, am I right?"
Bogo said nothing to this, only stared at her stone-faced.
"I'll take that as a yes," Claudia responded, setting off a rising heat in Nick Wilde's cheeks; those might not have been the Chief's thoughts, but they sure as heck had been his.
"Well forget it," the red panda was saying, "That kind of hacker went out with CRT monitors. The ones working these days—the ones that make the news anyway—are pros, not amateurs. They always operate as part of a crew, never solo, and they're not a bunch of scruffy kids with fleas. Professional hackers run in age from the late twenties to the early forties—and they're always clean cut and well dressed. All of them have day jobs and few of them even own their own businesses. Nice cars, decent houses; the average professional hacker these days looks just like your typical Joe-Stinking-Suburbia."
This time Nick didn't wait for Bogo, he asked the question himself..
"Why the heck would an animal with that kind of lifestyle want to get into computer-hacking?"
"For the money, Detective," Claudia answered at once, "Hacking's not about fun and excitement anymore, it's all about profit. In six months, a top notch hacker can pull down enough coinage to stop worrying about how they're going to put their kid through college." She shook her head bitterly, "Much as I'll always want to spit on The Mister's memory, I have to give him this much, he was way ahead of the curve on that one."
"Hmmm," Chief Bogo rumbled, regarding her now with a look of respect, "Would I be wrong to suspect that you're speaking from experience, Councilmammal?"
"You would not," the red panda replied. "That's how I got my start with the ZYPD, working cybercrimes."
Nick and Bogo exchanged another look, and the red fox didn't need to be a mind-reader to know what his boss was thinking, "Why couldn't you be in charge of OUR cybercrimes division?"
After all, that was pretty much how HE felt, too.
"But the other thing about hackers is this," Claudia was saying, "When they're looking to steal passwords and access codes, they don't just go online, they go where the employees of the big tech firms like to hang out; their favorite clubs, their favorite restaurants, their favorite watering-holes. Tech fairs are a hacker's happy hunting ground. And they don't use gadgets or algorithms to get what they're after either; their preferred method is social engineering."
Nick's face broke open in a sly grin. "It's called a hustle, sweetheart."
So did Claudia's, "Hustle, social engineering, whatever…you have your term and I have mine." She grew serious again. "But what that means is that professional hackers do a lot of traveling, and they're experts at dodging Security." She leaned back and folded her arms. "So tell me something, would an animal like that be a good candidate to smuggle blood diamonds?"
"Too right, he would!" Chief Bogo was halfway out of his seat.
"Ditto," said Nick, not quite as enthusiastic as his boss, but still in wholehearted agreement with the red panda's theorem.
Then she said, "If it was one of Kieran McCrodon's crew who delivered those blood diamonds, there's an easy way to narrow down which one it might have been. Most of The Company's hackers, nearly all of them, were animals he knew only online. You can cross that bunch off the list right now. Maybe Kieran would have been willing to trust that diamond drop to someone he'd never met face-to-face—but you better believe that The Mister wouldn't have gone for it. Nope, it would have had to be someone that Kieran McCrodon knew in real life…and that he'd introduced to his uncle at least once."
Nick let out a noise that was midway between a growl and a sigh. "Ahhhh, I don't suppose you'd know of any animals who fit that description?" The tone of his voice reeked with forlorn hope.
Claudia's mouth stretched backwards almost to the corners of her muzzle. "If I did, they'd already be in custody. As it is, the ZYPD never did catch up with any of the Company's hacker crew. None of them were at the Finagles meeting and one of them managed to sound the alarm even before the raid was over. By the following Tuesday, they'd all gone underground and had their tracks covered."
"Didn't ZYPD Forensics find anything useful inside of Finagles?" Nick asked her. "After the fire was out, I mean. There must have been something left over that could have led you to at least one of them."
"Nope, zilch," Claudia shook her head grimly, "whatever electronic evidence there might have been inside that place, it got toasted along with everything else. Kieran had all his gear rigged for self-destruction. Between that and the fire we ended up with nothing but a pawful of air."
Nick growled and slapped the arm of his chair in frustration.
"Yeah, I guess I should have expected something like that," he said. Before either Claudia or the Chief could respond, a church-bell peeled from somewhere inside the office.
It was coming from the red panda's cell phone.
"This Is Nizhang," she said, placing it against her cheek. "What's up, Sharon? Uhm, over at Precinct -1, why? What…?" Nick watched as her eyebrows jumped and then flattened, "Oh, right, right, right; thanks for reminding me. No, no problem, I'll be right there."
She disconnected and looked from Bogo to Nick.
"Sorry guys, I've got to fly. There's a City Council vote coming up in 20 minutes and I need to be there."
"Quite alright," Bogo nodded his understanding.
"What the Chief said," Nick concurred, "And no worries, you've given us more than enough info to start work with." He got up to see her to the door—and this time she didn't object to being helped.
"Come by my office before you leave," she told the fox, "we'll talk some more,"
And then she was gone.
"Hmm, you rather like her, eh Wilde?" a deep voice observed as he shut the door.
"Sure do," the red fox replied, turning around, "Don't you?"
"Since the first time I met her," Bogo flashed an uncharacteristic grin. And then one of his eyebrows went up higher than the other. "What d'you suppose she meant by 'before you leave', then?"
The tone of his voice told Nick that he knew exactly what Claudia had been talking about—and so he replied by saying, "Isn't it obvious, sir?" And then dropping down to one knee, he opened his arms wide and began to warble.
"Start spreadin' the newwwws…
I'm leavin' todayyyyyy…
I wanna be a part of it…"
Bogo rapped the desktop with the flat of his hoof.
"Cut that out, cut that out, you're not breaking into a song here. This is a police precinct, not some blasted musical theater, and by the way," he thrust out a finger in the fox's direction, at the same time pressing his other hoof against an ear, "you're not musical either!"
Or, as Judy might have put it, "Everybody sings off key once in a while Nick, but you couldn't carry a tune in a wheelbarrow."