Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (3 page)

My first station when I’d started
here as a cop had been Tremont Avenue, and I’d spent nine years there in
uniform. Now standing at the same location was the Uptown District station.
The 83
^rd
Street station, where I’d gone after I transferred into
plainclothes, was shuttered. All police activities in the district ran out
of the new Eastside District station two miles away, on the site of the old
68
^th
Street station.

And Central District station filled
the block once shared by the Cypress Avenue station, an assortment of small
shops, and a park. I don’t think anybody paid much attention to the
complaints of the shop owners when they returned from internment to find
their businesses gone.

I parked my Jeep on the street, fed
some coins into a parking meter, and went through the heavily tinted
revolving door at the front of the station. I’d left my gun at the office,
so I passed through the metal detectors in the lobby without a
problem.

The problem came when I reached the
front desk.

Since I was released from Camp
Delta-5 three years ago, I’ve been in the lobbies of a couple of the new
police stations. Downtown District frequently. Eastside District a few
times.

Downtown and Eastside are set up
the same, pretty much like the smaller stations pre-war. Big rectangular
lobby, chest-high front desk at the far end, stretching from one wall to
the other, manned by a desk sergeant and a couple of officers.

Central District station was
different. It was more like a bank in a bad part of town. Low desk, topped
with a wall of bullet-proof acrylic that stretched to the ceiling. A
speaker grill so you could communicate with the person on the other side.
And no desk sergeant.

The young blonde woman behind the
desk wore a white shirt with a Metro PD patch, but no badge. Not a cop. And
she didn’t seem much interested in her job. I stood there for thirty
seconds, staring at the side of her face as she jawed and laughed with
another woman at a desk beside her.

I tapped on the acrylic wall. She
kept on talking. I tapped again, and she spun in her chair and stared up at
me. I briefly wondered if the bullet-proof acrylic would stop the daggers
that were about to come out of her eyes.

“Yes?” she spat.

“I have an appointment with Chief
Northport,” I said with a smile.

She didn’t smile back.
“Name?”

“Charlie Welles.”

“Sit in the lobby. Someone will
come for you.”

I didn’t move.

She continued to stare at me. “Yes?
Something else?”

“Just waiting for you to call
upstairs and let him know I’m here,” I said. I was pushing it, just a
little, but if you want to give me attitude when I’m trying to be pleasant,
you get what you get.

“Sit in the lobby,” she said again.
“Someone will come to take you upstairs.”

“I’ll do that when I see you call
and tell them I’m here,” I said evenly. “Or I can go to the pay phone by
the door, call Daryl myself, and let him know that I’m waiting down
here.”

Now she really didn’t like me. I’d
gone from annoying interruption to potential threat. Daryl Northport
carries some serious weight in Metro PD and I’d referred to him by his
first name. That meant a personal connection. She wouldn’t want any
questions about why I was making the call and she wasn’t.

She locked eyes with me for a few
seconds, her jaw clenched. “Your name again?”

I gave her another smile, just to
rub it in. I can be as petty as the best of them. “Charlie
Welles.”

She picked up the phone and punched
in a couple of numbers. “This is Trisha at the desk. I have a Charlie
Welles here to see Chief Northport.” She paused, still staring at me. “He
says he has an appointment.”

She listened for a few seconds,
then said, “Charlie Welles. He’s waiting in the lobby.” She hung up the
phone, a little harder than necessary. “Sit in the lobby. Someone is coming
to get you.”

“Thank you, Trisha,” I said with
the most insincere smile I could muster. She didn’t return it.

I found myself a seat in one of the
molded red plastic chairs against the wall and waited. I didn’t have to
wait long.

A door to my left opened and a
short man with a close-trimmed full beard came through it. White shirt,
single lieutenant’s bar on the collar. He turned in my direction and
smiled. “Mr. Welles?”

I stood. “That’s me.”

“I’m Jason,” he said. “I’ll take
you up to the chief’s office.”

He held out his hand and I shook
it. Cold and dry. He was a Vee.

Then he reached in his pocket and
pulled out a yellow card with an alligator clip at the top. “Put this on
your jacket and follow me.”

I glanced at it as I clipped it to
the lapel of my coat. TRUSTED VISITOR, whatever that meant. Jason turned
and went through the door and I hurried to follow him.

“What’s a trusted visitor?” I asked
as we walked down a busy hall to the bank of elevators at the far
end.

“Upgrade from regular visitor,” he
said. “Not an officer, not a civilian employee, but you pretty much have
the run of the place, except for those areas that are passcard protected.”
He paused. “The chief said to give it to you. I guess you have a personal
relationship with him.”

“Daryl and I went to high school
together,” I said. There was more, but I didn’t think Jason would be
interested. If he was, he could talk to Daryl.

He nodded. “I see.”

As we reached the elevator, he
said, “Trisha sounded a little annoyed when she called upstairs. I hope she
was friendly with you.”

“Friendly enough,” I said. It was a
small lie, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal about a receptionist’s
attitude. No reason to advertise my pettiness.

“Some of the front desk personnel
are having trouble adjusting to the new schedule,” he said as the elevator
door opened. I followed him inside.

“New schedule?”

He press the button marked ‘5' and
the door closed. “Last week we began integrating humans and vampires in the
Administrative Division. This is Trisha’s first week working the day shift.
She’s unaccustomed to providing service to humans.”

“How about you?”

He smiled. “I’ve been working day
shift for eight months, since Chief Northport was promoted to Chief of
Operations. As his public information officer, I work when he works.” He
paused. “Or a little longer if he comes in after sunrise or leaves before
sunset.” Another smile.

Public information officer. Jason
was Daryl’s PR guy.

“You do that kind of work before
the war?”

The elevator door opened and he
stepped out. I followed him into the quiet hallway. “No, actually I was a
television reporter in Miami.” He paused. “The job is remarkably
similar.”

Jason stopped at a door and held
his passcard to it. I heard the lock release as he pulled open the
door.

Behind it was a shorter hallway.
Two doors on either side, one at the end. As we walked past, the plaques on
the doors told me that we were in Metro PD’s inner sanctum. Chief of
Planning. Chief of Logistics. Chief of Administration. The door at the end
said Commissioner.

Jason stopped in front of the door
marked Chief of Operations. “I can give you twenty minutes with the chief,”
he said. “Maybe twenty-five. He has a senior staff meeting with the
Commissioner in thirty.”

“This won’t take long,” I said.
Assuming Daryl didn’t ask too many questions.

He opened the door and went through
with me at his heels. The outer office had two desks, one occupied by an
older woman who looked up as we came in. The other was unoccupied. Probably
Jason’s.

“He’s waiting for you,” the woman
said.

“Good to meet you, Mr. Welles,”
Jason said, thrusting out his hand. As we shook, he added, softly, “Please
try to wrap it up in 20.”

I smiled and went through the door
on the other side of the room. Chief of Police Operations Daryl Northport
sat behind his desk, watching me with a crooked smile.

“Hey, CW,” he said.

“Hey Daryl,” I said, closing the
door behind me. I looked around the office. The walls were covered with
what looked like every diploma, award and handshake photograph he’d ever
had. “Anything here from Trojan Elementary?”

“Might see my student-of-the-week
certificate from Mr. Ottaviano’s fifth grade class ‘round here somewhere.
Remember him? Used to like to pick up mouthy students by their ears.” He
paused, still smiling. “None of this means squat to me, but at this level,
people comin’ into the office expect to see somethin’ that says you’re
important enough to be sittin’ here.” He paused again. “Take a
chair.”

 “Thanks,” I said.

As I sat, I looked across the wide
desk at him. Daryl Northport. I’d known him in high school in Osawatomie,
Kansas, and we’d gone to junior college together. Our career paths had
taken us to different places and chance had brought us here. For me, it me
was the army. For Daryl, the fire service. In time we’d both ended up as
cops here. I wanted to be a police detective. He wanted to be a police
chief.

The Vees and the war had knocked me
off course, but I’d finally become a detective. No gold badge with the city
seal, but it was a living. Daryl wasn’t so easily turned away from his
goal. He went into a camp like everybody else, but when he got out, he
got right back on track. Captain. District Chief. Deputy Chief. And now
Chief of Police Operations, one step away from Police
Commissioner.

It had been a quick rise, helped by
the country-boy image he cultivated that disguised a sharp mind and a
talent for political in-fighting. People tended to underestimate Daryl
until it was too late.

And every step of the way, he’d
been an advocate of the idea that humans and Vees needed to work together
in the police department. For years, there had been two separate shifts,
day and night. Humans during the day, Vees at night. With two different
ideas of how to do the job.

“How’s the integration going?” I
asked.

He sighed. “It’s goin’, but it’s
slow goin’, if you know what I mean. We’re startin’ here at Central
District. When they see that the brass can live with it, we’re hopin’ the
rank and file will get with the program. By summer, I hope to have the
whole district pullin’ together, all divisions, human and vampire. Then
we’ll think about the rest of the stations.”

“Yeah, I saw you have Vees working
the day shift front desk.”

“How’d they treat ya?”

When I didn’t say anything, he
grinned. “Come on, Charlie, I ain’t gonna fire nobody. They don’t work for
me, anyhow. I’m just wonderin’.”

“Let’s just say that I’ve seen
friendlier faces.”

“Yeah, that’s about what I
figured,” he said. “I blame Little Bill for that. Morris. Admin chief. He
ain’t really got with the program yet, and I think his attitude is
tricklin’ down to the people under him.”

“Takes time to change people,” I
said. “Especially when you’re asking them to work with their
food.”

“And some ain’t ever gonna change.”
He shrugged. “Well, can’t do anything about it right now. Just put a word
in Napier’s ear and hope for the best.” Joe Napier was the Police
Commissioner. And Daryl wanted his job.

He leaned back in his chair and
crossed his hands on his large belly. “So what can I do for you? When you
called, you said somethin’ about wantin’ to grill my Intelligence Squad
about the Resistance.”

“I don’t remember using the word
‘grill’. I just have a few questions. You mentioned last summer that the
Intelligence Squad keeps tabs on the Resistance. Thought I might get some
background from them.” I paused. “With your permission, of
course.”

“This wouldn’t have anythin’ to do
with that shootin’ over in Westside District this mornin’, would
it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“We been keepin’ an eye on a
warehouse over on Beacon for a while. Resistance has been usin’ it as a
meetin’ place, few of ‘em even live there. This mornin’, in what TV
reporters like to call the pre-dawn hours, somebody drove by and shot up
the place real good.”

“Anybody get killed?” I
asked.

“Hard to say. There was some blood
in the office area, but no bodies. Maybe one of ‘em was dead and they took
the body with ‘em when they skedaddled.”

Or maybe one of them was wounded
and they skedaddled over to my office.

“Think it was Vees who did the
shooting?”

“No idea,” he said. “Definitely
wasn’t the Security Force.”

He was right. The Area Security
Force would hit them with more than a drive-by. And when they were done,
Red and all his buddies would be dead.

“When you called, and mentioned the
Resistance, I thought maybe the shootin’ was part of some case you were
on.”