Mr. CEO(109)

“Thanks. How's the nose?”

“Not bad, didn't break anything. You got my respect for that one,” Nathan says, cracking the other mineral water and taking a drink. “Now... I owe you a story.”

I nod, and swirl some water around in my mouth, washing out what's left of the blood before spitting it onto the lawn. “What makes the grass grow green?” I joke, and Nathan chuckles as I finish the line, ingrained for him but just a movie quote for me. “Blood, blood, blood.”

Nathan takes another drink of his water then leans back. “Samuel Grammercy isn't the saint that his daughter thinks he is. Then again, considering the man left his own daughter behind in this city's foster care system, I guess you already figured that out. But Samuel wasn't even the good cop that the papers made him out to be.”

“What was he?” I ask. “Nathan, I never really got to know the man. And I missed the timeline on his death, which is something I still regret since I missed Katrina going into the system, too.”

“That was Peter's plan,” Nathan says quietly. “The truth is, Samuel worked for Peter, or perhaps it'd be better to say worked for Peter's friends. You see, while Samuel got plenty of busts, the vast majority of them fell into two categories. Either he was busting the guys who were enemies of his employers, or he was doing an end around.”

“What's an end around?” I ask. Nathan smirks and gives me a look. “Seriously. I've been deluded for years, so don't just assume I know fucking everything.”

“Okay. An end around is when Samuel would arrest or bust someone, but then before the case went to trial, something would get screwed up, charges were never pressed, whatever. The key part of an end around though happens in the evidence room. Say that a week ago, the cops made a bust for ten guns. Then Samuel pulls the end around, and in checking in evidence from his bust, things get mixed up, and when the charges are dropped, the evidence is returned to the suspects, but the first case shows only five guns on their bust now. Guess where those other five guns went? Right into Samuel's friends' evidence.”

“And this was profitable?” I ask, surprised. “Seems like a lot for five guns.”

“Oh, Samuel pulled end arounds for more than just five guns,” Nathan said. “He was damn near an expert in doing that sort of evidence tag switch on stolen property, too. Computers, art, currency, anything except drugs. It wasn't that Samuel had a problem with drugs, it's just that NOPD policy is to destroy drugs regardless of whether charges stick or are dropped. He had a whole other funnel system in place for that one.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“He got greedy and lazy. One night, the evidence clerk was some Dudley Do-Right who saw the Detective Lieutenant doing the switcheroo. He went to Internal Affairs, who started to gather evidence on Grammercy. Peter's connections in the NOPD heard about it, but at the time the ADA in town was just as righteous as you could get. Also, this was just a few months after Hurricane Katrina, so the feds were still in town in force. Samuel felt the jaws closing in on him, so he came to Peter for help.”

“A faked death.”

Nathan nods. “We set it up nearly perfectly. The horse show was one of the first big events at the Fair Grounds after the hurricane, and Samuel got his wife to leave her phone behind to give them a reason to send their daughter back and out of the way. Theresa, Katrina's mother, was opposed to it, but Samuel browbeat her into going along with it. Katrina was the perfect witness to leave behind. Young, innocent, and traumatized enough that she didn't notice some of the details. I'd pulled similar jobs faking deaths in the Green Berets, so I was the one tasked with setting it up. I was actually there, although in disguise so Katrina didn't recognize me. After they sent her back, Samuel and Theresa jumped over a concrete wall that was there into a dump truck that was parked below, landing in a giant pile of kitty litter. When Katrina picked up her mother's phone, I hit the switch, blasting the car all to hell. She, of course, didn't see that there was nobody inside, although later two bodies were planted in the wreckage. That was actually done by the first firefighters to respond, a crew that also covers up arsons in that area for Peter and his friends.”

“So what happened to Samuel and Theresa? And how the fuck could they just leave their daughter like that?”

Nathan shakes his head. “That I don't know. I spent weeks unable to sleep after I had to hold that little girl, sobbing in my lap before the cops arrived. She was so distraught she never realized, even though she'd seen me... what, by then it had to be hundreds of times. I took her home more than once, you know.”