The Quickie

I blinked down at the sheet in disbelief.

Victor Ordonez was looking so good for Scott's murder, I was almost convinced he did it.

I pointed my chin at the file stacks covering both of our adjoining desks and the floor as I sat down.

"Scott's previous Narcotics cases?" I said.

Mike nodded grimly. He chucked his reading glasses onto his desk and rubbed his eyes.

"I'm not cracking spine one of that saga until we have a talk with our Dominican friends," he said. "I guess the only good news is I got an ADA to get a subpoena to the telephone company. They're getting Scott's phones together right now. They're going to fax it over within the next ten minutes."

Chapter 38

I SAT THERE, ROCK STILL, trying to absorb what I had just heard. The fluorescent lights above hummed in my ears like an angry beehive.

How many times had Scott called me in the last month? Twenty? Thirty maybe? How was I going to bluff my way out of this one? I pictured the confusion on my partner's face as he spotted my number over and over again.

Mike moved his mouse to remove his "Who pissed in your gene pool?" screen saver. It sounded like someone stepping on Bubble Wrap when he rolled his neck.

"Mike, what are you doing?" I finally said.

"Go

DD5's were the incident reports we had to write for Scott's case file. I raised my eyebrows.

"Um, hello? Earth to Mike," I said. "People are going to actually read these reports, Shakespeare. You're the beauty, remember? I'm the brains. In fact, why don't you go grab a couple in the crash room upstairs. We need your head clear just in case we have to knock down a door with it. I'll bang out the reports in a way that doesn't get us reassigned, and when the phone records come in, I'll start collating them. How's that sound?"

Mike stared at me, exaggerated hurt in his red-rimmed eyes. Then he yawned.

"Yes, dear," he said, standing.

I held my breath as he walked to the exit. The bullpen gate had just swung back into place, when a low, off-pitch ringing sounded.

I turned around. It was the fax machine. Jeez, Louise.

It rang again, and the sound was followed by an electronic bleep. One of the white sheets started to slowly slide down out of it.

Keep going, partner, I thought, not looking at him. Please. For me.

But out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mike turn around.

My face felt hot. He would see it in a second. My number repeated over and over again! What the hell could I say? Nothing came to mind. How could I get out of this one?

I turned all the way around as Mike lifted the first sheet out. I watched him squint, watched his hand go to his forehead.

That's when I noticed his reading glasses sitting there on the desk beside me, right where he'd left them.

I didn't think. I just acted.

I opened my bottom-left desk drawer, and with one of Scott's files swept Mike's glasses off his desk and into the drawer. Then I quietly kicked the drawer shut.

I pretended to ignore Mike until I heard him rummaging around on his desktop.

"Didn't I tell you to take a nap?" I said, a

Mike exhaled a tired breath as he gave up the search for his glasses. He dropped Scott's phone records in my lap.

"All yours, sister," he said weakly. "Courtesy of Ma Bell. See you in sixty winks."

Chapter 39

FOR TWO SOLID MINUTES, I spun my pencil through my fingers like a baton twirler, my old, creaky wooden office chair cawing as I rocked back and forth just staring at Scott's phone records.

I turned and squinted through the office glass at my mercifully still-busy boss, then looked back down at the eight number-filled sheets of paper in front of me.

The fact that I'd managed to get my hands on Scott's rec-ords was phenomenal, but after riffling through them, I realized I now had a new problem.

I stuck the pencil between my back teeth and began turning it into a chew toy.

How the hell was I going to remove my number from them?

The thirty-three times it occurred!

"Lauren," a voice said.

I almost swallowed the pencil's eraser as I looked up. My boss had exited his office and crossed the squad room without my noticing. He placed his hands flat on my desk as he leaned over me, his fingernails practically scratching the edge of the fax paper. Could he read upside down?

"How we looking on those D-D-fives?" Keane said. "Borough and Detective Division commanders want them ASAP. Any problem with that?"

"Give me an hour, chief," I said, bringing the form up on my computer screen.

"You've got half," he shot back over his shoulder as he left.

I leaned over my keyboard, trying to look busy and at the same time hide what I was doing.

My eyes went from the screen to the phone records. From the phone records to the screen. Waiting for something obvious to jump out at me.

Then, miraculously, it did.

The font of the phone records was a common one. Times New Roman.

A second later, an idea occurred to me all but fully formed.

Which was good, I thought as I clicked on the Microsoft Word icon on my screen, since I didn't have a second to spare.

First thing I did was find the number Scott called the most. It was a 718 area code with an exchange I wasn't familiar with.

I checked my notes and verified that it was Scott's home number.

I typed the number, hit "print," and compared it to the records. It was a little too big. I blocked the number out and dropped the font size from twelve to ten, printed that out, and compared it again.

Perfect, I thought. It would work.

I copied the number thirty-three times and hit "print" for the third time. Who knows? I thought, pocketing scissors and tape from my desk drawer. I lifted the records off my desk along with the sheets from the printer as I stood.

This just might work.

It took me five minutes of nonvirtual cutting and pasting in the last stall of the ladies' room to tape over every incident of my cell number on the LUDs with Scott's home number.

Everything important I learned in kindergarten, I thought as I flushed the scraps away.

One trip to the copying machine later – with a brief side trip to the shredder – and I had everything the way I wanted it.

Scott's new and improved phone records.

I was coming out of Keane's office after dropping off my completed crime-scene reports twenty minutes later, when Mike walked back into the squad room. He gaped at the undetectably doctored phone company records I had left on his desk. His reading glasses sat on top of them like a paper-weight.

"Don't worry," I said, giving him a pat on his wide back. "Dropping a little off your fastball is pretty much expected at your age."

I lifted my coat from the back of my chair.

"Where are you going?" he said.

"To see my friend Bo

"Why don't I go with you?" Mike said.

"Because you need to get back to the phone company and put faces to those numbers, see who Scott was calling."

"C'mon," Mike said as I was leaving. "I'll behave. I'm not just a big ugly man doll, you know. I have a sensitive side. I'm in Oprah's Book Club."

"Sorry," I said, knocking through the bullpen gate. "No boys allowed."