Chapter 10 - VALLERIE:

  Vallerie Abbadi, Central Precinct Corporal, sat near the end of the table as the meeting dragged on.

  She’d already been dismissed and halfway home when she got called back in. Dominic, the enforcer who drove her from Central, had just chuckled at her bad luck. She was in the training uniform she’d snatched from the lockers earlier and was the only one not on official clothing.

  The eight others seated at the table were the heads of their respective DAIR branches, plus the local Commander. She half-expected Chief Elena to be present. But no. Where the hell was she?

  Val was also the only woman in the room. Not her playing field, but she knew their names, their ranks, career tracks and the base of their profiles. If she had extra time she might have known pay rates, political patronage and who they were sleeping with.

  A few steps back, pressed against the wall and pretending to be part of the decorations, personal assistants and aides stood in uncomfortable stillness. Dominic, the doberman, just looked bored.

  “Any meeting with the local companies will be postponed,” Commander Kai said. He was a big and burly human with dark skin and bald head. Voice like rolling gravel. “We need to have the situation near the docks stabilized, and the only thing that we have are injured enforcers.”

  “We also need to say something to the press,” Val said. “Perhaps even consider locking down the Borough.”

  Several heads turned towards her, and she heard snickers.

  “Oficial statements to the press have already been made, Agent Vallerie.”

  “Corporal Vallerie,” she corrected in calmly, picking a cup and pouring some tea from one of the thermos in the middle of the table. “And no, they haven’t. The press is talking about it quoting fear induced gossip from local residents and the precinct made no official declaration besides telling them that there was a situation and that people should be calm because it is being handled.”

  “What do you expect us to do then?” Jason, a bear with a beer gut asked. “Do you want to toss the city into panic?”

  “I told you. I expect you to act like you’ve got a plan.”

  “We have one.” Kai barked, hand slamming on the table. “We’ve got people tracking this guy.”

  “And that’s brave. But that isn’t a plan. This guy has been off the radar for more than a decade. You’ve got a half baked plan A. We need plans B, C and maybe even a D.”

  Jason scoffed. “Yeah, someone hasn’t been getting a D and it shows.”.

  “True,” Val said dryly. “But I wasn’t planning to bring up your wife and your erectile dysfunction problems in a strategy meeting, Corporal Jason.”

  He jumped up. “Listen here you…”

  “We need to seriously discuss lockdown,” she cut over him, louder.

  “Nonsense!” Kai snapped. “Do you know the kind of pressure we’re under right now? The docks have been closed since last night. The amount of money the city is bleeding out is insane. You have no idea the number of companies breathing down my ass demanding we open that up.”

  “I don’t agree with the lockdown, as agent Vallerie suggested…” said Desmond, a silver-haired older man with a neatly trimmed goatee. “Sorry — Corporal Vallerie. But I do think we need a more serious alert. Most citizens still think this is just a drug related incident.”

  “If we go to the public with news about Varro, it is going to be worse, Desmond.” Said Kai.

  “How so?” Desmond challenged.

  “You really can’t picture the panic?” Kai said, looking around like it was obvious. “We can’t even locate the bastard — and you want to announce that there’s a Class-A. A fucking Alpha predator loose in the borough? People will lose it. They’ll stampede.”

  Corporal Hati, a wide-shouldered bull with a ridiculous large nose ring, nodded. “Agreed. It’s not just about the now that we need to think about here. If we start looking weak to the population, we lose control. If people know it’s an Alpha, they’ll assume we’ve already lost.”

  Engel, the press liaison, leaned back on his chair, licking his lips anxiously. “Gentlemen, I have to agree with our Central guestt here. We need to be more clear. We are still chasing his shadow, and we have less agents on the field than we had yesterday. Too many injuries. At the very least, people should stop doing non-essentials.”

  “Of course you do say that,” the Commander said dryly. “Anything to get that smug rat face of yours on the screens, right?.”

  Vallerie looked over her shoulder, to Dominic. The doberman rolled his eyes and offered a tired smile.

  “Talking to the press and being clearer at this point is a necessary step. If we don’t start considering the damage the population might suffer in case that guy pops up in the middle of a busy street, and then it comes to light that we knew he was here… it’s going to be our badges on the trash the next morning.” Engel said. He looked scared, but was doing his best not to shrink into his chair.

  Hati looked annoyed but nodded, his face expressionless. When he spoke, his tone was conversational.

  “There are about ten people on vacation. We call them back. And maybe triage the ones injured. Perhaps Cassandra can put them back into the field.”

  “Let’s keep her to more extreme cases. She already saved two of our guys last night. We need her rested.”

  “Where is Chief Elena? She said she had an important meeting with the mayor and took off in the middle of the morning. So far we cannot get a hold of her.” Terry, a tiger, complained, He was nervously drumming his claws on the table making clinking sounds. “We shouldn’t be here taking this decision without the Chief.”

  Val chuckled. She liked that Terry was loyal to the bone.

  “That’s not the only problem,” Dmitry, another tiger, added, sitting straighter. “Rival gangs are moving in on Dorgan’s territory. We’re seeing minor clashes near drug spots. If we don’t get a lid on that, things will boil. So we need to pay attention there.”

  “It is like sharks. They smelled blood in the water and started moving,” someone muttered.

  Val spoke up. “The best move is to pull extras from other districts. Get a central surveillance station, inform the population and lockdown. You guys are trying to hide a fire with a straw hat. it is going to burn through, and you are going to get injured. People will get injured,” she insisted.

  “Are you talking about forcing people into their homes?” Hati asked.

  “We can’t even if we wanted to. We don’t have the numbers to force people into their houses.” Val said, rubbing her hand over the back of her neck.

  She considered throwing the thermos at Hati’s smug face.

  “And we need to be ready for all the ripples this will cause with the other lawbreakers we usually get. They are just going to get bolder. So we can't spend bodies policing regular people.”

  “I think this means you are out of arguments, Corporal Vallerie,” Kai said. He made the word corporal in a teasing tone.

  “Reach the city hall, or the Borough Undermayor. We get a closure order, forcing regular establishments to close down until further notice. We can use the same kind of alert we use for natural disasters. Like the one we did for Hurricane Stella 3 years ago.” Val said.

  “What does that solve it?” Jason, the bear, asked.

  “Not much,” but with everything closed, at least a good part of the population will have no reason to stay outside. And you guys can even blame it on a faulty weather forecast issue.” Val said, exasperated.

  Engels perked up. “A disaster protocol, along with the current rain, people can stay inside because they are afraid of a natural event.”

  “That… is not terrible,” Kai grumbled. “You think you can pull something like that, Engels?”

  “Maybe. I can get the tech guys working on it. We can toss some old footage from three years ago. We can make it work. I’ll need to call someone from the weather stations, so they’re on our side with this. But yeah…” his eyes were darting left and right as ideas kept popping in his head.

  “What about the Varro, though?” Hati asked. “I mean, even if your people pull this off, we still haven’t solved our main problem. The moose is still free and somewhere in the borough.”

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  “Working on that,” Dmitry said. He was in charge of organizing field teams and intel. And he had the bags under his eyes to prove. “I got news from Captain Jocasta. She’s finishing the sweep at the docks, but her team believes he went downriver.

  “And?” Kai asked.

  “We already had people canvassing the area before we got that info. We were not sure if the alpha was still hiding on the docks or moved to somewhere close. Teams are reorganizing and giving more attention to structures that can be used to hide.”

  “You mean the Industrial zone?” Val asked.

  “Yes, and that is a logistical nightmare in itself. It was the main reason we never fully rooted out Dorgan’s people.” Dmitry said, biting at the words a little.

  “Does anyone know what he was doing there yesterday?” Lucas, a gorilla that had been quiet so far, asked.

  “One possibility,” Kai said, “is that he decided to take over the drug cartel. It’s weird because all he ever did on his file is random destruction here and there, but it’s his first time acting on Endon. And the first time we ever had any intel on him working with other people.”

  “He ate one of his goons yesterday mid-combat,” Terry said. “Maybe he just did the same every time he made a move, and that’s why it’s hard to trace him.”

  “Look,” Kai said with a self-satisfied little smile, like a child who knew he was going to get his way. “I know we’ve stretched thin. But we are here, and let’s try to take down that bastard, but we need to talk about what the limits are on immediate response. I still think the lockdown sounds too extreme, but Corporal Vallerie’s idea does hold merit.”

  “Does it hurt to make a proper compliment?” Val asked.

  The room went quiet. Kai sighed.

  “Is that …” he said, but never finished the sentence. Val watched the men look at each other. She finished her cup of coffee. Engel was madly writing on a notepad he produced from his pocket.. Some of the faces were giving her frowns. She was the outsider here.. She really did need to find out why Elena had agreed to have Kai as her second-in-command. He was a terrible choice. But first, she needed to find the other woman.

  As the group started to complain about something else, Val quietly stood up and headed for the door. Dominic detached himself from the back wall and followed her. The other officers pretended not to notice her exit, or maybe they were so wrapped up in the new set of problems and the lockdown idea that they really didn’t. Either way, she was sure they were as pleased to have her out as she was to leave.

  The hallways of the Eastern Borough were wide and clean. She first had a good impression as she strolled in. The Spartan decor in the meeting rooms and officer rooms had an air of comfortable efficiency. But now she was just tired of feeling stunted. She paused next to a water fountain, the wall filled with a historic map of Endon from 100 years ago. The city had grown so much larger since it had been founded.

  “What’s next?” she asked.

  “I told Ruld and Muldoon that we got called back.”

  “Did they have anything extra to say about the docks?”

  “Only that they were also joining the enforcers patrolling downriver, trying to track the moose.”

  “Is Morty still in the building?”

  “No. He left earlier. No one pulled him from the arm case, so he is slowly trying to cut any false leads.”

  “Did Bianca go with him?”

  “I think the red-haired woman left with a bat in a fishnet shirt.”

  “A fishnet shirt?”

  “It didn’t look comfortable. But to each their own. There are two other technicians on shift, a lizard guy called Dolf, and this creepy one-armed woman and pink hair.”

  “Ah. Patricia!”

  Val raised her arms, stretching, then turned, walking briskly toward the elevators.

  “Fuck these guys,” she said. “I’ll talk to some of the logistics people and get them organized.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “They’re all fucking men,” Val groaned. Leaning back against the elevator. She had her hands rubbing her temples

  “Excuse me?” Dominic said, eyes wide.

  “The idiots in that room, these big shots from Eastern Precinct. They’re all fucking men.”

  “Really? I thought Dmitry was the only—”

  Val froze and looked at him.

  “For fuck sake, Dom. I don’t mean that they are all banging men. I mean, they’re all men, the fuckers. We only have Elena as the head here, and she vanishes, and those guys start running around with a ‘my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours’ competition. So we end up with the textbook picture of what happens when there is too much testosterone in a single room. By the way, I saw you flirting with that rabbit from logistics. See if she can dig up the contact of the Mayor and the Undermayor's offices. I want to know where our Chief is.”

  Dominic cleared his throat.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Did you just instruct me to spy on the Chief?”

  “No, I asked for an in-depth scrutiny of all movements of our Precinct Chief, officers, and the Borough’s head politicians to better organize and coordinate with her a response to Varro’s threat.” She paused and looked at the dobermann. “And I don’t give a fuck about any results besides Chief Elena, Mayor Stephan and Eastern Undermayor Blythe.”

  “Of course. My mistake.”

  The elevator rose past the windows, past the view of the city, and into the dark shaft of the private-office levels. Val cracked her knuckles.

  “Just in case, though,” she said, “do it on your own initiative.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That was my thought, too.”

  They went into the on-site constable office, trying to push some paper forward. The poor woman was a pile of nerves coordinating with on shift judges. Val offered a sympathetic smile that was ignored. After she double checked Engels to make sure he was actually following through with contacting the weather guys to spin the story of a natural incident. It would be best if they had just organized the people. She had a yelling match with the head guys and Elena when she first arrived, before she even called Morty and the other enforcers from Central. All for what? For the chief to vanish and the other guys be too busy jerking off their own egos.

  She went back to the small office they loaned her. It wasn’t much bigger than the one back at Central. She just missed the knick-knacks she used as decoration. Here, the walls were ‘I-want-to-cut-my-wrists’ grey, and the carpet a sad, faded beige.

  Through the window, she could see people running under umbrellas as the rain continued. Yet, a few kilometers away, people were killing each other, and a monster lurked hidden.

  In the ten years she had been a Corporal to the Central Borough, she had seen a parade of people trying to use a crisis for personal growth instead of trying to put out the fires first. It made her angry. She couldn’t avoid thinking of some officers as bacteria that would wait for an opportune moment to flare up, no matter the cost. At least they were trying to move now. She would still keep an eye on Kai.

  She remembered the bone famine when she was a kid. Later, when she later got into academia, it made her mad to understand that it could have been prevented if people actually got together, but a political war between left and right parties had been raging for city state government, and it allowed things to escalate without control because it wasn’t the focus. The election cycle still rose and fell.

  She knew that the DAIR was a political instrument. But she hated politics.

  Val picked her badge, clicked it into the phone by the desk and sat down.

  “Central Borough DAIR’s Office. Good afternoon.” A young female voice greeted her

  “Good Afternoon. This is Vallerie Abbadi. I’m speaking from the Eastern Precinct. Can you patch me to Alexander or Rita?”

  “Right away, ma’am.

  The line gave a static blip and started ringing again. Then somebody picked up.

  “Boss?” she heard Alexander’s voice. “I thought you'd be back by now. Did you know the Chief’s cousin was growing marijuana in his backyard?”

  She couldn’t resist the tired laugh, picturing the stoic man having to deal with a stoner nephew.

  “That’s interesting. But that’s for a future conversation. Listen, the guys here are doing a hush-hush job. And it is about trying to hide an Alpha.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I’m not joking, Alex. I guess they didn’t share that specific news with the other precincts?”

  “Wait! Are you serious? No! Do you need me to call the Chief and mobilize the precinct?”

  Val smiled at the eagerness.

  “Get ready for now. I just learned that I can’t trust Engel. That rat had told me earlier that all the precincts had been briefed, and I ran with it. So, make people aware.”

  “Which of the class-A made an appearance?”

  “Varro.”

  “The big one? At least he must be easy to spot.”

  “If that were the case, things might be solved already. There was a confrontation last night at the docks, and he has been missing since. The local force is searching for him downriver. But it has been more than twelve hours since he was last seen.”

  “Are the guys there just incompetent?"

  “The guys on the field are doing their best. But the ones in charge are a different story. That is besides the point. Listen. Chief Elena was here when this started and left this morning for a meeting with the mayor about the situation. And she has been radio silent since. I think the guys are way too happy with that. If they portray themselves as heroes while she is away, there might be a change of leadership after.”

  “So you want to stop them from replacing Chief Elena?”

  “No. I fucking hate politics. I want to know where the fuck she is. We need someone to bonk these guys in the head to make things work properly. And I’m just an outsider.”

  “I remember that you are very good at bonking people in the head.”

  “Alex!’

  “I will track the mayor office, and if I don’t get a response, I’ll go there myself. Anything else I can help you with boss?”

  “That is it for now.”

  “Hey, Boss?” Alex’s voice was more subdued now. “My in-laws live in the Eastern Borough. Can I give them a warning?”

  “Old people gossip. But you can tell them that the DAIR is going to make a statement so people stay inside and avoid doing non essentials. You can tell that it’s a case of drug faction war or even a predator incident. But let's avoid using the alpha bomb, for now. That needs to come from Eastern. But tell Chief Dek. He can help put pressure here.”

  “Thank you.”

  The connection dropped, and Val leaned back on the chair while stretching her legs. The class-A was a problem, but there were other several things a precinct would handle on normal days still going on. So, after a few moments to recenter herself. She might not be one of the locals, but the corporal stripes meant they still had a job. She’d keep the lights on while the higher-ups tripped over each other.