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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781462039821 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | iUniverse, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 07/27/2011 |
| Pages: | 428 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.95(d) |
Read an Excerpt
PSYCH CO.
THE CORPORATE AWAKENINGBy JUSTIN MAZZOTTA
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Justin MazzottaAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-3982-1
Chapter One
Wednesday, February 13
"We head into this shop on Pine Street where the silent alarm came from, not knowing what to expect. Inside, there's some idiot pointing a knife at the counter clerk while his buddy is stacking cases of beer on one of those trolley carts." Bruno stared at himself in the full-length mirror as he told his story.
"Beer?" Domenic asked incredulously from down at his feet, pinning the hems of Bruno's pants with blue-headed pins.
"Yeah, like he was planning on making his getaway on foot, pushing a cart of beer down the street. Some of these guys—ow! Dom!" Bruno stamped his foot as one of the pins pricked his ankle.
"Sorry," Domenic said perfunctorily as he raised his husky frame to stand up beside Bruno. "All done. What do you think?"
"They look great," Bruno assured him, twisting his hips to look at the new pair of beige pants he was buying. The mirror displayed an athletic man in his midthirties with short, dark hair that was parted in the center. His strong jaw was balanced with his high cheekbones. His warm, brown eyes observed the way the pants hung off his not-too-muscular legs.
"So I pull out my Taser and order the suspect at the counter to freeze and raise his hands." Bruno mimed pulling a sidearm from the left side of his belt and holding it out at arm's length, pointing it at his own reflection in the mirror. Then he mimicked the knife-wielding crook, pointing an imaginary blade at Domenic's throat.
"The suspect turns toward me and reaches into his pocket ..." Bruno reached into the pocket of the new Canali corduroys. "So I fired the air cartridge and took him down."
"Was he going for a gun?" Domenic asked with interest as he slipped his fingers into the waist of the pants and tugged to check the fit.
"There was another knife. I don't know what he was planning. Anyway, he went down, and Scott got the other suspect; the guy wasn't even armed. The waist is good, Dom."
"I'll hem them tonight then." The portly tailor gestured toward Bruno's slacks on the chair beside the mirror. "I always wondered what it must feel like to be shocked by one of those things," Domenic mused in his Italian accent, which was heavy compared to Bruno's neutral Floridian. The tailor had on a pair of tan slacks and a dark blazer with a blue and gold crosshatched tie. Domenic always looked good.
"It feels like pins and needles. Like sticking your finger into a light socket, only all over your body," Bruno said, undoing the front buttons and slipping the pants off. "We've all had it done to us. Policy says you have to get Tased yourself before you're allowed to carry one."
Domenic hissed and ran a swarthy-skinned hand through his styled, graying hair.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, picking up the pants while Bruno went for his slacks. Bruno took his time since they were the only ones in the tailor's shop and hidden from the front door besides. The shop had an unusual L-shape. Most of the shops on Wall Street went straight in from the pedestrian mall, but Domenic had bought the back half of the unit beside his own when his neighbor had gone out of business almost ten years ago. While the contractors had been there, Domenic had taken the opportunity to renovate the whole store.
Bruno remembered when the store had been populated with nothing but steel garment racks standing in the middle of the rectangular space with beige wallpaper covering the concrete walls. Despite the humble surroundings, the garment racks had held beautiful imported suits that Bruno had loved to touch as a child when his father had brought him shopping.
Now the racks were recessed into the walls, each rack devoted to a certain shade of gray or blue interspersed with racks of tan, taupe, and brown. Instead of wallpaper, the store was paneled with rich hardwoods in warm tones. The gloss on the panels reflected the track lights overhead while still letting the grains show in sharp relief. In the center space were tables of the same wood displaying colorful silk ties laid out in rainbow order. There were thirty or forty ties of each color, meticulously organized by shade and pattern, ranging from plain to kaleidoscopic and calligraphic.
"A bit, but it's more like an out-of-body experience," Bruno continued. "In training, they have you kneel with a guy on either side of you, holding your arms and with a pistol on the ground five feet away. The guys aren't there to hold you back; they're to hold you up. All you have to do is dive for the pistol and aim it. The instructor Tases you in the back and orders you to begin. It's weird; you tell your body to move, but all your muscles are locked up and won't listen. I've never felt anything else like it." Bruno zipped his slacks up and slipped his shoes back on while Domenic went to the front counter to ring in the pants.
"It's the same thing with the squads who are trained on riot equipment. To control a violent mob, they'll get a tanker truck with a high-pressure water cannon and spray the front ranks to knock them down. You have to get sprayed by the cannon five times before they clear you to fire it," Bruno added.
"You don't usually get called to crimes in progress though; you're a detective," Domenic called, frowning.
"We were a block away when the clerk hit the alarm." Bruno shrugged, coming up to the glass-topped counter with a display case underneath, fishing in his pocket for his wallet.
"You're braver than me, that's for sure," the tailor mumbled, tilting his head back to look at the register screen through the thin glasses that he always wore halfway down his nose. "Sixty dollars. You can pick them up tomorrow after four." As Bruno picked the bills from his wallet, Domenic narrowed his eyes at Bruno's inseam. "You still hang it down the right leg, right?" he asked seriously. Bruno chuckled as he set the bills on the counter.
"After all these years, I am still convinced that tailors do not need that information," he retorted, grinning widely. Domenic's weathered face did not flinch, and he kept looking expectantly at Bruno.
"Yes," Bruno said in defeat, just before pushing the door open. "The right leg." Domenic nodded and actually made a note on the chit. Bruno laughed out loud as he stepped onto the cobbled walk outside.
The Wednesday afternoon was cool, meriting long sleeves. Orlando weather typically did not call for overgarments, but Bruno wore a light coat because it was February. Bruno liked the look of a coat on a police detective, and the short months of what passed for winter in Florida were the only time that he could get away with wearing one comfortably.
Wall Street was busy. People were taking small breaks from their downtown jobs, and women were shopping in the higher-class shops on the pedestrian mall. Bruno made his way to the street adjacent where he had parked his blue Mazda by a parking meter. He arrived with two minutes left on the timer and smiled. He got in the car, started the engine, put the car in drive, and pulled out into the downtown street behind a city bus loaded with people.
Before he could get up to speed, another car sped out in front of him, making him brake hard. He honked his horn at the fleeing car, wishing that he was in his burgundy police cruiser. He wondered if the moon was full; lately, the traffic cops had been seeing a sharp increase in aggressive driving all across the city, which nothing could account for.
The offices of the Eleventh District Police Department were on the eighteenth floor of the county courthouse in the middle of downtown. It was a large complex of modern design, and Bruno appreciated the concrete underground parking garage, which kept the service vehicles and the employees' own cars cool in the summer heat. He arrived there and parked the Mazda in his designated spot, quickly taking the elevator to the eighteenth floor.
The department's squad room was an open floor of desks with dedicated lamps and computer screens, while the offices of detectives and commanding officers were recessed into the walls. Bruno greeted his friend Mark, who everyone called Switch. He worked part time in the field and part time as a dispatcher, and got the nickname because he switched between the two positions. Mark liked to think the name was short for Switchblade because he was a tough field officer, but in truth, he was a much more competent dispatcher. Bruno privately thought of Mark as Switchboard.
Bruno passed the corner office belonging to his superior, Captain David Holt. Holt was part of a proud military family, and the office was appropriately decorated with martial memorabilia. There was a miniature bronze Civil War cannon on the end table and several rifles from the same period on the wall. He had cherry shelves behind his desk supporting picture frames that held photos of Holt shaking hands with various high-level public officials in the city. The walls held plaques and commendations.
Finally coming to his own office, Bruno sat down. It was at the end of the row beside a storage closet, but he was proud of it because everything was in order. The wires to the movable TV stand in the corner were neatly coiled in the tray beside the VCR. Bruno's papers and files were stacked neatly in defined piles on his desk, held down by pewter paperweight statues of knights on horseback and tome-wielding wizards. Bruno was a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings and the genre it had created. On the shelf behind his desk was a stone statue of a small dragon, holding down a file that did not pertain to his police work. It contained the whimsical plans of the Doghouse, a bar he dreamed of opening someday with his partner, Scott Monday.
Satisfied that everything was in place, Bruno sat down at his desk and logged on to his computer. Checking that everything was in place was a good habit for him because finding an element out of place was frequently the key to solving a crime. He checked his e-mail and logged briefly on to Facebook. He did not have that many friends on Facebook, and he mainly kept his subscription to the networking site for the Fish Tank application, where he bred all different types of exotic virtual fish in a cartoon tank. After only a few months, he had gotten up to level twenty-two. He fed his fish and was about to get to the files on his desk when Dave Holt came into his office, in full duty uniform as the captain preferred, with a perfunctory knock. Holt's crew cut and alert posture said everything about him.
"Something for you to check out, Bruno," Holt said crisply. "Get Scott and head out to Ricardo Street. A nightclub burned down early this morning."
"Yes, sir," Bruno replied. "Has anyone started a file?"
"Ian was the first responder," Holt confirmed. "The site's been cleared by the marshal's office, but be careful anyway," Holt said. Some of the younger recruits mistook Holt's brisk manner for insensitivity. In reality, the captain had genuine care for everyone under his command.
Bruno rose from his desk and got his coat, following Holt out the door. Scott had appeared at his desk on the open floor; Holt had probably waited until Scott arrived to brief Bruno. He sauntered up just as Scott was sitting down in his chair. Bruno's partner carried an extra forty pounds of muscle on his solid frame, and it showed through his fitted shirt. Scott's close-cropped black hair was touched with early gray, even though he was Bruno's age. His chiseled features displayed their usual dour expression.
"We caught something," Bruno said with easy familiarity. "A fire in a nightclub on Ricardo Street. Dave wants us to check it out now."
"Do we think it was arson?" Scott asked, pulling on a light windbreaker with the Eleventh District department's logo on it.
"Maybe. Let's just get out there before we start making assumptions." Bruno led the way back to the elevators and pushed the button for the parking garage.
"I hate Ricardo Street," Scott mumbled as they got into the elevator.
"You hate a lot of things," Bruno said lightly. Scott was a person who got annoyed very easily. Unfortunately, sometimes he let it affect his actions. The excessive force complaints in Scott's file were one of the reasons that Bruno had been promoted to a detective while Scott remained on the officer pay scale. To his credit, Scott was as loyal as a hunting dog and twice as keen. He did complain, though.
"But I really do hate Ricardo Street," Scott insisted. Ricardo Street was a paved segment, just outside the high-rise downtown area, that was lined with nightclubs, dance halls, bars, and restaurants. Bruno had sometimes heard it referred to as Party Street. "Every time we go out there, something happens with the dumb, drunk people in the lines," Scott continued. "You've been with me; you know the people I'm talking about. The punks who want to show off to their friends by cursing at me. The girl who's having a fight with her boyfriend, who yells at me to arrest him because he pushed her or something. I know it's nothing, but I have to go over there anyway and calm everyone down, which takes time away from what we really should be doing." Scott let out a miffed breath of air.
"It's three o'clock on a Wednesday," Bruno pointed out as they left the elevator and got into the burgundy cruiser. "There won't be any club people there."
Bruno was wrong. After a short drive from the station through the downtown core, they came to the area to see a long lineup of young, excited-looking people waiting to be admitted to a dance club across the street from the blackened shell of the burned-out building. A line that size was normally seen only on busy Saturday nights in summertime. Bruno was suddenly less interested in the burned-out building as he was in the club across the street.
Scott met with Ian McLaughlin, the responding officer whose shift was just ending. Ian handed Scott the folder that he had started on the fire.
"What does the fire marshal's report say about cause?" Bruno asked Ian after they had greeted each other.
"The burn pattern suggests an improvised incendiary weapon," Ian admitted, opening the folder in Scott's hands to a page with a highlighted section. "Most likely a bottle filled with gasoline, thrown through the front window. The melting patterns confirm that one of the glass panes was broken inward before the fire started."
"Did you speak with the club owner?" Bruno asked, letting his gaze slide back to the lineup in front of the adjacent club.
"He's upset, says he doesn't have fire insurance," Ian said, following Bruno's eyes. Then he added, "The owner swears up and down that it was the guy across the street that set the fire. He said the guy's gone crazy in the last few days."
"Whatever he's doing, it seems to be working," Scott commented, indicating the volume of people waiting.
"Uh-huh," Bruno answered, mirroring Ian's smile. "Scott, do you want to go through and check the points of the report so we understand everything?" Bruno asked. "I think I'm going to head over there."
Scott complied without a word, turning away to inspect the ruined building. Bruno's partner was used to the way he worked; Bruno followed the element out of place. A giant lineup to a dance club on a weekday afternoon was definitely out of place. The club was two stories tall and displayed a large neon sign that read, "Club Lode."
Bruno strode up to the broad, bearded bouncer who was manning the front door. The bouncer stepped aside respectfully; he had seen Bruno get out of the police cruiser and did not make Bruno get his badge out to show him. It demonstrated that he was one of the quality bouncers who were serious about the enforcement profession. The man might have even applied to a police agency before; many applicants who were not hired for whatever reason became bouncers or security guards.
"Business is going very well for you," Bruno commented with an impressed tone. "I don't think I've ever seen a club with enough business to stay open during a weekday."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from PSYCH CO. by JUSTIN MAZZOTTA Copyright © 2011 by Justin Mazzotta. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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