Indigo
T hat evening, Madison went into the Little Falcon, the neighborhood bar Bianchi frequented when he wasn’t working, while the three men working overnight with him reported to work. As planned, Cooper and Doc were set up in the car in the parking lot. It turned out Bianchi’s little home away from home was a cute little hole-in-the-wall gastropub and brewery, not a dive-bar as everyone had envisioned. The bartenders were quite engaging when Madison said she’d just moved to the neighborhood. They introduced her to all the regulars in the place.
The night at work for Wilson, Garcia, and Michael was uneventful. It was a long twelve hours of nothing suspicious. Aiello gave Wilson a wide berth after assigning him to work on a long project with his number two in charge. Wilson did not see Aiello or the three other men who had the cash during the previous shift until they all stood in line to clock out.
Through comms, Wilson heard Garcia gripe that there was nothing suspicious regarding Bianchi, and he’d looked through all the work the man touched. Michael, too, complained this was a non-case. Bianchi repeated the previous shift of only leaving his desk three times. He wasn’t overly friendly with any of his coworkers. He just focused and plowed through his work.
The third and final night Bianchi was scheduled to work before his three nights off went much the same until an hour before it was time to clock out. Wilson had been left on his own to complete the final job of the shift in one corner of the yard. Shipping containers were stacked high around him. He was scanning the labels and entering them into the system as pending customs inspection.
His senses tingled, alerting him that he was being watched. He caught sight of a reflection off of something shiny to his right. But when he glanced in that direction, he saw nothing. He kept at the task, but remained alert. Several moments later, he was rushed by four men, Aiello and the three others who had the cash that first shift.
“Whoa, Aiello, put the pig sticker away, dude,” he said, knowing it transmitted. “Hold fast there and tell me what the hell this is about.” The hold fast was for the team, so they’d give him time before busting this assault up.
Aiello held the switchblade knife to his throat. “How about you tell us who you really are? And your Hispanic carpool buddy from computer systems. You two are cops.”
Wilson decided instantly how to play this. “Try Feds, but we’re not here investigating you. You have nothing to do with our case. What you’re in to, I don’t know, and I don’t care. Put that knife away and step back. And by the way, I’m wearing a wire. If anything happens to me, my partner and boss know it was Aiello, Keeler, Darrow, and Kent who did it.”
The men all looked shocked as he recited their names.
“Look, you’re not even a footnote on my report,” he said when Aiello didn’t step back or speak. “But if you don’t back off right now, you’ll be prominent in it.”
“How do you know your case doesn’t involve us?” Aiello asked.
“Trust me. I know. I don’t care about that cash you’re so worried I saw you with. As far as I’m concerned, it was friendly wagers between friends. I’m here to fry much bigger fish that you probably don’t even know is operating at this port and this facility.” He pushed back against Aiello, who finally took the knife away from his throat and he stepped back. “That’s better. Thank you,” Wilson said. And it was a far better outcome for the man. Had he not removed the knife, Wilson would have broken his wrist removing it himself.
The three other men exchanged nervous glances. “Now what?” the man named Victor Kent asked.
“You all go back to work and don’t mention anything about me or my partner to anyone else. If anyone figures out who we are, I’ll know it came from one of you and then I will go out of my way to jam you up. We’re nearly done here and will be out of your hair in a few days, and we’ll make the world a hell of a lot safer.”
“Huh?” Aiello asked. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“Good choice,” Wilson said. He watched the four men retreat back the way they’d come until they disappeared around the corner of one of the containers. Even though he’d played it cool, his fight-or-flight hormones flowed through his veins. He took a deep breath to calm his racing heart, and he kept his gaze in that direction, just in case this wasn’t really over.
“Everything okay, Taco?” Garcia’s voice came through comms.
“Yeah, they’re gone.”
“Nice play,” Garcia said. “I’m heading back to my section. Bubbles, do you still have eyes on the target?”
“Affirmative,” Michael replied. “This guy is as boring as they come.”
The following day, Bianchi and the team were off shift. Because of the assault on Wilson by Aiello and his little band of budding felons, Garcia had the Digital Team dig deeper into the four of them while they waited for the Little Falcon to open. Cooper and Madison were in the car across the street from the gastropub, watching for Bianchi to arrive. They knew he went there daily when not on shift, and from the examination of the receipts by the Digital Team, they knew he went at all hours of the day and evening.
Wilson woke just past thirteen hundred. Not bad. He’d gotten five hours of sleep. Michael and Doc still slept, but he found Garcia in the living room area clicking through screens within the MRG Enterprises intranet work system on his computer tablet. He wasn’t surprised Garcia was already up and working, but he was surprised he was in the intranet system that was supposed to only be accessible when inside the building.
“You looking for anything in particular?” he asked Garcia. “And are you having any luck?”
Garcia shot him a grin. “I built a backdoor in for myself and the Digital Team. It was easy enough. Their intranet links with their external internet presence. I’m just going over the last few work orders Bianchi closed out and I’m verifying dates that he actually worked the days the orders were closed. So far, all is lining up.”
“Can I help?” Wilson asked.
“Thanks, but no. I’m nearly done. By the way, the Digital Team sent a complete file on the four guys with the cash who assaulted you. They all went to school together, played on the same high school football team. Aiello was the team quarterback.”
“My guess is he’s still the ringleader, as he’s the foreman and the rest are just labor.”
With a few clicks on the keyboard, Garcia looked back at him. “I just sent you the file. See if anything jumps out that may explain what they’re into. I have a feeling we’ll be wrapping this case up soon and I’d love to make a referral to the proper authorities regarding them. You’re lucky they wanted info and didn’t move in to kill you right away.”
“I knew they were there before they struck, wanted to see what they had in store. Aiello didn’t realize it, but I had hold of his hand and there was no way he could have cut my throat, but it’s nice you care.”
“A heads up you knew you were about to be assaulted would have been nice,” Garcia’s deep voice said.
“Next time, I promise,” Wilson joked. He grabbed a cup of coffee and his tablet and opened the file on Aiello and the others. As usual, the Digital Team had done a thorough job. After he’d finished reading the file, he spoke again. “Bianchi has no known criminal ties, but Kent and Darrow do. I’m not sure how Darrow has stayed out of jail with his arrest record. Either he’s protected or is one lucky sonofabitch that the charges keep getting dropped.”
“I’m going with protected,” Garcia said.
“The question is, by who and is it related to the money I saw and what they’re up to?” Wilson thought aloud.
“All four men had money in their hands?” Garcia asked.
“Yes, identical rolls of cash,” Wilson answered. “So, it didn’t look like one guy was paying the three others.” He thought about it for a moment. “More like one guy was passing it out and showing the others his was an equal cut.”
“That would make more sense,” Garcia agreed.
“These four are all in their late thirties and have a history going back at least twenty years. None of these guys are rich or if they are, they’re hiding it well,” Wilson continued. “My original thought that whatever they’re into is small potatoes looks accurate based on this report.”
“Yeah, I have to agree with that. If they were making serious money, no matter what agreement they had, at least one out of the four would be living above his means,” Garcia said.
“And that just isn’t the case,” Wilson agreed.
Just then, Garcia received a text message from Cooper. Bianchi hadn’t shown at the Little Falcon yet. He wanted Garcia to give him a call if he was up. Wilson had to chuckle at that. Of course, Garcia would have been up and working by then. Coop knew that.
“Yeah, I’ve been up a while,” Garcia said into his phone. “Taco and I looked over the report from the Digital Team on Aiello and his three goons. Nothing there. And I looked over the rest of Bianchi’s work in the company system. There’s nothing there either, Coop.”
“With today being Saturday, Bianchi’s Senior will go visit his wife in the home. If Junior goes to his neighborhood tap at the same time, we can get in there and search the place,” Cooper said. The digital team had discovered that Bianchi’s father visited his wife every Saturday. He signed in at her care home at four in the afternoon every Saturday, had dinner with his wife, and then signed out at six-thirty sharp. “Why don’t you and Taco head over there and watch the residence? If they both vacate, enter, search, and plant some tech on Bianchi’s home computer.”
Wilson checked his watch. The timing could be perfect.
Wilson and Garcia watched Bianchi and his father leave the house. They got into his car, which was parked out front. They both presumed that Bianchi was driving his dad to his mother’s care home. They reported the movement to Cooper.
“Five will get you ten that Bianchi drops his dad at his mom’s home and then goes to the Little Falcon for dinner,” Wilson transmitted.
“Let’s calculate twenty minutes for Bianchi to deliver his dad, and then another fifteen to drive to the Falcon. I’ll go in, say, in about twenty minutes. I want to already be inside when he arrives,” Madison said.
“Taco and I are entering the house now,” Garcia advised. Then he nodded to Wilson and opened the car door.
Wilson walked with him to the front door. It was sheltered from the view of the neighbors on both sides in an alcove. Garcia rang the bell. Wilson knocked just to be sure no one else was in the house. They surveyed the area. There was no doorbell camera, no other security cameras in view.
After two minutes with no sounds coming from within, Wilson pulled the lock-picking tools from the breast pocket of his jacket. Picking locks was a new skill he’d just acquired. Just as he was about to insert the tools into the lock, the click of the deadbolt being opened came from the door. Wilson stepped back and hid the tools behind his back as the door swung open.
“Can I help you?” an older, Italian woman with the slightest of accents asked.
“You are not Bradford Bianchi,” Wilson said with a smile.
“You just missed him,” she said. She grabbed a tote full of cleaning supplies from the floor. They watched her turn the knob lock on the inside of the door knob. Then she stepped out and pulled the door closed. They stood in her way. “If you’d excuse me, please. And no one is home. You should go.”
They both stepped back and watched her walk between them to the car parked on the street in front of the house. They followed her away from the front door and got back in their own car. They pulled away from the curb before she did, but circled the block and returned after she’d left.
“Now that we know only the door knob lock is locked, that makes it easier,” Wilson said.
“And we know no one else is home,” Garcia added.
The two men returned to the front door and Wilson easily picked the cheap lock. They were inside quickly. They separated and began to search the house. Garcia found a laptop on the kitchen table and got to work on it, hoping it was their target’s computer and not his father’s.
Wilson easily discerned which of the two bedrooms was their target. The one without the support stockings, Bengay, and bookshelves filled with old Popular Mechanics magazines dated from 1990 through 2014. He searched the dresser, followed by the nightstand. Bianchi’s clothes were all crisply folded and arranged just so. He was careful to maintain the order in each drawer.
“Our boy is a neat freak,” Wilson broadcast. “His underwear is even folded in perfect, tight three by three-inch squares.” He lifted one of the little bundles of fabric and held it up, examining it. He wondered how Bianchi folded it so tightly, so compactly. And here he thought his method of rolling his clothes was best. He could learn a few folding techniques from Bianchi.
“He’s also a security freak when it comes to his laptop,” Garcia chimed in. “I find it odd that he has no security system on his house at all, but his laptop is Fort Knox.”
“Makes you wonder what’s on his laptop,” Cooper said.
“I’ll know in about three minutes,” Garcia said.
Wilson smiled to himself, hearing the glee in Garcia’s voice.
“If our target proceeds here after dropping Senior off at the home, he should be here any second,” Cooper transmitted.
“If not, if he comes home for some reason, that only gives us another five minutes or so before we’ll be rudely interrupted,” Wilson said, calculating Bianchi’s potential movements and the time associated with it. He’d moved on and was now searching the closet, which was equally organized as his dresser drawers.
Three more minutes clicked by.
“I’m in,” Garcia announced.
“It’s about time,” Wilson teased him through comms.
“Target should have been here by now,” Cooper said.
“Unless he goes in to see his mom, too,” Madison whispered. She was already inside the Little Falcon and had ordered a beer.
“Facility records say negative. Not his normal pattern,” Garcia replied.
“If the target is circling home, you’ve got maybe one minute,” Cooper warned.
Wilson left the bedroom and returned to the living room. He peeked out the front window just in time to see the target in his blue Toyota pull into the driveway. “Fuck, target acquired,” he said. “We have maybe thirty seconds.” He rushed towards the kitchen where Garcia had already closed the lid to the laptop and opened the sliding glass back door.
The two men exited, drawing the heavy drape closed and stilling it as much as they could. Wilson slid the door closed just as he heard the front door open. They both ran around the side of the house and pressed their bodies against the white siding near the front of the house.
They did not see, but in the house, Bradford Bianchi went into his bathroom and retrieved his wallet from the counter, where he realized he’d left it. Then he retraced his steps through the house, glancing at the cleaning job Mrs. Romero had done with approval. He closed and locked the front door and returned to his car.
Wilson and Garcia heard the front door close. Then they heard the car turn over. From their vantage point, they saw the tail of the car in the street before Bianchi shifted to drive and pulled away. “He’s gone,” Wilson reported.
“Probably heading here now,” Cooper said. “I wonder why he went home.”
“Must have forgotten something,” Wilson posed. He and Garcia walked to the back of the house. The door was still unlocked. They re-entered and they both returned to their searches.
Several minutes later, Cooper reported that Bianchi had just pulled into the parking lot of the Little Falcon.
Madison sat on a barstool in the middle of the bar. She had a menu open in front of her. When Bianchi entered, he went to the right side of the bar, fourth stool, and settled in. The bartender greeted him by name and then went to the tap and drew him a beer without Bianchi ordering. Then the bartender handed Bianchi the clipboard with the specials.
“Maddie, here’s one of our other regulars. Brad, meet Maddie, she’s new to the neighborhood,” the bartender introduced.
“Hi Brad,” she said with her best flirty smile.
“Hey,” he acknowledged.
At his house, Wilson went into Bianchi’s bathroom next. He found baby oil and an anal dildo inside the towel folded on the toilet lid. Below it was a gay porn magazine. “Oh hello,” he transmitted. “You need to change up your plan and send Coop in,” he paused for a moment as he flipped through the hardcore male on male magazine. “Our target plays for the other team, won’t have any interest in Xena.”
“Oh fuck. How’d the Digital Team miss this important detail?” Cooper groaned. “Coming in now. Create me a cover, Xena.”
“Nothing in this guy’s history suggested he’s gay,” Garcia replied to Cooper’s question. Then he hit pay dirt on Bianchi’s computer. “Oh, but the gay porn on his computer confirms what Taco found. Holy shit, does this guy have the movies eating up his hard drive space.”
Inside the bar, Madison shifted gears immediately. She picked her phone up from the bar top and pretended to read a message. “Kevin,” she called to the bartender. “Draw me another beer. My brother just got here and is coming in. I’m so glad he decided to come. He’s been down since he and his boyfriend broke up.”
Bianchi’s attention became focused on her. And when Cooper came into the bar, greeting her with a hug and a kiss, Bianchi’s lips pulled into a grin.
“Kevin, my brother John,” Madison introduced.
The two men shook hands over the bar. Then the bartender handed him the beer. He settled onto the stool beside Madison, his eyes sweeping the bar as he did. When his gaze met Bianchi’s, he smiled at Bianchi, who still grinned at him. When he did, Bianchi averted his gaze quickly.
“Our boy is shy,” Cooper said quietly his face to Madison and broadcasting to the team. “He smiled at me until I made eye contact.”
“He must not be out of the closet yet,” Wilson said. “Makes sense now why he keeps to himself at work. Being gay wouldn’t go over well with the dockworkers.”
“Probably not with his Italian father either,” Garcia added.
“New plan, Xena and I will make him our new best friend,” Cooper said. “This way, it won’t be threatening to him.”
“We’ll be finished here in about a half an hour,” Garcia said. “I’m going through all his files and have already installed spyware on his laptop. So far, no red flags of what could have triggered the referral to us.”
“Besides his bathroom magazine preference, nothing out of the ordinary from my search so far either,” Wilson added.
Then he moved on to what he surmised was Senior’s bedroom. In the rolltop desk he found stacks of betting vouchers. Looking through the receipts, it was obvious that Senior played the ponies as well as frequented casinos. From the stack of receipts from the Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore, he was a regular there. And he lost big every time he was there. He transmitted this tidbit. “Why didn’t we get this info from the Digital Team? I’d like to know where the money is coming from to support dad’s gambling. No wonder our target is paying his mom’s medical bills.”
“So now I have to wonder if it’s Junior or Senior we’re supposed to be looking into. Is there a computer in Senior’s room, Taco?” Garcia asked through comms.
“Negative, not that I’ve seen yet,” he answered. “But I haven’t completed my search.”
Wilson worked for the next twenty minutes searching every drawer and every pile of papers in Senior’s room. In the closet, he found a locked footlocker. He picked the lock and opened it. “Holy shit,” he said aloud. “Senior has six handguns, an AR-15, and multiple magazines of ammo for each weapon. Who the hell is this guy?” He began snapping pictures with his phone of the weapons to document what he found.
“Razor, have the Digital Team dig deeper into Senior,” Cooper ordered. “When you finish there, wake Bubbles and Doc and have the two of them head over to the home to follow Senior.”
“Roger that Coop,” Garcia acknowledged. “You nearly done in there, Taco?”
“Yeah, and no computer,” Wilson answered.
They left shortly thereafter. Once in the car, Wilson dialed Michael. Michael’s groggy voice answered on the third ring. “Yeah?”
“Good morning, sunshine. Wake Doc. We need you two to get to work.” Michael woke Doc and put the phone on speaker. Wilson filled them in on the events of the day so far.
“That’d be just like Mason, have us investigating the wrong damn target because he won’t give us enough info to conduct a thorough investigation,” Doc grumbled, the first words from his mouth.