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“Apologies, officers; as you know, my bodyguards are trained to react to sudden disruptions,” dad said smoothly. “How can I help you today?”
“Cut the shit, Marino,” the lieutenant said, all but spitting our name. It made me furious. “We’re here to inspect your cargo.”
“On what grounds?” dad asked affably as if his eyes weren’t icy cold. Still, they couldn’t accuse him of being hostile to them.
“On the grounds of we’ve got a warrant,” the lieutenant snarked. Dad’s mouth twitched down almost unnoticeably, and I knew why.
The ship had just docked, and our shipping container had hit the ground all of five minutes before we opened it. There was no way they got a warrant to search when there wasn’t even evidence yet, but there it was in his hand.
“May I see it, officer?” dad asked. The lieutenant scowled but complied.
“Everybody keep your hands where I can see them,” he said. I obeyed. I hated doing it, but I did. If dad had decided that playing along was the best option, then that was exactly what we were going to do. We didn’t need to actively antagonize the police, even if I was committing this lieutenant’s face to memory with a little too much vehemence.
Dad wasn’t given the okay to turn, so he didn’t, just waiting as calmly as he could while the lieutenant walked up behind him, one hand still poised on his gun. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the tension in his shoulders as he fought the instinct to keep the armed enemy in sight, but I did.
The warrant was produced, and dad took it with a polite thank you.
I stood rigid as he quickly looked it over, not that the police needed him to. The whole point of a warranted search was that they didn’t need his approval. Still, there were guns on both sides, and I’m sure the PD wanted this resolved as non-violently as possible.
“Thank you,” dad said after a moment. “I would like a copy of this for my records, please. Gentlemen, step back and let the officers do their work.”
I did as ordered, and the other soldiers followed my lead. We all kept our hands up.
I wanted to see that warrant so damn bad.
The thing was that the police knew who we were. The entire city knew who we were.
But they couldn’t prove it or get any charges to stick, partly because of good lawyers and partly because we were good at our jobs.
We were constantly caught in this ludicrous dance in which we claimed to be regular upstanding businessmen and they pretended to believe us, but I didn't like how this waltz was going.
They couldn’t have a warrant. But they did, because if it was falsified, dad would have called it out immediately.
They had to have gotten enough notice to seek a judge for the warrant, obtain it, and be here to serve it, and there was no way they could have done so within the time the ship was docked. Furthermore, no judge would approve a warrant without evidence, even if they knew it was us.
So what did they have on us, and how long had they had it?
And who gave it to them?
But that was a problem to be solved once the police weren’t close enough to count our nose hairs.
My immediate concern was that the police were diving fingers-first into what was anything but an average delivery. Sure, we made it look like one, but they were coming in here with such single-minded certainty that I knew they wouldn’t be leaving until they’d uncovered it. I watched with shrewd eyes.
“Richard Marino?” one cop asked, sidling up to me. I glanced at him, then back to the three policemen unpacking the box.
Out came one light fixture, then the other…
“Yes, that’s me,” I answered, biting back my annoyance at having this half-wit in my face. The cop, a man coming out of middle age with a thinning hairline to prove it, gave me a hard look all over.
I could tell he was trying to gauge my threat level and was smart enough to assume it was reasonably high. Good.
“Working as a bodyguard?” he asked. I grunted. “I’ve never met a man who would expect his son to take a bullet for him.” I grinned sharply.
"Oh, you must be new to Chicago," I said with feigned mirth. "Everyone in this city knows that he pushed me, his bodyguard, to the side and then ended up taking a bullethimself. The press went crazy about it. A simple Google search will surely answer any questions you might have; it was only a year ago, after all." The officer, who had most likely lived in Chicago his entire life, got all broodyas he scowled at me. I just smiled even brighter.
He could play his petty games all he wanted, but he was still going to lose. I learned the art of the clapback from my mother. She was a stripper for the majority of my early childhood—and strippers were brutal clapback suppliers.
"This lamp is heavier than the other ones," another cop, elbow-deep in our box, declared.
