28.
“New York City - 50” the sign read. It was 5 AM, so with a bit of luck, Stan hoped he might beat the rush hour traffic. He had driven through the night, fortified by rest stop coffee and donuts, just like when he had been on stakeouts back on the force.
As soon as he had finished evacuating the remains of his strip mall Chinese dinner and flushed it into the prison sewage system-his heart went out to any prisoner confined to the hole that night- Stan had sat on the battered toilet seat pondering what to do next.
To go back in the gym and watch Barb and Deb writhe in agony on their crosses was more than he felt he could face. And to what end? No SWAT team was coming to rescue them, nor could he do anything on his own. The crowd wanted to see them suffer and they had paid good money to do so and weren’t going to let a rogue guard stand in their way.
After a career of being able to shout, “Stan Goldman, NYPD! You’re under arrest!” he was powerless in this situation. Matron Armstrong could have strangled him or crushed his skull all by herself. No, Barb’s life was going to have to rely on the crowd’s blood lust eventually being sated and the Warden’s ordering her taken down so as not to have to deal with a prisoner dying on his watch.
And, of course, had Stan intervened, they would have found his camera and taken it, depriving him of the proof that might ensure that someone would believe that prisoners were actually being whipped and crucified at Newtown. That, in the end, was Barb’s best hope and the best hope of her fellow prisoners.
But, the question was, where to go and what to do with the video? Take it to the local cops or the local State Troopers? Stan didn’t know them. Could the Warden and his crew of VIPs have bought their silence? It was possible.
No, Stan decided, there was only one person he knew he could trust, his old boss back on the NYPD, Reginald Jones-good old Reggie. So, he had left the prison, pleading illness-not untruthfully- to the guard at the gate as the reason for his early departure.
He had stopped briefly at the motel to change out of his C.O.’s uniform, shave off the beard and mustache and ditch the wig-he was happy to see David Porter disappear and Stan Goldman re-appear in the bathroom mirror.
Finally, he quickly downloaded the glasses cam footage to his laptop. A quick look showed that while the camera work fell short of professional, he had managed to capture the essence of the orgy.
Then, he hit the road. Hanging around somewhere they could find him was dangerous. His quick departure from the prison might well raise suspicions. Furthermore, he thought it possible that Deb Morton had recognized him, despite the disguise, and he couldn’t think of a good reason why she would spare him.
All Stan knew is that the guests had enough wealth and power that they could organize a full-fledged Roman orgy inside a prison, so who could guarantee that they wouldn’t kill him if they found that necessary? He was determined not to find out just how far these people would go.
It was around 6 AM when Stan pulled into the parking lot behind his old precinct. The desk Sergeant, who had been there since forever, looked surprised to see him. “Detective Goldman? Stan? What the hell are you doing here? I thought you’d be on a book tour or lying on a beach with Moore in a string bikini. Her that is, not you.”
Stan laughed. “I wish, Fred. Something important has come up and I need to see the Boss,” Stan told him.
“Reggie?” the Sergeant asked. Stan nodded. “He won’t be in until around 8.”
“Look, would you mind if I crash in the conference room? I’ve been on the road for hours and I’m kind of zonked. And tell Reggie I’m here as soon as he gets in, would you?”
“Yeah, sure, Stan, no problem.” Stan made his way to the conference room and was asleep before his ass hit the seat of the swivel chair.
A hand on his shoulder and a deep voice saying, “Stan?” woke Goldman from his slumber. A large black man in an elegant Italian suit was towering over him. Stan imagined that was how his opponents felt when Reggie had been headed to the hoop during his college basketball days.
“Reggie,” Stan said, shaking the sleep from his eyes.
“Stan the Man? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Fred asked me the same question,” Stan replied. “I’ve got to show you something you’re not going to believe.”
“Stan, when it comes to your partner, the lovely former Detective Barbara Moore, there is very little I wouldn’t believe.”
“You can say that again!” Stan exclaimed. “Is the coffee still as bad as it was when I worked here?” he asked.
Reggie laughed. “Nah, Stan, it’s worse.”
“Let me go get us some and I’lI start from the beginning,” Stan replied. He stood and left the room, returning shortly with two mugs and a plate of donuts.
“The wife’s got me on a diet again, Stan,” Reggie said as he took a cinnamon donut from the plate and placed it on a napkin in front of him. “But I have a feeling that if this is another of Moore’s escapades, I’m going to need the sugar.”
“Oh, you will, Reggie, you will,” Stan replied, launching into the tale.
Reggie listened, shaking his head as Stan described Barb’s going to prison and Stan’s going undercover as a C.O. “That girl has you so pussy whipped it’s not funny, Goldman.”
“You mean woman, don’t you Reggie?” Stan said, giving him back a small dose of his own medicine.
“Yeah, Stan, woman. Whatever. But I guess working in a women’s prison is a good way to take care of that,” he said, looking a bit envious. “And you say they staged a Roman orgy there?”
“Don’t just take my word for it, Reggie. See for yourself.” Stan opened his laptop and clicked on the video file. They sat in stunned silence as the scene unfolded-the whip fight, the rampant sex between the guests and various inmates, the strapping of the inmate Stan held down.
Then they reached the point where Barb and Deb were scourged and placed on their crosses to be ravished by lines of men. “Holy, shit!” Reggie exclaimed. “Fuckin’ unbelieveable. Moore has gotta be the first person in history to be crucified twice.”
“I would suspect that’s the case,” Stan replied.
They watched the argument between Pennyworth and the Warden over nails, the Warden acceding to the demands of the crowd. Then the screen showed a spike placed against Barb’s wrist. “You didn’t Goldman?” Reggie asked, shocked.
Stan shook his head. There was a moment where nothing happened. Then, the camera showed the Matron taking hold of the spike and raising the hammer. After that, the screen showed a blurred jumble for a minute or so, before the image stabilized on a bathroom stall and a toilet bowl. Then the screen went blank.
“So you lost it, Stan?” Reggie asked. Stan nodded. “Can’t say I blame you. And then?”
“I got the fuck out of there and drove straight here.”
“Why? What do want me to do?”
“Come on, Reggie, you have multiple crimes documented on video. Inmates can’t consent to sex, by law, so you have sexual assault as well as plain old assault. You have official corruption, and I don’t know what happened to Moore and Morton, so maybe murder for all we know. It’s an open and shut case.”
“The perps were wearing masks. Do you know who they are?”
“Big shots-billionaires and assorted hangers-on,” Stan said. “They were paying fortunes to enjoy this little shindig.”
“So you want me to go down to Wall Street and just start rounding up bankers?” Reggie asked.
“Well, it’s a thought,” Stan said. “OK, that may not be practical, but you have the Warden, the Matron, various guards. The Warden knows who these guys are and he will give them up if we put the screws to him.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Reggie allowed.
“Listen, the guy fucking Barb, I recognize his voice. He’s Judge Pennyworth, the one who sent her away. I knew there had to be a reason for the out-of-line sentence. And he did that to at least two other girls that I know of.”
“So you want me to take a squad, drive several hours upstate, enter a women’s prison and bust the Warden and a bunch of guards, all based on an undercover video by a retired cop, who, by his own admission, impersonated a C.O. and engaged in sex with inmates himself? Did I get that right, Stan? And we should stop along the way and bust a judge too, while we’re at it?”
Stan slumped in his chair. He had been probably been very naïve to think that Reggie was going to come to the rescue, as he had before. But he had to admit Reggie had a point. This wasn’t a garden variety crime committed by straight up criminals, like Russian mobsters. This was crime committed by officers of the state-a very different proposition. And the people behind them, though their identities were unknown, were almost certainly extremely rich and influential.
“So what am I to do, Reggie?” he asked. “Barb may be dead. If she’s alive, she’s been badly hurt, I’m sure. I can’t just sit here and twiddle my thumbs.”
Reggie sat silently, thinking. “Normally, I’d tell you to go to the Department of Corrections. But, Coughlin told you that anytime he tried to look into Newtown, he got told to mind his own business, right?”
“Yeah,” Stan said.
“So I would stay away from them. There’s the Feds. You could talk to Harrison from the Fibbies-you and he worked a couple of cases together, right?” Stan nodded. Reggie continued, “But you need fast action, because Barb’s in danger. They’d need to run everything through DC in a case like this and these fat cats probably have a lot of pull there also.”
“Shit, Reggie, it’s like banging my head against a brick wall.”
“What you need is to get the public outraged. Pressure from the voters is what will get the politicians to move against these guys. You need to talk to the Fourth Estate.”
Stan brightened visibly at this. “Yeah, this is a scoop no reporter would pass up! You’re a genius, Reggie!”
Reggie smiled. “Nah, the genius is Moore. That girl, I mean woman, has an unfailing way of finding trouble.”
“I’m going to shop this around right now. Every reporter I ever spoke with on any of my cases. The papers, TV, you name it. This is dynamite! Film at 11.”
“Well, I’m not sure how much of that they can show, Stan. Maybe with a lot of black boxes, but that’s the route you need to go. Nothing is going to be faster or more effective.” Stan stood to leave. “Wait, before you go, how many copies of the video you got?”
“The original on the glasses cam and the copy on my laptop,” he replied.
Reggie pulled two thumb drives out of his desk drawer. “Make two copies right now. Leave one here with me. Go to a bank and open a safety deposit box and put the other one in there. If these guys find out who you are, and they may know already, and suspect that you’re going to blow the whistle on them, they may stop at nothing to stop you.”
“That may be, Reggie, but if Barb’s alive, I can’t just leave her at their mercy.”
“I know that, Stan. Just be careful, OK,” Reggie said.
“I’m always careful,” Stan replied. Reggie’s laughter followed him as he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
