No Cops!

Chapter 13

"Are you sure honey, that he knows?" Gwen's face was concerned. Suzy bit her lip and nodded. Sometimes she and Gwen and now Shay hung out with coffees after closing.

Suzy was happy to be back and running her café. Her home reminded her too much of the vandalism. And now it was filled with the presence of Jake.

She gave a wry smile at the irony of her life. The one man she was pretty sure was perfect for her was the one that she could never have. And now, he was too close to sniffing out her secret, a secret that would not only destroy all hope of a relationship between them, it would also endanger the people that she loved.

She could have never foreseen that Mrs. Nader had seen them. She thought she had been very careful. She had asked him to lay low and come clean. Oh, but he never listened!

And on top of that, Mrs. Nader, the frail woman living downstairs had perfect vision, she had seen the tattoo on his nape and let Jake know. Jake had known at once that he was a Marauder. She could see it in his eyes. And when his fierce gaze landed on her, she got flustered and lied to him. She knew that he hadn't believed her for a second.

Pretty soon, Jake would figure it out. And she couldn't let that happen at any cost.

The only sensible thing to do was revert to Plan A.

Stay away from Jake. But she may have to do some disaster management first.

#

Rounding up the gang of Marauders on Halloween night added a lot of extra hours to Jake's workload. On top of it, he had to deal with two officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency who had swooped in to confiscate the drug-haul.

The DEA officials an older official named Frank Butler and his junior assistant Scott Brown were in Jake's office, thanks to his Chief's insistence that he should take care of them. They were nice enough folks though, but Jake didn't like to deal with other agency folks on principal.

Butler, with the snowy white hair and stocky built, had been in the DEA for many years and the rumor was that he was due to retire soon. He was a good man, always looked out for his team and dealt with the drug-dealers with compassion. He seemed genuine in his wish that the drug-dealers should be given humane treatment.

"Thank you for your help in rounding up the drugs, Sergeant Larson. We may need an Officer of your caliber in the DEA. Have you thought of switching careers, son?" Butler asked Jake.

Only briefly, but he wasn't sure if Suzy's No Cops rule extended to DEA officials as well.

Jake chuckled. "If I'm looking for a change, I'll let you know, Sir."

"Sturgis will never let you go. He speaks very highly of you."

Jake gave a bashful smile. "But if you need any more involvement from the DEA, Brown is at your disposal." He pointed to Officer Brown. Brown was a nice-looking guy with a friendly smile. They shook hands.

"Any news about Busconi? Did any of The Marauders speak up against him or are they willing to testify against him?" Brown asked Jake.

Jake frowned. They had rounded up nine Marauders on Halloween night. All of them admitted to possession and distribution of narcotics, but each one of them was tight-lipped about the involvement of Joe Busconi. If he didn't get one of the Marauders to crack up soon, he was looking at a catastrophe on his hands. There wasn't a shortage of uneducated punks out there who were looking for a quick buck and the only way to stop the flow of drugs was to nip the problem in the bud. That is, find Joe Busconi and get enough evidence against him to lock him up for a really long time.