The Squad Room by John Cutter

some really sick, sexually explicit stuff in them. These emails, you’d have to see to believe. They really got him going, telling him they need to make sure he’s a real man, and can satisfy whatever her name is, and so forth. So he sends more, and a few days later they meet up in Cunningham Park and tell him they need ten thousand more.”
    “Jesus. Don’t tell me he gives it to them!”
    “No—but just wait. So Veda goes nuts, and calls the cops. A car from the 107 shows up, and Veda tells them the Russians are trying to beat him out of money. He doesn’t mention the photos. The Russians tell the cops they’re there to sell him a car and he won’t pay, and that he’d just given them pictures of his dick. Veda freaks out, tells the cops it was all a misunderstanding, and sends them off. So now he’s reallyfucked—the Russians tell him they want more money, or they’ll show his pictures to his wife and kids.”
    Tina whistled. “Man. And how bad did you say they were?”
    “Well, I’d say you’ve been through enough today—suffice it to say, they’re real degrading. Anyway, so here he is, somehow still thinking there’s a mail-order bride waiting at the end of this nightmare. Except now they want twenty thousand, and they’re not fucking around. So he begs them to bring his bride around and swears he’ll give them the last of the money from his 401(k). They actually set him up with her—she flies into Newark.”
    “So there was a woman after all?”
    “Yeah, a really pretty one. He takes her to a motel in Jersey City, and she gets him completely hooked. The two Russian guys meet them the next day, and he turns over the twenty grand; then they tell him they want his car.”
    “His car?”
    “Yeah. A Ford Explorer. They tell him just to sign it over to them right there, and they’ll give him his photos back.”
    “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
    “Nope. And remembering what happened the last time he called the cops, he does it.”
    “He gives them his car?”
    “Signs it right over. His new Russian bride was very supportive of him.”
    “Yeah, I bet.”
    “Well, so then he calls a car for them, and while they’re waiting, she goes to use the ladies’ room. Next thing he knows, she’s in his Explorer with the other two scumbags, waving at him as they drive away.”
    “Holy shit.”
    “Yeah. And it’s not even over yet. They later tell him they want ten percent of his paycheck, or they’ll send the pictures to his wife and Commanding Officer, and tell the cops that he sexually assaulted a woman in Jersey City. His DNA’s all over her underwear, they say,and she has all the details. In that kind of a corner, what was the poor cowardly fuck going to do?”
    “Oh, man.” Detective Koreski was visibly floored.
    “Yeah.” Morrison sipped off the last of his whiskey. “Moral of the story: it wasn’t you, Tina. He was a fuckhead, and he hung himself for himself. Don’t even worry about it. Fucked up as it is, it’s the kind of thing we see around here. Now,” he said, getting up to offer her a refill, “shall we talk about your new squad a bit?”

8
    Chief of Detectives Frederick Arndt tried to calm himself as he took a slow ride from One Police Plaza to the Midtown South Precinct. He could still feel the redness in his face from his meeting with the Commissioner.
    Over the nine months he’d been Chief of Detectives, he’d survived pretty well on the strength of his test-taking skills, on his political connections, and on the payback of the higher-ranking officials in the department for whom he’d done so many favors on the way up. But this was different. The briefing had started well; but as soon as the Commissioner had started asking questions, everything went downhill. Arndt hadn’t been prepared for questions about the plan moving forward, or whether the Medical Examiner’s Office had fast-tracked its DNA tests; now he felt his ineptitude had been dangerously exposed.