The Marshal Pt. 08

She first thought he was kidding, but as he held her hand, she realized he was serious. "You're not kidding! Doing what?"

"You wouldn't be a sworn officer of course, but with all this going down, I'm putting together a task force. You'd be an outside consultant, sort of our resident expert on the Han syndicate. This is going to be a long time playing out. Even if Han dies, there will be a lot of bloodshed as other groups try to carve up the body."

She slowly pulled her hand back. "Thank you for the offer, Marshal. I'm flattered, really, but I won't leave Rob."

Graves nodded slowly. "I knew you'd say that." He looked at Rob. "How'd you like to head up the task force, at least for a while? You can pick your own team of, say, a half-dozen deputies. Martinelli is still going after members of Han using R.I.C.O. The situation has gotten too big, too out of control, and we're wasting a lot of time and manpower trying to get control of this. I need someone to get us focused."

Rob first appeared to be stunned but quickly recovered. "I'd be honored. Thank you, Marshal."

"No. Thank you. This is a temporary assignment for maybe a year, but I happen to know that Charlie is retiring once he gets his forty in. That'll be in about nine months."

"Charlie Grettle?"

"Yes. I don't think you're ready for that position, but that will create an opening for another SDM. I believe you have some experience doing that."

"Yes, sir."

Marshal Graves turned back to Britney. "What about it, Ms. Han? Will you consider consulting with Deputy Marshal Cogburn's task force? The position pays seventy-five an hour, with an allowance of twenty thousand a year for transportation and lodging."

She did some quick mental calculation. The math was too hard to get an exact number, but it was close to $150,000 a year, plus the allowance. That was more money than she'd ever made in her life.

She swallowed hard. "What will I be expected to do?"

"You'll work with the deputies in a consulting fashion, help us pick soft targets, give us your insights into how these men think, look over the evidence we collect to help us determine what their next move might be, that sort of thing. Even though you were never part of it, you were inside for most of your life. Your insights will be tremendously helpful. This is purely a consulting position. You won't be expected to go into the field, and you'll work as much, or as little, as the situation calls for."

She looked to Rob. He was giving nothing away, allowing her to make her own decision. She began nodding. The sooner she could kill the Han jopok, the sooner she could stop looking over her shoulder. Ko, Tak, and Mong wanted her in? She was in. She was going all in... and she was going to fuck them all up.

She extended her hand again. "I accept. Thank you."

Graves smiled, covering her hand with both of his. "Martinelli is probably going to shit, but I'll handle him." He released her hand and looked at Rob. "Get me a list of who you need. Just the core group. You'll be able to temporarily pull in additional manpower as needed. I'll start the paperwork to have you transferred back to New York. How soon can you start?"

"I have some things I need to do back in Maine, and we have to find a place to live. Two weeks?"

Graves nodded. "That'll be perfect. It will give me time to get your transfer processed and for the deputies to free themselves."

"I know two already. I'll see who else I think I might need and get you a list before the end of the day."

"Perfect." Graves looked at Britney and smiled again. "When all this started, I thought you were a spoiled pain in the ass, but I was wrong about you."

She flushed. "No. You were right about me, but I've changed." She glanced at Rob. He'd changed her and made her better than she was.

"Be that as it may, I'm glad you're with us now. Welcome aboard, Ms. Han." He turned his attention to Rob. "Get me the list as soon as possible. Dismissed."

She was almost shaking in her shoes with nerves and excitement as they walked out of Marshal Graves' office. She pulled him to a stop in the hall where they had a bit of privacy. "Is this what you want?" she asked, her voice low.

"This is what I joined the Marshals to do. Yes, this is what I want."

"Do you think you can stand working with me?"

"Do you think you can follow orders?"

She grinned. "You just tell me what you want." She pitched her voice down. "I'll do... anything... for you," she purred.

He looked away as he smiled and then turned back to face her. "Okay, as my first official order, cut that shit out in the office. How am I supposed to concentrate when you say stuff like that? Especially in that voice."

Her smile spread. "But at home?"

"Then you can talk to me like that all you want."

She wanted to kiss him but that would be wildly inappropriate. She was just going to have to save all that until they got home at night. "Seems fair," she said. "Who's that Charlie guy?"

"Charlie Grettle?" she nodded. "He's one of the CDMs, Chief Deputy Marshals. That's one step below the big chair. He's been around for a hundred years. I'm surprised he's retiring."

"Why?"

"Because he could have retired ten or fifteen years ago if he wanted to."

"Oh. And R.I.C.O.?" she asked. She pronounced it Ree-co, as Graves had.

"I'll get you a sheet of all the acronyms you're probably going to hear. R.I.C.O. stands for... let me think... Racketeer, Influenced, and Corrupt Organizations Act. It's a federal law that allows men like Martinelli to go after people like Kwang-hoon to charge and prosecute them for crimes they ordered committed, even if they didn't actually commit the crime themselves."

"That's how they found Kwang-hoon guilty of all the crimes, even though he didn't do most of them himself?"

"That's it."

She nodded. She liked the law. "What happens now?"

"Now, I need to go talk to a couple of people and see if I can convince them to work with me."

"Okay! That's it! Everyone enjoy their weekends!" Rob said to wrap up their review.

He'd put his core group together, but they were still trying to get their feet on the ground. They'd pulled everything the marshals had on Han together and had spent the past week going over it all as a group. They were looking for targets of opportunity and developing a plan to take advantage of the confusion in the Han organization to begin putting a dent into the city's organized crime.

Britney... Rob mentally shook his head. Mi-sun, Mi to her friends, had been monumentally helpful. She'd shown them connections and links they didn't know existed, how the Han organization was structured, who was allied with who, and who someone hated or didn't trust. None of it was prosecutable, most of it wasn't even illegal, but all of it was damned helpful when trying to put together a picture of what was happening. As far as he was concerned, she was the most valuable member of the team. He knew he might be a little biased, but she'd accelerated the downfall of a major crime syndicate with nothing but a cell phone, and in his opinion that made her the baddest of bad-asses.

Rob's team consisted of himself as the leader and muscle. Jang Mi-sun, née Britney Hadley, née Han Bo-bae, was the expert. He'd asked Michelle Walpole to join as his puzzle master. She took all the information the team had and worked with Mi to try to figure out how it all fit together. She wasn't a hundred percent accurate, but with Mi's help, she was scary good at predicting what would happen next. That would be tremendously beneficial when they started running ops. She was also deadly accurate with a handgun or rifle, and Rob wanted someone like that on his team.

He'd also asked Luisa Hernández to join the team for her ability to read people. She could sniff out a lie like a damned polygraph, and she didn't need the person's permission or a court order to do it. It didn't hurt that she was as big a bad-ass as any of the men on the team and could kick ass with the best of them.

Steven Nicholson was also on the team. Like Rob, he brought no special skills other than good, solid, police work, but he had a score to settle with the Han organization. Han had killed members of his team, shooting him twice in the process. That made him driven, and that was the kind of people Rob wanted.

He rounded out the team with Aaron Hawkins. Hawk was there because Rob could trust him when he needed boots on the ground. He was a solid deputy, plus he was a chameleon. He was a natural mimic and could become anyone, from a backwoods Alabama redneck to a Harvard history professor. Rob didn't know how he could use him yet, but that seemed like a useful talent to have available. Rob hadn't put Lou or Hawk to work yet, but their time would come once the team got their game plan together and started running operations.

"Anyone have big plans for the weekend?" Lou asked as they began to break up.

"I have a date!" Hawk said. "We're going to the Catskills for a little R and R. That's romance and rutting."

"So what else is new?" Steve growled playfully.

Rob grinned. With the exception of Mi, the group had all worked together for years, but they were really starting to gel as a team. Hawk was a lady killer, and he knew just how to present himself in any situation to draw women like bees to honey. Rob didn't know how the man had time to do anything else since he always had a date, and it was rarely with the same woman two nights in a row.

"You're just jealous," Hawk responded.

"You're damned right I am," Steve growled. "I haven't been laid in so long, the last time a woman offered me some pussy, I told her my apartment didn't allow pets."

They snickered at Steve's self-deprecating humor. "Apartment hunting. Woohoo!" Rob said as he waggled his hands by his ears in exaggerated enthusiasm.

"Laundry," Michelle said.

"Whoa! Better hold back there, party girl," Lou teased.

"Yeah? What about you?" Michelle countered.

Lou grinned. "Well, I'm not doing laundry, that much is sure." She paused for effect. "Grocery shopping and cleaning."

Everyone looked at Steve. "Damned if I know. Maybe I'll take in a Mets game."

Hawk looked around the group. "Damn, you're all a bunch of losers." He grinned. "No offense."

Lou flicked a pen across the table that bounced off his chest. "That's enough, boys and girls," Rob said before things got out of control. "See you guys on Monday."

Britney and... Rob ground his teeth in annoyance. Mi's papers had arrived yesterday. She was Jang Mi-sun now, a twenty-eight-year-old from Queens. Everything but her name remained the same as her Britney Hadley persona, but he was still struggling to think of her as Mi. He'd gone through this with her when she went from being Bae to Britney, and he'd adjust to her being Mi-sun. Eventually.

"Ready, Mi? he asked, working to cement her new name in place.

"Ready. We need to hurry or we're going to miss our appointment."

Mi and Rob had been living in a hotel for the past three weeks as they looked for a permanent place. Finding someplace to live in New York that was affordable, decent, and in a good location wasn't always easy. They'd looked at dozens of apartments already, but nothing had been a good match. Those they liked cost too much, and those they could afford were either dumps or not in the best of locations. He wished he could get his old place back, but after a year it was certainly long gone, as was Bae's apartment on Staten Island. They'd avoided looking at anything in Queen, the home base of Han, for obvious reasons.

The place they were going to look at today appeared to be a good possibility. They'd agreed they didn't need a lot, just a place to sleep at night. Maine was home for her now, as it had been for him. The place was convenient to transportation, was in Jackson Heights, so it was close to work, and the price was right.

They hopped the subway and clattered their way to their stop, and as they walked the two blocks to the apartment, Rob kept repeating 'Jang Mi-sun, Jang Mi-sun, Jang Mi-sun' in his head. An airliner whistled overhead on its way to LaGuardia airport.

"Great," he muttered. He hadn't thought to see if the address was on the flight path to the airport.

"Walking distance to the airport. Makes it easy to get home," she said with a teasing grin.

"There is that," he agreed.

"Besides, the neighbors will be used to noise at night," she purred as she leaned heavily into his arm.

He grinned down at her. "You'll just have to time your orgasms to when the planes fly over."

"That's more up to you than me."

Bri--Mi normally wasn't loud, but the thought of having to make her come just as a plane was cruising overhead so the neighbors' wouldn't hear them fucking kind of turned him on, and he wondered if he could actually do it.

"Not a bad looking place," he said as they approached the building.

They stopped at the superintendent's apartment and he rapped on the door. "Rob Cogburn. We have an appointment to see 6F," he said when the stooped, elderly man, opened the door.

"Come on, I'll show you the place," the man said, stepping out and closing the door behind him.

They rode up to the sixth floor. The elevator would be a plus. Mi had spent some time last night looking at the area surrounding the apartment. There were plenty of activities in a six to eight block radius of the building, and being convenient to the airport and the seven train were plusses as well. The apartment had hit the market yesterday after a freshening up, and he was keeping his fingers crossed.

The super opened the door and gave them a brief tour. "I'll be downstairs. Shut the door when you're done. Let me know if you want it. So you know, I've got another three appointments to show it tomorrow. You're the first ones to see it." He began nodding to himself. He knew the place would go fast, and if Rob and Mi didn't want it, someone else would, so he didn't have to do the hard sell. "Anyway, take your time."

They walked through the place again. They didn't have any furniture, so they didn't have to worry about where anything would go, and could buy to fit.

The apartment was small with only eight-hundred square feet, but it was nice with fresh paint, hardwood floors, and a modern kitchen. It wasn't as interesting as Rob's previous apartment, nor did it have a view of a park, but it did have a southern exposure and the bedroom and living room were flooded with light. There was no laundry in the apartment, a minus, but the elevator was a plus, and there was a communal laundry in the building.

"What do you think?" he asked.

She looked around. "For $2,250 I think we'd be hard pressed to do better. I like the light."

He nodded. "Yeah. Me too."

"I wish it had a laundry."

He nodded again. "Yeah, but like you said, for the price, we'd be hard pressed to do better, and I'd like to move out of the hotel."

He looked around the bedroom again and smiled as another airplane flew overhead. It wasn't loud, and he knew they'd quickly adjust to the noise. Besides, now he wanted to try to fuck her to an orgasm as an airliner shrilled overhead.

"So, are we going to take it?" she asked.

"What do you think?"

She began bobbing her head. "Yeah. I think we should."

He jerked his head at the door. "Let's go tell him, then. But first..." He pulled her to him and kissed her thoroughly. He let her go with a long, slow sigh. "Welcome home, Ms. Jang."

"Glad to be home, Mr. Cogburn."

"There is one nice thing about all of this name changing."

"What?"

"I get to make love to three different women. Unfortunately, you're stuck with only me."

Her eyes crinkled into a smile. "You think you can handle three different women?"

"I don't know, but I'm looking forward to trying."

"Oh?" she purred.

"Yeah. I've got Bae, the hard-fucking bitch, Britney, the soft seductress, and now Mi-sun, the superhero crime fighter, bringing street justice to evil doers with her super cell phone." He grinned at her. Joel had been onto something with the superhero idea.

"Hard fucking, superhero seductress... I kind of like that." A faint smiled danced over her lips. "If you're willing to work... especially hard," she purred, her brief pause giving her words an extra meaning, "you can be my sidekick."

He chuckled. "I'm not afraid of working hard." He paused as he pitched his voice down in turn. "Especially at night."

"Oh... that's good. Let's go do this because after that kiss we need to go somewhere so you can demonstrate your work ethic."

"I'm always ready to serve those in need," he rumbled as a playful smiled flickered over his lips.

"Fuck..." she muttered as she took his hand and began dragging him to the door.

They rode back down to the super's office and rapped on the door. "Well?" the man asked after opening the door.

"We'll take it," Rob replied.

The super stepped back and held the door open in silent invitation. "I'll need first and last month's rent and a security deposit. Let's see, there are twenty-four days left in the month, so that's $1,775 for this month, plus $2,250 for the last month, and a $3,700 deposit. That comes to $7,725. I also have some paperwork for you fill out."

Rob was impressed the old geezer did the math in his head faster than he could have done it on a calculator. While Mi wrote out the check, Rob looked at the lease agreement. It was pretty standard stuff. He filled it out, signed it, and handed it back.

The super glanced over it before looking up at Rob with questioning eyes. "Marshal Cogburn?" he asked. Rob smiled, pulled out his badge, and showed it to the man. The super grunted. "Be nice to have a marshal in the building. Normally I wait until the check clears, but since tomorrow's Saturday, and you're a marshal... I guess I don't have to worry about your check bouncing?"

"It's good."

The man handed Rob two keys and a copy of the paperwork he'd signed. "Rent's due on the first of every month. More than ten days late, you have to pay a ten percent penalty. Thirty days late, I give you the legally required 3-day notice before I evict you. It's all in your lease agreement. I own the building, so I run a clean place and don't put up with shenanigans. You do what you're supposed to and don't cause any trouble we'll get along fine. You don't, I toss you out. Fair enough?"

Rob grinned. He liked this guy. They were going to get along fine. "As it should be. We're living in a hotel at the moment, but we'll begin moving in as soon as we buy some furniture."

The man's eyes flicked to Mi. "She a marshal too?"

"Consultant."

The super grunted again. "Too bad. I'd let her put some handcuffs on me," he said, his voice and demeaner as professional and business like as it had been all along.

Mi was still giggling as the super closed the door behind them. "I wish my super was like him. Mine was a complete asshole. He acted like calling him to fix a problem was a huge burden."

Rob nodded. "Yeah. I think I'll like him too. Ready to go find something to eat?"

"Yeah. I guess we might as well start finding out what around here is good."

He stuck his elbow out and she slipped her arm through it. "My thoughts exactly."

They stopped at a Chinese place that smelled good. The food was passible if not outstanding. After satiating their hunger, Rob purchased a tape measure, they returned the apartment for some measuring, and then they went shopping. They needed everything, from bath soap to a bed. They didn't worry about the little stuff, but they did pick out all their furniture. They purposely avoided any special orders and bought everything they needed from the floor, with the understanding the store would deliver it all tomorrow. By tomorrow night they would, hopefully, be sleeping in their own bed. They could get the rest, linens, pots and pans, and the like, later.