Ham Salad and Coffee

One morning , a few days later was certainly an eye opener...I drove up to the corner and parked and got out...I let Carlotta out and we walked hand in hand to Sam Mother's Diner..It was early....

"You know something....This is always going to be a special place to me." said Carlotta.

"Sam Mother's Diner?? Really?? Why?" I asked..

"It was our first date.....Remember? You took me here and bought me breakfast during the Haywood Murder case." she said.

"Wow...I didn't think of that as a date...but yeah,I guess it was the first time you and I were alone together." I mused..

By the time Carlotta got settled and sat down...We saw another familliar car drive up...
It was Lt. Sissy Van Buren and Eddie C.!!

Sissy smiled upon seeing us...So did Eddie...He laughed and pointed....

''Just grabbing some breakfast...I just uh happened to er ah run into Sissy..."he said.

''Stop it Eddie...They know I'm staying with you....They're staying together too." said Sissy...

Within minutes...Duke drove up with Dr. Hunter.....No surprise there....

Duke looked at us and smiled...Dr. Hunter was kind of embarrassed...It was not widely known that she and Duke were seeing each other....It was obvious to all of us...

The real show stopper was the next arrivals...

Jimmy Barlow and Angie Belton!!!  They had been a couple for a couple of weeks now...but none of us had seen them actually together...Until now.. Jimmy came in and saw all of us and had a look of pure astonishment...Angie surveyed the room and just hung her head.....

I laughed my head off!

''Well two things are for sure...One, Sam Mother is completely safe with all these coppers eating in here and two...The entire unit will be well fed this morning." said Jimmy...

Carlotta, Duke, Sissy,Eddie C, Angie, Dr. Hunter and I burst out into raucous laughter, leave it to Jimmy!

II-

We all ate hearty meals and then one by one slowly got up to leave... Carlotta and I, although the first ones to arrive ,were the last ones to leave...While I was at the counter, paying for our order, I heard a voice I hadn't heard in years..

"Hey Sam..I'll take my regular...Ham Salad on Jewish rye...and a cup of coffee to go." came the voice of Dominick Evans, another former Detective...

''Dom? Dominick Evans...is that you?" I asked.

He turned ,looked at me and smiled..

"Oh My God...ADA Keith freakin Wallace..Oh My God...How long has it been?" he said.

"About ten years." I said...

He looked at Carlotta and he just marveled....

"Oh Lord... Carlotta..Carlotta...Carlotta...you don't remember me do you?" he asked.

''I remember you....You used to send me and Jimmy out to pick up your coffee and your lunch....Ham Salad sandwich and coffee.." she said.

"Yeah..Yeah...you was a cute little patrolman..Now you're a homicide detective..Wow!" he said.

"I see you keep up huh?" she said.

"Uh yeah...I talk to uh some of the old guys from the unit from time to time.." he said.

"What are you doin with yourself?" I asked.

He hung his head...

"Since I left the force...I uh been workin as Mall Security...I'm a Mall Security guard..I'm thinkin about gettin a P.I.'s license and tryin my luck at being a private investigator..." he said.

"Well..uh...I wish you the best of luck Dom.." I said.

"Tell Sissy,Duke, Tyriq and Jimmy that I said Hello...." he said.

"I will Dom...Be easy babe." I said.

" Always...Nice seeing you again Carlotta." he said.

Carlotta and I got in my car and pulled  off...She looked at me and said...

"Now there was a waste of time if ever there was one." she said.

"Yeah...he was a mess wasn't he?" I laughed..

"He had the lowest clearence record of any detective in the unit....Couldn't crack a case if the suspect turned himself in and confessed." she said...

I busted out laughing......

It was one of his murder cases that Carlotta solved while still a uniformed patrol officer...She found the murder weapon, which Dom had overlooked twice and she located a witness that described the shooter.... This led to her taking the Detectives exam and becoming a Detective...It ended her days of fetching coffee for the detectives..

Dom got busted by Vice Detectives with two prostitutes in an undercover sting...and to make matters worse...While that was being investigated...A young lady sued the department and the city because of him...He was following her, had ran her licensce and was calling her up late at night making lewd remarks and asking to come over...

That was the last straw...He was dismissed from the force...Wow! In two days ,I had run into two disgraced cops...This was too much!

III-

Hours later, I met Sissy and Detective Tyriq Pile at a crime scene.....

''What do we have Tyriq?" I asked...

"A mess ADA Wallace...This is a lawyer, Melvin Feingold...He was shot 28 times with a glock nine....Same M.O. as our double murder the other day...Nobody saw a thing...and like the other shooting...It looks like there was two shooters...No fingerprints that I can see." he said.

Sissy looked world weary......

"I can't believe this...We haven't even begun to get any headway on the first one...now we got a second...We gotta keep this out of the paper...If you have to make a statement Keith, say that there is no connection between the two killings." she said.

"Ms. Sissy, our killer wasn't that smart...I found some recently chewed gum in an otherwise empty trashbasket...I'm bagging it and going for a DNA sample."said Dr. Hunter.

"Good pull Dr. Hunter." I said.

"Somebody had an axe to grind with these guys..Did they know each other?" said Sissy.

"Sure did...Melvin Feingold represented a lot of neighborhood Drug Dealers ..They went up against each other in court several times..but they weren't social friends or anything like that...I went up against Feingold myself...Very smart cat...Sleazy, but a very good attorney." I said.

"Sissy, Duke and I have interviewed about 20 ex felons that Joshua Washington sent up ,who were recently released and we alibied all of them....." said Detective Tyriq Pile....

"Yeah I heard..and Chica and Jimmy have gone over all of their phone records and come up with goose eggs..They're going to a Cyber Cafe in Chinatown today."said Sissy..

"A Cyber Cafe?? " I asked..

"Yeah..they traced some threatening emails to a computer to a certain Cyber Cafe." said Sissy.

IV-

Sissy and I left Detective Pile and Dr. Hunter at the crime scene...We drove over to the Cyber Cafe, Where Detective Carlotta Rodriguez and Detecive Jimmy Barlow and some police computer experts were doing a forensic examination of the computer the threatening emails had been sent from...

"Hey Boss Lady...Hey Baby...We found the computer...and we may have gotten lucky...We got a grainy video of the person using it ,that uses the I.P. Address.." said Carlotta.

"Each computer has a seperate, what they call Mac address Lieutenant....We backtrack and trace that Mack address and it'll give us a home address of our culprit possibly..." said Detective Jimmy Barlow..

I looked at Sissy and smiled..

''Young People huh?" I said.

"Yeah." laughed Sissy..

Carlotta was the baby of our unit , with Jimmy being the next to youngest, older by only a year... They had a tech knowledge that was invaluable...Plus they were both very intelligent and astute...

V-

I ran into Detective Edwin "Duke" Baylor later on in the day....He saw me standing outside of C.I.D. Headquarters and he stopped me..

"We may have gotten a break ADA." said Duke...

"How is that?" I asked.

"I found a cashier who sold a woman a bottle of bleach around 9:00 pm ,just three hours before the murder...She was with a man...the man didn't come in, he stood outside...She was blond, caucasion, had on a black t-shirt, real tight, black jeans, black sunglasses and a black baseball cap...Her hair was in a bun......I'm waitin to get video." he said.

''Good Pull."I said.

"Where is everybody else?" he asked.

"Tyriq caught another murder...Same M.O. as our double...He's running down leads now...Carlotta and Jimmy were looking at video tape...trying to find a vehicle in the next few blocks... They found a computer that the emails came from...They are waiting for an analysis ...IT'll give us an address..." I said.

"Wow..We just might crack this thing." he said.

I smiled..

"Get some sleep Duke." I said and patted him on the back...

Just then ,Carlotta walked down the steps...She waved to Duke and Dr. Hunter who were leaving...

"You Hungry?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact..I am." she said.

''What do you want?" I asked.

"I thought maybe we'd stop by that Deli...I want some Ham Salad on Rye and a tumbler of coffee." she said.

"Are you serious?" I laughed...

"Yeah...Kind of a reminder of how far I've come." she said.

I kissed  her forehead..

"You have come a long way...."I said..

(TO BE CONTINUED..)