Free Kill Me Twice (A Zeke Edison Novel Book 1) by Joseph Flynn

complete ruin, received greater compensation for the work they did than their city paychecks. He thought an equitable redistribution of liquid assets — cash — should provide street cops with comfortable retirements in warm places. So he came up with a plan.
    He and a select crew would relieve street dealers of both their drugs and their money. The narcotics they’d resell to the mob, the old line gangsters that had given the town a large part of its reputation, for pennies on the dollar and protection from the organizations that would be ripped off. The irony of having the mob protecting cops was part of the appeal for Dawson.
    The underworld figure Dawson approached with the idea had also been a young up-and-comer on his side of the street: Donald Magro. Don had sold it to his bosses, and the plan had worked for a long time. Everybody made money. Lots of it.
    As what he called a precautionary measure, Dawson had given his bent cops only 10% of their proceeds up front. He said it was for their own safety. So if things ever got hot they wouldn’t have summer homes, fancy cars or stashes of cash in their basements to explain to prosecutors and the IRS. When they chose to retire or otherwise left the department, a foreign bank account would be opened for each of them, in an alias, fully funded with what they were owed.
    The only problem turned out to be that receiving even a small fraction of their ill-gotten gains turned out to be too obvious to escape official notice. Three of the gang in blue thought it would be okay to exhibit their own huge rolls of money in restaurants, bars and even their own police station. Eyebrows were raised and internal affairs went to work.
    Two things saved Sergeant Jonas Dawson. He’d stashed all his booty where nobody ever found it. No investigator was able to track down a dollar that couldn’t be accounted for by his official income. The other thing was the three stooges who’d been indiscreet had immediately been provided with lawyers who whispered the following directly into their ears: Say nothing and you’ll get double what you have stashed when you get out. Rat Sergeant Dawson out and you’re dead.
    That, of course, left wriggle room for the stooges to squeal on the others in the gang. So everybody but Dawson got pinched, convicted and locked up. They all got killed in prison, too, except for Stevie Zimmerman who had managed to kill the two guys sent to shank him. Stevie Z was still locked up under another name in another state.
    Every day he stepped out his front door, Jonas Dawson worried Stevie Z might be waiting for him, released by the courts just so he could get revenge on Dawson and give any number of honest cops and prosecutors a good laugh.
    It had been a long time, though, since Dawson thought he had to worry about Pamela Keller. Then he bumped into that woman in Northbrook Court, a damn shopping mall he went to maybe once a year. She’d looked just like Pamela. It was all he could do to keep from strangling her right there in the food court.
    Then goddamn Zeke Edison, of all people, has a photo of the same young woman on his phone at Teddy’s Diner, for Christ’s sake. Thinking about that again made cold sweat pop out on Dawson’s forehead. All he could do now was hope those damn Hawaiians of his threw a good enough beating into the guy to get him to back off.
    If they hadn’t, he’d have to call in the two pros who’d inconvenienced Don Magro’s problem witness.
    When Zeke returned to Aaron Levy’s office, Reggie asked him, “Did that cop give you a hard time?”
    “No.”
    “Did he return my baton?”
    “Forgot to ask. I’ll buy you a new one.”
    Reggie frowned.
    “What?” Zeke asked. “The old one had sentimental value.”
    “Your ass isn’t the only one I’ve saved with that baton.”
    Zeke looked at Aaron in a silent plea for help.
    The older man shrugged. “I also have an emotional attachment to some of my tools.”
    Vindicated, Reggie smiled