December 21, 5:15 pm
Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth had briefed Gumshoe thoroughly. It was a matter of national security. It was a mark of his trust in him, he had said, that he asked him to do this personally. He had spent the better part of an hour making absolutely certain that the detective knew just how silent he had to be about this assignment.
At the time, Detective Gumshoe had thought maybe Prosecutor Edgeworth had been a little excessive in the seemingly unending lecture about the importance of keeping his lips zipped. But as he was ushered into the back of an unmarked van by Interpol agents armed with guns bigger than any Gumshoe had ever seen outside a ‘Guns, Guns, Guns’ mag at the airport…
He was starting to get the picture on just why Edgeworth had been so appropriately on edge.
A rather grizzled older man was waiting for him inside it– one Gumshoe was surprised to see again. Former detective Tyrell Badd, now apparently working with interpol. And here Gumshoe had thought he’d retired.
“Hey, kid,” the man grinned at him, shifting the stick of his lollypop from one side of his mouth to the other. “Not surprised it’s you the chief prosecutor put this on.”
Gumshoe couldn’t help the broad and dopey grin that crossed his face despite the uncomfortable ride.
“It’s great to see you again, sir!! I didn’t know you were working for Interpol now!”
Badd tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially.
“Well, you know how it is. Got restless. Retirements not for a guy like me. Pulled a few strings, here I am. And here you are– interesting job this afternoon.”
“Well, pal…the Chief Prosecutor insisted, and I ain’t ever gonna say no to Mister Edgeworth.” Gumshoe chuckled richly, before he nodded.
In all honesty, Gumshoe could see himself in his old idol’s shoes…years down the line and told to retire, finding a way to weasel himself back in.
Retirement wasn’t for everyone…especially guys who couldn’t afford it on their salaries.
“Hell of a job though..”
“Hell of a job,” Badd nodded. “And my job’s to get you changed, and wired. You’re going in undercover. No coat. No badge. We’ll wave you through security from here.”
The old agent jerked his thumb to a lit panel of buttons and switches.
“….” Detective Gumshoe glanced sidelong at the panel “Well shit.” he laughed genially “If you wanted me to strip, sir, you just had to ask!”
Detective Badd stared at him for a moment, and then he laughed and shook his head.
“We’re on the clock, kid. But here I am asking all the same.” He grinned at him, and flicked his empty lollypop stick into the trash.
He fished out a briefcase and opened it– inside were a pair of khaki slacks and a rather jolly red button down shirt with short sleeves and an orange palm tree pattern. Additionally, a pair of sneakers, and a tennis visor.
“….aw, Badd…” Gumshoe smiled awkwardly, “I gotta go in and see an international murderer lookin’ like a putz? No wonder Mister Edgeworth sent me.”
Still, despite his joking around, he was a man of duty. He began to change with a huff, “so I’ll be wired. Been a while since I had to wear one. Any tips?”
“Biggest tip for the wire is to ignore the hell out of it,” Badd said. He grabbed a can from an ice chest near his feet and cracked it as he watched Gumshoe change. It was a coffee. “It might itch. Don’t fucking scratch it, Dick.”
“Promise.” Dick sighed as he wriggled into the slacks “Anything in particular you want me to ask the guy? Or should I just give him some of the ol’ Gumshoe spirit?”
Badd fished a small notepad out of the front pocket of his coat, and handed it to him.
“Bring this back, or I’ll kill you,” he said with a big, friendly grin.
Gumshoe took it with a whistle.
“…must be one hell of a notebook, sir. Promise, I ain’t gonna let it go anywhere.” He turned it over in his hand and idly flipped it open to skim the first page.
It was full of questions– and a little of the same context that Miles had given him, only with all the specifics conspicuously absent.
“Good man,” Badd grinned. “That shirt suits you. We oughta go to the beach some time have a few drinks, see a few bikinis”
Badd had absolutely not looked away for a second while Gumshoe was changing.
Dick felt the slight heat of a flush warm his face, a rough chuckle in his throat as he gave the other man a salute.
“Sounds like a plan to me, pal! Let me keep the shirt and it’s a promise.”
“You got it. C’mere and I’ll get you wired up.”
December 21, 5:35 pm
Dick walked through the same hospital entrance that everybody used– an anonymous nobody in a silly shirt and a sports visor. In the busy L.A. hospital nobody paid him any mind as he wove his way through the corridors and halls until he came to the unmarked door that he’d been told to find.
There was a soft ‘beep’ as he approached, and he heard the door unlock.
“Howdy, neighbor!” Dick Gumshoe announced as he nudged the door open and strolled into the room like it was any of the other times he’d come to this hospital to visit a wounded friend or a comrade on the force.
Gumshoe felt a little ridiculous when the door didn’t lead to a hospital room, but rather to another, emptier hallway.
“…..” Gumshoe grimaced “awwww…Justitia dammit.”
At the very least, only the people at the other end of the wire knew what an idiot he was as he stomped along the hallway.
The doors here were sparser. He didn’t know where he was going exactly, but it was a straight shot to a dead end, so he was in no danger of getting lost.
As he passed one of the doors– it beeped, and the lock clicked open.
That would be it, he imagined.
With a genial grin, he practically threw himself through the door with a wave and a cheerful
“Well howdy there, pal!” This evening…he’d play good cop. He was sure Interpol had plenty of bad cops to throw the guy’s way.
The man cuffed to the bed didn’t look entirely unlike the man he’d known as Bobby Fulbright.
The sideburns were gone. The nose was thinner and sharper– so were the cheekbones. The eyes a little more arched, and a colored a deep steel gray rather than the amber he’d remembered. His hair was that same honey brown color, no longer slicked back but a wispy mess around his head. And of course, his signature suit and glasses were nowhere to be found.
The man sat up a little in bed as Gumshoe entered the small room, and the door clicked closed behind him.
“Detective Gumshoe. Forgive me if I don’t salute– my right hand’s a bit tied up.” He clinked the cuffs again, more deliberately this time, holding up his hand as far as he would go.
That jovial tone was the same. That big smile… it was the same.
“H..hah.” It was uncanny. He’d seen the man plenty of times over the last year,traded a few laughs and cups of terrible precinct coffee when he stopped by.
To see him chained there, the same yet so different, with the knowledge Gumshoe knew now. It made him feel just a little ill. He let himself anchor on that smile with a low chuckle.
“That’s a good one, pal!” He patted his chest, careful not to hit the wire. “Hope you don’t mind me dropping by! I got lost on the way to the beach!”
“Sure looks like it,” he chuckled, and there was something rueful in it. “I take it you’re not here to discuss this month’s pay evaluation. Please, have a seat.”
There was one chair in the room. It was by the door, facing the bed where the prisoner sat.
“Please, Bobby…can I call ya Bobby? Or are you going by something else now?” He took a seat in the chair with his hands folded in front of him, elbows balanced on his knees. “I’m sure you’re depressed enough right now without hearin’ about that.”
“Depressed enough. Sure am.” He made a huffing noise that was altogether un-Bobby-like, but then the smile, and demeanor were right back. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to call me something else. You’re the first friendly face I’ve seen since the incident.”
“Now that’s a shame.” Dick chuckled as he rubbed the back of his neck, before he returned his hand to the clasped position before him. “Then I better keep it up, you’ve gotta be starved for it…. hope you don’t mind if a friendly face asks ya a few questions, yeah?”
“I don’t mind at all. It’s been pretty boring in here, admittedly. I’ll do my best to answer.” The man shifted position, and Dick watched his face shift too, the Bobby-like expression draining out of it as it became more serious.
Dick took a moment to watch the shift, curiosity written on his open book of a face, before he cleared his throat and began.
“Alright pal…can ya tell me a little about that organization you worked for? Got a name for it, or is it just ‘The Organization’? Because that must get confusing.”
He laughed and there was very little humor in it.
“Oh believe me, Gumshoe, it does.” He stared off toward the wall. “‘This organization’. I doubt ‘This’ is their official name, but it’s all it was ever referred to in my presence.”
“Aw, shit. The boys are gonna think I’m joshing them if I tell ‘em that.” He grimaced “..probably get another pay cut.” Gumshoe sighed. He waved his hand. “So they didn’t even tell you huh? Even if you were their guy?”
“Do you think Missile could tell you the name of the police department?”
Missile. He was getting on in years. These days he mostly hung around napping at the station instead of sniffling out criminals. Bobby Fulbright had often brought him treats. Was that just to manipulate the dog the same way as anyone else?
Dick couldn’t help but grimace a little.
“…probably not, on account of the fact he could only bark, pal.” The metaphor dawned on him a moment later, and his grimace deepened “eeeh……oof.”
He looked back down at the notepad awkwardly. “Hoo boy. Hey, you have any buddies in the organization? Anyone else you happened to know?”
“Buddies. That would be fun, wouldn’t it.” The man calling himself Bobby rubbed his face. Two handlers. Specs and Bolo– those aren’t their names, Gumshoe, I don’t know if you need to write that down. And 25 ‘fellow assets’– 6 of whom were still alive last time I heard.”
“Oh uh…” Gumshoe suddenly felt a flush of embarrassment that he wasn’t already on it. “Sorry pal, gimme a sec.”
He grabbed a pencil, and flipped to a blank page “This Organization…dogs….Specs and Bolo, handlers….25 fellow assets and 6 left ali–”
He paused “….shit, pal. That’s grim.”
“Tell me about it. Hah. Down to five now, I guess. Whoever was on the roof last night was probably one of them.” He shifted again on the bed, and made a face which swiftly returned to neutral.
“Probably…onna them.” Gumshoe muttered as he scribbled in the notepad. “This is gonna sound crazy but you got any guess which one? Like , I dunno, a telltale signature or something?”
He seemed to turn it over in his mind.
“Asset-9. Blond. Brown eyes.”
He didn’t elaborate what the tell might have been, though Gumshoe could probably ask.
“How could you tell?” Gumshoe asked as he wrote down ‘Asset-9, blond w/ brown eyes’ and ‘good with a rifle????’
“Didn’t aim for the head. Brains make him puke. They would have washed him out over it, but he got good at swallowing it.”
Gumshoe sort of regretted asking as he jotted it down word for word.
“Sounds like a charming bunch, Bolo and Specs.” he grumbled as he wrote. “…actually…I got a big question, pal. Why? Why are they training ‘assets’? What’s the goal? The point?”
“Why?” He almost seemed surprised by the question. “I would have thought that was obvious. So they have elite, disposable agents to send wherever they please and carry out their orders.”
“Yeah pal.” Gumshoe pointed his pencil at him “that makes sense and all, at least for a bunch of terrible fuckin’ bastards like ‘the organization’. Pardon my french. But what I mean is…”
He gestured “why. What are their orders? Stealin’ moon rocks? Killin’ jr. Astronauts and psychologists? Why. What’s their big goal here? Are they working for someone’s government?”
“That’s a very good question, sir.” Some of Bobby’s smile came back, seemingly-guileless, and a little bit sad. “I’ve been thinking about that myself. The thing of it is, they never let any of us, hah, dogs, have all the puzzle pieces. There’s a rule that you don’t tell the others what missions you get sent on, and they worked that one into us early. So my information is limited…”
Gumshoe didn’t like the phrase ‘worked that into us’ one bit. He was sure the grimace was visible to the spy as he scribbled down the notes. “…no wonder they’re so hard to catch.”
He tapped his pen on the paper “…what kinda missions were you sent on before the whole moon rock business?”
“Corporate espionage. Extraction missions. Government infiltration. Occasional sabotage. I can elaborate.”
“Please.” Gumshoe nodded thoughtfully “what governments? What sabotage? What extraction targets?”
Here, ‘Bobby’ was quite obliging with details, and even mentioned some incidents that Gumshow remembered reading about in the media. The sabotage of some nuclear testing in a south east asian country. The disappearance of a certain American scientist– Bobby had apparently left him at a drop point in France and had no idea what had become of him. Theft of corporate patents. What he hadn’t heard about was the disappearance of certain classified documents from the Zheng- fan military.
Gumshoe whistled under his breath “Bobby, pal. You’ve been frickin’ busy. I’ll say that much!”
Dutifully he took his notes, ignoring the painful itching of the wire against his chest with a low hum.
“You got any documentation from any of that still lyin’ around?”
“Very little,” he explained . “We’re not meant to keep it, obviously. If you move very fast you might be able to get at my cache of identity documents that I used this past year and use those documents to trace my movements. But they’ll already be moving to destroy those.”
“Hooo boy, sure would be good if someone got on that!” he said a bit louder than was strictly necessary, “any idea where that is??”
For a moment, the man gave him a dubious and disappointed look, which then broke into one of Bobby’s big smiles.
“Of course, my friend! It’s in my apartment. In the top kitchen drawer, third cabinet on the left from the fridge. You’ll find a false bottom in there. With my apologies for the number of old matchbooks and half open packs of batteries, crumpled reciepts and things in between. You know how it is.”
“Oh trust me, pal. I ain’t gonna judge you for that. My drawers look like a bomb went off in ‘em!” He paused “…there’s no bomb in the drawer, is there?”
“Not that I put there. But if someone’s checking my apartment send the bomb squad in first just in case someone’s gotten there first.” Bobby smiled. “As you might have noticed it’s a favorite way for the organization to get rid of evidence.”
“Yeah we kinda noticed that.” Gumshoe’s jovial smile dropped for a moment. He couldn’t help but think of the crime scene photos of the Cosmos center. The fire scorched hallway and that poor astronaut’s dead body spared the flames by sheer luck. “…I’ll make sure the bomb guys go in first, alright?”
“Good. We wouldn’t want there to be any more… difficulties, in that regard,” His smile faded, and then reappeared. “Plus all my stuff’s in there!”
“Well, we don’t wantcha to lose all your hard earned stuff, eh? I know how hard it is for a fella on a detective’s salary!” He chuckled, even with the pit in his stomach. “Anyway…how long have you been with these guys?”
“Ah. Hah.” Bobby”s smile hitched and disappeared, and he shrugged. “Forever.”
Gumshoe made the effort to put a bit more warmth and cheer into his smile as he leaned a little forward.
“I understand, pal. How many years makes ‘forever’?”
“I’m sorry, Gumshoe, I don’t have a clear answer on that for you. At least 25. Somewhere closer to 35 I think.” He didn’t look troubled by it, but he looked… distant. There was a glassy quality to his steel grey stare.
Gumshoe thought for a moment, before he leaned forward and pat the man’s arm. “don’t worry about it, pal.” He said as he settled back in his chair with a huff. “I’m just trying to get an understandin’ of all this. Espionage ain’t exactly my expertise. You know me. I’m just Dick from the precinct.”
“You’re doing a great job, Dick. I’m glad you’re the one they sent in.”
Gumshoe smiled broadly.
“Hey, thanks pal! I’m doin’ my best, ya know? Figured you could use a friendly face…even if I gotta keep grillin’ you.”
“Grill away. I’m happy to cooperate.”
December 21, 6:45 pm
Gumshoe left the hospital the same way he came in, and wound his way through the hospital corridors until he was back in the usual populated areas. The questioning had gone on for quite a while, and he still wasn’t sure what to think.
He had a notebook full of answers to give back to Badd, a link with Interpol through the itching wire on his chest, and a head bursting at the seams with more questions than the notebook held answers.
His brow wrinkled as he stuck his hand in his khaki pockets, he was just a detective. A trusted detective, sure, and one who had a good head on his shoulders despite the way people joked and teased, but this sort of bag was always outside his usual purview.
The closest he’d ever come was that business with Interpol years and years ago now, when Mr. Edgeworth and Kay had gotten entangled with international espionage investigations.
All he knew was the man he spoke with seemed divided. Sometimes he was exactly the same as he remembered the other detective…it was too easy to fall into the playful patter of watercooler conversation and joking around.
He rubbed his neck with a quiet hum. “Well damn.”
As he walked out of the hospital into the parking lot he saw Badd in another ugly tropical shirt waiting in a handicapped parking space in a top-down convertible. He waved him over.
“Hey! Long time no see, pal!” he joked as he trotted over with the notebook in hand. He offered it the moment they got close enough. “here you go, sir.”
“Thanks, kid.” He tucked it in his pocket and slapped Gumshoe on the back. “How was the appointment?”
Badd revved the car and pulled out of the parking space a little too fast– gunning it out of the parking lot the same way as any old man playing with his expensive toy car did.
“Oh, you know…went pretty well, but it’s not exactly uh.” He cleared his throat “it’s kinda weird to see the guy again, you know what I mean?”
“I can imagine,” Badd said, glancing in his rearview mirror as they got on the road. “Heh. Believe me. We can talk freely for now, by the way.”
“Yeah? Whew.” He sighed with relief “…I’ll be honest, sir. Sometimes he seemed exactly like the guy I knew from the precinct. If it’s an act, it’s a hell of one that he ain’t given up yet.”
“Think he was using it to manipulate you?” Badd asked, glancing over at him. “Soften you up?”
“Dunno, sir.” Gumshoe shook his head “I mean, I’ll be real. If he was, he was pretty terrible at it. Kept slipping, you know what I mean? Before he bounced back to all smiles. And he answered all my questions– didn’t even complain once.”
“Huh.” Badd scratched his stubbly chin. “Now that’s weird. You’d think it’d be one or the other. Either he’d keep up the act or he wouldn’t bother.”
“I know, right?” Gumshoe nodded. “that’s just what I was thinkin’ , pal! Either he’d drop it or he wouldn’t. But he kept bouncin’ back and forth.”
“Huh.”