scarlet city - chapter one - king of the underworld
“Burke,” the Chief’s voice booms before he drops a file onto the detective’s desk. It lands with a thud loud enough to draw the attention of the other two detectives in the room and three secretaries who should have been doing something else.
Preston Burke looks up from the picture he had been studying through a magnifying glass, trying to make out the license plate on a getaway car from Hahn’s bank robbery case. Her leads had dried up weeks ago until the car picture surfaced, but she couldn’t make out the details. He’s trying to help her out in his spare time, give the force some reason to believe they hadn’t screwed up by giving her a detective’s badge; someone had done the same for him. Unluckily for her, there’s a potted plant in the way of the last two numbers but the last hour’s eyestrain means she could have a reasonable lead. He’d have to tell her that he’s off charity work for a while, though, as he eyes the two inches of a file that had barely missed knocking his cold cup of bad coffee off his desk. “Yes, Chief?”
“I’m redistributing O’Malley’s load. The Montgomery case is now yours. I’m having the rest of it brought up from storage. Treat it well.”
Burke leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers under his chin. He alternates between glaring at the file and glaring at the Chief. “The man’s been in the ground for,” he glances at the clock on the wall, “five hours, Chief.”
“Montgomery doesn’t care about that, Burke. Keep me updated.”
Burke glares at the file one last time before sitting up straight and putting the surveillance photo back into the folder it came in. He picks up the folder and the cold cup of coffee and drops the coffee into his trash can and sets the folder on Hahn’s desk, scribbling a note with what he was able to make out and that he got stuck with the Montgomery case so she’ll have to find another sharp set of eyes to borrow for a while. He brings a new cup of coffee, barely above lukewarm, back to his desk and sits down again. He reaches over and picks up the file and slides off the broken rubber band holding it all together.
He’s never been able to read O’Malley’s writing, so the other man’s notes get pushed aside. He starts from the beginning.
Name: Addison Forbes Montgomery (née Shepherd)
Known Aliases: Addie, Satan, Red
Spouse: Derek Shepherd (divorced)
Occupation: None (“philanthropist”)
Known Associates: Mark Sloan, Alex Karev, Callie Torres
Wanted in Connection With: Arson (NY); Murder (NY, WA); Pandering (NY, WA); Pimping (NY, WA); Gambling (NY, WA); Money Laundering (WA); Alcohol Possession (NY; retroactive, 1929-1933)
Burke skips over the rest of the outlined details - they won’t help him any. He flips to page one of her rap sheet and stares at the picture paper-clipped to the paper; a mug shot, from when they brought her in three years ago on gambling charges the DA couldn’t make stick. She stares up at him in stark black and white, eyebrow cocked as if she knew she wouldn’t be there long.
The rap sheet is the longest he’s ever seen, running the gamut from petty larceny and jaywalking to arson, prostitution and murder. He’s known about her for years, ever since she came to this town fresh from an acquittal in New York that cost a DA his job. Most of what he knows is hearsay, rumors, assumptions made over the coffee maker or at the deli counter they all frequent for lunch, but some of it is fact he’s discovered on his own.
There’s a scar on his shoulder, a gift from a bullet when he forgot to get out of the way. Shepherd had been taking the bullet out of him, off the books and after hours, when the man had mentioned he used to be married to the city’s crime boss. Burke had startled at the news, causing Shepherd to slip and leaving a scar. It itches from time to time.
Shepherd works the night shift at the hospital and Burke considers him one of the more reliable informants. In exchange for removing the occasional bullet and remembering what patients shout at each other, Burke keeps Shepherd’s name clean each time a beat cop tries to cite him for solicitation with his girlfriend. Burke figures it’s not Shepherd’s fault his girl chooses to make a living without her clothes on. Meredith thanked him for it once, when she happened to be hanging around the hospital entrance waiting for Shepherd to be done for the night, but she steers clear of Burke whenever possible. Burke has his suspicions about her employer.
Burke flips through the remaining pages of the file; he knows there’s more coming up from storage and he’ll need a separate file cabinet just to hold it all. His finger catches on her fact sheet from New York and he scans through the faded words. His eyes land on the word doctor next to occupation and he frowns. He’s seen “The Doctor” as an alias in files before, usually taken to mean “someone who will cut useful parts off you if you don’t cooperate,” but never as actual occupation of someone cited for more than drunk and disorderly or the occasional domestic dispute. He ruffles through the pages, looking for reference, and finds it: OB-GYN at Mt. Sinai General Hospital.
“Huh,” he says to himself out loud. He wonders how someone goes from a life of medicine and saving lives to a life of crime and ending them. Money, probably.
He tosses the file on his desk and grabs his hat and coat, intending to grab a late lunch.
He can’t really blame her. He loves his job, but it barely pays the bills.
“You need to stop worrying,” Addison says to Callie, leaning back against the bar and crossing one long leg over the other.
“I’m not worrying,” Callie says monotonously, her mind otherwise occupied with counting and organizing the stacks of bills in front of her. Finished with one stack, she makes a note of the amount and turns her attention back to Addison. “I’m just sayin’, they led them right to him. Was that smart?”
Addison yawns; she and Mark had rolled into bed sometime far beyond a reasonable hour. “As much as we might like to think so, the cops in this town are not stupid. But with O’Malley dead, it’d take them days to even realize Hunt was missing, a couple more to find him. If the fish hadn’t gotten to him, a boat would’ve run over him and we’d be lucky if they could identify him.”
Callie cracks her neck and starts in on the next pile. Working for Addison pays well - more than well, actually - but has its unexpected twists. Like discussing murder over cocktails. She finishes her martini and offers Addison the olives. The redhead takes the toothpick with a smile and pops it into her mouth, sliding the wooden pick out between her teeth and dropping it back into Callie’s empty glass. “He was really gonna snitch.”
Addison nods slowly. “Yep. Bastard.”
“Didn’t think he had it in him.”
Addison laughs, low and without any humor. “Neither did I.”
Burke stares at the body on the table, glad he hadn’t made it to lunch. “Owen Hunt?” He asks, squinting to read the toe tag.
Dr. Arizona Robbins snaps off her gloves and drops them in the bin. “Yep.” She cracks her gum and releases her hair from its ponytail before gathering it up again to pull away from her face. “Your guys found him in the Sound last night.”
Burke checks the clock. Almost six. “You’re just now getting to him?”
She jerks her thumb in the direction of the freezer. “I got a long list of bodies, Burke. What do you want from me?”
Burke smiles apologetically; he knows the coroner’s been overrun lately. There’s a string of dead prostitutes that Duquette’s been working on. “How’d he die?”
She pulls on another pair of gloves and grabs Hunt’s bluish grey shoulder and pulls, revealing his back. She points at the matted hair on the back of his head. “Gunshot wound.”
“So, not drowning.”
Arizona purses her lips and stares at him. “When was the last time you people pulled a body out of the water that hadn’t died long before it made it in there?” With Burke sufficiently chastised, she lets Hunt’s body drop back to the slab and continues. “Rope burns on his wrists and ankles, suggest he was tied up. Probably to a chair. Bruises on his face,” she gestures, “and abdomen, they probably worked him over first.”
“Yeah,” Burke says, “O’Malley had convinced him to fold on Montgomery.”
“No kidding,” she says smoothly. “Guess she didn’t like that too much.”
“Guess not.” Burke flips his hat back onto his head. “Let me know if you find anything else.”
She nods and blows a bubble. It pops. “Absolutely.”
A new, full martini glass makes its way into her line of vision and the empty one disappears. She looks up from the newspaper and smiles at the bartender. “Thanks, Alex.”
“No problem,” he says with a grin, wiping down the mahogany bar. “Anything good?” He nods to the newspaper in front of her. It’s slow right now in the bar, but it’ll pick up once the theater across the street lets out for intermission.
Addison frowns and studies the front page. “Adolf Hitler, in true fashion of being a pain in Europe’s ass, invaded Poland last week while you were out of town. Looks like war.”
Alex exhales; he was too young to fight in the Great War, but he remembers that it was supposed to end all wars. That didn’t last long. He starts polishing the tray of newly-washed glasses just brought out from the kitchen. “Roosevelt’s staying out of it, I see,” he reads the first lines of the article upside down.
“And why shouldn’t he? It’s all the way over there. We have our own problems.” She knows they’ll be in it sooner or later - they were last time, too - but she’d like that to be as far in the future as possible. “Of course, Chamberlain’s not actually doing anything about it…”
Alex lets her ramble about Europe and politics for a minute while he scans the other headlines. “O’Malley’s dead,” he says, coming to the bottom of the page. The lettering is distorted from his angle, but he can make out enough of it. He’d been down in Portland for two weeks, cleaning up the mess left by Sam Bennett - a man Addison thought competent enough to run his own city, until he got himself shot by a cop. Hunt had become an overwhelming problem to deal with the day Alex got back, and caused Alex to miss quite a lot of news: war in Europe, and O’Malley’s untimely demise.
“Hm?” She takes a calculated sip of her martini. “Oh, yes,” she looks back down at the paper, sliding it up so the article in question is on the flat surface of the bar. She pretends to skim for the gory details. “Got caught in the crossfire of that shootout over on Pike the other night. Funeral was today.”
Alex picks up the tone in his boss’s voice. “Did we have anything to do with that?” He asks quietly. The bar may be empty save a few regulars and early birds, but he’s long learned not to trust old men to have shoddy hearing.
Addison looks up at him through her eyelashes. “It was crossfire,” she says, “the man was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even we’re not that clever, Alex.”
Alex nods and takes the non-answer at face value. He and Addison are more off than on lately, owing to her and Mark being more on than off, but he still runs in the center circle of her operation and knows when to drop the subject.
Burke shuts his apartment door behind him and cracks his neck before dropping his briefcase on the floor and hanging his hat and jacket on the hook behind the door.
“About time you got home.”
He opens his eyes and scans the apartment. Black hair lit up by the single light she’s turned on; fell asleep reading on the couch, then. “I’m sorry. I was working late.”
She sits up and sleepily runs her fingers through the tangles of hair. “New case?” She can tell by his body language, even on the other side of the room and in shadows, that he’s not happy about it.
He bends over and unties his shoes, placing them carefully out of the way of the door. On the walk home, he’d been looking forward to an empty apartment, a glass of scotch, and spreading the case materials he’d managed to fit into his briefcase over the kitchen table and possibly working until the sun rose. But now that he is home, he’s thankful for Cristina’s presence. He hadn’t quite realized how exhausted he is; Hahn keeps telling him that he’s working too hard for what the city isn’t paying him, and Cristina gives him the perfect excuse to wait until tomorrow. “Yes,” he says, walking barefoot over to her. He kisses her forehead before detouring into the kitchen to pour himself - and her - the glass of scotch he wanted.
She pushes herself up and covers a yawn. “What’cha get?”
He screws the cap back on the bottle and picks up both glasses. “Addison Montgomery.”
Cristina whistles in awe. “That’s a bitch.” She’d known O’Malley was working it; he’d come into her bar a few times asking questions she’d skillfully not answered. “Why’d Webber give it to you?” She takes a mouthful of scotch and lets it sit on her tongue before swallowing.
Burke shrugs and falls into the chair by the window. He looks outside, the rain making shadows darker and gaslights brighter. “Just lucky, I guess.” He’d actually just finished a few cases. Either that or the Chief wants him preoccupied for the foreseeable future.
Cristina sets the glass down on the coffee table and lifts her hair off her neck before letting it drop again. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she says, “I’m not telling you anything.”
“I didn’t ask…” he silences at the finger she holds up.
“Already my customers are worried because they think I’m gonna tell you everything.” She’d been outed as a cop’s girlfriend several months ago thanks to a pushy press photographer at some swanky police affair she hadn’t been able to avoid; if there hadn’t been photographic evidence in the paper the next day, she would’ve kept her boyfriend’s occupation secret. “If they think I’m gonna snitch to you every mention of Montgomery, I’m out of business.”
“Cristina. I am not asking you to do that.” He knows that her bar runs on a delicate mixture of alcohol, making book, and secrets. It’s because of the secrets (and the owner) that the department turns the other way on the betting; she never names her customers, only the information they share over one too many drinks. Her customers know this and keep coming back for the gambling and the well-mixed gin and tonics; they’d gone silent after the picture in the paper, but she’s gradually won them back over. But if word gets out that she’s sharing anything with him now that he’s working the Montgomery case, all tips and gossip are gone; Montgomery casts a wide net and people curiously come back to work missing a finger or an eye when they mention her in the wrong crowd.
“Good,” she says, draining the last of her scotch. She stands and the afghan that had been covering her legs drops to the couch. “‘Cause the moment you do, I’m out of here.” She turns off the lamp, leaving Burke to sit in the darkness.
Addison rolls off of Mark, both of them breathing heavily in the aftermath of their lovemaking. She tugs the sheet up around her waist and props herself up on her elbow while watching Mark light a cigarette. It’s a habit she never picked up, but one she allows him.
“You have a new detective,” he says, exhaling a satisfied line of smoke toward the open window.
She chuckles lowly. “Of course I do. Webber wouldn’t want me gallivanting around unchecked for much longer.”
Mark turns his head and looks at her over his shoulder; her skin glows silver in the moonlight. “They’ll never catch you,” he says.
Addison scoffs. “Never say never,” she reminds him; her acquittal in New York still remains a mystery to those outside this room. The evidence was there and so were the testimonies: the police had learned their lesson and placed all witnesses in a safe house upstate until the trial and then kept them locked in the courthouse after the trial began. Only a few well-placed threats and money in the correct hands had kept her from several life sentences of jail time. “Who is it?” She’d known her case would be the first Webber would reassign after O’Malley’s funeral, but hasn’t yet heard who it is.
“Preston Burke,” Mark says, folding his arm behind his head as he lies down.
Addison ponders this, trying to remember his name. “Doesn’t he usually work solicitation and theft?”
Mark looks at her sideways. “Yes.” Besides murder, which doesn’t bring in too much money (though it does eliminate a lot of problems), and gambling, which only sometimes has the big payoff, most of her business is prostitutes and money laundering.
“What do we know about him?”
“Not much,” Mark admits. “He plays it straight.”
Addison snorts. Very few members of the Seattle Police Department are completely straight. Not many are completely crooked either. Most just bend the rules and sometimes look the other way in exchange for money or small favors.
“Want me to look into him?”
Nodding, Addison watches as the rain beats patterns onto the window pane, casting distorting shadows over the bed. “Have someone else do it, in case he’s smarter than we think. Freedman, if he still works for me.” Cooper Freedman had been one of her first hires when she moved to the city; working as a researcher for the Seattle Times, he’d been on the verge of being evicted until she came along to supplement his income and provide him with more interesting topics. Rumor has it that he’s about to make a move south to California. The LA Times pays better than Seattle and since all he ever does is look into things for her, she has no problem with him moving except that she’ll need to find a new researcher.
Mark stubs out the cigarette and pops a mint into his mouth from the tin he keeps by the bed. She allows him the habit, but with concessions. “I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
Burke steps off the elevator and nods to Erica Hahn, standing by the coffee maker as if sheer force of will is going to make it percolate faster. He blinks twice at the contents of the overnight holding cell. “Kepner, what are you doing here again?” He greets the girl sitting in the corner of the cell, pouting angrily at anyone who walks by.
“Your buddy Duquette thought I’d be safer here,” she says, attitude radiating off her like too much cheap perfume.
Burke looks over at Denny’s desk and frowns. It’s empty, but the mug of coffee is still steaming. “Where is he?”
“Morgue,” Hahn says blandly. “Another dead girl last night.”
“Jesus,” Burke mutters. “That makes, what? Three in the last two weeks.”
“Uh huh,” she nods, brushing past him to get back to her desk.
“Yeah,” April sasses from behind the bars, “and what are you guys doin’ about it, huh? We’re out there scared for our lives tryin’ to earn a buck and you’re sittin’ in here, comfy and safe, doin’ jack shit about some freak out there killin’ us.”
“Maybe if you found yourself a legitimate job you wouldn’t be having this problem,” Hahn sasses back from across the room. “If she’s not being held for anything, can someone get rid of her?”
Burke stifles a laugh. “If you’re earning just a dollar, perhaps you really ought to consider a different line of work,” he advises with a smirk and walks away, ignoring the rude gesture she throws in his direction. A beat cop comes by with the keys and releases April, who sways out of the room without another word.
The elevator opens, revealing Denny Duquette with a nice black eye. Burke frowns; the other detective is prone to getting himself injured or shot on the job.
“How are you not six feet under yet?” Erica asks, looking up from her desk with a smile. After the incident with the rabid cat, she’s just stopped asking how the man hurts himself so frequently.
Denny smiles. “Luck.” He drops the coroner’s report on his desk and falls into the chair. It squeaks.
“Who’s dead now?” Burke asks, his curiosity getting the better of him. The murders started a few months ago, too far apart to connect. But two weeks ago, they escalated. They’d tried to connect them to Montgomery, thinking she was cleaning out the competition, but it hadn’t fit her MO: the girls who aren’t on her payroll make up such a small portion of the city’s hookers and fulfill a particularly unique set of desires that Montgomery’s girls stay far away from. Besides, Montgomery was more likely to bring a girl onto her turf than murder her; it’s better business that way.
Sighing, he flips open the report, needing a reminder despite seeing her naked and dead on Robbins’ slab only ten minutes earlier. “Stevens. Isobel Stevens. Blonde. Throat slit.”
Burke muses over this news for a moment. Stevens makes seven and there is nothing to connect the dead girls together, except that they’re all hookers and all dead. He exhales sharply and leans back in his chair, frowning at the four boxes that have been brought up from storage. He wishes his coworker good luck and takes a knife to the tape sealing the first box. Normally, he’d jump at the chance to help and lend a fresh set of eyes to case files that have long since blurred into one unrecognizable mass of confusion.
But he has his own problems, now.
Cooper Freedman slides into the booth in the back corner of the diner and drops a flimsy envelope on the table in front of him. “So we’re clear. This is the last job I do for her.”
Alex nods and takes the envelope, tucking it into his inside breast pocket. “Any surprises in there?”
“Plays by the book, unless the force tells him otherwise. Got a couple citations on his record for arguing with top brass about things they’re letting slide.” He shrugs. “Girlfriend’s a bartender on the other side of town. Cristina Yang.”
Alex perks up at the mention of the girlfriend. He’s heard Cristina’s name before; they’ve done some business in her bar.
Cooper shakes his head. “I took the liberty of checking her out, too. She’s not gonna be a problem for you guys.”
“How do you know?”
“Emerald City runs on what people tell her. No way she’s going to turn and talk to the boyfriend and ruin that.”
Mulling this over, Alex nods. “Not everyone in this town is stupid, huh?”
“Nope. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have boxes to pack.”
“Enjoy Los Angeles,” Alex says by way of a goodbye.
Cooper slides out of the booth with not much more than a smile.
“Singles at the counter!” The deli manager, Charlotte King, shouts at the crowd pushing at the doors for lunch.
Burke and Hahn make their way through the masses to find a secluded, unoccupied table at the back of the restaurant. It’s mostly cops and hospital staff, owing to its convenient location across the street from both, but the crowd is peppered with the occasional businessman or lawyer who makes his way down here claiming it has the best roast beef sandwich in town. To Charlotte’s credit, it’s true.
There are three main places in this town to go to for information.
Ambrose’s, the deli, is where you go if you want to find out what the cops know about you. Time it right - late lunchtime on a Friday, usually, when the week’s dragged on too long and they’re more willing to talk shop over a Cobb salad - and sit in the right booth and you can overhear just about anything. The staff, however, is tight-lipped on the matter. They like their cop business and it doesn’t matter how much tip you slide their way: if you so much as look like you’re going to ask after what your waitress has overheard lately, you’ll find yourself waiting a very long time for your food.
The Emerald City Bar, situated on the other side of the hospital, just out of reach of the precinct at closing time, is where you go if you want to make book on the game or fight. Cops trade info from the bartenders the way stock brokers trade on Wall Street on the other side of the country. The bartenders mostly stick to small crimes, their information good enough and constant enough for any beat cop or detective worth their salary to ignore what goes on in the back rooms. But if a large enough bill makes its way across the counter, a bartender might be convinced to give up something she’s been holding onto for months.
The Archfield Hotel has a dimly-lit restaurant on the first floor and the leather seats of the booths crinkle when you settle into them. Owing to its shadows and discreet staff, every deal worth doing goes down in a corner booth of the Archfield. The quality of your information is directly proportional to the size of your tip. So is the silence of your waiter and for a large enough sum, he’ll swear under oath he’s never seen you before.
“How’s the new case going?” Erica asks, picking up and biting into the kosher pickle that clung desperately to the side of her plate as the waitress brought over their lunch orders.
Burke chews thoughtfully and scans the room for people he doesn’t recognize. The place is way too crowded to allow anyone to overhear them - he’s even having trouble hearing Erica - but it’s worth the discretion anyway, even if he doesn’t have anything earth-shattering to share. “I have a dead body I can easily link to her via common sense but not with any evidence and a dead body I’d like to link to her but can’t.”
“You get saddled with O’Malley’s case, too?”
He shakes his head. “No, thankfully. Chief’s officially writing that one off as an accident.”
“Accidentally got shot in the head.” She lifts an eyebrow in disbelief.
Burke shrugs and studies his sandwich. “A lot of guns in that fight; Robbins just finished all of the bodies. Said she couldn’t tell which bullets came from who.”
“Can I get you two anything else?” Miranda pops by, order pad in hand.
Burke smiles at her. They always try to sit in her section if possible. He knows she’s supporting a son on her own - husband walked out a year ago - and working two waitressing jobs; if he can make her life a little easier by tipping her more than he probably should, he will. “No thanks, just the check please.”
Addison watches from the bar as the man walks in. He’s practically dripping with detective. She glances down at the tri-folded papers Alex had delivered earlier; there’s a picture stapled to the corner. Even in the low light of the bar, she recognizes him as Preston Burke.
“Heads up,” she says when Alex comes back over and she tips her head in the direction of the door. He’s probably only here to check things out, get familiar with her territory, yet she wants her staff on alert. They’re all smart enough to spot a cop a mile away, especially one so obvious as Burke, but it’s better to tell them ahead of time. Some are better at lying than others.
Mark slides onto the bar stool next to her and kisses her cheek in greeting. He’s been taking care of overdue payments all day and his knuckles are a little more scraped than usual. “What’s,” he starts, then follows what Addison and Alex are pointedly not looking at as the man sits down on the opposite end of the bar, “oh. Want me to take care of him?” He lowers his voice for the offer, almost a whisper. The bar’s started to fill up and the patrons at the tables are occasionally loud with peals of laughter and there are several people between them and the detective, but offered threats of bodily harm are best spoken in hushed tones.
She shakes her head and smiles widely, pretending that they’re talking about something else and he just said something wildly funny. “No,” she says, turning to him, offering Burke a view of the back of her head. “Let’s see what he does.”
The mirror behind the bar affords Burke a fantastic view of most of the establishment; artfully arranged bottles and glasses impede his vision in spots, but for the most part he can see the entire place. He observes quietly, committing everything to memory, certain that a notebook and pen would be conspicuous. He knows Addison pegged him for a detective - perhaps even the detective assigned to her case, why else would a cop be in her bar? - the moment he walked in.
He stays for maybe two hours, nursing his beers as slowly as he can without being annoying about it. Convinced he has enough to start with, he leaves a friendly tip on the bar and takes his leave of the place.
“Hm,” Addison muses. They’d moved to a corner booth when Callie and Arizona arrived from the back entrance. Even though Burke hadn’t looked up - most people would have - she’s certain he noticed both the arrival of the women and their subsequent move.
“Is he going to be a problem?” Mark asks, his arm draped around her shoulders.
Addison tilts her head and stares at the door closing slowly behind Burke. “I don’t know.”
“Want me to take care of him?” He makes the same offer as a few hours ago, but it means something completely different. Earlier, he would’ve simply found a way to make Burke leave the bar. Now, Mark cracks his knuckles.
“No,” Addison says firmly. “Tail him, though. Put Wilder on it.”
“He’s headed to LA with Freedman,” Arizona points out, surfacing from her hushed conversation with Callie. Their relationship is as quiet as they can keep it, mostly so Arizona can keep her job at the city morgue. If the cops found out the coroner is - quite literally - in bed with the city’s main madam, who is on the payroll of the biggest crime boss the city has ever seen, they’d find a way to have her fired in an instant, without any investigation. In exchange for occasionally hiding important evidence from cops who don’t know any better, Arizona lives in an apartment slightly above her pay grade.
Addison throws up a hand. “What is it with that damn city? Pete owes me one more job before he leaves, make it this one.”
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