Well, I guess it would make sense for the cop in-charge of undercover operations to have an ‘undercover’ office as well,” Ro muttered to herself as she knocked twice on the solid metal door with a small sign that simply read “Private.” If she didn’t know better, it would be easy to mistake it for the entrance to a utility room.

Doug Payne called her Friday morning to ask her to meet with a Lieutenant Tate, who supervised undercover personnel in eastern Iowa, at his office in Cedar Rapids on Saturday morning, suggesting, “Say around eleven.”

Of course, she readily agreed, now impatient for her would-be undercover exploit to move forward.

Payne gave her an address on Old Marion Road and warned her the building was a former funeral home converted into offices. “There’re a couple of chiropractors, an insurance agency, an attorney, a local foundation… You’ll find Tate’s office at the end of the hall on the lower level, past The Geekster’s Workshop, a computer repair service,” he’d said, then warned her not to be put off by the odd door sign.

A tall, slender black man opened the door and stepped back for her to enter.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” he said, his voice was deep, although without the sinister timbre of a James Earl Jones. He half bowed and waved her in.

Well into his fifties, his close cropped, tightly curled hair and goatee were salt and pepper gray; his face deeply etched, but with lines hinting they more easily slid into a smile than a frown. He was wearing blue jeans and a bold, black, and red checked flannel shirt. Except for the compact Smith & Wesson M&P 40 holstered on a wide belt on his left, he could easily be mistaken for a retired preacher.

He sure wasn’t the hard-nosed, probably humorless, buttoned up cop she’d been expecting.

“My birth name is Leviticus. I think my mother was trying to psychologically set me up to become a preacher, but to her dismay I became a cop and a drug dealer in that order,” he said with a devilish smile that reminded Ro of her father. “My undercover assignment for four years in the late eighties was neck deep in the Denver drug trade.”

Ro thought there was probably much more to that story.

Just as Tate didn’t much look like a cop, the room did not look anything like a cop’s office. In one corner was a dark purple, wingback easy chair with a long coffee table alongside piled with papers and files, several legal pads, a big coffee mug stuffed with pens and a laptop computer, apparently what passed as a “desk” for Lieutenant Tate.

The rest of the room, though, was dominated by a big couch, with two occasional chairs facing it across a coffee table. Even though the walls were bare of any artwork, posters or photos, the room still had a casual, comfortable feel.

The coffee maker, a ubiquitous fixture in all cop spaces, sat on top of a squat refrigerator half hidden next to a cabinet that looked like a standalone closet, both lined up along the wall behind the door.

Ro recognized his chit-chat was designed to, first, put her at ease, as their meeting was fraught with all sorts of portentous subtexts, and second, to establish that Tate was not a typical cop. It was working.

Ro played along, extending her hand. “Good meeting you, L.T. Are you originally from Denver?”

He took the offered hand, gave it a single shake, then said, “No, I was with the Minneapolis PD. They’re the ones who loaned me out to a Colorado state drug task force.” Nodding toward the mini kitchenette, he added, “Doug says you’re like me, a tea drinker. Earl Grey alright?”

“Yes.”

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Straight up.”

“I knew there was something I was going to like about you. Go grab a seat,” he said, gesturing toward the conversation grouping, “while I get our tea.”

Ro sat in one of the occasional chairs but kept her back straight and her feet on the floor, still not quite knowing what to make of this cop’s obviously carefully fashioned informality. When Tate brought their mugs of tea, he plopped down in the other chair, lounged back, and threw one leg over the arm, revealing he was wearing a pair of black Converse high-tops.

“In the day-to-day cop world, to you I’d be L.T. or Sir, and for me you’d be Sergeant or Deputy, and that’s okay, that’s how it needs to be out there. But if we end up working together… And to be honest, from what Doug tells me about you, I’ll be surprised if we don’t… Well, titles and rank kind of lose their meaning. So, how about we get used to first names? Levi,” he said, pointing to himself, “Ro,” he added, pointed to her.

“Ro and Levi, it is,” she said, but then raised an eyebrow, now wanting to move past the opening small talk. “So, you’re thinking I might be able to handle undercover work?”

He chuckled. “Whoa… Doug did warn me you’re a no bullshit person.”

Ro got the feeling he meant it as a compliment.

“A qualified yes. Look, there are lots of traits that make a good cop, whether out on the beat or undercover. But the single most important one… The one that if it’s missing, well, the others don’t really much matter… Is the ability to stay frosty under pressure, which, if Doug is telling the truth about some of your, uh, exploits, you’ve got in abundance.”

Ro had a brief flashback to four years ago, when she’d been called into the office of Lieutenant Schnell, at the time her commander on third shift patrol. Lieutenant Pease, the sheriff’s department SWAT leader, was there as well and had pretty much said the very same thing as their reason for recruiting her for the newly expanded regional SWAT unit.

Ro said to Tate what she always said when given a compliment, because it was how she felt inside. “I was just doing my job.” Then shrugged, adding, “Anyway, you know how cops like to embellish those kinds of stories.”

“Actually, Doug confessed to me he spent a sleepless night trying to figure a way he could put me off on you as a possible undercover operative, but still be able to keep you as one of his highway officers.” But then leaning forward to emphasize his point, added, now in a serious tone, “Ro, If Doug Payne thinks a lot of you, then so do I.”

Ro just nodded and made a face she hoped was a kind of silent, “Thank you.”

Straightening up, as if to signal it was time to get down to business, Tate said, “I know you went through all this with Doug ten days ago, but I’d still like to hear for myself your thoughts on why you’re suspicious about the Pribyls. And remember, you’re not on the witness stand here, so don’t be afraid to share what your gut might be telling you. As you know, instincts are important to all cops, but they’re the bread and butter of undercover people.”

With her recitation with Doug as a kind of rehearsal, Ro’s sit rep to Tate took only fifteen minutes. Throughout, he would occasionally nod or raise an eyebrow, his body language suggesting not only that he was taking what she was saying seriously but was finding it of great interest.

When she was done, he said, “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what we do in undercover work is an elaborate game of connecting dots for a picture we have no idea what it’s supposed to look like in the end, and for that matter, may be morphing into a different picture even as we’re working on it.

“We take something suspicious regular uniforms might hear or see while on patrol, maybe combine it with information we may be getting from other sources, like the Feds and local PDs, maybe if we’re lucky, find an informant or two that can share tidbits of inside stuff… And in today’s world it might surprise you how much can be learned from online sources, if you know where to look.”

Actually, it wasn’t a surprise for Ro, as Tag’s thick report of a year ago on the Pribyls demonstrated.

“But it sure can be frustrating,” he added. “You know in your gut there has to be a picture there somewhere, you just can’t find enough dots to connect.”

Ro bobbed her head. “I’m familiar with that feeling.”

Tate chuckled. “I’m sure you are. The Holy Grail, of course, is to get a cop on the inside. They’re a hundred times better than a snitch. They know what to look for, they know how to connect the dots, or try alternate connections if the first ones aren’t working… Someone who’s willing to literally jump into the picture, in a sense becoming one of the dots themselves.”

He paused, dropped his voice, and gave Ro a grave look. “And you think you’re ready for that?”

Ro smiled, but it had something of a rueful tinge. “Well, ready or not, as I told Doug, this is something I have to do. Forgive me for a bit of hyperbole, but I sometimes feel like my soul will never rest until I find the answer, one way or another.”

Throughout her recitations to Doug Payne earlier and today to Levi Tate, she left out the real motivation driving her need for answers, the nagging question if the Pribyls, the DEA, and Kate’s death were all somehow of a piece.

And, of course, purposefully failed to mention anything about her connection to Ron Pribyl, the lodge, and his cadre of party girls.

Tate’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Ro for a long assessing moment, then said, “You know, I get the feeling you would probably move ahead with your plan to infiltrate the Pribyl operation on your own, even without the sanction of a law enforcement agency.”

During her hours of agonizing about the idea of being undercover, the thought of going freelance had crossed her mind, but was pushed aside, maybe because she hadn’t really wanted to deal with its possible complications. But Tate’s question now forced the issue.

She knew there was only one response. “You’re right, I probably would.”

“In fact, I suspect you may already have.”

Ro flashed him a “Moi?” look, but at the same time pretty much knew what he was getting at.

“You know those dots we talked about? Well, you’ve given me some interesting new ones, which, by the way, I doubt you could have uncovered without some effort, maybe even a clandestine endeavor,” he said with a sidelong look silently asking, “Am I right?”

Then continued, “For instance, we knew about the new metals trading operation and their modular offices at the back of Bi-State Reclamation. But as I understand it, they’re located several hundred yards from River Drive, the closest public property, in and of itself a bit suspect. Even with a good pair of binocs – which, by the way, would have been a dead giveaway we were watching them – there is no way anyone could have seen the kind of detail you did. I sure hope you didn’t risk sneaking onto the property with all those armed guards roaming around.”

Ro just shook her head, “No.”

“Good,” he said, then held up a finger, like he had a thought. “Ah, the railroad yard. It butts up against the back of the junkyard, doesn’t it? You could have found some hidden spot in the underbrush behind the junkyard where you could check things from close range.” He narrowed his eyes, as if thinking. “Let’s see… How might you have been able to get onto the yards property without risking getting arrested?” Then, with a look that was half smug and half knowing, said, “Ah, I bet you have a friend who works there and you two pretended you were paying a visit to the roundhouse.”

Ro was taken aback. “You know about the roundhouse?”

“Well, it’s been around for a very long time, so I wouldn’t have much confidence in our ability to know our patrol patch if we weren’t aware of its…uh…late-night attraction.” Then smiled, “Trying to slip onto the junkyard or the railroad property would have been reckless but using a trip

to the roundhouse as a plausible cover… That was resourceful, another trait I’m pleased you have. I hope you didn’t have to tell your friend too much about why you wanted to look at the trading outfit’s layout.”

“We have a special relationship,” Ro said, letting Tate draw his own conclusion as to what exactly that meant, “and he’s the one who two years ago originally spotted something new was happening at the junkyard that turned out to be Pacifica Trading and flagged me about it.”