[16 days after the attack on Ben, Sara, and Sophia]
Ben sat in the office of Captain Andersen at Mid-Wilshire station.
"Makes my skin crawl," the captain commented as she reviewed the files a third time. "We face dangerous situations pretty much daily. Having a dirty cop in the ranks makes everyone unsure if their fellow officers will have their back."
"Well, once Armstrong was taken into custody it didn't take long for him to spill the beans. Didn't even take a deal, he was just tired of the games," Ben relayed with a disdainful nod. But deep inside, he was conflicted. He knew he was different, he followed his own rules, not someone-else's - but he also knew that most dirty cops thought so, too. There was always an excuse, and his was merely righteous to him and him alone.
"His wife died and he took money to pay for the medical bills and such?"
Ben nodded in reply.
"There's whispers at IA that he also got help during the Rosalind Dyer arrest, but it's kept hush-hush for now. Having her released is the last thing IA wants. There's no doubt that she is what we all know she is. A monster," the detective revealed as he watched two IA officers walk past the office of the captain.
They were escorting a patrol officer away in cuffs.
"He's the only one?" Zoe Andersen asked, her eyes following the officer just like Ben's.
"For now, yes. You'd have to ask Commander West. Technically, I shouldn't have been the one to tell you. I'm only allowed to read the files, not work on the Derian cases."
The captain looked back at the detective in front of her desk.
It had been two weeks and some change since Ben saved her and Nolan from Cole Midas' trap. Her hands had healed, mostly. The abduction wasn't the scariest thing she lived through in her life, so her mental state wasn't shaken. Active duty in Afghanistan had been much more trying, much more… raw.
And yet, dislocating her own thumbs and fighting for survival only to be saved by a sniper in suburban Los Angeles still felt unreal.
By all accounts, Ben shouldn't have been where he was. He shouldn't have been carrying the Remington that he used to take care of the three assailants. And yet he was.
Not in some dry desert country where everyone might be an enemy.
Right in the middle of the posh part of West Hollywood. Where every house had a pool that alone would cost more than her yearly salary, less need to be said about the mansions themselves.
"Thank you again, Ben," she eventually said when the silence dragged on in her office.
"We take care of our own," Ben accepted with a nod, though his smile turned a little sheepish. "Or so Mumford and Hondo keep saying."
Zoe nodded with a respectful demeanor that turned a little mischievous and asked, "Metro is treating you right, it seems, but if you ever want to come back to your roots, I'd love to have you here at Mid-Wilshire."
"The people here are my friends. Rely on me to be there if you need it," Ben said to evade refusing the brunette outright.
They both knew he wouldn't accept, but the rejection didn't need to be put into words.
"Officer Nolan is back on active duty this week, he took this better than I hoped. I'm glad I got him at my station," Andersen praised as she continued to smile at the detective.
After all, despite Ben's colorful history with her watch commander, Sergeant Grey who used to be his T.O, Ben seemed to have the tightest relationship with the rookie John Nolan of all officers at the station. Through the gossip at the station, she heard about the two of them doing stuff together all the time. Ben had even helped her three rookies study for their latest test.
"Yeah, Nolan's a fine officer. The LAPD is lucky to have him," Ben countered with a smile of his own.
Despite having been tased and captured by Cole Midas, Nolan had cared much more about Ben's well-being after hearing about the three assassins failing to kill him on the street after picking Sara up.
Though the oldest rookie disguised it as a double-date with his new girlfriend Jessica Russo, Nolan still came over to cook for Ben and Sara the day after the detective was released from the hospital and even went out to shop for groceries for him. Something Nolan had to fight over with Zofia.
"So, if you aren't here on IA's orders, why are you here?" Andersen asked as she stood up and gestured for Ben to do the same. As nice as this was, there was still work to be done.
"Your supervising detective Sergeant Caradine is handling the case for the Serj Derian shooting personally. Since SWAT is about to raid a facility belonging to the gang that is now fighting the Derians in the hopes of finding their biggest weapons stash, I was wondering if he could answer a few questions I have. Due diligence to see if he uncovered a reason for their rabid behavior," Ben revealed, showing no signs of his inner conflict. No, he bit it down and extended an invitation, "And, I was wondering if you and Grey wanted to come over for dinner tonight."
"Sure," Andersen immediately agreed.
She had heard Nolan rave about the impressive mansion that Ben lived in and wanted to see it for herself. There was also that standing invitation for Ben's pool she had gotten the day the detective saved them.
-----
"I've had a talk with Detective Caradine after you left," Zoe said as she watched Ben finally sit down after finishing the dinner he had prepared.
It was already almost 7PM, their workday was over. Ben was busy pouring a glass of wine for himself and Captain Andersen.
Wade Grey stopped paying attention to the discussion between his wife Luna and Ben's girlfriend Sara and instead looked at his boss.
"Oh?"
"He said he is convinced that someone framed the Baldwin Gang, though that hasn't made it into his official report yet. As a working theory, he hasn't mentioned it to anyone but me either," the captain said and intently studied Ben's face. Her first instinct was to think of Ben, even though Commander West had already told her all she needed to know.
West had said that Ben suspected disgraced officer Nick Armstrong to look into him on the Derian's orders. And that West had reached that conclusion even before the detective. Then, when the dirty cop found nothing, he began trying to frame Ben anyway on the orders of Ruben Derian just to throw the LAPD off. It was a subtle comment here, a curious footnote in a casefile there. Minor things that weren't even necessarily true, which was only picked up because IA had been monitoring Armstrong's actions since a while ago.
Regardless, the situation was messy.
Especially because nobody knew how they found Armstrong's blackmail cache. The disgraced detective vehemently insisted that they found it at the wrong place even after confessing to everything they found inside. Their only saving grace was that Erin Cole and her training officer had their body cams on during the entirety of the search and found the incriminating files with no signs of foul play.
"Yeah, Caradine said the same thing to me. But they already escalated the matter. It doesn't really matter anymore if someone framed them because there is no way Elijah Stone calls the war off now. Ruben retaliated and started it on false pretenses, that can't fly," Ben pointed out with a thoughtful expression. He didn't flinch when he heard the truth, the framing he had done.
"Elijah Stone?"
"Yeah, he's the man behind the Baldwins?" Ben stated more than asked.
"I mean, there's rumors that he might be the one leading them in the files of Vice, but there's no confirmation on it," Andersen countered with furrowed brows.
Ben shook his head with a regretful sigh and said, "I already contacted Vice about that to change their files. Since I'm 'Metro Liaison Detective', the DEA is a little less reluctant to share intel with me. They confirmed years ago Elijah has been running things but only through ill-gotten wiretaps and surveillance without warrants so they can't act on it."
"I don't think I've heard about them before they started the fight with the Derians. Is the Baldwin Gang truly big enough to start a war with the Armenians?" Grey chimed in with a raised brow.
"They are ruthless enough, and one of the first victims in the budding war was the sister of his wife who was with one of his right hands, so it's extra personal for Elijah. I mean, not that the death of his brother makes it any less personal for Ruben," Ben revealed.
He had chosen Elijah Stone's gang on purpose because they were exactly what he needed for the frame job.
After everything he found on the Baldwin Gang, he was sure that their revenge would be bloody and methodical. They had kept a low profile for ages, never targeting civilians for fear of getting on the police's radar. But they did kill their competition, especially if their rivals and competitors didn't get the less lethal message the first time.
Ben wanted to kill multiple birds with one stone in this whole operation. Culling both crime syndicates - ideally without any collateral damage - was his ultimate goal.
Not that he didn't lay awake at night at times, haunted by what he had done when he read the reports of more 'bangers' dying during this conflict. The death of Stone's sister-in-law was especially jarring.
"Well, Vice didn't have the name of their leader, but they linked over forty homicides to the Baldwins over the past five years without being able to make any of them stick. They know who likely took the first shot, too, the one that got Serj. But they haven't been able to find him. Aiden Merritt, Army sniper who was dishonorably discharged and recruited by several gangs as a fixer. The man has no shots on record for the distance of the shot that killed Serj Derian, but it's more worrying that he was also a demolitions expert," Andersen absentmindedly added, her thoughts wandering.
She noticed that Ben had picked up that she was testing him and she did not read the response she thought she was going to get. With an inward sigh, she continued, "Serj's kill might have been a lucky shot, too. It was a stomach hit that didn't seem like it was properly aimed, understandable considering the distance. He bled out on the way to the hospital but would have lived if the shot was an inch in any other direction. It wasn't outright lethal. Maybe whoever shot Serj wanted to send a message and got unlucky that the message was more brutal than intended."
Everyone now looked at Zoe Andersen, who suddenly gained a sheepish smile. Luna and Sara looked at her with mild disgust for bringing something so graphic up just before they started eating.
"Well. It's been almost a decade since I was allowed to eat Benny's food. So no more talking shop before I officially lose my appetite," Luna, Grey's wife, suddenly cut in.
The topic was indeed a little morbid.
"The last time you complained about everything and told me to never step foot in a kitchen again," Ben mumbled with a small scoff, but he quickly regretted it.
Giving her husband who started - and quickly stopped - gloating at Ben's 'idiotic' remark, Luna stated, "Just because you can't cook doesn't mean I don't enjoy your efforts, the thoughtful gesture of having been invited into your lovely home. Plus, I didn't need to slave away in the kitchen myself."
"Yes, ma'am," Ben answered dutifully.
"I don't know what he made for you the last time, but I enjoy his cooking," Sara chimed in with a disarming smile and Luna quickly gave the redhead an understanding smile.
Just as the situation seemed to have resolved itself, Luna commented, "I know love makes blind, but I didn't know it made you forget the taste of real food, too."
Ben couldn't stop himself and started laughing.
He had earned the scorn in his opinion, so he didn't feel insulted. The first and last time he had cooked for his first boss and his family, Ben had undercooked the spaghetti and added onions to a sauce without frying them first - completely ruining the taste. The meal he had presented Luna and his TO at the time was so bad they had collectively decided to order takeout after just one bite.
"I got a little better these past years," Ben mumbled with a grin and started putting food on his plate first to show the others that he didn't want to poison them.
Just like the dinner he had at Deacon's place the other day, connections to his friends and allies was what grounded Ben. His actions behind the scenes tore him apart because he wasn't able to stop himself, but the friendly faces were a welcome distraction.
-----
[3 weeks and 4 days after the attack on Ben, Sara, and Sophia]
Ben sat in his office, full SWAT gear on, and reviewed a file logged by Vice.
He had just come back from a bust where he assisted Hondo's team as a sniper doing 'overwatch', not strictly as a detective.
Street was still off SWAT because of a fallout with his team leader Hondo after the newest member of the 20-David-squad lied about his whereabouts as the hotshot SWAT officer helped his freshly paroled criminal mother instead of being where he was supposed to be during work.
"Stone and Derian met at Santa Monica Pier?" Ben whispered to himself as he reviewed the pictures the undercover Vice officer took.
The last picture showed the two crime bosses shaking hands.
"So they reached an agreement of sorts? Or was this just for show?"
A knock interrupted his train of thought.
"Hey, Luca's doing a taco run, you in?" Tan asked as he leaned in through the door frame after Ben acknowledged the knock.
"Yeah, he knows my order," Ben instantly agreed without having to look up.
"Got it!" Tan shouted and ran back, closing the door again.
Ben closed the file and drummed his fingers on his desk.
Thinking over his options, Ben was interrupted again with another knock a few minutes later - but this visitor didn't wait for a confirmation and walked in.
"So. Quinceanera tomorrow," Chris said and allowed herself to fall onto the couch in her best friend's office.
"What about it? Does your tía have another fifty people to put on the guest list?"
Chris just laughed, it seemed Ben wasn't too far off since he didn't hear a denial.
"Is Sara going to be there?"
"Why? Afraid you can't pretend we're a couple with her hovering around?"
"You do get me," the latina SWAT officer sighed in mock admiration.
"Sara's back in London with Sophia for the week. Their flight took off an hour ago. Emilia and Anna are the only ones at my home currently," Ben said to answer the implied question.
"Aww, too bad about Sophia. But you're right, she did say something about the trip now that I think about it," Chris mumbled with a smirk only she knew what it meant. "What about the other Zofia?"
"She's going to spend the weekend at Jay's place. Gloria wanted to spend a romantic weekend without Joe and paid Zofia to watch him," Ben answered while finishing a report on his computer.
"Doesn't Jay have two adult children with their own kids? Why not place them with his family if they wanted to get away for a few days?"
"Next thing you're going to do is whisper 'white people'," Ben mockingly quipped back.
"White people," Chris mumbled with a roll of her eyes simultaneously and started laughing. Still chuckling, she said, "You really get me, man."
"To answer your question and shoot back the insult, your fellow latina was the one to decide how 'Fulgencio' will be watched. Jay had no say in the matter, as usual. The little boy loves Zofia and would gladly spend the weekend alone with her, but Gloria didn't want any family drama. So, Claire will spend the first night with Phil, and Mitch and Cam will come over the day after."
"Claire didn't complain that they didn't need a nanny to watch them?"
"I can only assume that she did and yet Zofia is still already over there and getting paid," Ben answered with a careless shrug. "To be honest, I think Cam will be the most offended of the bunch. Mitchell will huff but ultimately attribute it to something his father did. Since Claire gets the same treatment, though, Mitchell won't think it's because his dad thinks they are bad parents. Cam, however, will take it personal. He always does."
"And he'll still get over it once the misunderstanding clears," Chris chimed in with a sagely nod.
"I just hope for her sake that he won't be as awkward around Zofia as he was the last few times," Ben said with a sigh and worried facial expression that slowly formed into a small grin.
These problems were relaxing in their own way. So far removed from the bloodshed he had caused with a single bullet and a drone, Ben's mind stopped tearing at itself, letting the guilt and apprehension rest for a short while.
"He said something stupid and made a huge blunder instead of simply apologizing, right?"
"Yeah, we all know he didn't mean it like that when he said 'you people', clearly meaning Eastern European Au Pairs or nannies, and suddenly he rambled on and on about modern slavery and racism and 'white guilt' and, ugh, I get second-hand embarrassment just thinking about it," Ben replied with a shiver as he thought back on that ridiculous dinner back when he was still together with Haley.
"Alright, so. My tía sent me the names of five more 'uncles' who decided to visit and confirmed that we need entry for another car. My cousin is getting my niece a convertible and finally got the plates," Chris revealed in an effort to change the topic.
"Of course," Ben scoffed in disbelief.
"It's because we can use your house for free that they had the money to get the car," Chris countered with a small laugh.
"Wait a minute - who said anything about free?" Ben asked with a raised brow and a disbelieving smile that slowly started to turn a grin.
Chris only answered with a middle-finger, though she changed her mind and asked, "I could pay you with a kiss?"
"That's prostitution and solicitation," Ben countered and threw his handcuffs over the desk on the chair next to the couch Chris was laying on. Without even standing up, he lazily ordered in a quiet, bored voice, "LAPD, you're under arrest."
"What kind of shit cop are you that you don't know that it's one crime and not two if I'm the one offering?"
"I already had to referee quizzes between those three rookies at Mid-Wilshire because Nolan asked, don't get me started on a California Penal Code trivia contest," Ben chided and closed his laptop as well as his eyes.
Walking around his desk after a short, silent rest, he nudged Chris' leg and said, "Come on. Luca is about to arrive with the tacos."
Chris stretched out both arms and pouted, requesting, "Carry me!"
"You might be half as cute as her, but you weigh much more than Anna. So the answer will have to be no," Ben replied and walked to the door.
"Man, you're gonna make some bride real happy someday," Chris said with a scoff and stood up, hanging an arm over Ben's shoulder as she caught up to him. "'Sorry babe, can't carry you for the photo on our wedding day. You're much fatter than my toddler.'"
Ben just chuckled but didn't comment. After all, since she hung herself on his back, he was still kind of carrying Chris right now and didn't shrug her off.
-----
[4 weeks after the attack on Ben, Sara, and Sophia]
Ben was in a bad mood.
Sara was still in London and would only arrive a few days later. She had extended her business-trip. She said it had nothing to do with their fight, but Ben was unconvinced. The calls he had been having with her since the weekend had all been curt and icy.
He knew he probably messed up even though to him it truly didn't mean anything. He had asked first. He had shown all there was to it and been completely transparent.
But that brief peck he shared with Chris still got Sara mad.
'In a relationship being technically right didn't always mean you were actually right,' his mother once told him after she had been in a fight with his father. Ben remembered that argument like it was yesterday, despite having been an elementary student at the time.
His father had bought a motorcycle, his mother wanted it gone. His father had argued that his mother had once been okay with him having one, his mother countered that her approval had come at a time before Ben was even born.
People were allowed to change their opinion, especially in a relationship as short as theirs. Especially if circumstances changed. What Sara thought was fine might not be once she saw it happen, that was her right.
So Ben was patient. He knew Sara was worth it. And he knew Sara wasn't being unreasonable. Not yet.
It just sucked.
So he was in a bad mood.
"Fuck you, Ruben Derian," Ben whispered to himself as he so often did these past few weeks and hit send on the last email he had written on an encrypted virtual machine hosted far away from California. There were dark circles under his eyes.
With Sara gone and them fighting, Ben found no rest these past few days. Anna had declared she would help her daddy sleep. Since Sara was gone, the little girl had offered to fill the void by sleeping together in his bed.
Ben was naturally delighted… but his happiness had long turned into fond exasperation. His daughter was the most restless sleeper he had ever seen. It looked like she was trying to film an entire karate movie trilogy at night. She didn't just toss and turn either, she used his entire large mattress and weaseled from one end to another and back again.
Back in his dad's study, he finished deleting anything that could even offer a chance to be used to trace this back to him. Accounts, logs, servers, settings, VMs, backups - any resource he had used for his latest scheme was deleted in seconds. The script to do it thoroughly and without missing a step had been prepared and double-checked beforehand.
Ben leaned back in his chair with a weary sigh and closed his eyes to rest them as he so often did nowadays.
Elijah Stone and Ruben Derian did come to an accord. The gang war was halted, for the moment anyway. The killings have stopped.
But that meant Ruben Derian had no idea who killed his brother and he was losing his inside men at the LAPD quickly.
Ben was not finished with the complete defeat he had planned for Ruben, though. So the next part was about to unfold.
-----
[same time at the HQ of FBI Los Angeles Field Division]
Matthew Garza had been assigned as Supervisory Special Agent, or SSA for short, in Los Angeles to lead the Special Investigative Unit only recently. The position wasn't new, just the team he had been asked to create and the city where he worked.
The team was still in its infancy, they didn't have a lot of work yet because their first few cases had shown their inadequacy to the higher-ups. Something Special Agent Garza was busy correcting.
"Sir, you've received a very weird email that IT flagged," one of the recruits he had personally taken with him from Quantico said as she leaned into his office.
She was promising but still needed a lot of guidance, a focus to guide her forward, or so Garza wrote in his latest report. What he didn't write was that the brunette could be a bit of a scatterbrain sometimes. But she applied herself and never backed down. He might end up deciding she wasn't field agent material, but she was a fine investigator.
He liked that about her.
"Flagged as what?" Garza asked.
"Uh, they didn't say. Holden from IT just wrote 'weird'?"
Garza stared at the young woman for a short moment before he sighed and opened his inbox to take a look himself.
"'Unknown origin, no traceable source, empty header.' It says it right there, Edison," Garza read out loud and fought the urge to pinch his brows in exasperation. "Come over, we'll take a look together."
Garza pressed play on a video that IT had marked as uncorrupted from the attachment, there wasn't much in the mail anyway except for the comments IT left before routing it to his email account. His protege hurried around the table to look at the monitor over his shoulder.
"*Ruben Derian of the LA Derian Crime family has started a feud with the Baldwin Gang because he suspected them of murdering his brother. This was likely a frame job,*" a generic computer-generated voice began to narrate as it showed a slideshow of Ruben and Elijah shaking hands at Santa Monica Pier.
"*Since there was no motive, the brief but bloody killings stopped soon. That still leaves the question of who killed Serj Derian.*"
Garza paused the video and looked over his shoulder.
"You have been briefed on the Derian versus Baldwin gang war, Edison?"
His protege hurriedly nodded her head.
"Does the LAPD know who killed Serj Derian?"
Agent Edison shook her head after brief thought.
"Use your words, Edison," Garza said with a sigh and turned back to the computer.
He began looking into the files the LAPD had on the case filed by one Detective Caradine. What stood out immediately to Garza was the many arrests of police officers mentioned in the 'footnotes' of the case file.
"So the Derians had a whole network of LAPD officers on their payroll?" Edison asked over her boss' shoulder after Garza opened the files on the half a dozen arrested officers one by one. That hadn't hit the news yet.
Eventually, Garza reached the name Erin Cole and began to dig deeper. They might have gotten easy access to the homicide case, but they didn't have free access into the servers of Internal Affairs.
Hence, Garza needed to form a picture on his own.
"Ben Weiss," he uttered under his breath when he saw a name in Erin Cole's file that stood out. "Nine evaluations."
"What does that mean?" Edison asked.
"It means she is a rookie officer who still needs evaluations by her training officer and that Ben Weiss took her out nine times at least instead of her usual T.O.," Garza replied in a quiet voice as he continued reading. "Even on that day of the heist, whew."
"Ben Weiss. He's that celebrity officer who keeps getting medallions, right?"
Garza merely nodded. It was why the name stood out to him. Well, not entirely. Unknown to the young detective, the two had a history.
"Is nine a lot? Or too little?"
"It's a lot unless he took a special interest in her," Garza replied, his eyes still glued to the screen. "It paints the picture that this whole Derian crime family thing started with Ben Weiss and her. She wasn't among those who were arrested, after all. No, instead she was listed as one of the arresting officers for Nick Armstrong. We'd need to talk with IA to learn more, probably. Or they are fucking."
"Wait, you think there's a connection to Serj Derian's death?!" Edison asked in disbelief, ignoring the uncomfortable sexual possibility.
"No, no, not at all. That would be a huge leap. No, I think they were the ones to get the ball rolling. The investigations into those dirty officers had to start somewhere. I suspect it was Ben Weiss," Garza corrected as opened the file the FBI had on the detective.
"But, wouldn't that mean Weiss would make the arrests? He wasn't in any of the case files."
Garza shook his head and pointed at the file they had of Ben.
"He foiled an assassination attempt and was taken off the case to make sure total impartiality can be proven. Smart play by the LAPD, but I bet that wouldn't sit quite right with Weiss. Or maybe it does. He's a bit of a wildcard."
Edison kept reading everything Garza highlighted with furrowed brows. Eventually, Garza turned back to the monitor with the video and pressed play.
"*Unknown to the FBI, apparently, the Derians have rats among their ranks, too. Agent Denning working as a data analyst, for example. Denning's step-brother was a sniper in the marines.*"
Garza pressed pause again and studied the frame the video showed.
Agent Denning sitting in what looked like his apartment with a prostitute in his lap and Serj Derian opposite him with a manila folder on the table.
"Where the fuck did they get this?" Garza cursed under his breath.
The short video was taken via drone, the camera seemed way too high-quality for amateur footage. Yet, it was from an angle that disqualified the usual drones the military or the agency used. They flew much higher and this video was taken from what looked like the fourth floor looking into the third floor of an apartment building.
It was a wonder that nobody was looking out of the window because of the noise.
Garza immediately typed an email to IT demanding that they analyze this part of the footage especially and the entire thing as a whole while at it. Not just to verify that it was a legitimate recording that wasn't tampered with, but also to scrap any metadata that could help them identify the source.
"*Serj Derian died a day after this video was taken,*" the voice robotically continued once Garza pressed play again.
The voice remained quiet while the video showed snippets from ill-gotten logs from broadcasting towers and logged calls to and between what appeared to be burner phones.
"Edison, try to work out a profile. I want to know who sent us this," Garza demanded as he stared at the black screen once the video ended.
"It's someone from local law enforcement, probably LAPD, right?" She unsurely asked.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I mean. We saw those photos at the very beginning in the files from the LAPD. And they said 'FBI has rats, too'. And at the very start, they used the word 'motive' instead of 'reason' when they talked about why Serj Derian died," she said in deep focus. "Maybe someone who got this footage and the phone numbers illegally and can't act on it, hoping we make an arrest because it came from an anonymous source."
Garza nodded with a pleased smile as he turned back and said, "I was thinking the same thing. Look this video over and find everything we might have missed on our first watch. Who knows, it might have been a misdirect, too. On the premise that Dennings is indeed a rat, this comes from someone who is either fed up with the Derians, the LAPD, or the FBI, or it is an attempt to throw us off the scent. To waste resources or obfuscate what is really happening."
The response from IT came quickly. They were already working on the verification of the video.
"No metadata, the audio has no extra sounds, just the computer-generated 'Microsoft Sam' voice that millions of people have on their computers. The origin of the mail is an off-shore server that is no longer reachable, likely already wiped," Garza read out loud. "This was sent by someone who knew what they are doing…"
His gaze shifted back to Ben Weiss' picture on his other monitor, then to the name Ben had assumed during his undercover mission, Ben Muller.
He remembered that shitshow, especially because he used to work together with Special Agent Ford. He knew the reason the late agent would want to see Martin Kraft's organization toppled and why it had to be done unofficially.
Hence, it didn't surprise him that he had been called to work on the cover up, as much as the long-time agent hated doing it.
Ben Weiss did nothing wrong. The FBI failed the detective. His colleague Ford failed that young officer. They all continued to fail him every single day.
They only made it worse for the young man with so much promise again and again. All the hard work he had put into that operation and the bosses of his bosses used the evidence not to take heinous monsters into custody but for political blackmail.
Not that anybody would find out anytime soon. Not that Garza could act on it and make the arrests stick. These people were too connected.
They got congressmen doing their coverups - there was no justice to be found.
"You work on that profile. I'll talk to Ben Weiss," Garza decided and stood up. "Asking him about the investigation into the dirty cops is easier than convincing LAPD Internal Affairs to give us a copy of their files. We will need to know more if we want to take this video seriously."
-----
[same time at Ruben Derian's secret hideout]
*CRASH*
"FUCK!!!" Ruben screamed after flipping the coffee table.
Pacing back and forth with unhinged, unrestrained energy, the gang leader turned to a group of his men sitting at a dining table near him waiting for orders.
"Find me someone with fucking computer skills!"
Everyone turned to one man, who quickly stood up and ran out to fulfill the order.
The remaining men then looked to one another before one asked, "What is it boss?"
Ruben angrily picked up the tablet he had flipped to the floor together with the table. He cursed under his breath when he saw the single crack across the screen, but at least it stopped him from tossing the tablet toward his men, possibly breaking it even more.
"Some fuckward sent me a picture. Nobody knows that fucking address except for my family," he angrily pointed out as he fought the urge to punch a wall.
The men at the table all craned their neck to look at the tablet.
On it was a simple picture.
King Midas behind bars talking to someone in the dining area of the prison he was in. Ruben Derian recognized the tattoos of the one Midas was talking to, and he recognized Midas. And if he didn't, the info was spelled out for him under the picture.
"'Midas is planning to take over your business to make up for losses. Just ask Abelyan,'" one man read out. "What the fuck? Davit is no rat."
"Of course he fucking isn't!" Ruben yelled. "Davit Abelyan would rather cut his own head off than betray the organization! We have his fucking sisters!"
One of the men at the table furrowed his brows and stood up to make a call.
The men who still remained once again shared concerned looks. Davit Abelyan was the latest fall guy that they had used to make the investigations against Ruben go away. They had smuggled Davit and his three sisters to the US for this purpose, not that Davit originally knew. But once he was needed, Davit was given little choice.
The man who was supposed to 'get the computer expert' came back inside.
"Our guy is on his way. Alex is picking him up," the man reported but didn't sit back down.
"What else!?" Ruben demanded once he saw the frown on the man's face.
"Davit was transferred to a different prison after he was attacked during a riot in the high security cell block. Our guard couldn't find out where. The files were made confidential. He suspects the feds."
Ruben's fists clenched tighter, his breath turned more erratic, his eyes widened.
"FUCK!"
The gang leader angrily continued pacing for several minutes. Eventually, the other man who had stepped out for a call came back inside, his face pale.
"Davit's sisters were freed. LAPD picked up Narek and Officer Hudson at the hideout in Anaheim in a joint exercise with the Chief of the APD. That was our last man inside the APD, we're flying blind now in Anaheim," he timidly reported.
"FUCK!" Ruben yelled again.