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Benny & Ray 120 Good Cop, Bad Cop Dee Gilles Rated PG-13

Detective Doyle sat across from a man in Interview Room #2 while Detective Franklin paced behind and to the left of the suspect. There was no air conditioning inside the tiny room, and it was hot as hell. Doyle had let the man sit by himself in the room for an hour, stewing.

Al Bonaventura was sweating, beads dripping from his temple and upper lip. Doyle knew he was guilty as sin.

Doyle sat back in his chair and rolled up his sleeves. He wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. He loved to break perps down.

"So how do you know Matthew Domenico?" Doyle asked. It was his turn to be bad cop.

True to his name, "Funny Face" Al he was an odd-looking man. His features looked mismatched, like a bad police composite drawing. His eyes were set a little too close together, and his too-large ears stuck out from his head, pitching forward.

"Don't know him at all," Al said.

"You put a big hurt on him. He must have done something to you. You two have beef or something?"

"Nah, nah, nothing like that.

"You know Joe Medeiros?" Doyle asked.

"Who?"

"Medeiros!" Doyle said impatiently. He pulled his chair closer to Funny Face, who instantly pushed his chair back. Doyle doubted he even realized it. "So what did these kids do to you? Huh?" Doyle asked.

"Nothin'!"

"You don't know Andy Domenico?"

Al looked down and to the left. "Nope," he said resolutely.

"Really? Why'd we find his address in your sock drawer? Oh, and by the way, we snagged that baggie full of white powder you had stashed in your underwear drawer. It's now property of Chicago P.D. in case you're looking for it later. Hasn't officially been checked in. Just so you know. Think about that for a minute, before I ask you again. How do you know Andy Domenico?"

"Look. He owed somebody I know a little vig, that's all. He was having trouble collecting, so I went to go collect some debt."

"Who you collecting for?" Doyle asked. "Who'd you do the job with?"

Funny Face remained silent.

Franklin, who up to now had been quiet, finally spoke. "Look, we're trying to help you out here. We don't wanna see you go back to jail, nice guy like you. But you gotta give us something." Franklin did `good cop' the best.

Funny Face eyed Doyle's attractive partner, measuring, but kept his mouth shut.

Franklin asked. "Who are you protecting? We know it wasn't you that beat the kids up. As it stands right now, you'll go down for breaking and entering. Maybe a drug charge if things go badly. Problem is, this would be `strike three' for you, my friend. How old do you think you'll be when you finally get out? Sixty? Sixty five? We found a gun, too, by the way."

"I didn't have a gun."

"We found a gun." Micky said.

"It wasn't mine!"

"Really? Whose was it?" Franklin inquired, continuing her pacing behind the perp. It was unnerving him.

He looked uncomfortably between Doyle and Franklin. "Nobody's," he muttered.

"Oh. It was Nobody's gun," Micky replied. "Was `Nobody' the guy that beat those kids up?"

"Who else was there, Al?" Franklin asked.

"Wha'?"

She rolled her eyes. "You heard me. Was it Nicky Catalano?"

Funny Face Al got visibly agitated. "Throw the book at me! Dammit-I ain't scared of either one of youse!"

Doyle and Franklin exchanged glances. Bingo! Doyle thought.

He decided to chip away at another spot for a while. "How do you know Tommy DeBenedetto?"

"I don't know nobody by that name."

"You don't, do you?"

"Nah."

"How `bout Bruno Massimiliano?"

"Wha'?"

"You gotta hearing problem or something?" Doyle growled. "I know you heard of DeBenedetto. He was in the papers all spring."

"I don't read the paper."

"It was all over the news, too."

"So I don't watch TV, that much."

"He was the victim of a gay-bashing."

"Oh, that guy?"

"Yeah, that guy. Somebody almost bludgeons him to death with a baseball bat, and the next month, those same guys get the crap beaten out of them. How do you explain that?"

"They got shit luck, I guess."

Franklin spoke. "Listen. We know DeBenedetto put you up to this. Don't tell us you didn't know him. It's an open and shut case. How'd you know him? Old school buddy, maybe? Old...boyfriend?"

Bonaventura stood. "Hey!"

"Siddown!" Doyle said. "'Cause you know that's what people are gonna think. Guy helpin' out an old flame. Is that it?"

"No, that ain't it! I ain't no queer!"

"Prove it, then," Doyle said. "Tell us who sent you after the Domenicos. Tell us, and you can go home and be at the kitchen table for dinner. Your wife cook?"

"I ain't married."

"Ever been married?"

"Nah."

"Really? A man your age? Never married? Oh, what people will think." Doyle taunted.

Funny Face looked stricken. "I don't know who gave the order! Honest. I'm just a soldier."

"Who did the job with you?"

Funny Face sighed, and shook his head.

Doyle kept pressing. "Just give it up. Give it up, and you can just walk away with a slap on the wrist, alright? The drug charge goes away. The gun charge goes away. And none of those nasty rumors will get out about you and DeBenedetto....You can just walk."

Funny Face looked from Doyle to Franklin and back. His shoulders sagged in resignation.

Doyle inwardly smiled.

Funny Face took a deep breath, and told them what they wanted to know.

VVVVVV

Funny Face Al fingered "Nicky the Nose" Catalano as his partner. They pulled Catalano off the street the next day for questioning. Franklin and Doyle repeated their routine, only this time Franklin was the bad cop and Doyle the good.

Unlike his pal Funny Face, Catalano proved to be a tougher nut to crack. Franklin did her best to break him down, but he wasn't having it. Nicky the Nose stared straight ahead during most of the questioning, and said very little.

Finally, Doyle joined Franklin's interrogation and they both put the full-court press on him, but Catalano was a tiger. He didn't look like he'd be that tough. He was a small and wiry man with a hawkish nose, but he had dangerous eyes. He was resolute in his silence.

An hour dragged by, then another. The room was so hot that Doyle removed his tie. Nicky the Nose barely broke a sweat. Doyle dug his heels in.

Eventually, Franklin had to get going to pick up her kid from daycare, so she took off.

It was all up to Doyle, then, and he pulled out all the stops. He let the man sit for three hours, no food, no water, in the stuffy little room, to contemplate his fate. He later brought in a hot roast beef sandwich, dripping with cheese and ate in front of him.

Nicky the Nose still didn't budge. Doyle started to secretly admire him, just a little.

He brought in Kowalski later, to get in the guy's face. He even brought in Fraser for a little while to play good cop to Kowalski's bad cop, see if they could finally weaken him enough to talk.

No go.

But Doyle was like a bulldog with a good gristly bone.

Finally, at ten o'clock, after nearly eight hours later, Doyle cut him a deal, similar to what he had done with Funny Face. Give up your man, and you can walk.

Catalano finally gave up the name of the guy who gave the order to beat up the Domenicos. The man's name was Franky Fingers. Doyle knew him well.

He cut Catalano loose around ten-thirty, and went home and collapsed into this bed fully clothed.

VVVVVV

Days later, Doyle sat in his cubicle in the quiet made a few notes in his personal log. He scribbled down everything he knew about the Domenico case. He took a few swigs of his strong black coffee between sentences.

Here's what he knew: They hadn't been able to get to Franky Fingers. He was too high up in the West Side Family. But they knew Franky Fingers was a go-between for a capo named Fat Vinny. And Fat Vinny was Untouchable. He never went out, he never spoke to anybody directly. They never heard his name mentioned on any wiretaps. His record was pristine. Nothing had ever, ever had been pinned to Fat Vinny...at least nothing that had stuck anyway.

Doyle wondered how somebody like Tommy DeBenedetto was connected to Fat Vinny. Most likely, it was in fact Tommy and not Bruno that was the missing link. Bruno was from the west coast, and hadn't been in Chicago long enough to have those kinds of deep connections. And Tommy grew up in the neighborhood.

Last night as Doyle and Franklin were logging out, Lt. Welsh handed a slip to him to go and look into a gas station holdup around the corner. Doyle had cringed when he saw Welsh walking toward them with the yellow slip. Welsh had made that walk several times last week. The shit was really piling up.

This past week, they had picked up two rape cases, an attempted abduction of a minor, and a probable organized auto theft ring. And somehow, they had to find time to do undercover surveillance and go to court as their various cases went to trial.

Lately, Micky had been coming in at six a.m. and staying until eight, nine, ten at night. Almost everybody had too, except Fraser and Franklin, and that was only because they had children to look after.

Welsh had been pressing him and Franklin to close some of their open cases. God knows they were trying. Several had gone cold already in the past months. In fact, Elaine was going to pack some up and ship them off to the Cold Case Department as soon as she came into this morning. It was embarrassing to admit defeat. To have to go to the CCD with your tail between your legs and explain how you fucked up and just couldn't seal the deal.

Micky Doyle gulped down more coffee. They needed to get this stuff prioritized. Deal with what they could and get through them in the quickest time possible. He thought of asking Fraser and Kowalski to take a few more cases, but he and Franklin had been farming out quite a few to them lately. He knew Fraser'd never say no to his request for help, but the fact was that those two had their own job to do.

Doyle grabbed the folders on his desk and began to shuffle through them. He put them in order of highest profile to lowest.

The Domenico battery case found its way to the bottom of the pile. Doyle stood, stretched and went to retrieve himself another cup of hot black coffee.

FINIS