With summer classes being over and Ezra still having a few weeks until the fall semester started Ezra was finding himself with a lot of free time on his hands. Normally he cherished this time, usually every spare second of it for research and writing his crime novel. However, since learning that in the dreams he was basically writing the same exact book and it was based on real people there, and that he had pretty much stalked his dream!girlfriend for ‘research’, continuing to write it just felt wrong. Only problem was he had no other ideas brewing in that head of his. That novel had been his sole inspiration for so long, he had put so much work into it, moving on was more difficult than he had imagined.

Today he had something to look forward to though, something that might even provide some inspiration. A little before two he put on a pot of coffee. Being a coffee addict he knew he wouldn’t mind a cup and considering he had met Carol at a coffee house she would probably want one too. It seemed the polite thing to do and considering he didn’t have much in the form of food it was about all he could offer her.

At precisely two o’clock there was a knock on his door. Punctual. Seemed about right from an editor of a magazine, although with Carol’s klutziness he wasn’t so sure. There was always the possibility that she spilled something and had to change again. He opened the door with a half smile. “Welcome,” he greeted stepping back to let her inside.

Office work suited Carol to an extent. She had set hours, mostly, she had a fairly comfortable place and she could close the door and just work without interruption when she needed to. On the other hand, she hated being stuck in the one place, with the same four walls day in and day out to the point where she would fabricate reasons to not always be in the office.

She was used to reporting, not editing. And while she was all for the promotion and the wage rise and the relocation -it was smart at this point, even she could understand Tracy’s reasoning, she missed being in the field chasing whatever story she was working on and doing interviews and research. So, an afternoon to visit someone with her old work, it seemed like a reasonable excuse to leave the office.

Finding Ezra’s home was easy enough, her car had sat-nav to direct and she only took the wrong turn once, which is why Carol always left early. She had some issues with technology at times. “Hi there,” she had a folder in her laptop case, almost five years worth of work, although there were maybe two dozen cases in her portfolio, there had been a few largely linked to mob activity that couldn’t really be published with too much detail if Carol didn’t want to end up at the bottom of the Hudson.

Not making a ton of money Ezra lived in a studio apartment. As you would expect from a lover a literature his apartment was full of books and bookcases. There was also a desk with a laptop and a typewriter, that was usually where he did his writing. Bed in the far corner, small sitting area with a couch, coffee table and TV, kitchen with a counter with stools where he could eat and a bathroom. It was small but it worked for him.

“Would you like some coffee?” he asked walking a few steps into his kitchen. “Sit. Make yourself comfortable,” he said nodding toward the couch.

“Coffee would be great,” she wasn’t overly nosy in looking around, but enough to get a general feel for the place. He hadn’t gone to the extremes that she sometimes had. Her apartment in New York used to have a crime wall, filled with clippings and post-it notes and string to join everything together. But his place was homey, comfortable.

Shrugging off her jacket behind her, Carol made herself comfortable on the couch, laying her case by her feet. “I like your place,” it was small, but it suited. And the books were an expected touch. Carol’s life was still in boxes throughout her apartment. Things she’d get to eventually.

Ezra grabbed two mugs from one of his kitchen cabinets, pouring the freshly brewed coffee into them. He brought both mugs over to where Carol was sitting setting them down on the coffee table but he didn’t sit just yet. “Milk or sugar?” He usually drank his coffee black himself, but he had the fixings. Sometimes he wanted to add a little something to it, and there were the rare occasions where he had company over who didn’t have quite the same taste as he did. He liked to be prepared.

“Just milk is fine.” Carol could take her coffee most ways, if she was feeling like having it a little sweet she tended to use flavoured creamer though, sugar was just a little too sweet sometimes. “I keep getting told I should cut back, but I’m absolutely dependent.” There were just some things that you couldn’t cut out of your life.

She was cutting back a lot of things, she wasn’t going to drop her coffee as well. “Think I got hooked during my journalism class too.”

Back to the kitchen he went retrieving the milk out of the fridge. He brought it back over for Carol to pour to her liking. “I know what you mean.” Ezra agreed. “I don’t think I would have survived college without it. Too many late nights,” and no that wasn’t a reference to his partying. Ezra wasn’t big on that in college. It was more the studying, and the writing. Took a lot of coffee to get through those nights, particularly the ones full of writing since Ezra wanted his papers even on the most boring of subjects to sound enticing which sometimes took some work. “That’s why Starbucks will never run out of business. They get the college kids hooked for life.” He was never into the fancy drinks but he knew there were a ton out there that were.

Adding the milk, Carol just smiled, “I think that’s their target demographic really. Between those terrible energy drinks, binging on protein bars and coffee, college is pretty much a blur.” Carol had been proving a point when she went to college, and while she had nothing against her siblings anymore, she still refused to be anything but the best she could be, and that just happened to be better than her brothers where possible. She couldn’t really hold her father’s misogyny against them, but it had already clouded their relationships.

“Anyway, these were obviously why I stopped by.” The laptop was left in her case and Carol pulled out the folder with her previous work and notes from inside, handing the binder over for Ezra to look through. “Not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but there’s a lot in there.”

Once she was done with the milk he put it back in the fridge then finally took a seat on the couch next to her. Or next to her laptop case to be precise. Picking up his own coffee from the coffee table he took a sip before looking over the files that Carol had brought over. “These are great,” he said sifting through them, eyes skimming over the articles. “It’s crazy that some of these things actually happened. I never knew the mafia was so powerful.”

“Oh, it’s actually pretty surprising. Most of the time it’s one gangster whacking another gangster, but occasionally that spills over to something else.” The number of mobsters killing each other off, it was astounding sometimes, but then you got to the informants, or the squealers, and that was when it got particularly gruesome.

“There was a spell ‘04 where there was a body dropping every week,” flicking through the papers, Carol found her writings from there, clumped together in a sleeve to keep the cases linked. “I mean, they’re a lot less obvious about things now than they were in the seventies, there’s not as much pressure on everyone, the made men are a little more subtle in the running of things.” There were a few small businesses that operated as a front, but a lot of the time, it was warehouses in the smaller districts and ran a lot more under the radar.

“But in April of ‘04, there was a pretty heated feud between a boss called Big Paulie and little Johnny Gotti, Johnny was gonna take over from his father one day but,” well, the bloodbath that followed really altered that, since half of the Gotti’s ended up in jail and Paulie’s crew were mostly dead. “Family members, pets, associates, everyone was fair game during this nightmare.”

Ezra nodded, eyes continuing to skim over the articles as he took in all the information Carol was giving him. Mafia crime wasn’t exactly the type of novel he was writing. Or had been writing, but things were different now. Maybe he should look into a new genre, or more accurately sub genre and he had all that research in front of him.

“Who won that feud?” Ezra asked his curiosity piqued. He set down the papers for a moment picking up his coffee for another sip. “Did you ever start to notice a pattern? When the war wasn’t going on that is, between all the other murders?”

“In the end, the Gotti’s came out the victor, I think only two members of Paulie’s crew escaped with their lives, but the Gotti family were left in disarray from the indictments that their operations all but fell apart.” Crime families went through so many shuffles, even in the late ‘00s, it was hard to keep up with them all.

“Patterns were always complicated, a lot of these guys hired out their jobs to contract killers, which surprisingly, there’s still a lot of. The thing was that a few of them had already been bought off by this guy Scagnetti, who pictured himself as the next Capone,” and controlling most of New York’s less law abiding establishments really made a large name for him. “The cops were pretty good at keeping a track of the informants though.” Sipping her coffee, Carol pointed to another of the articles, with a picture of one of the NYPD of the front.

“That was Detective Frank Gallo. He was responsible for pretty much taking out three crime families within five years.” He’d been one of the most notorious cops in the Organised Crime division. And a good friend.

It was no wonder his dreamless chose to base a novel on real people. Real life could be more fascinating than fiction. The articles Carol was showing him and stories she was telling him was proof of that. “Must have been tough to report on it all,” he commented. He could barely keep track with the articles in front of him, how Carol had managed to follow it all and report on it was beyond him.

He did notice that Carol said was in reference to the detective. Past tense. That couldn’t mean anything good. “What happened?” he asked sure there was more to the story there.

It had been an interesting time in Carol’s life. She’d had a chip on her shoulder, she knew that. She’d been so adamant that she could do anything, even follow the most dangerous and deadly criminals in the news, she could report on them. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by them.

And for a large portion of it she wasn’t. But there were the occasional times where she was scared out of her mind when unmarked, dark cars started following her around.

“Not all cops were good cops.” It was a sore spot, but something that had been taken care of within the force very swiftly. “When one family or crew lose control, others try to snatch it back, it’s one of the biggest issues that Organised Crime face.” And it was usually where a lot of the disputes started, fighting over territory. “Some of the cops were bought off by an up and comer, they screwed Frank over, he ended up in a shoot-out without back-up.” It was a scandal at the time, when police had some added respect, so soon after New York disasters with the Towers.

“They were caught, charged and found guilty.” Carol didn’t keep up with what happened afterwards, she knew they would likely be killed in prison, cop killers or not, they were still cops in prison.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Even if Carol hadn’t said it, Ezra could tell she was close with the detective. It was the only appropriate response in his opinion. “I’m glad they were caught. I imagine that doesn’t always happen? Especially with dirty cops.” He could imagine dirty cops getting away with a lot. Simply due to the fact that they were cops and no one would suspect them. It seemed logical at least, but maybe that was only the type of thing that happened in movies and not real life. He wasn’t entirely sure.

“Thank you again for all these articles,” he took another sip of his coffee. “When do you need them back by?”

Carol just nodded to accept the sentiment, it was a good few years ago, and Frank was greatly missed for a long time afterwards, but Carol had moved on from the constant hurt at least. She’d taken time out from journalism in the newspapers after that, it was how she ended up working for Tracy in the magazine industry. “Not all the time, luckily there weren’t a lot of cases of that.” For all the bad press that Internal Affairs got, Carol thought it worked. Accountability was important in the force, and with the threat of it constantly looming, she felt it likely kept the cops that could be swayed from going the wrong way.

“It’s no problem, they just sort of sit in my study, collecting dust.” She kept her portfolio to hand more because of the nostalgia connected with it, less than the actual need to keep the hard copies -everything was digital after all. “There’s no rush. Just whenever you’re finished.”

“Of dirty cops?” He thought they were everywhere. Maybe not to the extent that Carol had seen with working for the mafia, but he was sure there were cops out there who did minor things, tampering with evidence for money and things like that. But that could be due to his dreams as well. It seemed like the whole Rosewood police force was corrupt. Burying or changing evidence in one way or another for money or other motives. Perhaps that was changing his view of the real world.

“Well I certainly won’t let them collect any dust here.” Ezra knew everything was digital these days but he much prefer hard copies. Call him of fashioned but he would rather read a newspaper than browse the news online, sit down with a book than read a kindle, hell he even preferred to write a his typewriter over a laptop half the time. “But I promise to take good care of them.”

“Not in my experience, there have been questionable methods, but…” Carol tended to vet her contacts exceptionally well. She was a reporter, she could dig up the dirt where needed. She never worked with anyone who might turn out to be corrupt. Least of all after Frank.

“I’m sure you will.” It was why Carol didn’t mind handing over her only hard-copies of her life in New York, all her accomplishments right there in black and white with some particularly gruesome headlines to match. She was sure that Ezra wouldn’t be the sort to leave things strewn around the place, with coffee rim stains or getting torn under each other. “And if they can help you, I don’t mind.”

“I hope so. At this point I’ll take inspiration anywhere I can get it.” He just needed to stop being so stuck on his previous novel, because well that just felt wrong to write now. “I’m sure I will be emailing you with questions as I go through them,” he added setting the articles back down and finishing off his coffee. “I’ll have to get you something more than coffee to thank you. Lunch next time perhaps?”

Her social circle was limited here, greatly limited really, so Carol didn’t mind the least about taking time out of her day and interacting in some way that wasn’t just work. Talking about writing for writing’s sake rather than in a professional interview was rather freeing. “Feel free, you’ve got my information, I can see about getting my old contacts in New York to look into anything if you need too.” Because writing was just a nice escape. “Well, I wouldn’t say no to a lunch,” more time out of the office, and Erza was good to talk to.

“I’ll let you get back to things, but call me if you need anything, okay?” Carol had no problem making herself available for like-minded people and brain picking.

Ezra didn’t have that much to get back to. He really needed to get more of a life. But he figured Carol was busy she had an important job after all so he would let her get back to that. And he was a little excited to dive in and read the articles she had brought over. “I will,” he assured her. He could only imagine all the questions he would end up having for her. “Thanks again, Carol.”