Work Text:
Ellsworth Lee is an uncomplicated man. Each morning, he wakes up at precisely 6:31AM. He never hits snooze, just rolls over, kisses his wife good morning, and gets out of bed. He walks on his treadmill for 30 minutes, however far that gets him, showers, then downs two cups of coffee while skimming the New York Times. By 8:27 he is out the door, where he walks the two blocks to the PATH train that will drop him off at the World Trade Center with approximately ten minutes to spare. That time is used to procure another coffee and a salt bagel (lightly toasted, veggie cream cheese), and he is in his office on Church Street (the one where the door reads Lee, Bergstrom, & Miller) by 9:01.
He likes simplicity. He likes routine. And this morning he has neither of those things to cling to as he slides into a booth at some grimey diner on the corner of Greenwich and Warren. His briefcase lands in a puddle of syrup.
“Sorry about that,” the hostess says in a vaguely Eastern European accent. “I get you napkin.”
She never does.
Ellsworth nods a greeting to the man who joins him a few minutes later. “Tommy.”
“Place is nice, right?” Tommy says, gesturing to the sticky black and white tiles, red mosaic columns, and rotating pastry case that leaks condensation everywhere. “Been comin’ here since I was a kid.”
Lee is the marquee name at his firm; Ellsworth doesn’t really hang out in dilapidated diners these days. He much prefers the fanfare of a perfectly cooked steak and a bottle of Opus One. But when his client (who’s paying him double, mind you) asked him to do some digging, he’d reached out to the one person he knew who might have some answers.
Tommy passes him an oversized menu and points at the inside cover. “They do a mean hash.” And before Ellsworth can politely decline, his companion is calling out an order of two coffees and two corned beef hash specials. No one even looks up, and he’s not sure if their order’s even been taken until a grumpy, heavyset woman in clogs drops off two chipped mugs.
“So what did you wanna ask me about?” Tommy asks, snapping a sugar packet and dumping four creamers into his cup. The clink clink clink of the metal spoon against porcelain makes Ellsworth grind his teeth.
“It’s for a case,” he begins, and he’ll drink his coffee black.
Ellsworth Lee has been on retainer for the Wheatley family for as long as he can remember. He wrote up the divorce papers for Richard and Angela, and while Richard is the one paying the bills, he’s always had a soft spot for his ex-wife. Does he think she’s guilty of hiring someone to murder Kathy Stabler as retribution? Maybe. But that doesn’t much matter to him – his job is to get her acquitted, or avoid a trial altogether. She’s been cooperative, and that helps, but then yesterday she’d asked him to sift through the NYPD rumor mill and if there’s one thing Ellsworth hates, it’s gossip. He likes facts, straight shooters, sentences that leave no room for question. He graduated from Yale at the top of his class; he was meant for so much more than this.
“Find out who she is,” Angela pleaded, “the other woman.”
“Are you sure you want to know?” If she is guilty, he would prefer not to be an accomplice when another woman is blown to bits.
Angela nodded and promised he’d be compensated handsomely. His wife has expensive tastes and wants to redo the master bath again, and the money the Wheatleys are paying him would cover the renovation and then some.
Which is how he finds himself here, in this diner with a lukewarm cup of gasoline, asking his old friend what he knows about an aging NYPD detective.
“Stabler… Stabler…” Tommy raps his fork against the edge of the table, punctuating each syllable. “Yeah, I remember him. Always in trouble with IAB for one thing or another.”
Ellsworth is aware of this. Even without the detective’s file, a quick Google yielded more than enough results. Questionable shootings, police brutality, a reneged sexual harassment complaint, it was all there in the search results.The man is older now, wisened and wrinkled, and with slightly less hair, but it’s unmistakably him. There’d been a woman in the background of some of the photos, a familiar face Ellsworth knows well.
Captain Olivia Benson. Just the other day, she’d stood beside the chief of police, stoic and tight-lipped, throughout a lengthy press conference. He doesn’t need to do any additional research on her; he remembers the days her face was all that played during the morning and evening news cycles. Like half of New York City, Ellsworth had watched her be escorted from a beach house, heart in his stomach. When she was taken a second time, he’d gone down a rabbit hole, googling this woman until he knew everything about her.
To be fair, it wasn’t much. He’d found an obituary for her mother, commendations for the work she’d done at SVU. There were photos of her holding the hands of children and young women, always flanked by a man with a receding hairline and a detective badge clipped to his waist. In every photo, he was always looking at her, maybe a hand at her back, a soft smile on his face. Inseparable, he’d thought at the time.
Now, the pieces start to fall into place.
“Heard the guy’s wife got blown up,” Tommy says. It’s at that exact moment a waitress drops off their breakfasts, and she shoots the man a horrified look before disappearing without a word.
“She did.”
“Sorry to hear it.” He doesn’t sound even remotely apologetic. “What’s that got to do with you?”
Ellsworth takes a tentative bite of hashbrown. “Did you ever hear any rumors about him and his old partner?”
Tommy leans back and lets loose a roaring laugh that has every eye in the diner turning toward them. “Who hasn’t heard about Benson and Stabler is the real question.”
“How so?” he asks, dropping his hands into his lap. He’s not really hungry anyway. He has a business lunch at The Grill later this afternoon, and he can already taste the branzino.
“Partners for a lot of years. Everyone always said they hadda be fucking. Can’t look that good and hang out in a car that long and not, y’know?”
Ellsworth does not know. He met his wife their second year of law school, on the lawn opposite the Provost’s house. But Tommy, he’d slept with his partner their first year on the job, married her the second, and divorced her the fifth.
“Heard that kid of hers might be a Stabler. No idea if it’s true or not, but.” He shrugs. “Sure looks like him.”
Ellsworth was unaware the captain had a son, so he might have to look into this detail; math was never Tommy’s strong suit. But it also sounds like merrittless gossip and is below his pay grade.
“Was there ever any proof of it?” he asks, finishing the last of his coffee. “The two of them being together?”
Tommy shrugs and drags a napkin across grease-stained lips. “Nah. But all rumors have some truth to ‘em, don’t they?”
Ellsworth thinks about the newspaper clippings and shrugs. “Maybe.”
+++
McSorleys is not the sort of bar Ellsworth tends to frequent. The paint (where you can see it) is peeling, the till looks like it’s from 1850, and the walls are covered in flags, black and white portraits of presidents long since passed, and military memorabilia. The planks of the counter have names etched into them, and the chalkboard menu that hangs between the bathrooms can’t even be wiped clean. It still sports the specials from 1997, and while the offerings are much the same, the prices are not.
He slides onto a barstool off to the side, draping his coat across his lap. Lorraine is out to dinner with her sister, and Ellsworth wasn’t sure which option was less appealing, so he’d leaned into work because at least here, all he has to do is listen.
Still, he’d love a glass of Quintessa, a 2011 merlot where red plums and cranberries lingered on his tongue. When the bartender asks what he’d like, he orders a ginger ale and ignores the look the grizzly old man gives him. If there’s a vintage wine anywhere on the premises, it’s probably not of the drinkable variety.
The bar is filled with cops. There’s a group of retired men sitting at a table across the room, part of the decor after coming here for so long. Men in uniform drift in through the open door as their shifts end, eager for a drink and a willing ear. There are people who come here in the hopes of hearing about the things that happen in the dark crevices of the city, cadets still in the academy, journalists, weirdos with too much time on their hands.
And then there is Ellsworth, a mild mannered defense attorney trying to verify a decades-long rumor he cares nothing about.
The TV behind the bar is staticy, but it is tuned to the evening news, where Ellsworth spots Richard being shoved into the back of a squad car. Lights flash as reporters try to get their cover story, and his old friend just grins into the lens and tries to wave with his hands cuffed behind his back.
“Glad they caught him,” someone nearby says. “I heard the guy’s part of the mafia,” and there is so much Ellsworth could tell him if attorney client privilege (and the threat of an early grave) didn’t keep his lips sealed shut.
“That the guy who got that one detective’s wife killed?” someone else asks.
Ellsworth scoots his stool a little bit closer, dragging his glass along the bartop and accepting a refill when it’s offered. He listens as a group of three cops swap theories about the case. Their ideas are liminal and lack any sort of imagination, and maybe that happens when you’re face to face with the worst humanity has to offer on a daily basis. Still, he listens and he waits while they toss back beer after beer, hoping one of two names comes up.
He’s about to tune them out and refocus on another conversation happening to his left when the news loops back to the press conference featuring the leader of Special Victims Unit. A lewd comment slips out from one of the men, and if Ellsworth ever heard someone speak that way about his wife or any of the females in his life, he might actually throw a punch. The captain is a beautiful woman, that is undeniable, but the way the men in his periphery gravitate toward certain parts of her body and grab for the front of their jeans, he feels a little bit sick.
“I’d fuck her,” one man says.
“I nearly did,” another comments. “Tried to pick her up at a bar not too far from here.” Ellsworth finds that hard to believe. He doesn’t know Captain Benson personally, but her reputation is sound, and she doesn’t strike him as someone who’d allow an inexperienced cop with grubby hands to take her home.
The man’s colleagues laugh at him and roll their eyes, and Ellsworth can at least appreciate they can smell a lie a mile away.
“You don’t stand a chance, Jackson. You know she’s banging that guy from Organized Crime, right?”
Ellsworth knows that man. He’s the reason he’s here now. And from the few interactions he’s had with Elliot Stabler, he seems like a man still very much wrapped up in grief. Even if he does have eyes for a certain captain, he’s been solely focused on finding the person responsible for his wife’s death. It’s why Angela is currently under the protection of the NYPD.
But Ellsworth heard what Richard said, about Kathy Stabler not being the love of his life. How it wasn’t Angela either. Ellsworth hates rumors, but he’s starting to wonder if they’re true.
+++
That night, he slides into bed beside Lorraine, politely asking how her sister’s doing. They lean back against the headboard, cups of chamomile cooling on their respective bedside tables. He learns he’s expected to attend mass and Sunday brunch the following weekend, and he can be a dutiful uncle for a few hours, even if it means putting up with his overly excited sister-in-law and her doormat of a husband.
“How was work?” his wife asks, glancing at him over the spine of her book. It’s an autobiography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, something he’d gifted her a few weeks back when a case she’d been trying had gone awry.
“Fine,” he tells her, flicking open his phone and navigating to the web. He types the name Olivia Benson into the search bar for the first time in roughly a decade, and uses his fingers to zoom in on old photos of her, like he had all those years ago, when he was barely above an intern at a swanky UES firm. He focuses on the man in the photos, and the way his gaze follows her, how he’s never far behind.
“That’s a man in love,” Lorraine says, tapping his screen as she peers over his shoulder. “Who are they?”
He tilts his head so he can kiss her goodnight. “Nobody,” he says, and lets the screen go dark.
+++
Ellsworth Lee is not a gossip. He does not repeat rumors, he doesn’t ask about them. But as he stomps on his treadmill, as he tries to read the paper, he can’t stop thinking about Angela’s request and where it’s led him.
He leaves the house a little after 8 and is in the city by 8:15. The walk to 1 Police Plaza is just under a mile, and the bagel he gets is burnt and they only have plain cream cheese. It starts to rain, and he doesn’t have an umbrella because he was so distracted that he never checked the weather this morning.
This is why he hates hearsay. It takes up too much space in a person’s brain, and then they end up soaked, with a breakfast that belongs in the trash. He graduated summa cum laude – he knows better than to get involved in a client’s love life (or lack thereof). He knows better than to leave the house without checking the weather, and yet here he is.
The lobby at 1PP is big and open, rivulets sliding down the textured windows. Groupings of chairs dot the room, some occupied, others waiting to hold visitors until they need to be elsewhere. He takes a seat near the check-in desk and scans the faces that pass by. Flags are pinned to lapels, and he recognizes the faces of some of the more important figures that have offices upstairs.
The one he’s looking for today is decidedly absent, but he’s also early. He picks at the sticky residue on his briefcase, sips his coffee, and is about to text his friend when the subject of his recent mania walks through the front door.
“Chief,” she says, her voice sharp enough to cut glass.
McGrath turns toward her and jabs a finger into her shoulder. Ellsworth almost wants to intercede on her behalf, but she doesn’t even flinch. Her eyes narrow and her fingers curl into fists at her side. “That partner of yours is a menace,” he snaps.
“Former partner,” she corrects, and that doesn’t win her any favors.
“Whatever. Tell him to get his act together. He’s going to fuck up this Wheatley case and the optics of that would not be good, do you understand me?”
Ellsworth is curious why Stabler’s own supervisor isn’t here to take this heat. He’s met Sergeant Bell and knows she’s more than capable of defending her unit and her staff. But as he looks around, she’s nowhere to be seen, just a tightly wound captain who looks ready to deck the next person who tries to speak to her.
“Control. Your. Partner.”
Captain Benson pinches the bridge of her nose and blows out a sigh Ellsworth can feel from where he sits. He feels bad for her, he genuinely does. He’s met Chief McGrath a few times over the years at various functions, and he’s prickly on the best of days. He thinks Captain Benson must be a saint, because she doesn’t say anything else, just shoulders her bag and follows the man to the bank of elevators.
The lobby feels too quiet after that. A few more bodies trickle in, but the captain doesn’t reappear, and no one is sent up to the chief’s office, so she likely hasn’t killed him. Ellsworth doesn’t condone murder, but sometimes he thinks he could be persuaded to look the other way. If Olivia Benson really is the one true love of Elliot Stabler’s life, then he thinks they deserve each other. If anything, she deserves whatever it is that she wants, given her history.
The elevator dings and a head of perfectly coiffed hair pokes out.
“Ellsworth,” Dodds calls to him with a wave. “It’s good to see you.”
+++
William doesn’t give him much, but Ellsworth does learn a thing or two about the longevity of rumors. Benson and Stabler have been firmly entrenched in the NYPD grapevine since 1999, and that’s a long time for an entire police force to be hyper-focused on two people without any reason not to be.
He swings by the hotel where Angela is under surveillance before heading to the office. A lanky detective pats him down and confiscates the meal he brings, which he thinks he’ll save for lunch now. He can’t blame his client for not eating the carefully prepared hotel meals; he wouldn’t touch the food on those trays with a ten foot pole either.
The two of them are left alone to discuss the finer points of Angela’s cooperation, but she’s fidgety and distracted as he asks her question after question about Richard and their kids. He’s hoping she’s forgotten about the fool’s errand she sent him on, that he can just forget the way apparently the entire NYPD knows something about Elliot Stabler Angela Wheatley does not.
She does eventually ask, though, just as he turns to go.
“Ellsworth, did you find out anything about that woman?”
For a brief moment, he considers lying. He considers telling his client that he has no idea the vulgar words men use to describe Captain Benson and the things they’d like to do to her. He could pretend he never heard the rumors about her and her old partner. And not just from a single source, which in and of itself could be considered unreliable, but from a number of people. Some he knew and some he didn’t.
If he lies, there’s a good chance she’ll find out soon enough, and that wouldn’t serve either of them very well.
He turns to her and says, “I did some checking. It’s probably just another bluff, but a couple people thought that your ex might have been referring to Detective Stabler’s former partner, Captain Olivia Benson.”
Angela doesn’t seem surprised to hear this. In fact, from the look on her face, it seems like she maybe already knew. And that makes Ellsworth want to throw the nice lunch he tried to bring her in the trash, because he’s spent the past 72 hours inserting himself into the rumor mill when he’d have rather walked over broken glass or swallowed fire.
As he walks back to the office, he starts to consider a career change.