Chapter 7
By the time I’d finished with my call with O’Day and emerged from the cell, Constantine had long since hung up on the Duty Officer. He’d left orders that I was to join him in front of the Town Hall, in his Cobra Commander Missile Headquarters, ASAP. I asked the Duty Officer if he’d really said ASAP. He had.
Dickwad.
I meandered up there, after taking my morning shower in the police union’s locker room. It was my routine: sleeping the night in whatever drunk tank wasn’t occupied and showering at the gym.
I hadn’t had a steady apartment for, maybe, two years. I bunked down every month or two with whatever girl I could sweet talk into taking me in. But that never lasted long. I didn’t make good company. Cops don’t, coming and going at all hours. The drunk tanks were always there.
As long I stayed light on your feet, living rough wasn’t too bad. The trick is to keep your personal possessions to a minimum. What I had, I kept in the trunk of the Accord.
The glamorous life of a Homicide detective. Just like Law & Order, huh?
Anyway, I was late for Constantine’s little party, and his operation was already underway. I climbed up the folding steps into the darkened trailer of his Command HQ. A whole brace of computer geeks were running ops for some Special Forces deal. Constantine was watching it all unfold on a large bank of monitors. The techs were muttering things like “Indigo seven, sitrep” and “Eyes on your six, Charlie Captain.” It all looked pretty cool, like some video game. It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t. That real men with guns were running around with deadly intent.
“What’s this?” I asked, sliding up to Constantine, knocking a Kools from my pack.
“Tac-30 is serving a warrant, connected to the Montavez murder,” Constantine said, not looking away from the monitors. SWAT officers were breaching a door and button-hooking through the entryway.
“Warrant? What warrant?” I asked, watching the action. The fire team woke up some poor old man and tossed him out of his bed, face first onto the floor.
“We got a flag on the phone records. A felony arms conviction. We’re bring him in for questioning.”
“You sent a tactical team to bring in one guy?”
“As I said, he has an arms conviction.”
“How old is his sheet?” I asked.
Constantine just shrugged.
The Tactical Team had the old man cuffed and were pulling a black sack over his head.
“What judge did you get out of bed in the middle of the night to sign off on that?” I took my lighter out of my pocket and flicked it open.
“No smoking in here,” Constantine said. I flicked my lighter closed, leaving the cigarette unlit. “No judge. We have broad-based FISA warrant covering or presence in Seattle.”
“FISA?” I snorted. “He’s no terrorist.”
Constantine finally turned to look at me. The coldness of his glare told me he really didn’t understand the distinction.
I’d seen enough. I turned, climbed back down out of the trailer and lit my smoke.
Constantine followed me out, joining me at the curb as I smoked away. “That was good work, yesterday,” he began.
The compliment took me by surprise. “Work?”
“The report you submitted last night...the interviews with Montavez’s neighbors...”
“Oh,” I drew a breath through my cigarette. “Yeah, well, you know, standard procedure.”
“Forensics came up blank. Only your suggestion to run the phone records has, so far, bore any fruit.”
I looked back at the command trailer. I decided not to tell him what I thought of his fucking fruit. “Be careful, Special Agent,” I said instead. “Any more compliments, and I might start to think I’m demonstrating competency.”
Constantine ignored me. “We’re heading out again,” he commanded, straightening his tie.
“Got a black sack to throw over the head of another telemarketer?” I tossed the butt of my smoke into the gutter and squashed it under the toe of my boot.
“No, Tac-30 can handle those warrants.” He reached into his suit pocket and removed a small tablet. He quickly pulled up some information. “What we have is a lead on Q,” he said casually.
I coughed, spluttered, then began to choke. Was he kidding me? Did he know about the e-reader? When I’d cleared my throat, I looked him over, curiously. No, he was serious. He wasn’t trying to get a reaction out of me.
“Q? Like Q, the mysterious mastermind behind the whole Gening epidemic?” I feigned shock. I did a pretty good job of it, if I do say so myself.
“That’s the one.”
“What does he have to do with the Montavez murder?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Constantine said, sighing in a fashion that let me know he really didn’t care. “But we scrubbed Vivian’s email exchanges with her family. She stated on more than one occasion, in correspondences with her brother, that she was in Seattle to track down Q. There’s very little else, however, to go one. Except she made a single transaction with her father’s credit card for $1264 at a book store here.” He showed me an address on the tablet. I knew the place, it was a used bookstore by the university. “Otherwise, she was self-sufficient. Curious that she’d make such a large purchase with no other history of spending her father’s money. We should run the lead down.”
“We?” I asked, prodding the bear.
“You know this location, correct?” He showed me the tablet again. “I bet you’ve even met the proprietor...”
“I have.”
“Then the interview will go smoother with you present.”
“You need my help?” I said. I wasn’t going to let it go. Not after his speech yesterday.
Constantine just looked at me with an angry stare.
“You need a cop,” I answered for myself. And it was true. That was what Constantine needed. Where did that fit into his three C’s?
I still hadn’t let it go as we sped north on the Interstate in the black, roaring Charger.
“I’m just saying that you can’t swoop in and, day one, be better cops and firemen and teachers and social workers and council members and mayors than the people who’ve done those jobs for years.”
Constantine took the exit for the university. “You honestly think we can do worse?” he said.
I don’t know why we were debating it. I just couldn’t stop poking the bear. Truth be told, Constantine’s existence irritated me. I might not have had any serious political convictions, but I knew what I didn’t like. And I didn’t like politicians getting into my shit. NeoCon or Prog.
“Look around, look at this town,” he said as we pulled to a stop to merge on to the surface streets, he gestured at the town around him. Forty-fifth at the Interstate was not exactly Seattle at its best, but he had a fair point. “Incompetence has run this city into the ground. You’re paralyzed by a bureaucracy you can’t alter or get rid of. It would take a forest fire to burn out the dead wood.” The light changed, Constantine rolled forward.
“And you’re the match, huh?” I reached for my pack of Kools. I rolled down my window as the car rolled to a halt again at the light crossing Roosevelt.
A greasy Genie stood on the corner, holding a cardboard sign, begging for change. “Spare a buck,” he said through the open window. His face was a halo of beard and unkempt hair. He had the glazed-over eyes of something seriously Geneing. The pinhole irises, surrounded by milky white. I dismissed him with a wave as I took a cigarette from my pack, but Constantine leaned over to the open window.
“Here you go,” he said, snatching my Kools from my hand and handing them out to the Genie.
“Oh, thank you, God Bless,” the bum said as the light turned green. Constantine pulled away and the Genie continued to call after us in gratitude.
I was beside myself. My smokes! “What the fuck?” was all I could say. “Those were my smokes.”
“Be happy, you helped out a poor soul,” Constantin
e said as he drove.
“Yeah, but they were my smokes,” I repeated.
“Would you rather have given him a dollar? What would he have spent that on?”
“I don’t know, food?”
“No,” Constantine gave me a condescending laugh. “Cigarettes. Why not give him the cigarettes directly?”
“Because I wanted to smoke them?” I said, totally consumed with disgust.
“Smoking is bad for your health. You should quit, Detective.”
“But it’s okay for him to smoke? My cigarettes?” I looked back. Perhaps if we swung around...
“He’s far beyond any concerns about his health. You are not. You are redeemable. It’s the compassionate thing to save you from dying a slow death. That Genie will be long dead before the effects of cigarettes consume him. It’s compassionate to give him cigarettes if they lessen his suffering.”
“And you get to decide this?”
“It’s the greatest good for the greatest number of people, Detective.”
“But, now I have no cigarettes,” I said slowly, fuming. “You can see how that totally, fucking sucks, can’t you?”
“You think like a Prog,” Constantine said, turning right onto University Way and pulling to the curb. “What did your hero say? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs? You have both the ability and the need to stop smoking, Fonseca. Just as this town has the ability and the need to reform itself. What you both need is a hard kick in the ass to send you in the right direction. That’s me.” Constantine killed his engine and opened his door. “I’m not a match, Detective, I’m a boot.”