God Makes Them Mean

Chapter 13

'You fucked things up badly,' one voice says. I look in the rearview mirror and spot the tiny Turturro-like creature sitting and grinning on my shoulder. Dressed in a white collar suit. The cheap kind low grade number-crunchers can afford.

'We got bigger fishes to fry. We got a big case to think about,' I reply. Traffic's slower than bureaucracy. Horns are honking, engines are revving, newspaper criers dressed like members of an Antartica expedition tap on everyone's window. I wave the guy away.

'Fuck the case, you got yourself to think of,' he continues. 'You're sitting on a gunpowder barrel right now. But you can still turn things around.'

'She's going to calm down eventually. Killer has to be taken now before he disappears.'

'Killer's gone, and you know it,' the other voice says, calmly. I spy int the rearview mirror: a Steve Buscemi lookalike, no bigger than a kid's hand. Dressed in farmer's overall, like the guy in American Gothic. 'Brandy's still here. And you got to keep her here.'

'Since when you two side together? Aren't you supposed to be the different voices of my conscience?'

'We were. We moved on.'

'Yep, you gave us too much leeway. We started having conversations while you were away, busy with your own thoughts.'

'We found we have much in common after all.'

'Fella's not bad. We came to the conclusion we gotta stick together if we have any chance of saving you.'

'Saving me?' I ask.

'Save you from yourself.'

'You two are my hunches. Get busy with the case, leave Brandy to me.'

'We let her to you too fucking long, buddy,' they both say. 'Look at the mess you made. Think about her drop dead gorgeous body, you could have that, every night.'

'Day too, if you were in better shape.'

'Shut up, the both of you,' I growl.

'Don't be daft, Eric, she's got a body belongs on the cover of Sports Illustrated.'

'She can do much better than me.'

'With that face that looks like a Nazi experiment gone wrong? I don't think so.'

'Besides, you moron, she loves you. Who else ever said that straight to your face? Let me refresh your memory: no-fucking-body ever told you she loved you.'

'Yep. Get you priorities straight buddy.'

'Exactly. One day somebody with money enough is gonna realize she's got a killer body, and he's going to offer her the plastic surgery you can't afford, and that'll be the last you ever gonna see of her.'

'Wise up, man. Wise up.'

'We got two dead bodies-'

'You know better than we do that corpses just don't walk up and leave the morgue.'

'But the killer might walk out of here.'

'He won't.'

'How do you know?'

'He just made his masterpiece. Bastard gonna stay here and enjoy the circus. He's gonna stay and watch the lot of you sweat and blunder around blind as bats. You guys gonna be like lab rats in a maze.'

'Would be amusing to watch, if it weren't for the fact we're stuck in there with you.'

'Gonna smell of desperation pretty soon.'

I turn on the radio to escape the fruitless conversation. The deep, constructed voice of an anchorman talks with a grave timbre of surely the most heinous crime that happened in the Near West Side. He condemns the silence that surrounds the happening, and blames the Police of running a secretive show. He concludes that, without diminishing the graveness of the murders, the Police Department should act like these was a time of openness, when Police and the News could work hand in hand. Bullshit.

I park on Elm. I take the long way around. The front of the Police HQ is besieged by TV vans with their satellite dishes and their cables and their reporters standing on boxes to look taller. Nobody notices me. I'm just a dishevelled fat man with the collar of my coat up to shield me from the cold. The main entrance is cordoned off by about a dozen uniforms. They're busy keeping the jackals at bay, but in the meanwhile the wolves run free. Captain McPhaerson stands at the top of the stairs, surrounded by henchmen and lawyer and big brasses. The wind flaps the tails of their trench coats. Reporters shout questions their way but are rebuked by silence. Cameras flash. Cameras roll.

I feel bad for the bastard. He's gonna get sliced and minced. I find it amusing that his balls are in my hands. I find the killer, he's safe and can go for the political home run. I fail, he'll be left hanging out to dry, flapping naked in the freezing wind like a battered flag at the end of a battle.

A uniform opens the door for me. 'Shitty day,' he says, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, the butt so short it looks like his moustache will catch fire any moment now.

'Are you telling me?'

'Word is you're in charge of the circus.'

'Yep. I'm the sucker in the line of fire.'

'Was it bad?' he asks.

'Never seen so many policemen puke.'

'Shit,' he says. 'Lucky I was on patrol on Northern Clark.'

'Right, this was one every sane man would've want to miss. I doubt that apartment will ever get sold.'

He grins. 'And the news boys complaining they didn't have any access to it. Screaming for photos to be released.'

'They should thank God they're never going to see anything even remotely like it.'

'Wanna smoke?'

I shake my head. 'No, gotta go check the autopsy, hoping it's going to give us something.'