The Weird Insights of a Scobberlotcher

Thirty-five Sounds Charcoal Gray

Latin's a dead language

As dead as it can be.

First it killed the Romans

And now it's killing me.

That pretty much sums up my classical education from uni. I finally ended up transferring into sociology where it was statistics that nearly killed me. If proficiency in math were a prerequisite for normal socialization I would have been institutionalized years ago. The only residue from my brief experience in Soc 101 was the term 'cognitive dissonance'; being confronted with new information that contradicts an existing belief. So, who was the real villain in this piece? Was I wrong? Had I unwittingly been representing the bad guy? Was there even a bad guy? For that matter, how in the world did I ever conclude that I wasn't just Doug's messenger, I was his spokesman?

"Look, I'm going to rely on your discretion here." He was leaning in to me now with a grainy urgency. "If this gets out, well, there could be big trouble for a lot of people. O.k.?"

"O.k." is what I said. What I was thinking was maybe I should have taken the coward's way out and just set fire to my inheritance. Oh well, too late now. My brain was already on fire.

"Morrison has been on our radar for a long time. Long before he was mayor. He had that legal practice here in town. Specialised in real estate transactions. Maybe you know what a dirty business that whole thing is."

As a matter of fact, I did. The only ones worse than the agents are the people they represent. But I just smiled vacuously.

"He handled some extremely suspicious deals for overseas clients buying property here. There were unproven allegations involving running large amounts through his trust fund. Money laundering, basically. He escaped the law society investigations a couple of times but we stayed on him. Then just when we thought we were getting close he suddenly packs it in, closes his office and runs for mayor. And he had huge financial backing. A record for a town this size but civic election financing around here is the wild west so that didn't get us anywhere. Then he wins. There wasn't much we could do but just keep him on our radar.

"Then he starts directing city business through his old cast of cronies - acquaintances, developers, politicians, foreign money - and our investigation heats up again. We had him and his council under surveillance. Circumstantial evidence was piling up. Some big names were being implicated. Investors, developers, politicians. It became extremely sensitive. That's when my old man stumbles right into the middle of it."

A few fiery red lashes of bitterness were mixed in there as the situation he'd been put in hove into view.

"So your father was right about Morrison?"

"Absolutely. The old man was a good investigator. Ask anyone who served on the force with him. Like he had a sixth sense. Problem was, well, problem was he never should've got mixed up in the business to begin with. And certainly not in his condition. Those episodes of bat shit craziness began to endanger the whole investigation. Did everything I could. Tried to talk to him but he wouldn't listen. Tried to get him to sell his condo and move in with us so I could keep an eye on him but he refused. I got him a nurse to help him at home regularly but he decided she was a spy for Morrison and wouldn't have anything to do with her. It was driving me nuts. And costing me a fortune. But I just couldn't warn him confidentially about what was going on. God knows what he would have done with that in his condition. All I could do was try to keep it under control with everyone involved. Then someone must have finally tipped off Morrison. Now he knows that's it's my old man doing all this weird crap so he comes to me and complains. And I mean going crazy. Right there in my office. The subject of an ongoing investigation complaining to me, yelling at me about my father harassing and stalking him, the mayor. I thought we might have to abort the whole thing right there."

"Musta been a bit of a ticklish situation for you, I guess."

"Ticklish? My old man was going to bring down all that police work like a collapsing Jenga tower. Fortunately I managed to put Morrison off by telling him I had no idea, that my old man was just sick, cancer, and on drugs, hallucinating. That I'd deal with it. The only good part was that I realized talking to Morrison that he still had no idea about the real investigation. The arrogant prick actually thought it was just my old man who was on to him. Just some cranky, senile old fart. That was a bit of a relief.

"Anyway, you know what happened next. Pop comes to me the very next day with this lunatic idea about privately monitoring calls. I'd been stewing on the whole mess for twenty-four hours so I just exploded. Told him he was mad, completely nuts. That he was going to embarrass the force, get us all fired or worse, put in jail. That he had to cut it out right now. I wasn't sure how he'd take it in his condition but it seemed to work, thank Christ! He just shut up and went dark."

"So what about that little warning visit he got after from one of the mayor's boys?" I asked

"Ya, well, normally I would have gone nuts over that. I mean, we know what a pack of thugs the Boyz are. They were active long before Morrison was in office. But as far as we know any links between them only came after. And apart from some minor criminal stuff we never had anything on them. They were smart enough not to be obvious so we were continually playing whack-a-mole with them."

His words were twisted like knots in a fog. A frustrated man. A frustrated cop.

"And despite what dad thought there was absolutely no evidence to support them being involved in that murder on the beach. Believe me, we looked. But, ya know what? When he told me about that visit, well, I hate to say it but I actually thought it might help. Do for me what I couldn't do myself. Let him know that Morrison knew. I mean, what would he have done in his condition if I'd told him? That the mayor had come to me about it? No, I figured it was better that way. Reinforce the fact that he'd better just let the whole thing go. So I told him I'd take care of it. Course I didn't. Never said a word to anybody. Then, next thing you know, he's in the hospice. And I thought that was the end of it."

His words were starting to wobble unsteadily. Like balancing plates on a stick. And pale. Or translucent. Drained of blood. Just like his face.

"I never realised he thought I'd actually betrayed him to Morrison. Never. Honest to God. Never! Dad, if only you'd told me."

His voice grated to a halt then dissipated inside my head and evaporated. The familiar soothing tawny waves of coffee house rumble rolled back in to fill the void. Then I saw a tear. Just one. But big. It escaped in a rivulet down his right cheek that almost made it to the edge of his lip before he bagged the evidence with the back of his hand. One of those things you think you'll never see in this life. An apology from the income tax department. A winning lottery ticket. A cop crying. It wasn't anywhere nearly as satisfying as I would've thought.

He didn't say another word. Just reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a business card, lay it on the table in front of me, got up and left. It struck me as he walked away how agile he was for a man built like a piece of bipedal field artillery. I tucked his card securely into my wallet and finished my coffee.