NOT AN AMERICAN

by Stanley W Rogouski

  "I'm sure you know Chief Devanny," Catalinelli said to Grossinger, who shook Devanny's hand.

  "Of course I do."

  The other two men wore civilian clothes. The first, who was about 6 feet tall, very well built, and with bright red hair and pale skin, was dressed in a store bought suit that fit him well, but was also boxy and very stereotypically "cop like." The second man was in his late 20s. He wore a stylish looking blazer, a pair of jeans, and thick, dark rimmed glasses. He was tall, slim, and had sandy brown hair and a medium complexion. He also seemed to regard his two companions with a slightly bemused expression of contempt, as if he were a sophisticate among rubes.

  "You probably also know Steve Quinn, but you probably don't know his young companion here."

  Quinn scowled at the proffered handshake from Grossinger, but the younger man quickly extended his hand.

  "Detective Lieutenant Peter Muffley currently attached to the Northwest Mid-Atlantic Fusion Center," he said to Grossinger, who shook his hand enthusiastically. "You don't have to tell me who you are. You're Dan Grossinger of the Winterborn Daily Post, obviously."

  "I'm very pleased to meet you detective."

  Grossinger turned to sit down but Steve Quinn, who noticed the notebook, seemed to disapprove.

  "Can we have this meeting without the press?"

  "No," Michael Catalinelli said, "and if I want your advice I'll ask for it."

  "I'm sorry if I sound insubordinate sir. But I would rather he leave."

  Grossinger stood up.

  "If detective Quinn is uncomfortable with my presence, I can just go out for some coffee," he said. "Would any of you fellows like something?" he added, flipping his notebook forward a few pages.

  "No thank you," Quinn said. "Just come back in 20 minutes."

  Devanny and Catalinelli both shook their heads.

  "Nothing for me," Catalinelli said.

  "Well," Muffley said to Grossinger, "if you don't mind. I'd like some donuts."

  "My pleasure," Grossinger said, putting his pen up to the book. "Any particular kind you prefer."

  Muffley pulled out a very clean looking 10-dollar bill.

  "Get me 2 maple walnut, frosted not glazed, and a box of chocolate munchkins for my friend Steve."

  Grossinger started writing his note pad.

  "Get a pair of glazed for the chief, and a French Cruller for the mayor."

  "How do you stay so slim after eating all those donuts," Catalinelli said.

  "I would not have become a cop had I not known I could keep my figure while eating them," Muffley said, putting his fingers inside the waistband of his pants and snapping it.

  "I wish I had one. I gain weight even looking at food."

  Catalinelli looked over at Steven Quinn and smirked a when he noticed the clenched fists and the thick neck muscles bulging underneath the tight collar.

  "You see this was what I was afraid of," Quinn said, putting his hand on Grossinger's shoulder. "Out, out. Get out. Let the grownups talk."

  Michael Catalinelli shoved himself in between Quinn and Grossinger.

  "Deputy Inspector Quinn," he said, jabbing him in the chest with two fingers. "I will have no violations of the First Amendment in my office. This administration is committed, and has always been committed to freedom of the press," he added, jabbing him even harder. "Dan was welcome to stay. Now I'm going to insist that he stay."

  "Stand down Inspector Quinn," Devanny said, raising his voice. "Show some respect."

  “I apologize," Quinn said to Catalinelli, looking like a high school football player who had just been dressed down by the assistant principal, "but we want to talk about what we talked about earlier," he added to Devanny.

  Devanny closed his mouth and nodded his head as if to say "OK. Why didn't you say so?"

  "Why don't we have it both ways," Grossinger said. "I'll give Deputy Inspector Quinn the opportunity to talk with you in private. You can fill me in when I came back."

  "I think I'll go too," Devanny said. "You three can talk in private if you like. Do you mind?" he added to Grossinger.

  "Not at all," Grossinger said as the two men walked out of the room. "In fact, I'd like to ask you a few questions."

  "I'm yours for the next 20 minutes."

  Michael Catalinelli sat back down at the end of the table, followed by Steve Quinn, who sat down on the opposite side. Muffley stepped over to the window and looked outside. His eyes, which seemed to wander from the mountains in the east, to Scahentoarrhonon Station, then over Reagan Plaza, finally alighted on the dirty window. He held up his finger, spit on it, then wrote a number on the glass. It had 3 numbers, then a hyphen, then 2, a hyphen, then another 4.

  "Dan Sedgwick, wanted for 2 years of back child support."

  Catalinelli smiled.

  "Now why on earth couldn't my reporter be here for that?"

  Muffley pointed at the ceiling. Catalinelli went over and turned off the recording device. He sat back down.

  "In this state, getting an arrest order for non-payment of child support takes a few days, especially, as in the case of Mr. Sedgwick, some attempts have been made to stay current on payments. But Mr. Sedgwick, as you may or may not know, has issues that stem from a traumatic brain injury he received while serving in the Second Battle of Fallujah."

  "He means drugs," Quinn said.

  "Detective Quinn is correct. Our man inside The Barrio has informed us that Mr. Sedgwick is addicted to prescription drugs."

  "Prescription drugs? What's that? A traffic ticket?"

  "Unfortunately yes. Mr. Sedgwick is also smart to have one of his bodyguards put some extra pills in his one, legally obtained bottle if he wants a little extra. But we've taken steps to augment his supply, vastly augment his supply, enough to charge him with trafficking, not possession or doctor shopping. That lets us keep him in jail for the full 168 hours. We'll drop the trafficking charges once we get the court order for non-payment of child support, of course."

  "We can flood the place with bums," Quinn said.

  "Mr. Sedgwick has concentrated almost all of the United Coalition Against Xenophobia's security in his own hands. Those 168 hours will allow us to introduce an undesirable element into Mr. Sherrod's heretofore well organized little protest. Mr. Sedgwick's arrest for non-payment of child support will only add to the negative publicity."

  "I hope you're not putting our man inside at risk. He's a very promising young detective I don't want getting picked up by a fed while he's carting pills around."

  "Oh for God's sake no," Muffley said. "We're not using your own personal undercover man as a drug mule."

  Catalinelli smiled.

  "Detective Muffley. I was a little skeptical about you when they first sent you over, but I'm going to admit I was wrong. You are without a doubt, a credit to the Poison Springs Metro Police. Keep going at this rate, and you'll have Joe Devanny's job before you turn 35."

  Catalinelli looked over to see Steve Quinn clench his fists.

  "He would have let that little bitch string him along forever if I didn't put the fear of God into her."

  "What Deputy Inspector Quinn is implying," Muffley said, "is that I went soft on our infiltrator because she's young and innocent and I felt sorry for her."

  "OK, I get it. You used someone who wasn't our detective. Good. Tell me more."

  "That little bitch is about as innocent as a barrel of snakes," Quinn said. "She doesn't look poisonous, but unless you grab her by the neck and put your thumb on her head she could bite you. So watch out."

  "Could you translate for me Peter? Detective Quinn has a way with words I don't always understand."

  "As you know, your opponent has a younger brother."

  "Oh not him again," Catalinelli said. "I don't even know why I had David dig up all that dirt on him in the first place. He's just a loser who went to war, came back home, and started being a loser again, just like half the other losers in this town. There's nothing there."

  "Y
our old employee Mr. David Sherrod thinks there's something there," Muffley said. "In fact," he added, "he's been added to the speakers' list at the Water Rally this Friday."

  "Then the more fool David Sherrod.

  "You may not be aware of our opportunity."

  "He means that stupid bitch's brother is fucking our infiltrator and he's got no fucking clue who he's fucking," Quinn said. "How do you think people will feel about that?"

  "That he's heterosexual?" Catalinelli said, standing up.

  He walked behind Quinn and put his hands on his shoulders.

  "Unlike my deep and abiding love for Detective Quinn that kind of love can usually speak its name."

  Quinn forced himself to relax when he realized Catalinelli was giving him a neck rub.

  Muffley started clapping.

  "If I ever get a rabid pit bull I'll know who to hire as a dog trainer. But we still have an opportunity."

  "We get her to accuse Felton's brother of raping her," Quinn said as Catalinelli continued to massage his shoulders. "Problem solved. Nobody's going to vote for the sister of a rapist."

  Muffley sighed in frustration.

  "That is not the opportunity I'm talking about. My plan is a lot more subtle."

  "I'm afraid Detective Muffley is right," Catalinelli said. "First of all we have no guarantee that she'd even agree to it, however much we paid her."

  "Pay her?" Quinn said. "She'll do it if she wants to keep her fucking skin."

  "Calm down," Catalinelli said, patting him on the head. "Calm down."

  "I'm not joking around. I'll skin her and hang her up on a lamppost. She'll do it."

  Muffley smiled.

  "As you can see, Deputy Inspector Quinn does not understand subtlety."

  "You can't just do that to someone from his family," Catalinelli said. "If he were just some bum, fine. I'd say go ahead. But you can't just do something like that to Elizabeth Felton's brother without consequences."

  "Just some bum?" Quinn said. "He is just some bum."

  ‘A bum with good family connections is not just some bum," Catalinelli said. "Billy Carter was not just some bum. Roger Clinton was not just some bum."

  "Here's what I have in mind," Muffley said, rushing to make his point before Steven Quinn could speak again. "As you know, we are currently sitting in the highest value target in this part of the state. Whatever people think about the government, they love this building. It's part of their identity."

  Catalinelli raised his hand as if to say the discussion was over.

  "Peter," he said. "I'm going to do you a little service that you may not appreciate until you get a little older and more experienced. I'm going to cut you off."

  "Just hear me out."

  Catalinelli raised his hand a second time.

  "No Peter. Let me tell you what I've learned in my long years in politics. First success breeds overconfidence. Overconfidence breeds overreach. You bent the law a little with Sedgwick. OK. It worked. It's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, but this new plan that you and Deputy Inspector Quinn are cooking up is bound to blow up in your face, and more importantly in my face, so I don't want to hear anything about it."

  "Just hear me out."

  Catalinelli held up his hand a third time.

  "I've heard all I need to hear."

  There was a knock on the door, cutting him off. Catalinelli gave Quinn one final pinch on the shoulders then let him go as Dan Grossinger and Joe Devanny entered the room.

  "So it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission I guess," Muffley said.

  "Sit down Peter. Have some donuts."

  Grossinger walked over, put a tray full of donuts and coffee on the table and started passing them out. Muffley sat down at the table, fished one of the maple walnut donuts out of the bag, and started to eat. Grossinger sat down in the chair next to Steve Quinn.

  "So you fellows finish all your cloak and dagger business?" he said, putting his long notebook down on the table in front of him.

  "There was no cloak and dagger business," Quinn said. "We just wanted to get some work done.”

  Muffley put a one page press release down in front of Dan Grossinger.

  "There's going to be an arrest tomorrow. It might be of some interest to you."

  "He means you need to be on the western lawn tomorrow to cover the arrest," Catalinelli said.

  Grossinger picked up the press release. He started laughing to himself.

  "I should have figured that hippie for a deadbeat dad," he said. "Get a job you loser."

  Chapter 28 - An Arrest

  As the bells rang out for 3 o'clock, Dan Sedgwick was pacing back and forth inside the Poison Springs War Memorial in front of the statues of John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. When he saw John Avellanos leave the pump house, he went inside, and sat down across from David Sherrod. He opened the package of opposition research on Martin Ruiz lying on the folding table Sherrod used as a desk.

  "Do you remember how you used to feel about Michael Catalinelli?" he said.

  "I admired him," Sherrod said. "A lot of people admired him back then."

  "Not me."

  "And eventually you, the Senator, and Elizabeth alerted me to his flaws."

  "Do you think you might be as wrong about Elizabeth's brother as you were about Catalinelli?"

  Sedgwick leafed through the package of opposition research until he found what he wanted.

  "Mr. Ruiz's grades in high school were barely passing," he read. "During his time in the Marine Corps he developed the reputation of having a below average intelligence and a need to be closely supervised."

  Sedgwick put the page back into the folder.

  "Does that strike you as the type of person who can handle himself with those jackal reporters?"

  Sherrod picked another piece of paper out of the folder, a printout of an e-mail.

  "Martin was a loner in high school," he read. "He never had any friends. But I wish I had gotten to know him better. He always struck me as one of those super geniuses who just never found his niche. He always had a book. He was always reading, even in classes he was failing. I think he's found his niche, and I'm helping him find it," he added, putting the page back down on the table.

  Sedgwick picked up a photo, this one of the real Martin Ruiz. Ruiz was sitting in the distance, in the far right corner of the frame. He was in uniform, alone, squatting on the ground, eating what looked to be part of an MRE, scowling, apparently unwilling to be photographed.

  "Why did he look older 5 years ago then he does now?"

  "I've seen photos of myself when I was in Iraq. I looked like I was 100."

  Sedgwick slammed his fist down on the table.

  "Please David, listen to me. That guy, whoever he is, is working for Catalinelli. He's an actor. He's something. But he's not Martin Ruiz. He hasn't been in Iraq. He doesn't even know the first, most basic thing about being in the infantry."

  "You mean he's reluctant to talk about it. Dan, I don't think I've let you know just how important you've been. This is probably more your campaign than mine. In a few weeks, it will be all over. Maybe you should take a few days off and have a well-deserved rest. You've certainly earned it."

  Sedgwick hung his head, as if defeated. He gathered his strength to continue speaking, but stopped abruptly, almost in mid-sentence. Three Poison Springs Metro Police officers were standing in the doorway of the pump house, one leaning on the side, another waiting outside, a third holding a piece of paper.

  "Daniel Michael Sedgwick."

  "Don't you guys ever get sick of this? You've searched through my living quarters 100 times."

  Sherrod took out his cell phone.

  "I'll call the lawyer, again."

  Sedgwick followed the three police officers out of the pump house. Sherrod walked outside. He grabbed Avellanos, and asked him to talk to what seemed to be a sudden influx of people with cameras, notebooks, and digital recorders. But he didn't have time. Dan
Grossinger, who was wearing his fedora and writing in his long notebook, noticed Sedgwick and the three police officers.

  "What's going on there?" he shouted.

  That brought the other reporters with him. Avellanos followed the crowd to Dan Sedgwick's tent, which two more police officers were already searching. Jeff Dawson was watching them. He had a wild look in his blue eyes.

  "You're not going to find anything there that you didn't find last week," Sedgwick said.

  "Get out of here you pigs," Dawson said, addressing the two officers going through Sedgwick's tent, "or you're going to be dead pigs. Oink. Oink."

  A cameraman from a local TV station was about to turn his camera on Dawson when one of the officers emerged from Sedgwick's tent. Dan Grossinger muscled his way through the crowd to get a better look as the officer held up a pager bag.

  "Is this yours Mr. Sedgwick?"

  The officer turned the bag over. The TV cameraman drew closer as sixteen large bottles of pills dropped out onto the ground. A newspaper photographer crouched down to get a close up of the label on one of the bottles with his wide-angle lens. There were eight bottles of Valium and eight bottles of Oxycontin.

  "Having a little trouble sleeping Mr. Sedgwick?"

  "Those aren't mine."

  "Fucking pigs planted those pills on Dan," Dawson said, getting in between a photographer and the pills, shoving the man back. "Don't take photos of what those pigs planted on Dan."

  "Step over here Mr. Sedgwick."

  Sedgwick stepped aside. An officer began to search him, running his hands up and down his legs, and moving up to his upper body.

  "You're not going to find any guns on me."

  The officer took another bottle of Oxycontin out of Sedgwick's coat.

  "Do you have a prescription for these pills?"

  Sedgwick looked shocked.

  "I've never seen those pills in my life?"

  "We'll give you a few minutes to call a doctor. Show us a prescription, and we're all good."

  "I don't have a prescription because those pills aren't mine."