“Aren’t you going to say something?” Finn asks, moving over to the next vending machine.
Pete wasn’t, because he already said everything right there in the bite report and the TRR, plus he did all the talking in Finn’s office. But: “Pretzels?”
“What?”
“Gum?”
“What?”
“I’m trying to guess what it is that you want.”
Finn feeds a dollar into the far machine and watches his selection spin off the coil while his change drops into the return.
He collects his nickel and then his snack: a slim package of peanuts. Nuts were Pete’s third guess.
Finn takes a look at the wrapper—maybe checking the calorie count, more likely stalling. Annoying, since he told Pete to stick around even though the vet cleared Butch hours ago and that was hours after Pete finished writing up the incident and so he’s just been waiting, every flush of the upstairs toilets reminding him that this is supposed to be the start of three days off and here he is, where the shit drains.
Finn shakes the nuts to the bottom of the package, looks around the windowless room. The overhead fluorescent throbs, a bad ballast; the machines’ LCD lights blink in time. A broken box fan sits on the counter next to the sink that doesn’t work, which doesn’t matter since there aren’t any cups or a coffeemaker or anything. A Hefty Bag–lined trash can and the other table are empty. There is nothing on the bulletin board to consider.
Pete gets at the last of the Fritos, pressing his fingers into the greasy crumbs. When he’s finished he slugs the rest of the pop and crumples the bag into the can and tosses it into the trash and when the silence is officially awkward he asks, “Aren’t you going to say something?”
“I am.” But he doesn’t. He pulls out the chair, straddles it, tears the package open with his teeth and dumps half the nuts directly into his mouth.
So then Pete sits there and watches him chew.
When he’s through, Finn runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth while he flattens the package and folds it over, precise, twice more. Then he asks, “Have I given you enough time?”
“For what?”
“To get your story straight.”
“It’s been straight since it happened.”
Finn turns his head, looks at Pete sideways. “Depends how you look at it.” He turns his head the other way, same thing. “No, nope. I think you’re going to have to see it my way.” He pushes the folder across the table. “I need a rewrite.”
Pete opens the folder: his reports are torn neatly in half. He says, “I wrote the truth.”
“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Majette: the only one who isn’t going to bullshit me here is the dog and thank God he can’t talk. The truth according to your agenda or your self-preservation is not what I want. What I want is for you to quit pouting and do your job which, if I’m not mistaken, includes following orders.”
“You’re telling me to lie.”
“Jesus, Pete. Do you want to be a headline again?”
“This isn’t news—”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“Because of Butch? He alerted. He was—”
“I don’t give a shit about Butch. Dogs are dogs. They bite. Who I do give a shit about? David fucking Cardinale. He just posted White’s bail.”
“I’m supposed to know who that is?”
“You will when he’s through stripping your star. And then your last dollar.” Finn sits back, uses a sharp fold of the nut wrapper to pick a seed coat from between his front teeth. He looks disgusted. “People saw you, you know. Here. Today. Sulking. Spoiled.”
“How am I the guy in question?” Pete asks. “White’s a known felon.”
“Correction: he’s known because he’s Felan White’s brother.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you need to switch your words around like I just did so your version of the incident reads like you’re a good cop and not the butt of a fucking bad joke.”
“The stop was a mistake, Sergeant. I thought Edwards’ vehicle was the one in the APB. I thought the men inside were BFMs—”
“You can say that, but you can’t prove it. What Cardinale can prove is that you stopped Ja’Kobe White. He has two witnesses who confirm you called White by name. That you said you knew him. He has, you know—on camera—he has you calling White an animal.”
“Sergeant, I didn’t know White was in the car. When I made the stop.”
Finn raises his eyebrows, straight as his face. “That’s why you’re going to write this up same way as Majette. He heard your radio transmission with Dispatch and arrived before you initiated contact with the suspects. He assumed control at the scene, he ordered you to approach the vehicle, and then he requested a K9 search on the vehicle. You were following orders. Not trying to be a hero.”
“I was doing the job.”
“You want to keep doing it? You think—after everything with Katherine?—you think you have a chance against White? You make him a victim, Pete. Not a suspect.”
“Kitty has nothing to do with this.”
“Sure she does. She makes this a story. And the way it reads? An off-duty traffic stop for a search that produced nothing more than a baseball bat and a bottle of prescription drugs, prescribed to White—”
“It was a sawed-off bat inked with Hustler insignia and it was hidden under the floor mat. And who knows what kind of pills White had in his bottle? All three of them were high—”
“I don’t give a shit if they were floating around in circles above the fucking street. The camera was on you. Your dog bit the guy linked to you and your beloved judge. And I’m sorry, but no jury is going to rule in favor of that coincidence.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“And yet here we are.” Finn unclips the pen from his shirt pocket and tosses it onto the table. “Look. I know you didn’t do anything wrong. But we can’t prove that. So what we have to do now is make it go away.”
“I don’t know why Kitty has to be a part of it.”
“I don’t know why you refer to her that way,” he says, and gets up. “Makes it sound like you’re still fucking.”
“You know better than that—”
“Forget the truth,” Finn says, spitting the last word and with it, another seed coat. It sticks to the table and he looks down at it and as he flicks it away he says, “Start talking about what will save you and your dog.”
He pockets the nut wrapper and he’s about to take the folder, too, but Pete stops him—a hand on the file—because Finn is right: the truth hasn’t done a damn thing for him so far.
“What is it, exactly, you want me to write?”
* * *
When Pete finally gets back upstairs, the real world, the guys left over from the last shift look day-old, and glum, and the sight of Pete does nothing to rouse a single hello. The handful of others—those who just came on, and should have missed the White thing completely—don’t say hello, either; hard to know whether they’re hung up on the old thing or have been recently convinced by the new.
It’s okay; Pete doesn’t feel much like the hi-how-are-ya. And anyway, Butch has been waiting all this time, too, back of the squad. Though he’s always content in his aluminum nest, he’s got to have his legs crossed by now, so Pete humps it out of there.
Almost out of there. At the back door, he runs into Jetty. Or else Jetty was waiting for him.
“Pony,” he says, folding a piece of green gum into his mouth.
Pete wants to ignore him or else poke him in the eye, that fucking nickname a burned-out candle on top of this big shit cake, but he can’t, because Jetty’s got leverage now. So: “What.”
“It used to be that we did the job and if there was a problem, the higher-ups would make it go away.” Majette sounds reasonable enough, but his eyes are a little wild. Like someone forgot to let him outside.
“This administration, now?” he says,
getting close, his breath heavy on spearmint. “The higher-ups don’t care what we do, the job or what anymore, so long as we’re the ones who make it sound good.”
“That’s what I’m told,” Pete says. “Twice just today.”
“I wanna know: did you make it sound good, Pony?”
“I made it sound like you made it sound. I don’t know if that’s good.”
Jetty’s hands go to his hips, an elbow between Pete and the door. “Hey: I’m speaking for you on this. Don’t fuck me up.”
“That was never my intention.”
“What was your intention, exactly? Stopping your friend White.” His smile like he wants in on the racket.
“Jetty, I didn’t know it was White.”
“You bullshit your friends, I’ll bullshit mine,” he says, then loses the smile. “How about we go for a beer? Make sure you understand my intention.”
Pete supposes he has to oblige but then he feels his phone buzz, right pants pocket, and it’s Sarah, who already called once while he was in the basement without a signal. He shows Jetty the phone and says, “The wife.”
Jetty stretches the gum over his tongue, splitting it to strings. “Bet you’re on a shorter leash than your dog.”
“Yeah, but I’m not as well trained. Just a second.”
Pete turns away to answer and when he does Sarah says, “Where are you,” not a question, or much of a greeting.
“I’m just finishing up.”
“I thought you were going to be here today.”
“Something happened.”
“Something happened, yes,” she agrees, even though she isn’t talking about the same something. She’s become real good at removing the co- from conversation. “Your son is in trouble. I need you here.”
“My son,” he says, hating her for her uncanny ability to provoke a trite argument. “How about you—” he starts, but Sarah hangs up; apparently she isn’t taking suggestions.
“No—of course,” he says, pretending they’re still talking; Jetty’s already pegged him as a sop; he doesn’t need more proof.
And then, because he’s going to need an inarguable reason to duck out of that drink, he asks, “What did the doctor say?” He turns around, shrugs at Jetty. “Okay,” he says, “I’m on the way.” He pockets the phone, ready to explain about Joel’s broken arm, but—
“You’ve got problems,” Jetty says. “Don’t make me one of them.” He snaps his gum, teeth showing, and walks away.
* * *
Outside, the squad is parked in the lot off Flournoy against the fence that backs up to private property. Pete got a spot right next to an out-of-service unmarked, camouflage for the K9 dog decal the general public treats like an invitation—as if the dog inside is all smiles, too.
When Pete releases the rear locks, he finds Butch in there shaking, nerves hamstrung, and he wonders if somebody discovered the squad anyway, tapped on the windows. Kids, probably. It’s usually kids.
“Sorry, Butch,” he says, thinking it’s been a hell of a day for the dog, too: the storm, the vet, the rest of the nonsense. “Come on. You have to pee? Voraus.” Butch obeys, soft-pawing it to the pavement and heeling to Pete’s left.
They cross Flournoy to an empty, overgrown lot between duplexes and Butch runs the perimeter, sniffing his way around to a patch of tall grass where he stops to do his business. He looks flustered—not to anthropomorphize him like Joel does, but when he drops his back end, he always has this look—as if he’s actually being caught with his pants down. Pete faces the street, gives him some privacy.
While he waits he watches Swigart, a cop he knows, pull his beat car into the lot. He’s a tall kid, a mouth quicker than his feet. The three of them worked together a while back—wintertime, Pete remembers: there was a wet snow falling, no wind. Butch chased the offender into a waste-management lot and Pete told Swigart they were done for; no way the dog could work amid the millions of rotting, microbial distractions, his paws caked with ice. But Butch stayed on the trail, and when he flushed the suspect out from behind a mountain heap of trash so warm it had a pulse, he sat down and barked as the offender ran, hit a slick patch of who knows what, and ate shit.
It was Swigart’s case, so the kid bought Pete coffee and they shot the breeze while the suspect had his ulna reset at Pres St. Luke’s.
If Swigart knew anything about Pete—the rumors about Kitty and him were rampant back then—he knew better than to act like he did. It was nice, talking to a kid who showed some respect. A kid like Pete once was.
Pete waves, gets nothing back. He tells himself Swigart didn’t see him, but then he looks in the same direction the kid is looking and sees a group of reporters gathered a hundred yards down the way at the station’s main entrance: they’re documenting Ja’Kobe White’s exit. If Swigart did see Pete, he knew better than to act like he did.
“For fuck’s sake.” Pete couldn’t have tried to run into the guy again today.
White’s mouth is going, cameras and mics following him to the backseat of a black showroom-caliber sedan waiting curbside. Once he gets in, the driver lets him finish whatever he’s going on about before easing the car to a crawl, the photographers desperate to keep up—thankfully—since the car is headed right toward Pete on the one-way.
Pete folds his arms, watches the car pass. He won’t pick a fight but he sure as hell won’t turn away, either, get camera-shot in the back.
When the sedan passes by, White is saying, “… the motherfucker right there waiting for me! Close up this window, he’s going to sic his dog on me again!”
“Give me a break, Ja’Kobe,” Pete says and then the car stops, abrupt, middle of the street.
The front-passenger window comes down and the driver, a man with too much hair to be his own and a tie the color of his strange rosy lips, leans over and looks at Pete like he’s the dog and says, “Back away, Officer.”
“I’m standing here. Move along.”
White says, “The dog, man—”
The driver puts his hand up, a shush. “Have you been waiting for Mr. White?”
Pete tears a plastic bag off the spool he keeps in his pocket, rubs its thin sides together to loosen the opening, and pulls it over his hand like a glove. He says, “I’m waiting to pick up dog shit.”
“Mr. White is afraid of your dog.”
“Then why don’t you move the fuck along, like I said?”
The driver looks in his rearview: a couple of the reporters have noticed his brake lights, and probably Pete, and hopefully not Butch.
Pete steps back, checks over his shoulder: Butch is oblivious, scratching his back on the grass.
“Is your dog neutered?” the driver asks.
“What?” Pete whistles and the dog flips onto his feet and starts toward them.
“Is he neutered.”
“No.”
The driver leans over just a little more and Pete watches his mouth as he says, “Then I think I’ll ask the court to take his balls, too.”
In the backseat, Ja’Kobe smiles, fearless, even though Butch has come up, right there at Pete’s side.
Then both windows go up and the sedan moves on ahead of the reporters, and as Pete jogs Butch back to the squad, he guesses he just met David fucking Cardinale.
* * *
Pete backs into the garbage can next to the garage as AM 780 restarts its top-of-the-hour newscast, and he realizes they’ve been out for nearly thirty-six hours.
“Son of a…” he says, brake lights illuminating the trash now splayed out behind the car.
In the back, Butch turns over and keeps right on snoring, having given it up on the way home.
“I wish you could drive sometimes,” Pete says, and gets out to pick up the mess.
An empty pizza box reminds him he was hungry a long time ago and he wonders what was for dinner. He hopes he can persuade Sarah to tell him Joel’s trouble while he microwaves some leftovers or something. The last thing he had was his fourth cup of c
offee, powdered creamer the only thing keeping it from sluicing right through his system. His stomach quit growling some time before that, sustenance as forgone as sleep.
He gets into the car and as he successfully backs into the garage the radio announcer on WBBM says, “Coming up, traffic and weather together on the eights,” and he decides to idle, wait for tonight’s forecast.
“WBBM news time 9:05 … A civil suit has been filed against the Chicago Police Department and K9 officer Peter Murphy after his dog bit a civilian late this morning. Ja’Kobe White claims Officer Murphy ordered his dog to attack and says Murphy was, quote, still banging for the judge.… Our listeners may remember White’s mother, Trissa, attempted to sue Judge Katherine Crawford over the death of her son Felan … at the time, Murphy served as Crawford’s protection. White is suing for harassment, excessive force, and wrongful arrest—still, he says, a ruling won’t be good enough. This from his attorney, David Cardinale—”
“Son of a bitch,” Pete says, wondering if Sarah heard the news, if it’s what made her call back three times since they spoke, no voice mail. He switches off the engine and, thankfully, the radio with it.
“You comatose back there?” he asks Butch, who’s still sawing logs, so he leaves the dog while he lets himself into the locker underneath his workbench where he keeps their training arsenal: a licensed supply of coke, heroin, meth, mary jane, oxycodone, and methadone—all of it either synthetic or dittoed, since Butch only needs the slightest whiff to detect the stuff. This is also where Pete keeps a secret supply of tobacco—a pack of Marlboro reds—because his own training never did completely take. He lights one and steps outside, checks the moon, the house.
Fucking Ja’Kobe White. Pete knows what’s not good enough for him and that’s the sorry salary of a cop. And now that he’s got Cardinale shooting for him, he’s aiming higher—the city’s pocketbook. And why not? Pete just bought him a ticket to play the ghetto lottery.
No wonder Finn was so rock-ribbed about the report. Excessive force was an obvious choice due to the dog bite, but harassment and wrongful arrest—White must’ve trumped those up from history. His story, that is.
The Good Boy Page 5