Case and the Dreamer (26 page)

The old Chief looked up at last, giving a whole new meaning to the words “eye strain.” The cold and deepset eyeballs seemed totally involved in lifting the enormous wattles which hung beneath them, while the uplifted face, the whole head, was equally involved with the weight of chins, which dragged the lower lip away from the lower teeth in the corners of the mouth wetly, pinkly down. This was the famous and terrifying scowl so beloved of hating political cartoonists, two generations of them. There was time for Perk to realize that his crotch, and probably a great deal more about him, had had no part in that apparently fixed stare. The old men had merely been mustering the strength to look up. Yet, because he was the old Chief, nothing was “merely.” He could conquer, he could devastate by lifting his face. “Shuddup,” he said. “Siddown!” The twitch of two mottled fingers showed where. Perk was standing, Perk was sitting; it was like matter-transmission, like changing the angle in a film cut, without so much as a click between, and he never could recall the move.

The old Chief turned to face him, not so much his function as that of his swivel chair. Now that their eyes were on a level, the old Chief’s had no work to do but to pour out hatred. They did not—at least, Perk hoped not—but it was there to do, and they were aimed right at him.

At last: “What did you want to be a cop for?”

“Who, me?” Perk answered stupidly, startled. He broke his gaze away; stupidity seemed able to ignite the hatred. “Well, I, it’s what I’ve always wanted to be, ever since I.” A quick glance at those old eyes stopped him short. He hit his knuckles together in chagrin, and was afraid he was blushing. He was. He said, “To help people. To make it a better place, the city. To teach folks it’s right to live by the law, right and easy, and it’s wrong to break the law, long and hard. And then, to keep teaching people, showing people, all the time every day what the law
is
.”

“Why don’t you tell the truth?”

“Oh, I, but, I—”

“Never mind that now,” the old man cut him off. “You probably don’t even know the truth.” He paused, then said with immense weight, “But you will.… What do you do on your duty tour every day? Oh God,” he blurted, interrupting before Perk could speak, “I don’t mean you control traffic when the game breaks up, so the dumbheads don’t kill each other driving manual between the gates and the radarway. I don’t mean you find a little girl’s kitten or bring in a case of clap the medics have traced and nailed for you, or call for a freeze because you think a street fight could start.”

“Well, that’s police work,” said Perk, a little defensively; then, “Sir—Chief! What’s the matter? Are you all, shall I—”

“I’m trying to keep from throwing up. You know, you really make me sick. Don’t take it personal. You don’t know no better, not yet, but what I hear talk like that my stomach wrenches and I gag.” He made some heavy, whistling breaths, while Perk debated whether or not to apologize.
Don’t take it personal
. Well all right. He waited.

“Put it this way. A citizen has a go-round with his chick, splits her face clear down to the tits with a cleaver. What’s the procedure?”

“Her ID signals the precinct, condition yellow, peak violence,
and if the computer shows vital signs failing, we get condition red. We know who she is and where she is. We cordon, Stage One, five hundred meters. We close the cordon. Anything unusual, any resistance, we freeze the area.”

“Everyone lies down sleepy.”

“Yes, sir. Then we move to the scene and enter.”

“No warrant.”

“
Hightower vs. Dayton, Ohio
, 2019, Supreme Court. ID notification of the precinct constitutes a warrant for search.”

“Did your homework, huh. What next?”

“On entering, and discovering evidence of assault, which we always do, we use the police key on the mobe.”

“You know why it’s called the mobe?”

“Yes, sir. From Möbius, 19th-century German mathematician, who devised the moebius strip. The mobe is a scanner which is installed, as many as necessary, to cover all enclosures, public and private, and most thoroughfares. It records and retains audio and video for twelve hours before it recycles. The police key stops and opens it for the record of events leading up to the crime, for use in court.”

“What about the Fifth Amendment—self-incrimination? Right of privacy, all that?”

“Completely protected, sir,
Arkwright vs. Thorndale, Miss.
, 2022. Surveillance after the fact, even of events before the fact, takes on the nature of detective investigation.”

“All right, all right. So what about your murderer?”

“With his picture and voice-prints, we have identification. If we’ve frozen the area, he’ll be in it somewhere. If not we’ll pick him up the minute he uses his ID to make a purchase, or says a single word in a public or private place. As a fugitive he has no civil rights, and the warrant to search for him is valid wherever the computer locates him.”

“All right, no more, I’m going to throw up for sure. So. Radar keeps the cars apart, the freeze and the mobe gets your murderers, molesters, vandals, and thieves, and you—when you’re not directing traffic in the parking lot at the ballpark, or finding the little lost
dogs—you trot down trails the goddam computer marks out for you. And that’s police work. Why did you want to be a cop?” He shouted it.

Startled, Perk shouted back, “I told you!” Then to those eyes, he added, “Sir.” Then, to more of the same, he murmured, “Well, gosh, I thought I did.”

“Then tell me this. Do they like you?”

“Who—you mean civilians? People? Well, sure. I mean, I guess so. I mean, why shouldn’t they? We help them.” He looked up quickly at that cliff of jowls, and away.

“So you joined the cops so people would like you.”

“No! No, I mean, that isn’t it at all. I just wanted to help!”

With a dreadfully slow, terrifying landslide sort of flow, the old man leaned forward until his elbows reached his knees and the full weight of his great torso came to rest on them. “You are going to be the chief of police here—chief of police in the biggest city in the whole country.”

“Me?” Years later, and for all those years, Perk was to cringe at his memory of that moment, and each time he was to wish he had the moment to live over again, for he
squeaked
. “Me?”

“You qualify, down the line. You’re the first man I’ve seen who does. All the years I served, and ever since I retired thirty-four years ago in the year 2000, and mind you, retired or not, I never took my eyes off the force and what’s been happening to it, I’ve been looking for that one man to be the kind of chief I was, yeah, and better.”

“Oh no, sir—no! Never that!” Perk was genuinely scandalized.

“Don’t you ‘no’ me, you limp little dick!”

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean … I mean, I’d like that, more than anything in the world I would, but it’s so—so big that I’ve got to be honest. I’m not the best there is. On my last competence survey I scored eighty-seventh. The time before that I scored forty-sixth. If my next one shows a continued downturn, I’ll think about resigning.”

“You’ll do no such a damn thing. I’ve been looking for you for fifty years and I ain’t got another fifty, let’s not kid ourselves. I’m shootin’ my wad with you, and you’re goin’ out of this room today on your way to the top. You’re goin’ to give this city the kind of
police it used to have, if you have to personally make this city what it used to be. Hear?”

“Y-yes sir.”

“Okay. Lesson one is why you, and 99 dot four-9s percent of the police wanted on the force, an’ what I tell you you will never and I mean by God never, repeat to anybody, most especially a cop. Do you really understand that?”

“Yessir,” but it was inaudible. Perk when his lips and tried again. “Yessir.”

The old Chief heaved himself upright and folded his forearms, which was as far as his arms would fold. Out of their caves, the eyes trained downrange like artillery. “From time to time it comes to a man that he wants to straighten other people out, that he was put on the world for that—to see to it that other people toe the mark, and toe it because this man said so. Now a very small handful of them could do it all by themselves, because there was a certain something about them that made folks listen, made folks move.”

“Charisma,” Perk murmured.

“Shut up, I’m talkin’. Mohammed, Marx, Hitler, Gandhi, Jesus, FDR, that feller over there in Hungary I can never say his name right ten, twelve years back. You’re the schoolboy, you know the ones I mean. They could do it and they did, but that thing they had, it comes to one out of dozens of millions. All the rest of it, the wanting to straighten other people out, there’s thousands of them born with that. But when they try to move people like Hitler and Jesus and them, they just get laughed at. So what do they do? They join the police force. Not the Army, the Navy—those guys can to straighten out only other Army and Navy guys. The police, they get to straighten out everybody.” The old Chief raised a heavy forefinger and marked time with his words. “An application to try for the force is an open admission that a man hasn’t got the muscle to do what he wants to do, by himself. His uniform says to the world that he isn’t complete, that he’s some sort of amputee. His club and a side arm and his badge are the muscles he admits he does not have. You got to know that about yourself and about every man and woman from rookie to chief—away down deep they feel impotent and mad
that they can’t straighten people out with their own muscle.

“Guys who really want to help—” (he made the word scathing with mimicry) “—wind up in the fire department.” He spat on the carpet.

“If you know that about the force, and if you’re the only one who does, you got a handle on them. You know who to order into what action, you know who has the most to prove and needs to prove it the most. That’s how you make your appointments and promotions, and that’s all you need to handle things inside. But that’s not enough to bring the force back to what it should be.

“What you got to do—and I’m telling you, you are the one that is going to do it—you got to forget if people, I mean that ocean of dumb-dumbs out there, if they like you or not. Respect you, sure, admire you, sure, but if they all like you, you failed, you’ve lost the chance to bring back the kind of power we had when there was such a thing as money, I mean the kind you counted out and passed around from hand to hand, and before the IDs with their bio-sensors, and the mobe, and the freeze, and like that. Can’t you see what’s wrong?
Nobody’s afraid of you anymore!
Time was when a highway patrolman stopped the car for a soft tire or failing to signal a lane change—this was before the radar waves—the guy in the car would pull out a gun and blow the cop’s head off. And it got so when the guy was stopped on a highway and reached into his pocket for his chewing gum because he was nervous, the cop would blow his head off. Nobody likes to see cops killed, or even civilians, but back then there was always fear, back and forth; people were scared of the cops, the cops were scared of the people. Only, because of that thing I told you about, that kind of amputation, it made the cops tough and mean because it gave them something special to prove. So in those days, sure, cops would find little girl’s lost puppy-dogs and all, and when someone you’re afraid of does the like of that, they are special, boy, special, and they knew it. And that’s what we’re going to bring back. What you are going to bring back. Volstead. That mean anything to you?”

Perk had to shake himself. The old man had perhaps more of that thing he claimed was amputated, that charisma, than he realized.
“Volstead. The Volstead Act. Eighteenth amendment. It was against the law to manufacture, sell or transport alcoholic beverages.”

“Oh, you are the little schoolboy,” sneered the old man, but wasn’t there a touch of admiration in it? “It was a dumb law—the dumbest part was getting it into the Constitution, because it made everybody who boozed a federal criminal, and when you have millions of people violating one part of the Constitution you can’t expect them to take the rest of the real serious. Aside from that it was great. For the first time it gave the law the chance to infiltrate and raid and hire informers and make and take payoffs—move in on the citizens. Sure, the citizens fought back in a lot of ways, from apathy to gun-fighting, but it gave the cops more reach than they had just busting unions and chasing burglars. It couldn’t last—the law, I mean, it was too stupid, but by the time it was repealed the force had a taste of what it was like to walk the beat and see people back off and lam out and sit there worrying till the bull walked by. Marijuana.”

“That’s been legal for forty years.”

“Forty-three,” said the old Chief smugly. Inwardly, Perk decided to be a little less accurate. It did the old man a grain of good to be one up on the schoolboy. “Ah, that was a great time. The greatest of all. Outlawing tobacco was small potatoes compared with the marijuana thing, because by then we were pretty well computerized and had sensors out everywhere, sniffing for tobacco. Marijuana was made to order for law enforcement; honest to God, if you was to draw a blueprint for some one thing that would put pride into that empty place in all cops, it was marijuana—pot, we used to call it. Booze, now, you needed a still and you had to feed it with grain and sugar in big lots, big enough to flag long before you even knew there was a still. Hard drugs and mindbenders, like LSD and DMT, you needed a laboratory and skilled chemists. And the street price got so high that big bundles of money were as easy to notice as big bundles of grain and sugar back in Prohibition days. Prostitution even—that used to be against the law—it had to have a place to happen in some way to contact the public, all the time, every day, every night. But pot, now, it’s a weed, it’ll grow anywhere for anybody, indoors, in the back of the closet with a little UV light. It never
did get out-of-sight expensive, and you can carry a couple of sticks around that would make a hell of a lot less bulge than a bottle. It spread like you wouldn’t believe, all over the country, all up and down the income brackets. It was in the poverty belts for the longest time, at first, poor damn drones, it was the only thing most of ’em could afford to hide from their troubles and that was all right with the force, because if there is anywhere you want to lean hard on it’s the poor. A lot of revolutionary stuff starts with them, and stealing and mugging and the like, and it’s a great thing to have something like pot to go cruising for, something cheap and easy to get and you can smell it! Back in the Prohibition days, the biggest killer gangster of them all, name of Campone—”