Superbia (Book One of the Superbia Series) (13 page)

Vic shrugged and
said, “That’s what he said.
 
One of those
auto-erotic something-or-others.”

“Like the guy
from
Kung-Fu?
” the Chief said.

“Exactly,” Vic nodded.
 

“I never tried
that.”

“Apparently it’s
more common than you’d think,” Vic said.
 
“The restricted blood flow makes an orgasm ten times more powerful.
 
At least, that’s what Frank told me.”

“No I didn’t,”
Frank snapped.

“What you do in
the privacy of your own home is your business, Frank,” the Chief said.
 
“Anyway, nice work coming out so fast to that
call.
 
If you two keep up the good work,
I might be able to make room for two detectives.”

“Does that mean I
can get a fancy gold shield too?
 
Vic
keeps picking on me because I don’t have one.”

The Chief stuck
out his bottom lip as he thought about it, looking up at the ceiling tiles like
the answer might be written there.
 
“I’ll
think about it.”

Vic and Frank
walked out of the Chief’s office toward the stairs, grinning at one another,
with the sound of flip-flops smacking the ceramic tile with every step.
 

***

It was the same
episode of the same cartoon for the fifth time in a row.
 
Penelope liked nothing better than watching
the same thing over and over.
 
Vic didn’t
mind.
 
He’d read that children learn from
repetition.
 
“Turn it on again for your
sister?” he said to Jason.
 

Jason was
clicking through a webpage on Vic’s laptop, sounding bored when he said,
“Again?”

Vic went into the
kitchen and opened his refrigerator, taking a bottle of Miller Lite out of its
six-pack carton.
 
“You’re playing on the
computer, what’s the difference?”

He cracked it and
drank half the bottle in one easy swallow.
 
It was cold as ice and went down smooth.
 
He grabbed two more and went back into the living room, plopping down
next to Penelope as Jason turned the show back on.
 

“Can we play a
board game?” Penelope said.
 

He put his arm
around her and nodded, “As soon as this is over.
 
Let’s just sit here for a few minutes and
when it’s done, we’ll shut the TV and the computer off and play anything you
want.”

Penelope laid her
head against him as he stroked her hair, now finding the stupid cartoon
somewhat pleasant.
 
Everything settled
inside of him and resolved itself, like sediment floating to the bottom of a
canister.
 
Vic finished the second bottle
and leaned his head back against the couch.
 
He closed his eyes and soon heard the sounds of snoring coming from his
open mouth.
 
Everything was all right,
though.
 
Everything was good.
  

The sound of
Jason’s voice woke him up.
 
He opened his
eyes to see his son sitting on the coffee table, hunched over as he talked on
the phone.
 
Penelope’s head was down in
his lap and she was asleep.
 
Jason had
covered her up with a blanket and taken off her shoes.
 
“I can’t put him on, Mom.
 
He’s sleeping.”

“Give me the
phone,” Vic said.
 

Jason’s head
popped up and he handed Vic the phone.
 
“What’s
up?” Vic said.

“You fell
asleep?
 
You’re supposed to be watching
them.
 
It’s only nine o’clock at night.”

“We were sitting
on the couch watching TV and I closed my eyes.
 
What’s the big deal?”

“Were you
drinking?”

 
Vic looked at the bottles on the coffee table
and then at his son.
 
Jason shook his
head silently and Vic said, “No.
 
I’m
just tired from work.”
 

“Put Jason on the
phone.”

Vic wiggled out
from underneath Penelope’s head and snapped his fingers at Jason, directing him
to the bathroom.
 
“I can’t.
 
He just went into the bathroom to get
freshened up for bed.”

“Make sure he
calls me the second he gets out.”

“Okay.
 
How are you doing?”

“Tuition for her
pre-school is due.
 
I need a check from
you when you drop them off in the morning.”

“I don’t have it
right now.”

“When will you
have it by?”

“When we get our
overtime check, I guess.
 
Why can’t you
pay for it out of the money I give you every week?
 
Why does the three hundred dollars I fork
over every paycheck not cover anything they need?”

“Because I am a
single-mother and have no help, Vic.
 
Thanks to you I have no help.”

Vic moved into
the kitchen, keeping his hand cupped over the phone to muffle his voice.
 
“You aren’t a single mother.
 
That’s asinine.
 
I have them three days a week and give you
more money than I take home every paycheck.
 
Is that what you tell people?
 
That you’re a single-mom with no help?”

“Well it’s true,”
she said.
 

“It is not fucking
true.
 
Listen to me—”

“Don’t curse at
me!
 
And don’t talk to me that way in
front of my children!”

“I’m not in front
of the children!
 
Listen to me!”
 
He continued to talk but quickly realized
that she’d hung up the phone.
 
He ended
the call and put the phone down, fighting the temptation to text her:
FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING CUNT
.
 
He typed it into his phone but did not send
it.
 
It felt better just to write
it.
 

Jason was
standing in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing his teeth.
 
Vic leaned up against the bathroom door and
said, “Thanks.
 
You know how she gets.
 
Every little thing just…you know how she
gets.”
 

“No problem,” the
boy said.
 

“Listen, I’ll put
Penelope to bed and how about you and me watch a movie?”
 

“I kind of wanted
to finish my game, Dad.”

“Oh.
 
Okay.
 
That sounds good,” Vic said.
 
He
followed his son out of the bathroom and watched him sit down in front of the
computer again, quickly immersing himself in the bright screen and theatrical
sound effects.
 

Vic lifted
Penelope and put her back in his lap.
 
He
reached for another beer and opened it.
 
It was warm.
 
He drank it anyway.

***

Frank finished
his fourth beer and sat back, clutching his stomach.
 
The aspirin was not mixing well with the
Miller Lite.
 
His whole body tingled and
although his knee ached, he was only dully aware of its mild throb.
 
He’d already ground up the remaining Percocet
in the garbage disposal.
 
Somewhere, a hundred miles downstream, a
little old lady is going to drink a glass of tap water and be high as a kite.
 
Oh well
,
he thought.
 

His phone
rang.
 
Frank picked it up and looked at
the numbers in confusion.
 
“Hello?”
 

“Hey, Frankie.
 
You know who this is?”

Frank did.
“Special Agent Dolos?”

“Just call me
Dez.
 
What are you doing?”

“Watching TV and
drinking beer.
 
We had kind of a crazy
day after the meeting.
 
There was this
dead guy—”

“Uh-huh.
 
Can you talk?”

Frank put down
his beer and said, “Yeah.
 
What’s up?”

“Vic was
bullshitting me earlier today.
 
Are you
going to bullshit me too?”

“No, of course
not.”

“There’s room in
our operation for good people, Frank.
 
Especially people who have a family history of doing the right thing,
you know what I’m saying?”

Frank
paused.
 
“Kind of, I guess.”

“Good.
 
Because we’re all big fans of your old man’s
work.
 
It’s the kind of thing that’s
missing from police work today.
 
The kind
of thing it takes certain people to understand.
 
I need a guy like you out in the boonies, Frank.
 
I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure about Vic
anymore.”

“I know he can be
hard to take sometimes, but he’s a good guy.”

“Everybody that
works with me makes a lot of money, Frank.
 
They all go on to exclusive assignments that take them far away from the
shitholes like where you work now.
 
Stick
with me, and you can go places.”

“Okay,” Frank
said.

“What’s the real
reason you guys didn’t sign that CI up yet?”

Frank took a long
sip of beer.
 
“I have no idea.
 
Vic talked to him without me there.”

“Really?”

“Honest to God.”

“All right.
 
Listen, I need that CI flipped.
 
I need you to make sure we get him one way or
another.
 
If Vic can’t make it happen, I
want you to find a way for me to get in touch with him, understand?
 
We have resources you guys could never dream
of.”
 

“I wouldn’t doubt
it,” Frank said.

“Say hello to
your old man for me.
 
Let him know his
friends down here haven’t forgotten him.
 
If he ever needs anything, you make sure he has my number.”

“I will,” Frank
said.
 
The line went dead.
 
Frank’s first instinct was to call Vic, but
he found himself staring at the phone without dialing.
 
He tossed the phone aside, then finished his
beer and turned the TV back on.
 

9.
 
Vic was sitting at his desk, waiting as Frank
walked into the office.
 
He smiled
broadly and said, “There he is.
 
Our Miss
America.
 
How you feeling?”

“Like hell,”
Frank said.
 
“My knee is killing me.”

“I can see the
pain in your eyes,” Vic said.
 
“It’s how
I know you haven’t been taking that shit anymore.
 
How you making out with that?”

“What I don’t
understand is if my doctor says it’s okay, and the Chief of Police says it’s
okay, why do I need to listen to a not-even-promoted Detective who says
different?”

“How many drug
addicts does the Chief know?”

“He doesn’t need
to know any drug addicts.
 
He has the
Staff Sergeant at his side, who is an expert in all aspects of law
enforcement.
 
That’s a real police
officer, with a real rank, Vic...” Frank stopped talking and held up his hand, “I
really tried to get all that out without laughing.
 
Let me try again.”
 
  

“No need.
 
So how was your night, last night?”

“Good.”

“What did you
do?”

“Iced my goddamn
knee because I’m not allowed to take the proper medicine for it.”

Vic started
tapping his pen on his desk anxiously.
 
“Did Dez reach out to you?
 
I
figured he would because that’s his M.O.
 
He likes nothing better than to divide and conquer.”

“Really?” Frank
said.

“So did he?”

“Did he call me?”

“Do you know what
the number one thing people do when they are confronted in an interrogation
situation and they do not want to answer the question?
 
They repeat it.
 
It allows them to create psychological space
and distance from the interrogator so that they can gather their thoughts.
 
Do you know what the number two thing they do
is?”

“No,” Frank
said.
 

“They swear they
are telling the truth.
 
They swear to
God, swear on their lives, swear on anything really.
 
I once had a man swear on the soul of his
dead child that he was telling me the truth.
 
He was actually wearing a t-shirt with a silkscreen of the kid’s picture
on it that said, IN MEMORIAM.”
 

“That sucks,”
Frank said.
 

“So what did Dez want?”

“He wanted to
know why we hadn’t signed up Billy as a CI yet, and to tell him if you weren’t
going to do it.”

Vic nodded, still
tapping his pen anxiously.
 
“So were you
going to tell me about it?”

“Maybe.
 
I was trying to decide if it was necessary or
not.”

Vic came forward
on the desk, “Necessary?
 
You mean a guy I
introduce you to tries to cut my throat and turn you against me and you have to
decide whether or not it’s
necessary?
 
After everything we’ve been through?
 
That’s bullshit, Frank.
 
You were waiting to see if you could play the
cards in your favor.
 
Well I’ve got news
for you, pal.
 
Dez promises a whole lot
and delivers very fucking little.
 
He
creates discord and misery wherever he goes just because he likes to see people
fight.
 
And then, when you think he’s
your friend, he jams it up your ass sideways and moves on to the next person!”