Supervolcano: All Fall Down

by Turtledove, Harry

  “Dad . . .” There was something in Shakespeare that Marshall couldn’t quite recall about doing it quickly if you were gonna do it. He brought the words out in a rush: “Dad, he bought the shit off Darren Pitcavage.”

  Marshall’s father held Deborah in the crook of his elbow. Even so, all at once it wasn’t Dad standing there any more. It was Lieutenant Colin Ferguson, in full cop mode. “Tell me that again. I want to make sure I heard it straight.” Most unhappily, Marshall repeated himself. His father took a few seconds to work things through, his face as expressionless as a computer monitor while the CPU crunched numbers on a big spreadsheet. Then he asked, “How much dope are we talking about here?”

  “Tim had, like, I dunno, a few ounces,” Marshall answered. “Like, enough to get us loaded but not enough to go into business for himself.”

  “Okay,” his father said. To Marshall’s amazement and relief, it did seem okay; Dad wasn’t going to give him the sermon out of Reefer Madness. Instead, his father went on, “Did Tim say whether Darren Pitcavage was in business for himself? Or was this one friend selling some to another friend?”

  Marshall had to think back. “Um, Tim didn’t say one way or the other. But I know for a fact he’s not tight with Darren or anything. He was, like, cracking up on account of he was buying dope from the police chief’s kid.”

  “Uh-huh,” his father said.

  The grim finality in that almost-word made alarms blare in Marshall’s head. “Dad,” he said urgently, “for God’s sake don’t drop on him. If you do, he’ll know I talked to you, and—” He didn’t—he couldn’t—go on.

  For a wonder, he didn’t have to draw his father a picture. “Nobody loves a snitch,” Dad said. Marshall managed a nod. Dad continued, “But when somebody knows something important and he keeps quiet about it, a lot of the time that’s worse.” He waited. Marshall nodded again—not with any great enthusiasm, but he did. Dad set a hand on his shoulder, and Dad was anything but a touchy-feely guy. “This may be that kind of important. I don’t know for sure that it is, but I think I’d better find out.”

  “Try not to drag Tim’s name into it,” Marshall said again. “And—” He stopped short once more.

  “Try not to drag yours in, too?” his father finished for him.

  “Yeah.” Marshall hated the dull embarrassment in his own voice.

  “Darren Pitcavage is a nasty piece of work, no matter what his father does for a living,” Dad said. “If it weren’t for his father, I think we would’ve taken him off the streets a while ago. Well, maybe better late than never.”

  “If you say so.” Marshall wasn’t sure of that, or of anything else.

  XX

  Colin Ferguson contemplated ways and means of busting his boss’ son without making it look like a coup d’état inside the San Atanasio Police Department. The more he contemplated, the gloomier he got. The case would have to be dead-bang, one hundred percent airtight. And it would have to get made without Mike Pitcavage’s finding out it was even cooking.

  Because if the chief did find out, something else would cook instead. Colin knew what, too: his own goose.

  If, of course, there was a case. If Darren had sold Tim a few ounces and that was the only time he’d ever seen that side of the business, that was one thing. But if he’d sold a few ounces to a good many Tims, Dicks, and Harrys, that was something else again. That was a serious felony, was what it was.

  If. Marshall didn’t know for certain. Maybe Tim didn’t know for certain. (Colin suspected Tim didn’t know anything for certain, the alphabet very possibly included.) But the vibe was that Darren Pitcavage was doing some real dealing.

  Do I want to put my neck on the block because of the vibe? Yes, that was the question, much more than To be or not to be? Or Colin thought it was at first. Then he realized they were one and the same, only his version wasn’t in iambic pentameter.

  It was well before noon when he walked over to Gabe Sanchez’s desk and said, “Let’s go Code Seven.”

  Gabe blinked. “Early,” he remarked, but then he patted his midsection. “Hey, I can always eat. Where you wanna go?”

  “How about the Verona?” Colin suggested.

  “Kind of a ways,” Gabe said. And it was—the old-fashioned Italian place was closer to Colin’s house than to the station. That was why he wanted to go there: he didn’t want other cops overhearing him. He couldn’t very well say that here. A clenched jaw and a raised eyebrow got some kind of message across—Gabe stood up with no more argument. “Well, I’m game. What’s it doing outside?”

  “We’ll both find out.”

  It was chilly and cloudy, but not raining. Gabe lit a cigarette. They climbed onto their bicycles and pedaled off. Colin did a good deal of talking on the way. No one except Gabe could hear him then.

  He finished just before they got to the Verona. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Holy shit,” Gabe said.

  Colin chuckled—not in any happy way. “Yeah, I figured that out for myself, matter of fact.”

  “I bet you did!” Gabe exclaimed. “You better watch who you talk to, too. Word gets back and you’re walking around without your nuts.”

  “That also crossed my mind,” Colin said. They went inside. The Verona was a refugee from the 1950s, with red-checked tablecloths, candles stuck in Chianti bottles (often useful now, not just for show), and posters of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Colosseum on the walls. They made spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, ravioli—stuff like that. And they had a wood-fired pizza oven, so they stayed open even when the power went out.

  Colin and Gabe decided to split a medium sausage pizza. The dough would be odd by pre-eruption standards. So would the cheese. The sausage would be pork or maybe chicken. By now, Colin made such adjustments almost automatically. Almost.

  “I’ll tell you who to go to,” Gabe said when the pizza got there. “Talk to Rodney, man. He hates dealers with a passion, and he won’t screw you.”

  “Even if it turns out to be nothing?” Colin said.

  “Even then.” Gabe took a bite from a slice of pizza. He chewed thoughtfully. “Could be worse. Could be better, too.”

  “Sure could,” Colin agreed after a bite of his own. But he ate with more enthusiasm than he’d expected. The black detective had been on the mental list he was making, too—and, by the nature of things, that list wasn’t very long.

  He paid the tab. The cops unlocked their bikes from the little curbside trees to which they’d been chained. Gabe smoked another cigarette on the way back to the station. It started drizzling just as they got there. They hurried inside. Chief Pitcavage was gabbing with the uniformed officer at the front desk. He nodded amiably to Colin and Gabe. “Hey, guys. Wet outside?”

  “Just a little, like it doesn’t know whether to piss or get off the pot,” Gabe answered. Colin was glad to let him do the talking. Dammit, he didn’t have anything against Mike Pitcavage—except for raising a worthless kid and letting him decide he would get away with anything because his father was a bigwig in this town.

  Pitcavage wouldn’t think like that, of course. He’d think it was because he got the chief’s badge and Colin didn’t. Were things reversed between them, it would have been, too. Colin was positive of that.

  He quietly checked which cases Rodney Ellis was working on, then ambled over to his desk. “Want to talk with you about the witnesses to the robbery at that check-cashing place last Saturday,” he said, as casually as he could.

  “Well, okay,” Rodney answered. That wasn’t Colin’s usual style, but it wasn’t too far out of line, either. “Drag up a rock.” He pointed to the beat-up chair by his desk.

  “Let’s do it in one of the interrogation rooms,” Colin said. “Coupla things I want to bounce off you.”

  “However you want.” Rodney got to his feet. He was
solidly built, but moved as smoothly as the point guard he’d been in high school. They walked into one of the rooms. Colin closed the door behind them and glanced up at the camera near the ceiling to make sure the red light under the lens was off. He hadn’t even sat down when the African-American detective asked, “What’s really going on, man?”

  “I’ve got a problem,” Colin said. “Maybe you can give me a hand with it.”

  “I’m listening.” Ellis showed no cards. Well, neither had Colin.

  But he had to now. He had to if he was going to go anywhere with this, anyhow. He told Rodney what he’d heard from Marshall—what Marshall had heard from Tim, in other words. He named no names, though he was glumly aware Rodney would work out at least one of them without a hell of a lot of trouble.

  When he finished, Rodney didn’t say anything for close to a minute. Then, very softly, the other cop went, “Aw, shit, man.”

  Colin nodded. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “It wasn’t your kid who bought from Pitcavage Junior?” Sure as anything, Ellis could walk barefoot through the obvious.

  “No, a friend of his. I’ve known, uh, him”—Colin almost said Tim—“since they were in high school. They kinda stopped handing out brains before the guy got to the front of the line, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t make up something like that for the fun of it. The way Marshall tells it, his buddy thought it was a big old joke.”

  “A joke. Uh-huh.” Rodney didn’t sound like somebody who was going to ROFL. “You believe this happened because your boy’s friend says it did. You believe darling Darren’s dealing.” Those weren’t questions, not the way he came out with them.

  “’Fraid so.” Colin nodded again. He would rather have gone to Kelly’s dentist father for a root canal without Novocaine, but he did. “Would I be talking about it with you if I didn’t believe it?”

  “Not fuckin’ likely,” Ellis answered, which was also the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He eyed Colin. “What do you want to do about it?”

  That was the $64,000 question, all right. Colin had been thinking of little else since his son gave him the unwelcome news. Sighing, he said, “Seems to me we’ve got to find out how deep Darren’s in. If this was a onetime thing, if he scored more than he could use for a while and was selling some, then I guess we shine it on. But if he’s dealing dealing, if you know what I mean . . .”

  “Then we got to drop on him.” Rodney didn’t ask that, either—he said it. Colin made his head go up and down one more time. Rodney went on, “And whatever we do, we got to do it so Chief Mike doesn’t know we’re doin’ it.”

  “Probably a good plan,” Colin agreed, so dryly the other cop guffawed.

  “I trot over to the chief’s office now, man, you’re fucked,” the African-American detective said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Colin left it right there.

  Ellis stared up at the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. He let out a sigh of his own. “And if I don’t go to Pitcavage, if I start working this like it’s a case, and he finds out, I’m fucked, too.”

  “I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry all kinds of ways,” Colin said. “If you want to make like this entire conversation never happened, hey, I can see why you would. Long as you don’t rat me out, I won’t hold it against you.”

  “Wanna know something weird, Colin? I believe you,” Rodney said. “Anybody else in the whole wide world’d be blowin’ smoke up my ass. Pitcavage sure would, Lord knows. But you, I believe. Doesn’t matter any which way, though, on account of I’m in. If Darren’s dealing, he’s got to pay the price, same as anybody else. Wasn’t for his daddy, he woulda paid some prices a while ago by now. ’Bout time he finds out the rules don’t have except for you in ’em anywhere.”

  “Looks that way to me, too,” Colin said. He hadn’t been so relieved since . . . since when? Since Kelly’d said she’d marry him—that was the only answer that crossed his mind. “Thanks, man,” he added a moment later. He’d never been one for big shows of gratitude.

  “It’s cool, Colin.” Yes, Rodney’d known him long enough to have a notion of how he ticked. “Anybody who deals, he ain’t no friend of mine.” He peered up at the ceiling again, as if trying to extract wisdom from the random patterns of holes in the tiles. “Talk about friends, though . . . We end up busting the chief’s kid, this whole goddamn department’ll go off like a grenade.”

  “That did occur to me, yeah,” Colin said. “Be careful while you’re working on it. Be careful who you pick to help you, too. You know the old line—three guys can keep a secret as long as two of ’em are dead.”

  “I didn’t, but I like it.” Thoughtfully, Ellis continued, “Not the only reason to be careful. Darren, he’ll make a lot of cops. A couple of the brothers who haven’t been here since dirt, maybe not. Let’s hope he’s one of the white guys who figure all black folks look alike.”

  “That’s a bunch of bull, too,” Colin said. “You don’t look one damn bit like Halle Berry.”

  Rodney laughed. “Well, you got that right, anyway. Long as we’re here, you wanna really talk about the robbery?”

  “Sure. Let’s do it,” Colin said, so they did.

  * * *

  Deborah started to nurse. Kelly felt her milk let down. That was a sensation she’d never known—never even imagined—till she had the baby. Well, so was labor, but this was a lot more pleasant than that.

  Deborah sucked and gulped, sucked and gulped. Then she tried to gulp when she should have been sucking or something, because she choked and swallowed wrong. The first time that happened, it had horrified Kelly. Now she got that it wouldn’t kill her firstborn daughter. She pulled Deborah off the breast and hauled her up onto her own shoulder, patting her on the back till she could breathe easily again. It didn’t take long. Then the baby went back to supper.

  Kelly’d just switched her to the other side when her eyelids started to sag. Up on the shoulder she went once more. Kelly wanted to get a burp out of her before she crashed. She also checked the baby’s diaper. Deborah was dry. That was good.

  “Okay, kid, you can sack out now,” Kelly said, rocking in the recliner. With luck, Deborah would stay sleep long enough for Kelly to make dinner, perhaps even long enough to let her eat it. That was bound to be against the babies’ union regulations, but the local hadn’t come down on Deborah yet.

  The front door opened. Somebody was back from work: Colin or Vanessa. “Don’t sl—” Wham! Too late. Deborah jerked and yelled. “Shit,” Kelly muttered.

  Vanessa sauntered into the front room from the foyer. “Aw, did I wake her?”

  “Yeah, you did. Thanks a bunch.” Kelly was too frazzled to stay cool; maybe that horseshit Aw had something to do with it. No, for sure it did. “I tried to tell you not to slam the goddamn door, but did you listen? Fat chance.”

  Vanessa blinked. Kelly’d done her best to play the easygoing stepmom—till now. “Well, excuse me, Ms. High-and-Mighty,” Vanessa said. “Can I kiss your ring?”

  “You can kiss my ass, Vanessa,” Kelly said, meanwhile rocking to try to calm Deborah down again. “Now that somebody’s been dumb enough to hire you, the sooner you get the hell out of here, the happier everybody else will be.”

  “Fuck you, too,” Vanessa snarled. She stomped up the stairs and slammed the door to her bedroom, too.

  Kelly’s stomach churned. She didn’t like fights. She didn’t do them very well, or she didn’t think she did. And she was damn glad she’d already nursed Deborah, because if she hadn’t the baby would be chowing down on sour milk right this minute.

  Deborah was just going back to sleep when Colin walked in. On the off chance that she might be, he closed the door quietly. When he walked into the front room, he stopped short. “Good God in the foothills!” he said. “I’ve seen guys we tased who didn’t look so ready
to bite holes in things. What did I do? Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” Kelly said, and not another word.

  “Uh-oh.” Colin didn’t need any fancy DNA analysis to work out what must have happened. “You and Vanessa fired away, huh?”

  “Yeah, we did.” Kelly sighed. She wasn’t proud of it, not even slightly.

  “What went on? Do I want to know?”

  She told him. It didn’t take long. She finished, “You go upstairs, you’ll hear a different version, though, I bet.”

  “Uh-huh. Hearing a bunch of different stories comes with being a cop. So does deciding which one you believe, or whether you believe any of them,” Colin said, the corners of his mouth turning down. “I already have a notion about that, but I am gonna go upstairs.” And he did, more slowly than Vanessa had. He knocked on her door. She said something. Kelly couldn’t make out what, but Colin answered, “It’s me,” so she must have asked who was there. The door opened, then closed again.

  Rocking Deborah, Kelly could hear Colin’s voice and Vanessa’s, but, once more, she couldn’t follow what they were saying. By their tones, she counted herself lucky there. Then Vanessa was, in the classic Nixonian phrase, perfectly clear: “Get out of here! Everybody hates me!”

  If she’d been thirteen, that kind of thing would have come with the territory. Kelly remembered screeching the same words in the same tone. But since Vanessa was more than twice thirteen . . .

  The door to her room opened and closed again. Colin came down the stairs. His face held no expression at all. Kelly got to her own feet as fast as she could without bothering Deborah. The baby muttered, but her eyes stayed shut. “I’m sorry,” Kelly said.

  “Not your fault.” Colin went into the kitchen. Kelly followed him. He got the Laphroaig bottle down from the top shelf of the pantry and poured himself three fingers’ worth.