"Okay, boss," Frank said. "That reminds me." He turned toward Iolaus and lifted his hand to his temple, "I forgot to salute you when I walked in."
Iolaus shook his head, "No more saluting. I'm striking that one from the books, first thing."
Frank nodded and looked back at Erinnyes, "If he wasn't on his deathbed, you'd have just put him there by saying that."
"You're not kidding."
"You think it would be wrong to hold a lottery for the PBA to see who gets to yank the plug?"
"I told you. We're focusing on the positive."
"Right," Frank said. "Very few sick days."
"The fewest. Maybe of all our officers, ever."
"Got it."
They both paused at the door before going back in the hall, and Frank took a deep breath. "Remember to look sad."
Iolaus let his face droop, "Like that?"
"I said sad, not like you just had a stroke."
"Dick."
Frank opened the door and frowned at Mrs. Erinnyes, reaching out to touch her hand as he passed. The line was getting short. They'd be pulling the plug on the fat fuck in just a little longer. As he stepped out of the line he saw two uniformed police officers walk in. Both of them in their fanciest Class-A regalia, complete with dark blue dress coats with embroidered sleeves and pearl white gloves. The older one's hat was covered in tangled gold braids across the brim, the scrambled eggs of a Police Chief. Frank recognized the younger officer standing next to him and leaned back toward Iolaus, "Isn't that the kid we interviewed? The moron who said he'd call his dad for advice before he responded to a domestic?"
Iolaus looked down the line and said, "Yeah. I guess Chief Tovarich and him came to pay last respects."
"Respects, my ass. That guy's been grabbing for power ever since I came on the job. Tell me he didn't give his kid a badge and a gun."
"He did more than that. I heard Junior spent three months in uniform and got moved inside. He's now the administrative officer for Manor Farms PD."
Frank's eyes widened, "The guys over there let that slide?"
Iolaus shrugged, "Who are they going to complain to? Their Chief? I guess I better go say hello. Hey, we're all meeting up for a beer after this. Can you make it?"
"I promised Dawn I'd go somewhere with her."
"It'll be quick. I can't drink much anyway, I'm driving a township car."
Frank eyed the older Chief at the other end of the room suspiciously. "Listen to me. Be careful around that guy. They're sniffing around here for a reason."
"I've got this." Iolaus headed down the remainder of his line of men toward the rear, extending his hand as he walked. "Thanks for coming, Chief. We really appreciate it."
Tovarich clutched his hand and squeezed like he was trying to crush a soda can. The Chief was in his mid-fifties with a head of white hair stained with puddles of blonde that looked like a piss-stained carpet in someone's living room. He was as thin and gaunt as a cancer patient and his nose had an upturned slope to it like someone had dabbed poop on his front lip and he was trying not to smell it. It gave his face a piggish quality and his green eyes fixed on Jim Iolaus when he said, "It would have been disrespectful of me not to come."
Iolaus looked at Junior and nodded, but hesitated to offer his hand. The younger man was grinning and standing with his arms at his sides like he was holding a pose. The last time Iolaus had seen the young man had been when he interviewed for their police department and failed spectacularly. In the meantime, the kid had obviously learned to appreciate long lunch breaks with his father, and his stomach protruded hard enough against his fine Class-A coat that Iolaus feared the brass buttons would pop off and begin striking people in the head. Junior's puffy cheeks and double-chin accentuated his unfortunate hereditary facial features to look even more like something that should be rolling around in the mud, bleating, but Iolaus smiled kindly at him and said, "How have you been, Wally Junior? I heard you're setting the world on fire over there."
"I've been good, Jim. It's not easy trying to keep our retards in line, but we're managing" Junior said.
Tovarich looked around the room and said, "I don't see Frederick or Jones here. They said they would stop by. Did I miss them?"
Iolaus turned and glanced over his shoulder, "Who? I didn't see anybody else from Manor Farms."
"No. They're the newest members of your township council and probably the next majority leaders," Tovarich said. He looked past Iolaus' shoulder at where Mrs. Erinnyes was standing and tugged on his son's sleeve, "Come on. Let's go up."
"Okay, Chief," Junior said. He leaned close to Iolaus and whispered, "Hey, where's that female officer of yours hiding?"
"She hasn't shown up yet," Iolaus said cautiously.
"Damn. I had mandatory updates with her a few months back and everybody was drooling."
Iolaus did not speak as Junior headed up behind the Chief, the two of them approaching Mrs. Erinnyes with condescending offers of sorrow. Mrs. Erinnyes wrapped her arms around Tovarich and kissed him on the cheek, leaving a pale pink ring on his face that he didn't wipe off.
Beers, both cold and dark, topped with an inch of thick white foam lined the bar. Good Irish stout for a proper police salute to the dead. The bartender set up the mugs and when Frank and Iolaus reached into their pockets to pay, he waved them off. "This is on the house, guys. I heard you lost another one. Breaks my heart when a hero goes down."
Frank squinted at the use of the word hero in reference to anything to do with Carl Erinnyes, but Iolaus spoke up and said, "We really appreciate it. Thanks for the support." He looked sideways at Frank as he picked up the beers, "We'll drink to Heck and Vic too. Hero's a loose definition when it comes to free beers."
Frank sighed and reached for the rest of the mugs, "Erinnyes did have the least amount of sicktime, after all. Maybe that's what the guy meant."
"That's the spirit."
They passed out the beers to the waiting hands of their guys. It was clear the group wasn't used to drinking together, or doing much of anything together, in fact. Mainly they kept to small, isolated clusters of two or three who worked on the same squads. Each group eyed the others cautiously, uncertain how freely they could speak. Still used to the old ways where anything you said would be run back to the nearest boss and twisted to suit the speaker's purposes. Nobody spoke to Frank, of course. Old habits die hard, he thought.
He watched Jim Iolaus move among the men, going from group to group. He picked up and put down their various conversations with steady precision. Finally, the Acting Chief made his way back to Frank, who had already filled another glass of stout and waiting to hand it off to Iolaus as he returned. "I can't," Iolaus said. "Can't take any chances driving around a township car."
"Right, right, I forgot," Frank said. He drained the rest of his own glass and started working on the one Iolaus passed up. "Thank God I'm not the anointed one."
"You could have been," Iolaus said. "I half expected you to make a play for it. Kept waiting to see you sitting in the township manager's office, making a deal."
"Yeah, right," Frank sniffed. "Not me."
"Why not? You've got the time on the job, specialized skills. Outside connections. More experience with larger investigations. I was really worried, to be honest."
"I'm a glorified trash picker, Jim. That's what Vic always said we were. 'Detectives are the trash pickers. We feel more comfortable with drug dealing criminals than cops because we can't conform and don't belong.' That's all I've ever tried to be, Jim. If this place would just leave me alone and let me lock up the bad guys, I'd never make another peep."
Iolaus put his hand on Frank's shoulder, "You did good that day. Vic would have been proud."
"What day?" Frank said, but Iolaus's eyes said it all. He knew what day. In that moment, he saw the crumpled form of Kayla Polonius slumped over in her wheelchair, blood from her crushed skull seeping through the cartoon characters printed on the pillowcase covering her head. He blinked it
away. "I just did what had to be done."
"While I sat outside and vomited."
"She was just a defenseless little girl, Jim. Her father beat her to death with a brick because he thought his life would be better off without having to take care of her. You'd just had a little kid. Of course it affected you."
"But you didn't run outside and I did. I'm just saying, you did good that day. I'm sure he'd have been proud of you."
Frank chuckled softly, "He'd have called me a rookie and yelled at me the whole time."
"Yeah, probably," Iolaus sighed. He lifted his mug, "To Not-Even-Promoted Detective Victor Ajax."
Frank clinked his glass against Jim's and said, "True police."
Iolaus finished his beer and looked around the room, "These guys don't look too comfortable together, do they?"
"It's not that they're adverse to camaraderie, boss. They've just never seen it before. Give it time. They've been divided and conquered for so long, it's part of their thinking. It's going to take some good old fashioned leadership to bring them around."
"Leadership? What's that? Did I ever hear of that before?"
"It's this crazy new concept. I've always wondered if it would actually work."
Iolaus smiled, "You're a big part of the future of this PD, Frank. Like it or not, you're my right hand man in dragging this place into the modern era. Five years from now, we're going to go rocketing directly into the 1980's. By the time I retire, we might actually only be fifty years behind the times."
"I don't know, Chief. I've always hated the goddamn administration. It's part of my character. I've got a reputation to uphold."
Iolaus clapped him on the shoulder, "A wise man once told me the greatest undercover work is always done on the bosses. That's why you'll be perfect for the job."
"Yeah, who said that?"
"You did."
"See, you aren't supposed to listen to me when I say that shit. That's how we both get in trouble."
Iolaus checked his watch and said, "All right, time for me to get going. You heading out too?"
"Yeah. All this beer drinking and relaxation is getting old. Let me go spend some time with my wife at the mall instead. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll want to go shoes shopping."
The sky was bright and clear with a cold, chill wind that rocketed through their clothes. Frank turned up his collar and whistled as Iolaus headed for the all-black Crown Vic backed into the spot next to the door. It was easily made as a police car, with a red and blue light bar in the back window, too many antennas and a silver spotlight on the driver's side frame, but there was no cage, and in the backseat, a child's car seat for Iolaus' little one. Frank whistled and said, "A take home car. You're moving up in the world."
"It's more trouble than it's worth." Just as Iolaus spoke, a dark blue Taurus drove past the bar slowly, like gangbangers about to machine gun an old lady's front porch. It sped up as it passed in front of Iolaus and Frank, the face of Wally Tovarich Junior unmistakable as he told his father to, "Go, go!"
"What was that?" Iolaus said.
"Looked to me like we were being surveilled."
"Why the hell for?"
Frank shrugged, "I told you that guy was a snake."
Iolaus' hand dove in his pocket, "I'm gonna go find out. That's bullshit."
"You want me to come with?"
"No. I'll take care of it. Go spend time with your wife." Iolaus stuck his key in his car door and jiggled it open, his eyes cast down the road at Tovarich's unmarked. Iolaus' tires spun on the parking lot gravel as he threw it into drive.
Frank got into his car and turned it on, the radio coming alive with thumping bass and sped-up chorus of N.W.A's "Fuck the Police. Fuck - fuck - fuck the police."
Frank sang along, waiting for MC Ren's verse to start, just as Iolaus' car reached the road and peeled out, trying to go after the vanishing Taurus. His brake lights flashed momentarily as he stopped to let a Hyundai pass. He waved impatiently at the driver to hurry up, spinning to look at where Tovarich's car had gone as he stepped on the gas to get behind the Hyundai.
Something passed through the corner of Frank's peripheral vision, nothing but a blue blur as a GMC pickup truck doing sixty miles an hour headed straight for Jim Iolaus. Time slowed, revealing the horrified look of the GMC's driver as he lowered his cellphone in time to see Iolaus' police car sideways in the road directly in front of him. There was no time to stop. Iolaus never even saw the truck.
Frank found himself already out of his car when the crash happened, blindly running across the gravel parking lot as the truck's front end smashed into Iolaus' door and crushed it, an angry child stomping on a cardboard juice box. Water and antifreeze squirted through the GMC's crumpled hood and hot, hissing steam billowed out, forming a cloud around the Crown Vic.
There was too much crushed metal and smoke for Frank to get to Iolaus through the front door. He raced around the passenger side, screaming Iolaus' name. The GMC's terrified driver looked up as Frank screamed, "Call 911! Tell them there's an officer assist!"
He heard sirens immediately kick up behind him and looked back to see the Tovarich's Taurus spinning around in the street, heading back toward them. Jim Iolaus' bloody hand was flat against the passenger side window, not moving. Frank yanked on the door handle and felt his knees weaken. Iolaus' body was a twisted, haphazard imitation of a human form. A thick white bone stuck out of his left leg's suit pants, gleaming and fresh, but thick black blood bubbled up from the wound beneath it. "It's okay," Frank whispered, reaching into the car to grab Iolaus' face. "Help is on the way. Everything is going to be fine, so stay calm."
Iolaus muttered something, his words a wet gurgle.
"I can't move you, Jim. Just hang in there. The paramedics are going to cut you out, and you'll be just fine. Just fine." He could hear the Tovarich's car skidding to stop behind them. He turned his head and cried out, "Call fire rescue for an immediate extrication!"
"Buckle me, Frank," Iolaus sputtered. "Buckle me in."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You have to buckle me in," Iolaus gasped. "Township car. Not covered otherwise." His bloody hand grabbed for Frank's sleeve, "Please."
The driver's side seatbelt was folded between long slats of crushed metal and the broken headrest. Frank dug his fingers in, trying to pinch enough of the strap to pull it out. It was jammed too tight.
The Taurus's car doors slammed shut behind him. More sirens, now, coming from a distance. Frank pulled and tore and finally managed to get just enough of the seatbelt's strap out to yank it out from the metal tangle and wrench it across Iolaus' chest. He clicked the metal bit shut just as Chief Tovarich ran up to the car and shouted, "Is he dead?"
Frank backed out of the Crown Vic, seeing the men from his police department all gathered around the police car. Two of them came around the side of the GMC and ripped the driver out, grabbing him by the back of the head and neck and driving him face first into the street. They pinned him down with their knees in his neck and his back while he screamed, "I didn't do anything! He pulled out in front of me!"
"You were asked a question. Is he dead?" Junior said. Loudly.
Frank turned around and glared at both men, his hands in tight fists. There they were. Two motherfuckers looking at Frank like he wouldn't knock them both the fuck out. The old man with his bullshit gold braids and three dollar medals ordered out of Galls Magazine. The pudgy little douchebag in a Class-A uniform his daddy bought him, playing dress-up. There were more ambulance sirens in the distance. Frank's hands were smeared with Jim Iolaus' blood. His fingers stuck and unstuck from their red, tacky coating and got in the hair on his knuckles and wrists. He lowered his eyes at Junior and said through clenched teeth, "Go make yourself useful, you little fuck. Direct traffic and get the ambulance and fire crew in here."
"Excuse me?"
"That's actually a good idea," Chief Tovarich said, tapping his son on the arm and waving him away. He looked past Fran
k at Jim Iolaus' crumpled, bloody form, eyes narrowing on the seat belt improbably stretched across the mangled interior compartment. "This officer is going to have to clear a few things up for the accident investigators."
The medevac hovered low over the crash site, searching for a place to set down. Iolaus' unmarked car was a cluster of twisted stinking metal from where the fire company's saws and torches had cut it to pieces to get him out. Iolaus, silent until they moved him, reared back his head and screamed in a high-pitched voice like a woman as they shifted his leg. "Be careful!" one of the cops shouted, rushing forward until some of his fellow officers grabbed him and held him. "God damn blue lighter assholes!"
Frank looked around. Somebody was smart enough to grab the other driver and get him out of there. The seatbelt holding Iolaus in place had been cut by one of the medics and lay in pieces on the ruined car seat. Someone tapped Frank on the shoulder and said, "Are you the witness?"
Frank turned to see a uniformed corporal holding a clipboard with a yellow notepad attached to it. He was tall and trim, his leather police jacket sparkling with silver buttons and a large silver belt buckle that connected his thick Sam Browne and matching shoulder strap. The corporal's crush cap was snug to the sides of his head and there was a knife stuck in the calf of his tall black boots. He looked like imitation Philly Highway. Manor Farms PD had less than twenty guys and routinely hired part-timers to fill out their patrol squads and cover vacation time, but somehow, this schmuck had wormed his way into being their full-time Highway Enforcement officer, Frank thought. He looked at the Corporal's silver highway pin and his special lightning bolt patches and said, "What?"
Chief Tovarich was hovering a few feet behind the officer, watching them carefully. The highway officer tapped his notepad, "Are you the one who witnessed the accident?"
"Who are you?"
"Corporal Donoschik, Manor Farms Highway Patrol."
"Yeah? I didn't know you guys were big enough to have your own highway divison."
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