Superbia (Book 2)

by Bernard Schaffer

  Thump.

  He stopped moving, ear cocked toward the ceiling above him. Something was moving up there. He hadn't heard any doors open to the station.

  Thump. The sound of footsteps.

  Maybe it was the heater, he thought. Or maybe the fat fuck managed to resuscitate.

  Frank pushed up from the chair and raced for the door, desperate to get upstairs. If he could just get to Erinnyes first, just get his hands on the bloated cocksuckers chest and pump it a few times he could at least say he'd tried to save him. That way, even if the bastard survived, nobody would know Frank had watched him code and ran for the door instead of calling for help.

  He banged the walls of the tight corridor as he ran, kicking up dirty water from between the rotting floor tiles and tripping over the rubber mats stretched across them to keep people from slipping. He turned the corner at the bottom of the stairwell and froze, seeing a uniformed police officer standing at the top of the steps.

  Frank swept his wet hair off his face and tried to swallow. "Hey," he managed. "What's up?"

  The officer didn't speak. The lights above him were harsh and bright, cascading down on the murky hallway beneath, but Frank could see him back away from the top step and wave for Frank to come up.

  "Okay," Frank said, playing it cool. Playing it off like, what Chief who?

  As Frank came up the steps, he realized he knew the cop but wasn't sure how. And it wasn't in a good way. This happened most often at restaurants. He’d be out with Dawn and the girls, sitting down at a table, enjoying themselves. A regular family, just like all the others surrounding them, and then Frank would happen to look up at the kitchen’s swinging doors as waitresses hustled out to take orders and Mexican immigrant busboys slung heavy trays full of dirty dishes back to be scrubbed, and there, behind them all, the cook and Frank would lock eyes.

  He'd immediately know that he knew the guy from somewhere, knew it wasn’t in a good way, knew that this was not someone he wanted being responsible for the food safety of his family, and worst of all, by far, he knew that the guy recognized him. The guy saw Frank a mile off and knew how and where they’d met and in what way Frank had ruined his life. To me, you were just another day at the office, buddy, Frank thought. It didn’t mean that much to me. Now please don’t poison my little girls.

  Frank followed the uniform down the hallway. On his right were the doors he'd spent his entire career trying to not go inside. The vacated Staff Sergeant's office and the very-much occupied by a recently deceased fat bastard of a Chief's office. Frank expected the cop to stop at the Chief's door, thinking, this is where they'll show me the body. This is where they'll take me into custody for leaving a man to die.

  Instead, the cop walked past the doors and headed for the interview room. Hard light flared out from within and as Frank turned the corner, he squinted to make out the familiar gray table and the old man sitting opposite of him. Sitting in Frank's spot. Sitting where the interrogator sat. "Sit down," the old man said.

  Frank looked down at the hard bench that was bolted to the cement floor. "I never sat on this side before."

  "It wasn't a request, Frank."

  Frank frowned at the old man and said, "I know you, don't I?"

  "That's not important right now. You're here to answer some questions we have."

  There was a two-way mirror behind the old man. Dark shapes appeared in shadow form from the other side, watching him the same way he'd watched a thousand skells giving a thousand bullshit stories. The old man watched Frank carefully, assessing his every sigh and what direction he looked in before he spoke, searching for body language cues and non-verbal communication proxemics. Frank instinctively coached himself on what to do. Don’t clasp your hands. Don’t fold your arms. Don’t be overly defensive. Don’t be passive if they accuse you of something heinous. Frank opened his hands and sat back, a physical gesture showing his intent to cooperate as he leaned back and said, "Now I know. How you been, Uncle Petey?"

  Peter Lamia slammed his liver-spotted fist on the table, "Don’t call me that. That is not my name for you to call."

  "It's how I know you. It's how Beth described you to me."

  "Well this isn't about me, Frank. It isn't about the things I did or didn't do. I’ve been forgiven for that, you understand? I humbled myself and begged for salvation and accounted for my sins. What about you?"

  "What about me?"

  "What about your sins?"

  "You mean the when I made a little girl put her mouth on my penis when I was supposed to be reading her bedtime stories? Oh wait, that’s right. That wasn't me. That was you."

  "Does that make you a good man, Frank?"

  "It makes me better than you."

  "Are you. A good man. Frank?"

  "Whatever I am is what you fuckers turned me into. But I'm still better than you."

  Uncle Petey smiled slightly at that. He reached down on the bench beside him, under the table and came up with a case file stuffed with photographs and reports. He set the case file down in front of him and rested his elbows on it casually and sighed. The shapes behind the two-way glass shifted excitedly and Frank felt the hair stand up on his arms, the flesh all suddenly goose-pimpled. "If you're a good man, can you explain to me what's in this file, Frank?"

  "What do I care what's in your file?"

  "Well, we’ll be bringing your wife Dawn in here next and going through it very carefully. Very, very carefully, I can assure you. I wonder if she’ll care what's in it?"

  Frank reached for the file but Uncle Petey moved with surprising speed and yanked it back. "How many times have you made an otherwise decent, God fearing man stand in front of a courtroom full of his family and friends and admit to their darkest deeds, Frank? How many times have you used one singular transgression to discolor a man’s entire life? To reduce him to the lowest piece of human garbage with one sworn statement? How many times, Frank?"

  "A lot."

  "I was a good man, Frank. A good husband. I was kind and honest and generous to those in need, but you labeled me a child molester. Like I was some sort of sick predator luring children into vans with candy. After you arrested me, my wife took ill and I couldn’t properly care for her. I spent the last year watching her deteriorate, until finally she passed away. You stole her from me! You ruined our lives!"

  Frank shrugged, "I didn't tell you to go after that little girl. You did that all on your own."

  "You weren’t there, Frank," Uncle Petey said. "You weren’t there to understand the intricacies of the situation and all that went up to it. To see how it evolved and became what it was. You just came in at the end and passed judgment."

  Frank rolled his eyes and looked up at the two-way mirror, "Always with the excuses. You hear me out there? Every single fucking one of you pieces of shit can cry about what happened to you in the past that made you do what you did, but just because I sat here and nodded and pretended to understand, don’t think I did. Just because I was nice to you, don’t think I approved." He glared back at Petey, "You know something, it's a good thing we met when we did. I saved your ass from Vic that night because he was going to beat you half-to-death and I stopped him."

  "That's right, and it was the only decent thing you've done," Petey said.

  "But the funny thing is, I was wrong. Vic was right. He knew your family was going to protect you. He knew the court wouldn't put an eighty-year old into the prison system. He knew that putting his hands on you would be the only real justice you'd ever face, and I stopped him, and I regret it. If that happened today it would be me climbing in the backseat with you, you son of a bitch and I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it."

  Pete Lamia picked up the case file and leaned back, eyes twinkling with amusement. "So proud. So self-righteous." He tapped the file with his fingers, "Everybody's got excuses for their crimes? I think you're right on that, detective. I think you are right on that."

  Frank woke up snatching for the file, trying to rip it out o
f the old man's grip. His hands smacked into Dawn's back and she grunted in annoyance and muttered something. "Sorry, hon," Frank whispered. He slid across the bed, closer to her, pressing himself against her back and dropping his arm across her chest. He cupped her breasts through her nightshirt and laid his face down behind her neck, listening to her breathe.

  He laid there like that for a long time, too agitated to sleep. He took a deep breath and rolled away from Dawn, searching the nightstand next to his bed for his phone. He held it down below the bed so the light didn't show and quickly punched in his four-digit code to unlock it.

  He opened up his text messages and scrolled down to the most recent one, squinting in the screen's harsh glare as he typed, "I can't do this anymore. I'm done."

  Frank waited for the message to send, then he deleted the entire text thread. He scrolled through his phone's pictures and quickly deleted them. After that, he rolled back over and embraced Dawn again, kissing her on the shoulder and whispered that he loved her. She muttered something reflexively in response.

  It was enough.

  Interviews with the Author

  David Hulegaard’s Interview with Superbia author, Bernard Schaffer

  Published: January 23, 2012

  Welcome back and thanks for dropping by! Let me start off by congratulating you on the release of not one, but two publications over the past few weeks. My God, man, when do you sleep? I feel like I should be warning Sarah Connor about you.

  I appreciate the opportunity, David. The question about when I sleep and how fast I write has come up often lately. People who are balancing jobs and families seem mystified at how quickly I write and release products.

  I wrote like this when there was no Kindle. I wrote like this when agents and small press magazines were laughing at me.

  Superbia is a project that you have been talking about for a long time. You and I touched on it briefly during your last visit to the site. Of all the projects swimming around in your head, why did Superbia rise to the top? Why now?

  No matter what book I released, people around me would say, “That’s nice, but when are you going to write a cop book?”

  I was afraid to write Superbia. I couldn’t see what they saw. Plus, I was still struggling with the belief that I would be a police officer for the next fifteen years or so. I knew that to really write it, I would have to let go of that belief because the consequences would be potentially disastrous to my career.

  Superbia is obviously a very personal story. Was it difficult reliving some of these moments over again for the book?

  No. What was difficult was trying to describe them in ways that would not make their source immediately apparent. I know what really happened. I needed to bend the entire story enough that no one could come back and connect reality to fiction, but still resonate.

  You have said that Superbia might be the book that ends your police career. Have you shared the book with anyone on the force? If so, what has been their reaction?

  I’ve told several people about the book, and heard back from one already. His quote, I believe was, “This was no shot across the bow. This was a direct hit from the Battleship New Jersey.”

  Without giving anything away, talk about the book’s ties to Greek mythology. What inspired that pairing?

  Completely accidental. I kept struggling with Vic’s last name, doing “Replace All” in the manuscript multiple times, until finally it occurred to me to make it something meaningful. After that, the rest seemed obvious.

  Anyone who follows you on Twitter knows that the real-life Bernard Schaffer is often a humorous and jovial guy. As an author, your subject matter rarely lends itself to comedy, but Superbia is surprisingly laugh-out-loud funny at times. Did you base the relationship between Frank and Vic off of real life experience?

  I’m doing very limited press for this book, David, but since you’ve been so good to me, I’ll tell you something funny that no one else knows.

  Superbia did not turn out the way I originally intended it. I meant it to be my “Beach Read” book, a la John Locke. I read his book How I SOLD 1 MILLION EBOOKS IN 5 MONTHS! and the part about his writing style annoyed me. I think he said it was heavy on dialogue, light on description, and that he didn’t exert much effort.

  My reaction was, “Shit, I can do that with my eyes closed.” I sat down and wrote out a few scenes between Vic and Frank that focused on dialogue, getting their back-and-forth conversational style down. Then, the monster kicked in.

  I first encountered the monster during Guns of Seneca 6. After Whitechapel, I was trying to write a lighthearted little sci-fi western to show people I can do more than just explicit gore, and these psychopathic cannibal hillbillies showed up. I sat there staring at my computer screen like, “You can’t be serious. Don’t EAT THAT GUY.” But they did.

  The turning point for Superbia came toward the end of the first draft when I realized what Vic’s fate was. I don’t mean decided, I mean realized. Here I was, motoring along, writing my cute little cop buddy book and it was like someone slammed a gavel down and said, “Vic Ajax is going to kill himself.”

  I was absolutely horrified. Pissed off. I couldn’t sleep.

  In that one fell swoop, my funny beach read became a major work. Once you’re faced with that, you can’t back down. I am not sure how many MAJOR WORKS the universe gives you, but when it does, you better be ready.

  I know that a magician never reveals his secrets, but I’ve got to know: The bit about the poster-sized African American penis. Please tell me that was based off of a real event. I had tears pouring down my face after that.

  The ENTIRE book is fictional. Honest. I swear to God. (If you read the book, I’m hoping you pick up on that one.)

  As a policeman, was it difficult to toe the line between authenticity and protecting sensitive information when writing this book? Not just in the crime stories, but also in describing what happens behind the station’s doors?

  That was the hardest part of all. I don’t want to give people the impression that I wrote a different book about my real life experiences and then modified it to create Superbia.

  If I told you all of the bizarre things that have happened to me during the course of my career, it wouldn’t be readable. It would seem like I was just being outrageous. I grew up as a cop’s kid, and have spent my adult life in police work. Believe me, I’ve got stories out the wazoo.

  The trick was to create a fictional world, with fictional characters, who experience real things.

  Like a good friend of mine said, “If anybody complains about what they read in the book, they are basically admitting that’s how they act. They won’t make a peep.”

  I can’t talk much about this without giving away plot spoilers, but I am very curious to know about the backstory involving the “Truth Rabbit.” I got the feeling that it could have been a tall tale used to spook the rookies, but it also sounded bizarre enough to be true.

  The Truth Rabbit is a mythical beast that once reportedly roamed the basements of Philadelphia Police Districts. He’s an urban legend. That’s all I’m allowed to say.

  When writing Whitechapel, you talked about how listening to Morrissey for inspiration played a huge part in your process. Did you look to a specific playlist for inspiration for Superbia?

  I did, especially once I came to that division bell of the book turning from Beach Read to Major Work. It took me some time to absorb the ramifications of the story, and I relied on Chris Cornell and Hank Williams III to help me understand what it meant. Specifically, “Cleaning My Gun” from Chris’s Songbook LP and “#5” from Hank 3’s Rebel Within album.

  Based on the early reviews, how do you feel about the warm reception Superbia is getting?

  Grateful. It’s like bringing your girlfriend home to meet your family, and when she goes to the bathroom, they all say, “She’s a winner. Where did a bum like you find her?”

  I believe those were my parent’s exact words when they met my fiancé
e. So, was there any part of you that was concerned that your readers might not “get” your book?

  I sent the second draft of the book out to five beta readers. Three of them got back to me immediately and put me to work right away. I sat down and started making adjustments and rewriting the manuscript.

  Two of them waited until the last minute to tell me they’d only had time to read half of it and disliked certain things. One said she thought the “weird names were distracting.”

  That’s a gut check when you have already finished the book and ready to release it. I stuck to my instincts and people have had no problem figuring out the “weird names.” Thank God.

  Are you at all worried about Superbia becoming the measuring stick for which all your future books are judged, or are you looking forward to the challenge of one-upping yourself?

  You know, it never crossed my mind until reader reviews started making it an issue. I never set out to write “My Greatest Book” with Superbia. I was just telling a story.

  Once you become concerned with the formula for success, it’s over. I’ve been bitten on the ass by too many authors who thought they could crank out another book in a series just to take my money. I’d probably be making a lot more cash if I just wrote just one series. The problem is, I have more to say than that.

  You’ve been talking lately about your ambitious plans for 2012: Publishing four books and earning over a million dollars. That seems like a lot of pressure for one writer to put on himself. Care to divulge your strategy?

  Write hard and well. So far, so good.

  Let’s talk a little bit about your agenda for this year. One of the books on your slate is WHITECHAPEL 2, which surprised me a little bit. What prompted you to revisit this series?