by Jim Nisbet
Tipsy turned out an inside flap. “Everything you ever wanted to know about spittle-flecked invective.”
“Wadsworth, Wadsworth,” Quentin said. “Wasn’t he in the state department?”
“He’s had several jobs in and out of the government,” Protone confirmed, “including spook.”
“A career bureaucrat,” Few summed.
“You mean American Polity is some kind of insidious euphemism? How about a concrete example?”
“Sure. The privatization of public capital is a game they like a lot.” Protone thought a moment. “Here’s another. The so-called Middle East has been a source of global turmoil for, let’s say, two thousand years.”
“Pick a starting point—any starting point,” Tipsy laughed, though uncertainly. Then her smile faded. “Are you guys serious?”
Protone pursed his lips. “In consideration of said turmoil, one might go back so far as Troy—”
“The Iliad concerns events that occurred 3,200 years ago,” Quentin put in.
Everybody looked at him.
“But the city itself goes back to the Bronze Age—about two thousand years before that,” he added helpfully.
“But let’s don’t,” Tipsy hastened to suggest, “let’s please don’t go all the way back to Troy.”
“We don’t have the time to do it justice,” Protone agreed with barely a pause. “But my colleague can offer some pertinent details.”
Few blinked rapidly, like a mechanical device waiting for the quarter to drop, then plunged in. “Let’s go back merely to the Balfour Agreement and British partition that created Iraq in 1921 or, slightly less remote, historically speaking, to what Palestinians celebrate—”
“Wrong verb,” Protone interjected. “Try lament.”
“—as Naqba,” Few nodded, “the Catastrophe.”
“Otherwise known as the creation of Israel by the United Nations in 1948,” Quentin put in.
Few continued. “Though the state of Israel consists of a mere four million people, it seems reasonable to stipulate that turmoil has been her inheritance and legacy to the Middle East throughout her existence. She possesses nuclear arms, not to mention cluster bombs, will not ratify the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and, whether offensively or defensively, she has taken up conventional arms against all of her neighbors. Something like ten million so-called Palestinians are hostage to Israel’s sense of wellbeing. ‘God’ has telepathic relations with both sides.”
“Naturally,” Quentin muttered.
“… In all of this, the United States has backed Israel with treasure, arms, and policy, both public and clandestine.”
Protone lifted one hand off the table top in front of him and turned it palm up. “Fair enough?”
“Not if you’re a Palestinian,” Quentin frowned.
Tipsy shook her head. “You can get a very loud argument about everything both of you just said, including the verb tenses and the punctuation.”
Few nodded. “Amen.”
Quentin regarded Few. His hair was slicked back, and he hadn’t shaved in two or three days. Not a strand of gray showed in hair or stubble, yet he seemed aged. The tone of his skin ran from pale to grayish, his eyes were tired and pouched, the left eyelid displayed an erratic tic. By the odor about him, he smoked tobacco, which may partially have explained the bluish tint to his lips. Quentin smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Protone asked.
“I was just thinking,” Quentin replied affably, “how some people assume that cops aren’t smart.”
“Long as they think so,” Protone said, “our job is that much easier.”
“Or educated,” Few added.
“Let alone, human,” Tipsy had to chime in.
“We get that all the time. People think cops are what they see on television.”
“Those aren’t cops,” Tipsy pointed out. “Mostly they’re actors.”
“Yeah,” Protone said. “We get them down here all the time. Want to ride around in a black and white, observe interrogations, spend an hour locked in a cell.”
“You can do that on Alcatraz,” Quentin remarked.
“Costs money out there,” Protone pointed out.
Few almost smiled. “They know all about guns, too. Way more than I know.”
Protone looked at him. “Almost.”
Few made no response.
Has this guy been shot, Quentin wondered, or shot someone else? Or both? After an awkward pause he said, “Let’s get back to the Cavalcade of Wonders.”
“Well, like some of these wannabe cops,” Protone said, “these Knights of the Cavalcade, as they call themselves, think they have a line on a better way to run the world.”
“Oh boy.” Tipsy shook her head. “Don’t they know they have to get in line with the rest of the people who have lines?”
“I don’t know,” Quentin said thoughtfully. “It seems to me that the job is up for grabs.”
“Who in their right mind would want such a job?”
“Another excellent question from the little lady,” Officer Protone replied.
“That’s quite enough of the little lady stuff,” Tipsy suggested tartly.
“Point taken,” Protone replied immediately.
“But right mind is assumed,” Few jumped in, with unexpected fervor, tapping the table with a forefinger to emphasize his point. “As in the right man is one who does not question his moral imperative, nor his presumed mandate to affect—better, to wreak—changes upon those around him, changes up to and including those of life and death, and as such is more or less in line with the point, which is, Who, in the big picture, is in a position to do something about the big picture?”
Quentin frowned. “Are you talking global ambitions of the last remaining superpower kind of talk?”
“Sure.”
“As in, The United Nations exists solely by our discretion and at our pleasure”?
“That’s the way they talk.”
“You’re stipulating that the people in a position to do something about problems like the Middle East are the people in charge of foreign policy in the government of the United States?” Quentin looked to each of the people seated around him.
“I’m not,” Few pointed out. “But they are.”
“In view of recent history that hardly seems credible.”
“The right man is no less right,” Few declared, “despite or because of recent history, that is to say, despite evidence pro or con. The Right Man takes the long view.”
“This Cavalcade is a think-tank?”
“That and more.”
“I hate it when tanks think,” Tipsy quipped, adding, “I think I wandered into the wrong classroom. Can I be excused? I have this essay to prepare for my DUI class. It—”
Protone shot a cuff and looked at his watch. “We’ll get you there, Miss Powell.”
Tipsy’s expression clouded. “You know where I—”
Protone slipped his sleeve back over the face of his watch. “We know. We’ve been keeping tabs on you.” Protone produced a rare smile. “That DUI made it pretty easy. Since you can’t drive, we got cops on bicycles following you around.”
Quentin chuckled.
“But I—,” Tipsy began. She indicated both herself and Quentin. “We—”
Officer Protone held up both hands, palms out. “We checked you out thoroughly. We know you’re oblivious.” His glance included Quentin. “Both of you.”
“If oblivion were against the law,” Quentin quickly stipulated, “seventy-eight percent of the country would be in jail.”
“Eighty-eight.” Few’s eyelid twitched. “Possibly ninety.”
Whatever this is about, Quentin observed to himself, this guy Few is taking it very seriously.
“The Cavalcade is a think-tank,” Protone continued. “And they are serious about making a difference in the world. Deadly serious.”
“Different like how?” Quentin asked.
“Sticking with the example of
the Middle East, they’re serious about changing things there one way or the other, if you get my meaning, for good and for all, as in, permanently for everybody.”
Quentin and Tipsy exchanged glances. “No,” Quentin said, “we do not get your meaning.”
Protone persisted. “Given its druthers, the Knights would take all the pieces and throw them up in the air.” He threw both hands upwards. “Some pieces higher than others, of course. They’re control freaks, cheating is expected, money talks, oil screams, human rights are for pussies, they’re a red herring anyway, and in any case they’re a luxury afforded us by our privileged status in the world. A lot of their so-called guidance comes from the Bible, and if they weren’t so well financed, connected, determined, entrenched, crazy, and so goddamned determined, we could forget about them. Unfortunately …”
Tipsy thought to ask where it mentioned oil in the Bible.
“And so forth,” Protone said, apparently agreeing with her.
“Don’t these guys realize that controlling your history is not like controlling your mayonnaise?” Tipsy asked.
“No,” Protone shook his head, “they don’t. Worse, there’s probably an argument to be made for their perceiving history as some kind of sandwich. A finite, vendible, and even stealable commodity, and certain to go stale if somebody doesn’t eat it. And the sooner it’s eaten,” he added with emphasis, “the more nutrition it provides.”
“What happened to the football metaphors?”
“As goes foreign policy, all football metaphors were exhausted by recent administrations. But as Joseph Campbell said, if you want to change your history, change the metaphor. Or was it the narrative?”
“Joseph Campbell?” Quentin marveled aloud.
“At any rate, it’s about time,” Tipsy remarked.
“But they’re not asking for our metaphor,” Quentin supposed.
“That would be correct.”
“All the pieces?” Quentin asked. “Israel? Egypt? Lebanon? Palestine? Iraq? Jordan? Iran? Syria? Saudi Arabia? How about the background players—Russia, China, India, OPEC?”
Few nodded and nodded and nodded, as repetitiously as the tic in his eyelid.
Quentin looked from one cop to the other. “Who am I leaving out?”
Neither spoke.
“Turkey?” Quentin said, with an obvious tone of disbelief.
Protone nodded thoughtfully.
“But that’s …” Quentin whispered. “That’s crazy. If there are four million people in all of Israel, there are fifteen million in Baghdad alone. Or used to be. In any case it’s like saying Squire Sancho Panza can throw some windmills higher than others, so Don Quixote can pick them off sequentially and at will as they come back down.”
“Tilt,” Tipsy quipped.
Nobody had a rejoinder to this miserable yet completely appropriate pun. But, “Your similes,” Protone told Quentin, “are excellent.”
“But then,” Tipsy said, as if to convince herself, “pinball is so last century.”
Protone nodded thoughtfully.
“Of course,” Quentin said, speaking even more softly, as if to the table top, “nobody in Baghdad has nukes.”
Nobody spoke.
Quentin raised his eyes and searched the face of each cop, twice. “Do they?”
“If you’re asking me,” Protone shrugged, “it’s bad enough that Israel has nukes.”
“They’ve had nukes since the Johnson administration,” Quentin flatly stated. “Who killed Karen Silkwood?” he stage-whispered.
Few picked right up on it. “Probably the same people who paid Michael Crichton to write a novel declaring global warming to be a fabulist plot intended to further an agenda of left-wing environmentalist socialism, starring the environment as a deity,” he said. “If you’re asking me.”
Everybody looked at him.
“Stupid cop,” Protone said affectionately, adding, “Not that he has any facts to back that up. Hell, I can’t even remember the name of the book.”
“State of Fear,” Tipsy said. “It’s his most boring book.”
“Wow,” Few whistled.
“I wish I were illiterate enough not to know how boring that is,” she added wistfully.
“Patience, darling,” Quentin said, “you’re well on the way.”
“Have you considered becoming too literate to know it?” Few suggested solicitously.
Quentin held up his hands. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
“One woman’s airport bookstore,” Tipsy scowled, “is another woman’s beautifully paneled library.”
“Gentlemen,” Quentin interrupted, his tone as sober as the three hours Tipsy was about to spend on Diamond Heights, “are you telling us that one of the wonders in the Cavalcade would or could be a nuclear weapon in the hands of any one of the dozens of so-called fanatic but in any case undoubtedly focused opponents to the state of Israel?”
“That’s the kind of stuff they lecture each other about,” said Few.
“As an incitement?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
Protone glared at Few with obvious annoyance. “There are other techniques,” he said brusquely.
“Techniques?” remonstrated Quentin, much surprised. “Are you calling nuclear warfare in the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter, a technique?”
“The Knights do,” Protone said. “Drop a tactical nuke on Teheran, or Fallujah, or Gaza—like that. They can be hotheaded. Personally, I’m not convinced.”
“Are you nuts?” Quentin expostulated. “Do you remain to be convinced?”
“Once you make up your mind, you forfeit your status as an intellectual,” Protone pointed out. “Besides, they have a point about the Middle East.”
“What,” Quentin snapped, “that it’s intractable?”
“Sure.” Protone looked at him frankly. “You think it’s not?”
“Okay,” said Quentin, “let’s concede that it’s intractable. That doesn’t mean you allow the place to blow itself up—not, at least, if you can at all prevent it. And it sure as heck doesn’t mean you help them blow themselves up.” He looked from cop to cop. Few’s mouth was grimly tense. Protone looked almost bemused. “Does it?” Quentin asked. “Well, does it?” he demanded.
“Oscar?” Protone said. “Answer the man.”
“Like you said.” Few looked nobody in the eye. “The situation’s intractable.”
Quentin looked at Tipsy. Tipsy looked confused and disconcerted.
“Okay, it … it gets blown up. So then what? You put guys there in moon suits to tap the vast reserves of oil beneath the subfloor of a nuclear winter?”
“Nuclear winter is one thing,” Few said glumly, ostensibly addressing the tabletop. “Guys with miscellaneous agendas blowing up vital pipelines is something else.”
Nobody said anything.
“What—what about that nuclear winter?” Tipsy asked.
“Easy,” Quentin quipped. “You contain it with a country-sized geodesic dome, and all the pipelines run underneath it.”
“We had you wrong.” Few pointed a finger at Quentin. “You’re not oblivious.”
Quentin sat back in his chair, stunned. “My God.”
“You see?” Protone said. “Cops have opinions, too.”
Quentin sighed loudly. “Stupid cops.”
“Opinions are like assholes,” Tipsy began.
Protone pinched his brow between thumb and forefinger, scrubbed his forehead, looked at Few, then at Quentin. “Of course, as mere cops, we’re not in the business of nukes and zero-sum endgames and such.”
“I wish you were,” said Quentin. “I think.”
Protone permitted himself a little smile. “I’m sure that’s meant to be reassuring.”
“Especially in light of knights and cavalcades and such like, who don’t have such low opinions of their low opinions,” Quentin adduced.
“Opinions are like assholes,” Tipsy began again.
“That
would be correct,” Few confirmed acidly. “It’s an understatement, too.”
“Some people have more than one asshole?” Tipsy asked naively.
“Okay. Okay.” Quentin placed both his hands flat on the table top. “If we’re not suspected of smuggling nukes to the betterment of mankind, what are we doing here?”
“We can’t go around arresting people for what they think or what they say,” Few stated pedantically.
“Not yet, anyway,” Protone put in.
“If you could, you’d probably have to arrest yourselves,” Quentin observed.
“That would be correct.”
“But what we can do is arrest people for committing crimes that are already on the books.”
“Such as?”
Protone raised a few fingers from his folded hands. “Dope smuggling. Dope possession. Dope peddling. Burglary. Forgery. Murder.”
A silence protracted until Tipsy volunteered that she personally drew the line at Driving Under the Influence.
“In a nutshell, Ms. Powell is related to someone who is running errands for someone commissioned by someone who is high up in the religious wing of the Knights.”
“Related … ?” Tipsy repeated incredulously. “But I have only one living blood relation in the whole worl—” She stopped. Slowly, she covered her mouth with the fingers of one hand.
“The religious wing?” Quentin repeated incredulously. “What the hell do they believe in?”
“Sir, you astonish me,” Protone said.
“Well?”
“They believe in God, of course.”
“Jesus Christ,” Tipsy remarked bitterly.
“When convenient,” Protone nodded.
“The most useful idea, for tyrants,” Quentin recalled thoughtfully, “is the idea of God.”
“Marx?” Few brightened. “Lenin?”
Quentin fixed an eye on Few. “Stendhal.”
“Got that?” Protone said to the tape machine. “Follow up.”
“It doesn’t make any difference who said it,” Quentin assured Few. “It smacks of the truth.”
“Think avatar,” Protone nodded. “They have their leaders, their ideas of leaders, and, once in a while, one comes along whom they deem sufficient to the hour. But it seems clear that it’s boiling down to some kind of royalist conspiracy. The idea is, they want to train a leader from birth.”
