A voice bellowed from the glassed-in office behind him.
“McClellan!”
“It’s right where you put it when I gave it to you,” the sergeant muttered, not looking up. “Top right-hand drawer.”
“What is?” The cop at the adjacent desk glanced up from the form on the screen. He was booking a shoplifter. “What’s in the top right-hand drawer?”
“The manpower stats for last month,” murmured McClellan.
“Never mind,” bellowed the voice.
“What’s got his shorts in a tangle?” wondered the cop.
“I bet he’s all upset over that judge sayin’ you couldn’t move those pushers out,” said the shoplifter, nodding wisely. “He worked real hard to get that law passed.”
“It wasn’t a law, it was an ordinance,” McClellan said, looking up. “How’d you know the captain was involved?”
“I live down there at Mornin’side,” she said. “I was one of the marchers went to city hall. Me’n my kids.”
“So you got kids,” said the officer. “That doesn’t excuse you walking off with birthday presents under your shirt.”
“It was just candles!” she cried. “For the cake. A dollar niney-five for twenny-four lousy birt’day candles an all I had was a dollar-fifty an all I needed was twelve. An she wouldn’ split the box up, give me half!”
The officer got up and moved toward the storeroom. “Watch her, Mac, so she don’t walk off with half my computer.”
Mac shook his head. “I’m not watching. I’m not getting involved. Six more weeks, four days, three hours and I figure about forty-five minutes, I can say good-bye to it all.”
“You quittin?” asked the shoplifter.
“Re-tire-ment! Captain says he wants to take me to lunch on my last day. Every guy that retires or gets transferred, the captain wants to take them to lunch on their last day, he says, but it’s just an excuse so the guys can throw a surprise party. Doesn’t he think I know that?”
“They gonna give you a gold watch?”
“I said no watch. They want to give me something, give me a new fishing rod.”
“McClellan!” roared the voice.
He got up wearily and shambled into the lieutenant’s office, stopping before the desk and leaning on it with both hands. “What?”
“What’s this?” The lieutenant held out a sheet of paper. “It was in the manpower reports.”
“It’s a tabulation of how many calls we get from Morningside, complaining about the dealers. I thought, when we appeal that judge’s decision . . .”
“Oh, McClellan, you hadn’t heard,” the lieutenant said loudly, well aware that there were a dozen sets of ears listening from outside his office. “We are no longer interested in the dealers down at Morningside. The dealers at Morningside have civil rights. They are being represented by the ACLU in their suit against the mayor and the police force on behalf of all the upstanding young men who stand around on the sidewalk all day, every day, with no visible means of support.”
McClellan stared at him, mouth slightly ajar. “You finished?”
The lieutenant dropped his voice. “I am so close to finished, Mac, that I may retire before you do. Actually, tabulating the calls is a pretty good idea. Go on keeping a record.” He fumed, running his fingers through his gray hair, shifting his shoulders as though they hurt. “Not that it’ll do any good. How much longer you got now?”
“Too long,” said McClellan. “I can remember back to when we got rid of guys hanging around on corners, giving the women a lot of dirty talk. I can remember when giving a little kid a gun would have put you away for a good long while.”
“See, that’s our trouble. We remember too much.” He waved McClellan away and went back to his paperwork. “Way, way too much.”
Chad Riley—THURSDAY
Though it was past midnight, FBI agent and sometime White House liaison Chad Riley had his driver run by the office then drop him six blocks from his Georgetown house so he could cool down on the walk home. The business with McVane had rubbed him very much the wrong way, and Chad knew exactly who to blame. The FBI had started surveillance on Congressman Alvarez by midafternoon Monday, and Chad had just picked up a report saying he’d gone to the Pentagon that afternoon. Monday. And by Tuesday, McVane had been named as liaison, and he had probably already known everything the congressman knew, which meant his cronies, if not already briefed, would be shortly. The congressman had been sworn to secrecy, but his loyalties lay elsewhere, which might have been deduced from the number of pictures of himself in uniform on the walls of his office. Major Alvarez here with General Tank, Major Alvarez there with General Missile. Military men! Damn it, they always thought in terms of hardware, black or white, our side or the other side. It was damned hard to get them to see gray at all, and getting them to tell dark gray from medium gray was impossible!