James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

Hackberry watched Temple Dowling stride toward the front door of the building, coatless, his silver shirt crinkling like tin, a martial glint in his eyes, his creamy complexion moist in the heat. But it was the man’s lips that Hackberry couldn’t get out of his mind. They seemed to have the coloration and texture of the rubber in a pencil eraser. They belonged on the mouth of a man who was cruel, whose sentiments were manufactured, whose physical appetites were visceral and base and infantile all at the same time. Watching him stride up the walk, Hackberry decided he had been too kind in assigning Dowling and his peers to that innocent and insular group who treated police officers as they would loyal servants. Temple Dowling, like his father, the senator, was a man who knew the value of the whip and how to turn the screw in order to bend others to his will. The fates may have given Temple Dowling a face that would never allow him to ascend to the throne. But Hackberry guessed that in Dowling’s view, the power behind the throne was gift enough.

Hackberry got up from his chair and met Dowling at the entrance to the building. “What’s your problem?” he said.

“I have a grocery list of them,” Dowling said.

The three men standing behind him had come to a stop. They wore western hats and sunglasses and had the physiques of men who worked out regularly in health clubs. They wore mustaches and a growth of beard that Hackberry guessed was deliberately maintained rather than shaved entirely off. Their hands were folded in front of them, their faces turned at a deferential angle so Hackberry would take note that they were not staring at him from behind their shades. One man had a puncture in his cheek that looked like a hole someone had made by inserting his thumb into putty. One man wore a tattoo inside the growth of beard on his throat. The third man had facial skin that was as dark as saddle leather and flecked with scars that resembled tiny pieces of brown string.

“Lose the entourage and come in,” Hackberry said.

“These men go wherever I go.”

“Not here they don’t.”

“Why do I continue to have trouble with you, Sheriff?”

“Because you asked for it.”

“I had to replace both the brake lights on my vehicle this morning.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. That’s too bad.”

“You’re aware your deputy broke them?”

“Be advised I support my deputy in whatever she does. I’m pretty busy. You want to stand out here in the sun or come inside?”

“Here will be just fine,” Dowling said. He wiped his forehead and upper lip with a handkerchief, then shook it out and wiped the back of his neck. He gazed down the street at the courthouse, a slick of sweat on one cheek, his eyes intense with the words he was preparing to speak. Hackberry realized Dowling’s next remarks would be part of a performance that was not for him but for his employees. “I’ve lost two good men to a psychopath who should have been mulch the first time you saw him. This same man has murdered an untold number of people in this county, your county, but you don’t seem to have a clue where he is, nor do you seem bothered by your ignorance. Instead of conducting an investigation, your personnel are vandalizing people’s SUVs. I understand that mediocrity is a way of life in a place like this, but I won’t abide incompetence when it comes to the welfare of my people or the security of my country. We’ll do your work for you, but you need to stay out of our way.”

“If you interfere in a homicide investigation, you’re going to find yourself in handcuffs, Mr. Dowling.”

“My father said something about you, Sheriff, that maybe you should hear. He said you were one of those rare politicians to whom nobody had to pay money in order to corrupt. All they needed to do was appeal to your Don Quixote complex. He said the only payment you required was a chance to play the role of the knight-errant so you could self-destruct and absolve yourself of your petty sins. I think my father read you like a book.”

“Tell you what, I changed my mind about something I told my chief deputy this morning. I said I couldn’t care less if you tried to slander my name. But on second thought, some might think the elements in your lies refer to my dead wife, Rie, and the nature of my relationship with her. You did make those remarks, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t have to make them. Everyone who knew you already has.”

“I don’t like to humiliate a man in front of his employees, but for you, I’m going to make an exception. I’m probably in the top of the eighth inning or the bottom of the ninth, which means I don’t have a lot to lose. You ever play much baseball, Mr. Dowling? If you crowd the plate with the wrong pitcher, you can bet the next pitch will be a forkball at the head, the kind that hits you like a dull-bladed guillotine.” Hackberry smiled pleasantly and winked at him. “What do you think about that?”

“Considering the source? Not very damn much,” Dowling said.

Hackberry went back inside his office, sat down at his desk, and did not look outside the window until he heard the SUV drive down the street. But the anger that had bloomed in his chest would not go away. A half hour later, the phone on his desk rang. He looked at the caller ID and answered. “?Que tal?”

“?Que tal?” Ethan Riser repeated.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I know what it means.”

“Say what’s on your mind.”

“This is a personal call and off the record.”

“I’m the sheriff of this county. I’m sitting at my office desk, on the job, in my official capacity. Nothing that occurs here is off the record.”

“You sound a little short.”

“What do you want, Ethan?”

“I’m taking early retirement. I wanted to tell you that. Plus a couple of other things.”

“Like what?”

“You’re in the way.”

“Say again?”

“This guy Noie Barnum is the Holy Grail. We want him, Krill and his people want him, Al Qaeda wants him, Temple Dowling wants him, and now Josef Sholokoff wants him.”

“Why would a Russian porn dealer risk his immigration status by going into espionage?”

“Josef Sholokoff has been spreading drug and porn addiction around the country since he arrived in Brighton Beach. Why should doing business with third-world bedbugs bother him?”

“You said I was in the way.”

“Guys like you are not team players. You’re a hardhead, you don’t chug pud, and you cause major amounts of trouble. Government agencies might say otherwise, but they don’t care for guys like you.”

“What difference should that make to me?”

“They won’t have your back, bud.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“I’m at a driving range. I wish I’d done more of this a long time ago.”

“When do you retire?”

“Three months, more or less. Yeah, about three months.”

“You’re retiring but you’re not sure when?”

“I’m terminal.”

Hackberry leaned forward on his desk. Before he could speak, Riser cut him off. “I used to smoke three packs a day. Five years ago I quit and thought I’d gotten a free pass. I went in for a blister on my nose last week, and the doc said it was already in my liver and pancreas and had reached the brain.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan.”

“There’s something I never told you about my history with the Bureau. You remember right after 9/11 when a planeload of bin Laden’s relatives was allowed to leave the country without being detained, except for the fifteen minutes we were allowed to interview them on the tarmac? I was one of the agents who went on board the plane. I should have resigned in protest then. But I didn’t. I’ve always regretted that. Take this for a fact. When you get to the end of the track, you don’t regret the things you did. You regret the things you didn’t do. You’re a good man, Hack. But good men are usually admired in retrospect, after they’re safely dead.”