Lee Goldberg: King City

“I didn’t want this,” she said.

“Only because you haven’t seen it on HGTV. The damn channel was on twenty?four/seven in this house, just so you could constantly point out to me all the things we needed. You even had it on while we fucked.”

“Only so the kids wouldn’t hear us,” she said.

“I couldn’t take a shit without finding the latest issue of Architectural Digest waiting for me with the corners marked down on the pages you wanted me to see.”

“This isn’t my fault,” she said.

“You didn’t shake down the drug dealers or take any bribes, but you were part of it, honey. Don’t kid yourself.” He looked at Wade. “You took the money too, but I never saw you spend it on anything. You never enjoyed it. I asked myself about that and never came up with an answer.”

“I gave it to the Justice Department.”

“You didn’t keep even a little of it for expenses?”

Wade shook his head.

“C’mon. Don’t you have a mortgage? Don’t you have things you need and want but can’t afford?”

“Sure I do.”

“You could have had them,” Roger said. “You could have had prosperity.”

“I could also be sitting in my kitchen waving a gun at my family and ranting about what I read in the bathroom.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“So shoot me, Roger. It would be less painful than listening to any more of your whining.”

“You suck as a hostage negotiator.”

Wade shrugged. “I don’t negotiate.”

“Why did you sell us out? What did they offer you?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. Nobody does anything for nothing.”

“It’s my job to catch bad guys. You’re a bad guy. It’s as simple as that.”

Roger nodded. “So you did it just so you could feel even more self?righteous than you already do.”

“I did because that’s what I am paid to do. It’s what you’re paid to do too. I guess you forgot about that. But it’s not your fault, Roger. It’s those bastards at Architectural Digest.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done, what it’s going to mean for me, what it’s going to mean to them,” Roger tipped his head toward his family. “Did you ever think about the consequences, Tom? Even once?”

“Did you?”

Roger glared at Wade for a long moment, then aimed the gun in his right hand at his family. They whimpered in terror. He tossed the gun in his left hand to Wade, who caught it.

Wade checked to see if his gun was loaded. It was. “What’s the game?”

“I’m going to blow my wife’s head off in five seconds unless you shoot me.”

“Suicide by cop,” Wade said.

“I’m not going to let you hide behind a bunch of federal agents. If you want to take me down, you’re going to have to do it yourself, right in front of my family so they can see the-”

Wade shot him in the right shoulder, knocking him off the counter onto the floor. The children screamed. He kicked away Roger’s dropped gun, rolled him facedown on the blood?spattered travertine, and pinned his left arm behind his back.

“You’re under arrest,” Wade said.

Roger started to heave before Wade could read him his rights. Wade tipped him to one side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit.

That’s when FBI agents burst into the kitchen from every doorway. Two of the agents immediately hustled Sally Malden and her wailing kids away. But they still saw what a puking, mewling, bloody mess their father was and that Wade was holding him down.

It was their father who’d threatened to kill them, but it was Wade whom they hated. He saw it in their teary eyes already. The hate would only intensify with time.

Wade got up off Roger, handed his gun to one of the agents, and walked outside, the harsh glare of the arc lights casting his long shadow over the house.

King City was created by greed, and as far as Wade was concerned, it had permeated the place and its inhabitants ever since.

The city was conceived in the mid?1800s by four wealthy railroad, logging, and shipping barons as a means of expanding their already immense fortunes into the Pacific Northwest. They wanted a spot on a river that could be reached easily by a railroad extension and that was near land rich in agricultural, logging, and mineral possibilities.

They found what they were looking for in the heavily forested, rocky peaks of the West Hills and the verdant Chewelah River Valley in eastern Washington State.

The only problem was that the land was already inhabited by Native Americans. It had been their ancestral home for centuries before the white man ever showed up.

The obvious solution was war. But the businessmen knew from experience that it could be a time?consuming, messy, and expensive endeavor. So they relied on what they knew best.

Greed.

They offered the Indians barrels of whiskey and wagonloads of blankets and asked for nothing in return but friendship.

The Indians proudly draped themselves in their disease?infected blankets, guzzled down their poisonous raw alcohol, and basked in their riches.

The tribe was decimated by plague and liver disease within a matter of months, clearing the way for progress.

The four founding businessmen called their new metropolis King City in their own honor and named the major thoroughfares and parks for themselves individually. The other streets were named after presidents, generals, and other great leaders like themselves.

Wade walked east on Chandler Boulevard, the preferred address of the city’s lawyers, to Riverfront Park, a grassy strip of bike paths and jogging trails that lined the shore from the Grant Street Bridge south to the Performing Arts Center.

It was a bright, sunny day that looked warmer than it actually was, the clear blue skies masking an unexpected chill. Nobody seemed to be dressed warmly enough for it, and that included Wade, in a short?sleeve polo shirt and jeans. It was a deceitful day.

There were picnic tables and benches facing the river. It was a popular place for picnics and parties on the weekends and, on weekdays, for the city workers in One King Plaza to gather for a smoke.

Chief Gavin Reardon was one of them. He wore a tailored suit and sat on top of a picnic table, his feet on the bench, smoking a cigarette and looking at the Grant Street Bridge, which resembled an enormous number eight made out of steel and lying sideways over the water.

The chief was a lifelong cop from a family of lifelong cops and ran the department as if it were his birthright. Perhaps it was. He was a star quarterback in college and could have gone pro, but he preferred a badge. At fifty?five years old, his hair was totally gray, and he still looked like he could run over a linebacker and keep right on going.

He hadn’t spoken to Wade since that night at Roger’s house. He’d immediately put Wade on indefinite paid administrative leave and told him not to get within a hundred yards of a King City police station.

Wade stayed on leave throughout the countless hours of depositions and testimony that stretched over the next two years as the Justice Department prepared and prosecuted its case, winning convictions against all seven of the cops. That last conviction came down only two days before this moment in the park.

The chief flicked his cigarette into the river as Wade approached.

“There was a time in this city when the police would hang the worst criminal offenders from the bridge and leave their corpses to rot as a warning to anyone who thought about disrespecting the law.” The chief spoke without acknowledging Wade’s presence with even a glance. “It was a very effective deterrent. Sometimes I miss those days.”

Wade looked out at the bridge and imagined the corpses swinging on ropes over the river. Welcome to King City.