Slice

BUCKHEAD SPRINGS

“Juggy” he said to the PR guy, “f'r Chrissakes.” Hey, Jack, what can I say, booby?” He spread out his hands expansively in a totally insincere gesture.

“Hey, this is home, ya know?"

“I hear ya, paisan, but this was the deal,” he whispered conspiratorially, smiling some orthodontist's Bermuda vacation.

“Donna too? Jesus.” Eichord was just a hair away from boiling over and he knew he didn't want that to happen. But the PR dude should have handled it so it wouldn't have ended up on his fucking doorstep.

“It's a PHOTO OPPORTUNITY, poops,” Juggy Jay told him. Juggy and Eichord got along well because they both had a sense of humor, and Juggy had earned his nickname out in the wet trenches, something Jack knew all about. All too well.

“Uh huh,” he said, feeling like a fatuous fool in his old Mets cap.

“What can I tell ya?"

“Right.” Where was a hounds-tooth cape or a meerschaum when yon needed one.

“You guys are news. People wanna see. Superflyyyy.” He grinned.

“Cut me a huss,” Eichord said, without moving his lips.

“It's good for the shop."

“Real smart. And down the line I'm on a homicide and some crazy hump sees this and he knows what my lady looks like."

“They got fifty GRILLION shots of her in Dallas, bunky, and one more ain't gonna hoit. Also, that's why the wig.” Booby. Poops. Bunky. Poopsy. Juggy. Christ, it sounded like the fucking East Side Kids. Eichord sulked.

“It's all right, hon,” Donna whispered to him, having already quite obviously accepted the fact that a photographer was waiting to take a picture of the Eichords.

“No. It's not, actually,” he said to her quietly in his most brittle whisper, and he smiled to soften it. “But what the hell."

“Come on.” She held his hand. “If we don't give it to them with our blessing they'll just get it anyway under worse conditions—that's what you've always told me.” She'd acclimated herself to Jack's unwanted celebrity, as well as her own. She'd had her fill of the spotlight too, such as it was, but ever since Dallas there'd been enough vestiges of it from time to time that it no longer jarred. It was certainly part of her husband's life, and for good or bad she figured she might as well do the best she could to accept it gracefully. Jack was hot and cold on it. One time he'd grin and go with the flow. Next time he'd stomp his feet a little.

In Dallas, where Donna had been abducted and raped by the brother of a psychotic killer, she'd had her fifteen minutes of stardom and then some. She'd been hounded by print and electronic media, the American version of the paparazzi, and had not handled it well. They'd talked about it. Jack talked about it. “You have to understand the public's curiosity. The concept of serial killings holds a perverse fascination for these people.” He was talking about a woman buying supermarket tabloids, but he meant everybody. “The horror of it is kinda like terrorism itself, you know? We can't quite put it in any of the accepted pigeonholes.

“We try to comprehend the mass horror of the Reverend Jones, the clown who tortures and kills boys—whose names begins with the ironic John Wayne, the mystical, demented monsters like"—he started to say Joseph Hackabee, but swallowed the words and said—"the so-called Lonely Hearts killer. And more than anything else we want somebody to have answers.

“They want to believe some cop has genuine insight into the mentality and psyche of the serial murderer. It's the supersleuth syndrome, that desire to have a hero we can put our faith in. Sherlock's on the job, gang. We can sleep safely tonight. But where was I in Atlanta, for example, when that nut was killing the kids? I've struck out more times than I've hit homers, but the press don't talk about those.

“Part of it is the guys I work for. The brass with the hash-marks and big bellies and Swiss bank accounts. I'm a media tool, they say,” he pronounced the words with a vengeance, “and they're going to use whoever or whatever they can because to them the balance of the scales rests on manipulation of the public perception. It's not so much catch the bad guys as make sure we LOOK like we caught the bad guys.” He shook his head in frustration. “Finally you just shrug and say, What the hell.” And that's what Jack was doing now.

This would get a lot of coverage. The big regional daily was doing a piece on law enforcement. It was pro-cop, with a pictorial section on the Major Crimes Task Force and—central to that—Jack. These were the kinds of public-relations pieces in which the top cops, Eichord's rabbis within the system, could use print to spoon-feed whatever the latest official thinking was. This week's installment in the continuing efforts of the establishment to keep the old upscale image in motion. Jack and Donna Eichord at home. It went against his grain but he was smart enough to know he wasn't being asked, he was being told. It went with the territory. So you give in here, whether you think it's right or wrong, and later—when something is too tough to swallow—you stomp and scream and kick holes in the wall and maybe then it's your turn and you get your way.

“Okay, gang,” the woman from the paper said to them, “let's do it."

The young man with the camera got down on his knees as if to pray, and he motioned for the Eichords to move to the right. “Could you come over this way, please?"

“Sure,” Juggy Jay said, as if he'd been asked.

The cop and the cop's wife moved over as directed. The sun hit Eichord right in the eyes like a couple of steel knitting needles. He made a kind of humming noise in agony and the photographer said, “Good. Hold THAT!” And something clicked and a car squealed up and Eichord saw fat Dana lurch from one side, Chink from the other, and Jimmie motioned him over.

Donna saw them say something to him that made him change the set of his big shoulders—bad or good she couldn't tell but something—and turned back and shouted, “That's it. Sorry! Gotta go. Donna,” and he sort of pointed with his head, which she knew by now meant, Better go on back in the house. She'd been through enough with him that she knew he didn't futz around. When he looked like that, it was time to move. She just said her thanks, made a couple of quick apologies, said good-byes, and went inside, wondering if it were something bad.

“Thanks,” Eichord said from the back seat of the car as they pulled away, “gave me an excuse to put an end to that shit."

“Our pleasure."

“Okay. What happened?” The unmarked car's radio was blasting. Lee leaned back over the seat with his hand over his face, as if he didn't want anybody reading his lips.

“I got pulled in on the thing yesterday. The feds.” Eichord's heart started to sink. “No. Really. No sweat. They don't know jack. They don't know babyshit. Gave me this hilarious thing about a secret surveillance camera or something, said they had me dead-bang. I said, Fine, assholes—arrest me then, right? I'll sue you from one end of the fucking city to the other.” Eichord didn't appear relieved. “They later cop that it's bullshit. They run some crap by me about computer-enhanced doodahs, and the electronic reebus-feebus. All this good craparoony. And the bottom line is—they cut me loose. Nothing. I go home—right. The blimp here's on the landline. Meet me outside. He wheels by in the blimpmobile and lays it on me.” He looks at Dana Tuny.

“They had this moke John Monroe in Segregation and, funny thing, somebody didn't like the way he ratted out his partner and what not. They convinced him he didn't have anything to live for, and the booger just goes over, takes a towel, and hangs himself.” Chink tilted his head over like he was dead. Dana's hung-man neck schtick.

“So now what?” Eichord felt like he was being booked on the Titanic.

“Who the fuck knows?” Lee said. He looked over at his pudgy partner and shrugged.

“What a handjob."

“They'll watch you the rest of your fucking life, man.” Eichord told him. All for twelve fucking thousand. “This just keeps getting worse and worse.” And he didn't know anything. He hadn't even seen the tip of the shitberg. “Jeezus, Chink—I mean, seriously, you're a logical person. You knew there was no fuckin’ way you could get clear with the money in that sort of a controlled circumstance. You knew it would mess up your job. They'd be suspicious of you forever. It might even get you thrown off the force not to mention into prison. Why in the flaming FUCK did you do it?"

“Everybody else gets THEIR slice of the American Pie, papa-san. I looked down there and saw that fucking money, and that was MY slice. Hey, I'll tell you the truth I only wish it had been MORE. I wish it wasn't twelve I wish it was a hundred twelve. And as far as them watching me the rest of my life, fuck ‘em. And I'll tell you something else, Jack. You know something: if I had it to do over, I'd do it AGAIN!"

“Dana,” Eichord said, looking into the bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror, “what the hell are we gonna DO with this maniac?"

“Fucked if I know. What do I look like f'r Chrissakes, a"—he couldn't think of the name “halfway house” and he trailed off sleepily—"a goddamn whaddyacallit?"

“Yeah,” his partner said to him reflexively, “for once you got it right, hippo hips. You look like a goddamn whaddyacallit."

They rode in silence and finally Eichord muttered, “Well, at least there's one thing to be thankful for: it's still a secret. Only seventeen people know about it."

“That's a lotta yak shit. Nobody's knows but you, me, the human blimp, and"—he narrowed his eyes and intoned in his best Sessue Hayakawa—"Admiral Yamamoto. Nobody else knows that on the dawn of December twenty-first, my men and I will attack Pearl Bailey."

But Eichord wasn't going for it. He said in a serious, soft voice, “Jeezus, man. I just can't come to grips with it. You FUCKING GOT TO COUGH IT UP, BUD. Get it? You gotta give it back. Either Dana can get it back to ‘em, I can get it back to ‘em someway, or whatever, but get rid of that damn stolen money."

“Don't talk nonsense, Amellican G.I."

“One, it's the right thing to do. Two, it'll show you are a honest person who just fucked up for a second, came to your senses, and decided to play it straight. VERY important, mano, when they descend upon your silly butt with the warrants and the hoo-hah. Gon’ be too late then. Get the money back now while you still got a shot."

“You spleek suplisingly good Engrish for a total roon-a-tic. But your thinking is unsound.” Still with the put-on voice.

“Yeah.” Wonderful. His best friend was going to prison. He couldn't get it up half the time for worrying. And down at the office he had twenty-nine fucking dossiers from the task force. Missing persons all having vanished in the same sixty-mile radius during the past six or eight months. Sometimes life was just a bowl of cherry pits.