Why Me?

31

Kenneth ("Call me Ken") Albemarle was a Commissioner, it hardly mattered of what. In his calm but successful career he had been, among other things, Commissioner of Public Sanitation in Buffalo, New York; Fire Commissioner in Houston, Texas; Commissioner of Schools in Bismarck, North Dakota; and Water Commissioner in Muscatine, Iowa. He was well qualified to be a Commissioner, with a B.A. in Municipal Administration, an M.S. in Governmental Studies and an M.A. in Public Relations, plus inherent talent and a deep-grained awareness of what the job of Commissioner actually meant. The Commissioner's purpose, he knew, was to calm people down. With his excellent employment history and fine academic background, plus his appearance—at 41 he was trim, dark-haired, and businesslike, showing the relaxed self-assurance of a high school basketball coach with a winning team—Ken Albemarle could calm down a roomful of orangutans, if necessary, and once or twice he'd proved it.

At the moment he was employed by the City of New York as, um, um, Police Commissioner, and right now he was being called upon to calm down two irate FBI men named Fracharly and Zeedy, who had entered his office shortly before eleven a.m. and now sat across the desk from him absolutely ruby with rage. That is, Fracharly was ruby with rage; Zeedy appeared to be snowy with shock.

"Chief Inspector Mologna," Ken Albemarle said, nodding his head judiciously and pronouncing the name right, idly tapping his fingertips on his neat and orderly desktop, "has been a fine police officer for years and years. In fact, he's been here longer than I have." (Ken Albemarle had been New York Police Commissioner for seven months.)

"Perhaps," Fracharly said through clenched teeth, "no one before this has ever noticed the Chief Inspector's incompetential quotient."

"He hung up on the man," Zeedy said, hollow-voiced, as though he still couldn't believe it.

"Just a moment," Ken Albemarle said. Tapping his intercom, he said, "Miss Friday, would you bring me Chief Inspector Francis Mologna's file?"

"Yes, sir, Commissioner," the intercom replied, in a tinny voice.

"It won't be in the file," Fracharly said. "It won't be in the fiiiiile—he just did it!"

"Quite so," Ken Albemarle said, tapping his fingertips together. "If you could give me a little of the background on this, Mister Fracharly, put me in the pic—"

"Zachary," said Fracharly.

"Beg pardon?"

"The name is Zachary, not Fracharly! And it's Agent, not Mister! I am Agent Zachary of the Federal Bureau of Investigation! Here, here—" He clawed for his hip pocket.

"No need, no need," Ken Albemarle assured him. "I've seen your identification. Sorry to get the name wrong. So you're Zachary and you're…Zeedy?"

"Freedly," said Zeedy.

"Oh, my heaven," Ken Albemarle said, chuckling at himself. "A Spoonerism. Well, no harm done, I've got it now. Zachary and Freedly. Agent Zachary and Agent Freedly."

"That's right," Agent Zachary gritted, still through clenched teeth and rubescent face.

"My favorite Spoonerism," Ken Albemarle said, smiling reminiscently, "because it's an improvement really on the original, is 'flutterby' for 'butterfly. »

"Commissioner," said Agent Freedly.

"Yes?"

"I don't mean to rush you or anything, Commissioner, but I think Mac here's about to leap at your throat."

Ken Albemarle looked at Agent Zachary and saw it was indeed probable. Time to buckle down and do some major calming. "I see," he said, took a deep breath, and proceeded: "I certainly understand and sympathize with your position, gentlemen, and before we do anything else, please let me assure you right here and now that if there has been the slightest breach of proper police procedure, if Chief Inspector Mologna, whether deliberately or through inadvertence, in any way materially harmed or damaged the case upon which you are all engaged, I will personally not rest until a thorough and painstaking investigation has been made of the entire affair. When I became, uh, Police Commissioner of this fine city, I vowed then, at the time of my investiture in the Mayor's office—that's a photo of the occasion framed there on the wall, with the light glinting off the Mayor's head—that any carelessness or improper procedure or unacceptable behavior which might have been tolerated in the past—I'm not saying it was, I'm not competent to judge my predecessors in any way, I'm merely saying if there may have been any slackening of standards at any time for whatever reason, that slackening, if it occurred, shall stop and cease and desist as from now. Then. As from then, when I became Commissioner. And if you care to look at the record I have established since that day, gentlemen, I honestly believe you will feel much more relieved in your own minds, convinced that under my charge fairness and competency and a thorough airing of all disputes without fear or favor is the hallmark of—"

Talat Gorsul!" screamed Agent Zachary. Ken Albemarle halted and blinked. Was that a war cry?

Were these even FBI men? "I beg your pardon?"

"Talat Gorsul," repeated Agent Zachary, more quietly but panting a bit.

"What Mac means," Agent Freedly explained, reaching over to reassuringly pat his co-agent's near forearm, "is the Turkish Chargé d'Affaires at the United Nations. His name is Talat Gorsul."

"Oh, I see," Ken Albemarle said, though he didn't see at all.

"And he intends," Agent Freedly went on, "according to our information, to give a speech before the UN General Assembly at four o'clock this afternoon, in which he's going to suggest that the United States Government itself engineered the theft of the Byzantine Fire."

Ken Albemarle was completely at sea. "Why?"

"Because he wants to."

"But why, why would the United States Government—"

Agent Freedly shook his head. "Do you want Talat Gorsul's reasoning, Commissioner?"

"On loan only."

"We never intended to give Turkey the Byzantine Fire, and this is our way of reneging on the deal."

"But that's ridiculous," Ken Albemarle said.

"If you'll take a look at the speeches made at the United Nations," Agent Freedly said, "I think you'll find they're mostly ridiculous. But that never stops them from being delivered, translated, printed, and very often believed."

"But we didn't have to make the offer in the first place."

"I don't believe," Agent Freedly said, "Mister Gorsul intends to emphasize that fact in his speech."

"I see. It's simple anti-Americanism."

"Anti-Americanism is never actually simple" Agent Freedly said. "When their throats grow parched from calling us names, they pause to drink Coke. But the point is, Gorsul intends to make that speech, and the State Department has informed us it doesn't want the speech made. In the old days, of course, we'd merely have poisoned Gorsul at lunch, but—"

"Poisoned!"

"Not fatally," Agent Freedly said. "We're not barbarians. Just give him a tummyache for a few days. In the current climate, of course, we can't do that. So four o'clock becomes our deadline for recovery of the Byzantine Fire."

"Mo-log-na," said Agent Zachary, slowly and distinctly through those apparently glued-together teeth.

"Exactly," Agent Freedly said. Looking four-square at the Commissioner, he lined it out: "An individual claiming to be in possession of the Byzantine Fire arranged for a telephone call for the purpose of negotiation. He asked to speak specifically to the Chief Inspector. Early in the conversation the Chief Inspector lost his temper and hung up."

"I see," said Ken Albemarle. He was getting a headache. "Did the, um, negotiator call back?"

"No."

"Did he appear to be genuine?"

"From the little bit we have of him on tape, yes."

"I see." Ken Albemarle fiddled with the corner of his desk blotter. "Of course, I haven't as yet heard all sides of the matter, but from what you tell me there certainly—"

An interruption entered at that point, in the person of a young woman dressed in black ballet slippers, extremely baggy men's trousers, a very wrinkled white shirt, a narrow maroon necktie, an off-white bandleader's jacket six sizes too large for her, and a pair of blue-framed harlequin glasses with rhinestones. This maiden placed a thick dossier on Ken Albemarle's desk, saying, "I'm sorry it took so long, Commissioner, but his name, the spelling, we just…"

"That's perfectly all right, Miss Friday. Better late than never. Thank you very much."

"Thank you, sir."

Miss Friday, successfully calmed, returned to her own office, while Ken Albemarle leafed quickly through Chief Inspector Francis Mologna's files, picking up a few of the highlights, getting a general impression of the man. And what a lot of skating on thin ice the old boy'd done over the years! Right to the edge here, almost tripped up there. These old bull elephants, Ken Albemarle knew, if they survived at all, they knew all the tricks in the world, plus a few extra all their own. He visualized himself trying, seven months into this job, to bring down Chief Inspector Mologna at the behest of two out-of-town FBI men. "Well, well, well," he said. Giving the out-of-towners his most straightforward look, he said, "I want you to know I take this matter with the utmost seriousness, gentlemen. Now, please, I want to hear all the details, and then we'll decide what's best to do for the future."