I almost laughed at his insolence.
Jameson winced. “I’m just generalizing so don’t be an asshole. Fuck, I’m forty-nine years old, been breaking my ass out there since I was a nineteen-year-old cadet. I’m a shoe-in for deputy chief, then all of a sudden a couple of dead junkies make the papers, and there goes my promotion.”
“So this is all about you,” I said. “You’re just worried that this case will queer your promotion.”
“I don’t deserve the shit, that’s all I’m saying.”
That may have been true, at least in a sense. Eventually, I found out that Jameson had the highest conviction rate of any homicide investigator in the state. A lot of promotions, commendations, and even a valor medal. But now, after so many years on the department, his bitterness was draining like an abscess.
“You’ve covered this up for three years,” I pointed out. “How’d the papers get wind of these last three?”
He sputtered smoke in disgust. “One of the construction crews building the new stadium found two in one day, and one of the workmen’s wives writes for Post-Intelligencer. So we were fucked. Then a couple days later some egghead from UW’s botany department finds the third body stuffed into a hole in one of the original drain outlets to the Sound. That fuckin’ outlet had been out of service for seventy years, but this guy’s in there with hipwaders collecting samples of fuckin’ kelp and sea-mold. Then we were really burned. Three bodies with the same m.o., in less than a week? Next thing I know, me and the rest of my squad are getting pig-fucked by the press.”
“Your compassion for the victims is heart-rending, captain,” I said.
“Let me tell you something about these ‘victims,’” Jameson shot back. “They’re crack-whores. They’re street junkies. They steal, they rip people off, they spread AIDS and other diseases. If it weren’t for all this walking garbage that this candyass liberal state welcomes with open arms, then we wouldn’t have a fuckin’ drug epidemic. Shit, Health and Human Services pays these fuckin’ people with our tax dollars! They sell their goddamn food stamps for a quarter on the dollar to buy crack. The city spends a couple hundred grand a year of our money giving these animals brand-new needles every day, and then millions more in hospital fees when they OD. Sooner or later society’s gonna get fed up… but probably not in my fuckin’ lifetime.”
“That’s quite a social thesis, captain. Should I start my next article with that quote?”
“Sure,” he said. “But you’ll have to have it transcribed.”
“Transcribed?” I asked.
“They won’t let you have a computer or typewriter in prison. Between the FCC violations and the tax-evasion, they’ll probably give you five years, but don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll parole you after, say, a year and a half.”
Okay, so maybe I’ve cut a few corners on my taxes, and I almost never use that descrambler… but I didn’t know if he was kidding about this stuff or not. And Jameson didn’t look like the kind of guy to kid about anything.
“Now that we’ve got that settled—come on. I need a drink.”
Jameson wasn’t kidding about that either, about needing a drink. He slammed back three beers—tall boys—in about ten minutes while I sipped a Coke. Of all places, he’d taken me to The Friendly Tavern at James Street and Yesler, what most people would call a “bum” bar. It was on the same block as the city’s most notorious subsidized housing complex, a couple of liquor stores and two bail bondsman’s. Right across the street was the county courthouse.
“You sure know how to pick the posh spots,” I said.
“Aw, fuck all those ritzy socialist asshole pinkie-in-the-air places up town,” Jameson replied. “I want to drink, I don’t want to listen to some bald lesbian read poetry. I don’t want to listen to a bunch of fruitcake men with fingernail polish and black lipstick talk about art. I’ll tell ya, one day Russia and the Red Chinese are gonna invade us, and this’ll probably be the first city they take. When they get a load of the art-fag freak show we’ve got going on here, they’ll just say fuck it and nuke us. All this fuckin’ tattoo homo Goth shit, women in combat boots, guys with Kool-Aid-colored Mohawks swapping tongues in public and girls sticking their hands down each other’s pants while they’re walking down fuckin’ Fifth Avenue. Everybody wearing black, of course—’cos it’s chic, it’s sophisticated. Everybody with all this ridiculous metal shit in their face, fuckin’ rings in their nose and lips, rivets in their tongues. Nobody gives a shit about global terrorism or the trade-deficit—all they care about is getting their dicks pierced and picking up the next Maryland Mansion album.”
“I think that’s Marilyn Manson,” I said, “and, boy, you’re packing a whole lot of hatred, Captain.”
“I wouldn’t call it hatred.”
“Oh? You consider the homeless, the drug-addicted, and destitute to be, and I quote ‘walking garbage’ and you’ve just railed against alternative lifestyles with more invective than a right-wing militia newsletter. If that’s not hatred, what is it?”
“Focused animosity.”
“Ah, thanks for the clarification,” I said, amazed at this guy.
“The world doesn’t ask much, you know? Work a job and obey the law—that’s all anyone needs to do to be okay in my book.” He slugged more beer, then glanced around in loathe. “The art-faggots, the dykes and the pinkos? I guess I can put up with them—most of ’em got jobs and they tend to stay out of the per-capita crime percentages. I’m just sick of seeing it, you know? Fuckin’ pinkos.”
“Didn’t that term die out in the ’70s?” I speculated. “Like when All In The Family went off the air?”
Jameson didn’t hear me. He took another slug of beer, another loathsome glance around at the bar’s patronage. “But this shit here? The rummies, the winos? They’re the ones that get my goat. Ever notice how shit-hole bars like this are always full the first week of the month?”
I squinted at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s ’cos on the first of the month, they all get their four-hundred-dollar SSI checks. Then they come here and sit around like a bunch of waste-products and drink till the money’s gone. Then the rest of the month they pan-handle or mug people for booze money.”
I had to protest. “Come on, Captain. I read the crime indexes. Incidences of the homeless mugging citizens are almost non-existent. They pan-handle because there’s nothing else they can do. And they drink because they’re genetically dependent on alcohol. They can’t help it.”
“Gimme a break,” he said. “I’m not surprised at something like that from lib journalist. Jesus Christ. Everything’s a disease today. If you’re a lazy piece of shit, you’ve got affect disorder. If you’re a fat fuck, it’s an inherited glandular imbalance. If your kid’s a wise-ass, smart-ass punk fucking up in school, it’s amotivational syndrome or attention-deficit disorder. What they all really need is a good old fashioned ass-kicking. Crack ’em in the head with a two by four enough times and they’ll get the message that they gotta pull their own weight in this world. And these fuckin’ rummies and crackheads? Oh, boo-hoo, poor them. It’s not their fault that they’re dope addicts and drunks, it’s this disease they have. It’s this thing in their genes that makes them be useless stinking fuck-ups on two legs. Put all that liberal shit in a box and mail it to someone who cares. I’ll bet you give money to the ACLU and ACORN. If they had it their way, we’d all be paying seventy-percent taxes so these fucking bums could drink all day long and piss and shit in the street whenever they want.”