"I had the symptoms."
"Symptoms. Like what, as a for-instance?"
"Insomnia, anxiety, fatigue."
Gray glanced at him, then looked away. The guy was tough to look at, what with the circular scar of the lighter on his cheek and the oozing mess of his left ear. The right side of his face was untouched, but the left was a horror show. He was like that Batman comic book bad guy, Two-Face.
"Sounds like a case of the shakes to me," Gray said. "You were shitting your diapers 'cause you thought you might get found out or maybe turned in by your good buddy Wolper."
"I was scared, yeah. I knew about what he was up to for a long time, but I was never, you know, directly involved."
"Till recently."
"Yeah."
"So it wasn't no post-traumatic whatchacallit. It was plain old fear."
"And maybe guilt."
"Ooh, your conscience doing a number on you, huh? You mean to say you ain't a complete scumbag?"
"I'm not sure what I am. At the arcade, if Wolper hadn't been there"
"Yeah, you said something about that before. What would've happened if the lieutenant hadn't been hanging with the doc?"
That face of his was sort of fascinating, Gray decided. Two-Face wasn't precisely the right reference, though. It was more like Brand had partially melted. The Incredible Melting Man, that was it.
"I followed her and Wolper over there," Brand was saying. "I thought that maybe I'd come clean with her."
Gray smirked. "Maybe?"
"I'm not sure what I would've done. I mean, the thing is, they've got her kid, you know? I don't want that on my conscience. Not a kid."
"Who took the kid? Wolper?"
"No, I don't think so."
"So there's other cops in on this?"
"There are others, yeah. I don't know how many. I don't know how far it goes."
"This is a big fucking deal you got yourself mixed up in, Sarge. You really think you're smart enough to outfox all these other players?"
"No. I don't. I'm not smart."
"Gotta agree with you on that one."
Come to think of it, he wasn't sure there was an Incredible Melting Man. It was the shrinking man, right? Not melting. So maybe Brand was Darth Vader with the helmet off. Or the Phantom of the fucking Opera.
"I tried to stay clear of it," Brand said. "I never wanted to be part of the action. I'm still not really part of it. I mean, Wolper figures I won't sell him out, but that doesn't mean he lets me in on all the details."
"Did you know what was going down today?"
"Snatching the kid? No. I'm not even sure they knew. It might've been improvised."
"How about the hit on Doc Robin?"
"I didn't know for sure."
"But you kinda knew, am I right? Be straight with me, Sarge."
"I suspected."
"And you let it happen."
The scarred head turned in Gray's direction. "What, are you lecturing me, for Christ's sake? I don't need any goddamn lessons from a guy who snuffs high school girls"
Gray lifted the gun in his right hand, just enough to remind Brand of its existence. "How about from a guy who snuffs cops? You willing to hear a lecture from him?"
Brand settled down, cowed once more. "Fuck."
"So you were gonna come clean to the docmaybe."
"I knew they still wanted to hit her. Wolper even called me at home, tried to get me to do it. I let him think I might play ball. But like I said, what I really wanted to do was"
"Confess. Bare your soul. I got that. But you didn't."
"Cameron and Wolper saw me. I ran. I didn't want to face Wolper. But he chased me down. He frisked me, found my off-duty piece but no throwdown. So he knew I wasn't there to whack her. I couldn't use a traceable gun for that job. He must've figured I was gonna double-cross him."
"Which you were."
"Yeah, maybe. If Cameron and Wolper had separated. And if I could've figured a way to do it so that I could warn her and amp; well amp;"
"Save your own ass." This guy was a piece of work; he really was.
Brand seemed to hear the contempt in Gray's voice. "Survival is what it's all about," he said belligerently.
Gray almost smiled. Yeah, Sarge, he wanted to say. Just look at you, with your Frankenstein face and your scared-rabbit heart. You're surviving real good. But he let it pass.
"I hear you," he said. "How'd Wolper take it when he tumbled to you changing teams?"
"Told me not to even think about trying anything. Said if I tried to rat him out, he would see that the whole mess was pinned on me. Said there was already enough evidence to put me away if Robbery-Homicide ever decided to look at me close. I would take the fall."
"He planted some shit."
"That's what he told me. I didn't know if it was true."
Gray figured it probably was. That was the way he himself would have played it if he'd had to keep a weak link like Brand in line.
"Anyway," Brand said, "I had to assume he wasn't bluffing. I went to the Newton station house, checked my locker. Nothing there. Next place to look"
"Was home sweet home. You would've torn the place apart looking for the stuff he planted. Wouldn't have found it, neither. Whatever Wolper laid on you was hidden too good for you to find. He wouldn't have told you about it if he thought you could sniff it out."
"Yeah, maybe."
No "maybe" about it, Gray thought. This Wolper is smarter than you. He sees two steps ahead.
"So you didn't say nothing to the doc?"
"I said what Wolper had told me to saythis bullshit story he fed me about how I was trying to redeem myself by assisting with your arrest. I'm not sure she bought it."
"She didn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because she's still trying to remember who conked her on the noggin. Which means she thinks it might've been you. She's over at her office right now getting her brain dry-cleaned in that space helmet of hers."
"Alone?"
"Wolper's with her."
The melted-candle face turned toward Gray again. "If she remembers it was him"
"He'll waste her." Gray nodded. "That's why we're riding to the rescue."
"So you're on her side?"
"I'm on my side."
There was a pause, and Gray figured Pumpkinhead was out of conversation. He was wrong.
"I don't get it," Brand said. "Why do you care about any of this?"
"Two reasons. One, I don't like being set up by any goddamn gangsta cops. And two, you assholes got the doc's daughter. You got Meg."
"You're worried about Cameron's kid? After you amp; I mean"
"After I wasted five perfectly healthy teenagers with their whole lives ahead of 'em? I guess that's right."
"Doesn't make sense."
"I am a mystery and a conundrum, Sarge. I got layers. It's what makes me so goddamn fascinating. Now I don't suppose you know where Meg's been hid away."
"I don't."
" 'Course not. They don't tell you shit, right, small fry?"
Brand stared into the darkness. "Never thought they'd take the kid. Fuck, that's low. Should've expected it, though. It's like the fights."
This baffled Gray. "Fights? What fights?"
"The dogfights." Brand's voice was a low drone. "She probably thinks I go there for entertainment. That wasn't it. I went because that's what this city is. Whole fucking city's one big dogpit, and we're all caught in it."
Gray had no idea what Scarface was jacking his jaws about. He skirted a Cadillac that was traveling too slowly in the fast lane.