The outer office was Spartan. Nothing to read, no pictures on the wall. The Dragon Lady got up once, poured herself a cup of coffee from an urn on a ta6le near the door, and sat down again. She did not offer Sharky coffee, a drink of water, the time of day, or a kind word. Finally he got up and helped himself to a cup.
‘Don’t you ask?’ the Dragon Lady growled.
‘May I have a cup of coffee?’ Sharky said with a mock smile. He sprinkled half a packet of sugar into the cup, stirred it with his finger, licked it off, and returned to his seat. The Dragon Lady ignored him. He slurped his coffee loudly and stared at her. She continued to ignore him. The minutes crawled by. Fifteen minutes seemed to take an hour, at least. At exactly ten o’clock the phone on her desk buzzed.
‘Yes, sir? Yes, he is. Yes, sir.’ She hung up. ‘All right. You may go in now,’ she said, without looking at him.
He plopped the half-empty cup in the middle of her desk. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘for starting my day so cheerfully.’ She glared at him as he knocked on the door. A voice inside said, ‘Come.’
Captain Jaspers was a tall, angular, emotionless man in his early fifties. A scar as thin as a fishing line stretched from in front of his left ear down to his jawline. His black hair was streaked with grey. Cold, lead eyes hid behind glasses set in gold frames. His attire was as rigid as a uniform, dark blue suits, white shirts, drab ties, black lace- up shoes. His Timex watch had a grey cloth band. He wore no other jewellery.
To Sharky’s knowledge, Jaspers had no friends in the department. His only confidant was the new police commissioner, Ezra Powers. Jaspers was a ruthless officer with little regard for his men, a rigid and stern disciplinarian, quick to demote or suspend the men in Central District, which was his command. Five years earlier when Sharky was assigned to a blue-and-white, his partner had been Orville Slyden, who had been flopped from detective third grade to patrolman and given six-and-six, six weeks’ suspension and six weeks at reduced pay, for taking a handout. Later Slyden had been proven innocent, but Jaspers refused to restore him to rank. It was the captain’s contention that anyone even suspected of such an infraction did not deserve to be a detective. It was Slyden who had given Jaspers his nickname, The Bat. ‘He’s a fuckin’ vatnpire,’ Slyden had said and the name had stuck, although nobody ever called Jaspers that to his face.
Jaspers’s predecessor had been a thoughtful and highly respected man who had risen slowly and painfully through the ranks. He had committed suicide after learning he had terminal cancer. According to a persistent rumour of the House, Jaspers had loaded the gun for him.
The office was barren. A spotless desk ‘with nothing on it but a telephone and a letterbox. A table behind the desk contained a police squawk box, nothing else. Two uncomfortable chairs. A single photograph on the wall of Dwight Eisenhower shaking hands with Jaspers, who wore the uniform of an army major. Neither of them was smiling. There were no ashtrays; Jaspers did not approve of smoking or drinking.
He did not look up when Sharky entered the room; he jabbed a linger towards one of the chairs and continued reading a file that lay in front of him. Sharky sat down. Another five minutes died. Finally Jaspers closed the cover of the file and took a newspaper out of his desk drawer. He held it up with a flourish for Sharky to read. Jaspers thrived on these little dramatis momenta. The headline read:
UNDERCOVER COP KILLS DOPE PUSHER ON CROWDED CITY BUS’
Beside the story a photograph showed a scruffy, bearded, and weary Sharky, gun in band, leaning over High Ball Mary.
‘I saw it,’ Sharky said.
‘When you blow your cover, you certainly do it extravagantly,’ Jaspers said. His voice was a dry, brittle rasp.
‘Well, I had a little bad luck.’
‘You had a lot of bad luck.’
‘The way it happened, I was —‘
‘I know the way it happened. Anybody who can read knows the way it happened.’
‘The story in the paper isn’t quite —‘
‘I read your report, what there was of it.’
‘Yes, sir, uh, about that. . . Lieutenant Goldwald thought we should leave out some. . .‘
‘I know what Goldwald thought. I’ve already finished with Goldwald.’
‘Could I just give you my end of it? Sir.’ Sharky said.
‘No. I know all I need to know. I know you went into this meet with, uh, what was his name? Uh...’
‘Creech. Percy Creech. A/k/a High Ball Mary.’
‘Yes, Creech. You went in there solo. No back-up. No surveillance team. Six hundred dollars of department money in your pocket. You set up this buy with a very dangerous pusher and kept the details to yourself. A real grandstand play, Sharky. And then to get involved in a chase through the most crowded section of town. At rush hour. A shoot-out on a crowded city bus filled with women and children. Just what else would you like to add to that?’
‘Everything was rolling smooth until that goddamn Tully...’
‘I’m not interested in Tully,’ Jaspers snapped, cutting him off. ‘Tully was an accident. Accidents happen. You should anticipate, anticipate, problems.’
Sharky’s face began to redden.
‘He’s a moron...’
Jaspers cut him off again.
‘Are you deaf?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Deaf. Are you deaf? I said I am not interested in Tully. Tully was a mistake. It’s what happened after Tully that concerns me. You forgot everything. You panicked, forgot every regulation. You ignored the rules. Pro-ced-ure. There is pro-ced-ure to be followed.’ Jaspers sat back in his chair and stared across the desk at Sharky, who felt suddenly like a grammar school boy called before the principal. It was humiliating and Sharky could not abide humiliation.
‘Look, do I have any say at all? I mean, do I get to tell my end of this?’
Don’t be insolent,’ Jaspers snapped.
‘Insolent! Insolent, shit.’ He stood up and walked to the edge of the desk. Jaspers’s face was scarlet with rage. ‘Lemme tell you something, Captain. I spent three months on that goddamn machine. Three months setting it up, kissing that miserable bastard’s ass so I could make that buy.’
‘Sharky!’ Jaspers roared.
‘No, I’m gonna finish this. ThIs wasn’t any ordinary coke buy, y’know. Creech was leading me upstairs, to his man. We were talking coke in pounds. Pounds! He couldn’t handle that big a thing; he had to go to the supplier. That’s who I was after, High Ball’s connection. I had to. It couldn’t leak out, see. One leak —‘
‘How dare you?’ Jaspers was enraged now. ‘What in God’s name possessed you? A gunfight on a crowded bus.’
Jesus, is that all that mattered? The bus ? Sharky started to explain what happened. That he had taken a chance and looked at High Ball Mary, that everyone behind the pusher had dropped to the floor, that he was using soft-nose bullets. It wasn’t some irresponsible snap decision; he didn’t have any choice. But he said nothing. What the hell, all The Bat cared about was the goddamn bus.
‘This kind of press is disastrous,’ The Bat was saying.
‘Press? For Christ’s sake, what was I supposed to do, kiss his ass and wave goodbye?’
‘I ought to break you. For insubordination alone. I ought to give you six-and-six and put you back ‘where you belong, in a blue-and-white on Auburn Avenue. You’ll never learn, will you? You have no respect for anyone.’
‘Captain, look, it happened too fast. All of a sudden there we were on a bus full of Christmas shoppers and he was bonkers, totally around the bend, threatening to kill kids and all. I had a clean shot and I took it. What the hell else is there to say about it?’
‘Three clean shots, apparently.’
‘Okay, I hit him three times. I didn’t want to take a chance that maybe he squeezes one off and wastes some old lady on the way home to dinner. Ot some kid. I took him Out. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?’