The Door To December

'That must be a comforting thought,' Dan said, 'but it's wrong. I covered for you then because you were my partner, and I figured everyone has a right to screw up once. But I've lived to regret the way I handled it, and if you give me a good excuse, I'd enjoy setting the record straight.'

'It all happened a long time ago,' Mondale said.

'You think no one cares about dereliction of duty just because it happened thirteen years ago?'

'No one'll believe you. They'll think it's sour grapes. I've moved up, made friends.'

'Yeah. And they're the kind of friends who'd sell their mothers for lunch money.'

'You've always been a loner. A wiseass. No matter what you think of them, I have people who'll rally around me.'

'With a lynching rope.'

'Power makes people loyal, Haldane, even if they'd rather not be. Nobody'll believe any crap you care to throw at me. Not a rotten wiseass like you. Not a chance.'

'Ted Gearvy will believe me,' Dan said, and if he had spoken any more quietly, he would have been inaudible. Yet, in spite of his quiet delivery, he might as well have swung a hammer at Mondale instead of those five words. The captain looked stricken.

Gearvy, ten years their senior, was a veteran patrolman and had been Mondale's partner during his probationary rookie year. He had seen Mondale make a few mistakes — although nothing as serious as what happened at the Lakey house later, when Dan had replaced Gearvy as Mondale's partner. Just disquieting errors of judgment. A too-meager sense of responsibility. Gearvy had thought he detected cowardice in Ross too, but had covered up for him, just as Dan would do in times to come. Gearvy was a big, gruff, easygoing guy, three-quarters Irish, with too much sympathy for rookies. He had not given Mondale high ratings in his rookie year; the Irishman was good-natured and sympathetic but not irresponsible. But he didn't give Mondale really bad ratings, either, because he was too softhearted for that.

A few months after the Lakey incident, when Dan was back at work with a new partner, Ted Gearvy had come around, quietly feeling Dan out, dropping hints, worried that he had made a serious mistake in covering up for Ross. Eventually, they had swapped information and discovered they had both been misguidedly shielding Mondale. They realized his misconduct was not just a rare or even a some-time thing. But by then it had seemed too late to come forth with the truth. In the eyes of the department brass, Gearvy's and Dan's failure — even temporary failure — to report Mondale's dereliction of duty would be nearly as bad as that dereliction itself. Gearvy and Dan would have found themselves standing in the dock beside Mondale. They weren't prepared to damage or perhaps even destroy their own careers.

Besides, by then Mondale had wheedled an assignment to the Community Relations Division; he was no longer working on the street. Gearvy and Dan figured Ross would do well in community relations and would never return to a regular beat, in which case he would never again be in a position to hold someone else's life in his hands. It seemed best — and safest — to leave well enough alone.

Neither of them imagined that Mondale would one day be a serious contender for the chief's office. Maybe they would have taken action if they could have foreseen the future. Their failure to act was the thing that both of them most regretted in all their years of service.

Clearly, Mondale had not known that Gearvy and Dan had compared notes. Their consultation was a nasty shock to him.

* * *

The radio boomed:

'IT!'

'COMING!'

'HIDE!'

'COMING!'

The disconnected words exploding from the Sony were impossibly loud, delivered with considerably more volume than the speakers were capable of providing. Thunderous, volcanic. Wall-shaking. The speakers should have disintegrated or burned out as those tremendous bursts of sound smashed through them, but they continued to function. The radio vibrated against the counter.

'LOOSE!'

'COMING!'

Each word crashed through Laura and seemed to pulverize more of her self-control. Panic and fear surged through her. The kitchen lights pulsed, dimmed. At the same time, the green glow that illuminated the radio dial became brighter, unnaturally bright, as if the Sony had acquired both a consciousness and a greedy thirst for electricity, as if it were drawing off all available power for itself. But that didn't make sense, because regardless of how much power the radio received, the dial was still equipped with a low-wattage bulb that couldn't produce this brilliant glow. Yet it did. As the ceiling lights grew dimmer still, dazzling emerald beams sprayed out through the Plexiglas panel on the front of the radio, painting Earl Benton's face, glinting off the chrome on the stove and refrigerator, imparting to the air a rippling murkiness: The room seemed to be underwater.

'… RIPPING…'

'… APART…'

The air was freezing.

'… TEARING…'

'… APART…'

Laura didn't understand that portion of the message — unless it was a threat of physical violence.

The Sony was vibrating faster than the stones in a rattlesnake's rattle. Soon it would be bouncing across the counter.

'… SPLITTING… IN… TWO…'

* * *

Dan said, 'If I go public, Ted Gearvy probably will too. And maybe there's even someone else out there who's seen you at your worst, Ross. Maybe they'll come forward when we do. Maybe they'll have a conscience too.'

Judging by the expression on Mondale's face, there evidently was someone else who could blow his career out of the water. He was no longer smug when he said, 'One cop never rats on another, damn it!'

'Nonsense. If one of us is a killer, we don't protect him.'

'I'm no killer,' Mondale said.

'If one of us is a thief, we don't protect him.'

'I've never stolen a goddamned dime.'

'And if one of us is a coward who wants to be chief, we have to stop protecting him too, before he gets into the front office and plays fast and loose with other men's lives, the way some cowards do when they get enough power to be above the fight themselves.'

'You take the goddamned cake! You're the snottiest, most self-satisfied son of a bitch I've ever seen.'

'Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment.'

'You know the code. It's us against them.'

'Why, for heaven's sake, Ross, just a minute ago, you told me it was always every man for himself.'

Irrationally trying to separate his own conduct at the Lakey house from the code of honor that he now so strenuously professed to embrace, Mondale could do no more than repeat himself: 'It's us against them, damn it!'

Dan nodded. 'Yes, but when I say "us," I don't include you. You and I can't possibly belong to the same species.'

'You'll destroy your own career,' Mondale said.

'Maybe.'

'Definitely. The Internal Affairs Division is gonna want to know why the hell you covered up this so-called dereliction of duty.'

'Misguided allegiance to another man in uniform.'

'That won't be good enough.'

'We'll see.'

'They'll have your ass for breakfast.'

Dan said, 'You're the one who actively screwed up. My moral irresponsibility was a passive act, passive sin. They might suspend me for that, reprimand me. But they're not going to throw me off the force because of it.'

'Maybe not. But you'll never get another promotion.'

Dan shrugged. 'Doesn't matter. I've gone as far as I really care to. Ambition doesn't rule me, Ross, the way it does you.'

'But… no one'll trust you after you've done a thing like this.'

'Sure they will.'