Boldt Read Free Page A

They don’t know the town and they don’t know the people in it. All they know is how to jump on a truck after a sniper’s a million maybe two million miles away. And then what happens is it’s our guys who pick up the guy anyway. Listen, I hate what your fuck of a brother stands for, he’s out to fuck this country, but I don’t want him taken out in my town. Now Bolan is the guy who could give Fort Knox some hints, but he’s like a map of the city, all straight lines. That’s why I’m talking to you two. I want you to make silver snail tracks across Bolan’s intersections and stay on the level of the snail’s belly and sniff out anything Bolan might miss. I want you to crawl the whole square footage of this city and pick up anything Bolan might miss from his gun turret. Bolan rousts the city; you roust its foundations because that’s your level. Nobody crawls in or out you don’t know the color of his jockeys. Anybody gets a hard-on you come and tell me how big it is. Somebody planning to vacation in South America, you read his mind. All other activities, you forget about them. If the Mayor runs over thirty-five school kids and you’re driving by at the time, keep on driving. Don’t even report it; it might stop you figuring three moves ahead of this nut who sent your brother his valentine.”
    â€œDo we check out the letter?”
    â€œThat’s being done. Don’t worry about it. Any information comes up, you’ll have it passed on to you. All that kind of work stays with the regular guys and if you come up with anything that needs a routine follow-up just pass it on and keep moving.”
    I light a cigarette, lean forward and drop the match in Draper’s ashtray. “So at long last our methods have been recognized at a high departmental level,” I say.
    â€œNo crap,” Draper says. “No jokes. Just get out and make sure nobody’s staring down a telescopic sight a week from tomorrow.”
    â€œIt’s as close as that?” Murdock says.
    â€œYeah,” I say, buttoning my coat. “I’ve been counting the hours.”
    Going down in the elevator, Murdock tries to get me to talk about what’s just been said in Draper’s office but after a couple of openers, he gets the message. When the elevator door stops he just follows me. I walk out of the building and over to the car and I get in and he gets in and the doors slam and the dull faraway morning city roar is cut in half. Murdock sits there, lights a cigarette and waits patiently, a state of affairs he’s got used to since he and I were teamed together nearly three years ago. Not only is he good at waiting patiently for me to let go with what’s happening inside my head, he’s also good at waiting patiently for his promotion, an event which no way will occur while he’s working alongside me, a non-event he could do something about if he wanted to; but he seems to like the arrangement the way it is. Christ knows why. So there we sit in the half-quiet of the car, two middle-aged cops, defenders of mid-America and its middle-aged ways, in the middle of our declining careers, listening to the hum of the city as it travels through time towards the day’s end.
    I take my pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket but the pack is empty so I crumple it up and jam it back in my pocket. Murdock reaches for his own pack and shakes one out for me, and to save an echo of the performance, he flips a book of matches into my lap. I light the cigarette and bend the match, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger Then I say, “I lied up in Draper’s office.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œAbout the note. About not taking it seriously. Ever since the first, when I got the first breath of wind of my brother making it from state capital back to hometown to raise some nostalgic dust I had this feeling. Nothing rational. Just uneasy, nervous. Even