Free True Detective by Max Allan Collins Page B

next to me. "You'll be a sergeant for a while, and a lieutenant by next year this time. Sergeant's pay is twenty-nine hundred dollars, but you'll get deputy coroner's pay. which is three thousand sixty. Lieutenant's is thirty-two hundred. That's a thousand-dollar raise for you. isn't it, Nate?"
    Cermak talked about that extra grand like he wasn't a millionaire, like it meant something to him; or maybe that's why he was a millionaire: because a grand did mean something to him. Like it did to me.
    "And the salary isn't everything," he continued, with an offhand gesture, a little smile, a shrug. "There are extras. I don't have to be specific, do I, Nate?"
    "You don't have to be specific," I said.
    He sat and stared at me and smiled at me and it was like having a shotgun smile at you and I finally had to look away.
    When I did, he said, "I think the boys have had time enough for their smoke now, don't you?"
    Sure.
    He got up and went to the door and called Miller and Mulaney back in; then, his upper lip pulled back over his teeth, a hand clutching his stomach, he excused himself and left the room again.
    "Does he do that often?" I said.
    Miller, who had resumed his post by the window, said. "He has to take a shit now and then. Don't you. Heller?"
    "Not every five minutes."
    Cermak came back in. sat down, seemed embarrassed, smiling, gesturing awkwardly. "Sorry about the interruptions. I got the trots to beat the band today. It's my goddamn stomach. Ulcer or something. Colitis, gastritis, the docs call it. About as bad as goddamn kidney stones."
    "Your Honor…"
    "Yes, Nate?"
    I held the badge out toward him. "I can't take this back."
    He didn't understand for a second: it was as if he thought I were fooling. Then his smile fell like a cake. and his eyes could've turned Medusa to stone.
    When I could see he wasn't going to take the badge, I put it on the table, next to the bucket of ice and beer.
    And now Cermak softened his gaze, like somebody fine-tuning a radio.
    "Mr. Heller," he began (not "Nate"), "what is it you want?"
    "Out. That's all. I don't like killing people. I don't like being used. By you. by your people. By anybody. Just because I helped you people cover up that fucking Lingle case, that doesn't mean that every time there's a dirt)' goddamn job to do. you go pull Heller in off the street."
    Cermak folded his hands across his troubled stomach. His expression was neutral. "I don't know what you're referring to," he said. "The Lingle case was prior to my administration, and it's
my
understanding that the murderer was convicted and is serving his sentence right now."
    "Yeah. Right. Look. All I want to do is quit the force. That's all I'm after."
    "Nate." So it was "Nate" again. "We need to present a unified front on this matter. You killed a man. You have an inquest to attend, when? Day after tomorrow?"
    "Tomorrow. Morning."
    "If my people tell conflicting stories, it will reflect badly on
me
. On
all
of us. It will get very complicated.
You
are the only officer who killed anyone in that office, Nate. Surely you don't want this to linger on, to fester in the public's eye."
    The beers from Barney's, and the one Touhy, were knocking at my bladder door. I asked
if I
could leave the room this time, and Cermak, looking wear)' (or pretending to- who knew with this guy?), assented, pointing, as if he hadn't already made the direction of the bathroom perfectly clear.
    I walked through a big fancy bedroom, where against one wall a rolltop desk was stuck, looking about as out of place here as me. But what really struck me as wrong were the three suitcases, the four boxes of personal papers and other work-type stuff and the steamer trunk, all standing at the foot of the bed. like a crowd at a political rally. Cermak was going someplace.
    I let the beer out. then came back and sat down.
    "Taking a trip, Your Honor?"
    Absently, he said, "Florida. Taking Horner down there."
    Horner was the recently elected governor of Illinois- one