Free American Quartet by Warren Adler Page A

limelight so that he could dance in the circle of glory. It was one of the hazards of the publicity seeker. Being caught in the white heat of that spotlight also made one a target. Fiona got little satisfaction from such wisdom. The politics of the bureaucracy had its own wisdom.
    A few days later she was summoned to the eggplant’s office alone, an ominous sign. It was raining, a driving summer rain that tapped out a drumbeat on the dusty windows of his office.
    He sat behind his desk, on which piles of cigarettes filled his numerous ashtrays. For some reason he did not empty them, as if they were there to illustrate his displeasure.
    “That Baines girl,” he grumped. “You let her off the hook. You didn’t even sweat her. Or her old man.” He was matter-of-fact, although she felt the capped pressure. Bloodshot eyes scowled at her.
    “The manager vouched for her that morning. Teddy covered that base. She was working the breakfast shift. The old man was sleeping off a drunk and the mother . . .”
    “Sheet,” he interrupted, punching out yet another cigarette, the nicotine yellow deep against his black gnarled fingers. He picked up a sheaf of papers, read the first page, then threw it back on his desk. She braced herself.
    “Hagerstown PD got another story. The assistant manager was on duty, not the manager. According to him, she didn’t show till noon. That, smartass lady, is bad police work.”
    As senior detective, Teddy had given her latitude and it had blown up in his face. She knew the eggplant had her. She was sorry for that, guilty. But she had indeed overlooked a confirmation. Why? Had she dismissed the girl as innocent too quickly?
    “You and your goddamned Master’s degree.”
    “Maybe I goofed,” she said, opting for quick surrender. “Maybe I was too intuitive. It was my own damned fault.”
    “Women’s intuition,” he smirked. “Magic bullshit. As if it were something holy. You all should stay out of police business.”
    “I don’t appreciate the generalizations,” she snapped. The door to his office was closed. No witnesses. His word against hers. She braced for more abuse.
    She watched him struggle to cap the temper. His disdain hung in the room like the after-stench of a fire.
    “I want that bitch sweated. And the manager. And the mother. And her old man. And I want you to sweat her . . . And another thing. I’m divorcing you and Teddy. I think you got his balls in your hand.”
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    He watched her, then showed his large teeth in what passed for a smile.
    “I’ll put it another way, mama,” he said softly. “You’ve pussy whipped him. He’s lost his . . . ,” he groped for a professional touch, “. . . his initiative.”
    “You’ll be humiliating him,” she said. Her stomach tightened. “That’s not fair.”
    “Fair? Fair is for games. Not murder.”
    She braced herself for more.
    “I’m putting Jefferson on your case.”
    “Jefferson.” It came out as an oath.
    Jefferson was a swaggering egomaniacal black stud with a mouthful of ghetto sewer talk. The Ape, they called him in the department. Worse, he was proud of it. He had been a Ranger in Vietnam in the early days, cultivating the image of the cruel avenger. They called him the Ape, someone had told her, because of that old joke.
    “Where does that big Ape sit?”
    “Anywhere he wants.”
    He had a reputation for uncompromising cruelty to criminals, especially black ones, and he was an outspoken honky-hater. She knew that he considered women a subspecies, and white women unclassifiable, although it was rumored that he would use them, if opportunity knocked, for their only obvious function.
    Jefferson had been brought up on so many disciplinary charges that they were considered pro forma. They were always dismissed with a slap on the wrist. Apparently his misdeeds were merely the fantasies of other black cops saddled with the job of patrolling a jungle where their