Excerpt
Red
Haynes, a lanky, sleepy-eyed man with fiery tousled
hair and oversized ears, sat in the stuffy waiting room
of the Federal Health Clinic. His arms were folded across
his chest. Seated opposite him was an emaciated, stringy-haired
woman wearing an extremely short skirt. He watched as,
keeping her knees primly together, the woman nervously
reapplied both lipstick and pancake makeup for the third
time during the twenty minutes or so that he had been
waiting. A wired-up pillhead, he said to himself.
To Haynes's right was a fortyish man dressed in a bureaucrat's
uniform --short-sleeved white shirt with ballpoint-pen
marks on the pocket, baggy trousers, and cheap wing-tipped
shoes. Come to think of it, Haynes said to himself,
except for the on-sale polyester sport coat that covered
his gun and handcuffs, he was dressed the same way.
A door opened. A tall, bubble-butted black nurse stepped
into the room. "Agent Haynes?"
"That's
me."
"Dr.
Rhodes will see you now."
Red Haynes came to his feet and shuffled behind bubble-butt
into the doctor's office. The doctor, a parrot-nosed
man much younger than Haynes, looked up from his paperwork
and nodded. Haynes took a seat in front of the desk.
On the walls were diplomas, psychiatric-internship certificates
and other crapola which impressed Haynes about as much
as a television commercial. The door closed behind him.
"Your
file says you've been an FBI agent for twenty years,"
the doctor said as he removed his thick glasses and
wiped the lenses, then the frames, on a small rag.
"Right."
"Do
you know why you're here?"
"Because
I received a low yearly performance evaluation and the
agent-in-charge said I'm depressed."
"Do
you think you're depressed?"
"No."
Dr. Rhodes nodded his parrot beak. Why do you suppose
your supervisor said you were depressed?"
"To
screw me."
"Why
do you think your supervisor would want to...uh...to
cause you problems?"
Red Haynes interlaced his bony fingers. With a brisk,
well-practiced movement, he loudly cracked his knuckles.
The doctor winced.
"Because
that's the way he is."
"What
do you mean by that?"
"He
is an asshole."
"And
you feel he wants to cause you harm?"
Haynes shook his head. "If you are born an asshole
you cause people harm whether you want to or not."
Dr. Rhodes lifted his eyeglasses from his nose for an
unnecessary cleaning, lenses only this time, then tipped
them back onto the deep eyeglass indentation on his
beak.
"Do
you ever have nightmares?"
"I
did a few years ago."
"What
were they about?"
"Shooting
somebody."
"Anyone
in particular?"
"A
bank robber."
"What
was occurring in your life around the time you started
having those nightmares?"
"I'd
just shot a bank robber with a twelve-gauge shotgun."
Dr. Rhodes stared at Haynes for a moment, as if doing
so would help solve some great riddle.
"What
did you do immediately after the shooting?"
"I
went to a bar with the other agents. We celebrated."
"And
it was after that you began to have nightmares?"
"That
very night."
"What
occurred during the nightmares?"
"I
would shoot the guy and see the blood an gore all over
again. It was in Technicolor."
"Perhaps
you felt guilty about what had occurred?"
"I
just told you we went and had a party after the shooting.
Does that sound like I felt guilty?"
"You
had nightmares."
"They
went away after a while."
"There's
a notation in your file that you received a reprimand
after the shooting incident. What was this about?"
"I
got written up for following the FBI manual."
"Please
go on."
"It
says in the FBI manual that all prisoners must be handcuffed,
no matter what the circumstances of the arrest."
"So
you handcuffed the man you shot?"
"That's
right. If I hadn't, the supervisor at the scene would
have written me up for not following procedure."
Dr. Rhodes maintained eye contact with Haynes. "Then
what exactly was the dispute concerning the handcuffing
of the...uh...prisoner?"
"The
supervisor said what I did was unbecoming a federal
officer."
"Why
would he say that?"
"Probably
because some of the onlookers in the bank got upset."
"I
take it this was because the man you handcuffed was
injured?"
"No.
It was because he was headless."
"You
handcuffed a headless corpse?"
"It
was either that or be written up for not following procedure."
Dr. Rhodes stared at the personnel file for a moment,
shook his head.
"Did
you really believe that your supervisor would have reprimanded
you for failing to handcuff a dead man?"
"Yes."
Dr. Rhodes swallowed a couple of times, reached for
his eyeglasses, and then stopped himself. He picked
up a report, cleared his throat, spoke in a businesslike
manner.
"This
rating report says that you lack initiative, seem constantly
'blue,' and that you have a 'tendency to find fault
with everyone and everything.' What is your reaction
to these comments?"
Red Haynes gave his right ear a tug. One by one, he
cracked each of the knuckles on his right hand by tugging
sharply on each finger. "My reaction is that the
person who wrote that is a pencil-necked Bureau asskisser
and a general all-around prick who's not qualified to
write an evaluation on anyone."
"Nevertheless,
he's someone you have to work with," Dr. Rhodes
said.
"Not
anymore. He transferred me from the Las Vegas field
office to the Organized Crime Strike Force almost ten
months ago."
Rhodes flipped the file folder's cover to check the
date. He blushed as he noted it. "We are a little
behind in consultations."
"The
whole government is behind. That's because it has second-rate
people working for it. In fact, if you were such a hot-shot
psychiatrist you'd be out making big money somewhere,
instead of collecting a federal paycheck to work in
a chickenshit government clinic."
Dr. Rhodes made a notation in Haynes's file. "I
think you are suffering from severe depression, Agent
Haynes."
Haynes cracked his knuckles again. The sound was extra-loud,
like twigs breaking.
Exasperated, Dr. Rhodes let out his breath. He made
notations in the file. "I'm going to recommend
that you get into an exercise program...jogging, maybe.
When you feel stress coming on I want you to drop whatever
you are doing and start jogging."
"I
should start the moment I feel stress coming on?"
Dr. Rhodes stopped writing, looked up. "That's
right."
Red Haynes came to his feet in a quickstep march. With
his bony knees and arms working like pistons he jogged
to the door. Keeping his legs moving, he opened the
door and jogged directly from the room, through the
reception area, and out the front door.
At the federal courthouse, Novak parked the G-car in
his assigned spot in the parking lot. Inside, he took
and elevator to the third floor. At the end of a hallway
he stopped in front of an unmarked door. He punched
numbers on the door's cipher lock. The lock mad a snapping
sound, and he let himself into a drably decorated room
which contained six government-issue desks, some filing
cabinets, a radio base station, and a teletype machine.
Next to the window was a bulletin board covered with
black-and-white photographs -- blown-up surveillance
shots of Tony Parisi talking to men in casino parking
lots.
At an immaculate desk in the corner of the room, Along-for-the-Rid
Frank Tyde, a seedy, middle-aged U.S. Customs agent
who invariably wore the same brown polyester sport coat
and frayed necktie, sat with his feet up on his desk,
head turned to face the window, hands behind his head
with fingers interlaced, meerschaum pipe jutting form
the side of his mouth emitting smoke. It was a position
from which he seldom moved. Probably because it would
have caused him an unnecessary expenditure of energy,
he did not acknowledge, Novak's arrival in any way.
John Novak sat down at his desk, rummaged through some
paperwork.
"Big
day planned, Frank?" Novak said as an aside.
"This
afternoon I'll get a haircut, do some shopping at the
government store, make a few phone calls around the
country to see who's getting promoted...and brief Elliot,
our fearless prick of a leader, on an old case. That'll
be the hardest part of the day, " Tyde said without
taking the pipe out of his mouth.
"No
overtime planned for today?"
"Already
logged in my two hours. I came in early and made some
phone calls."
"That
sounds like an honest deuce at time-and-a-half,"
Novak said facetiously. He yanked open a file drawer.
Tyde
swung his feet off the desk, ambled to a metal duty-schedule
board. He picked up a magnetic metal dot, placed it
under his name on a section of the board marked "Sick
Leave."
"Yes,
these long hours can sure take atoll. I'll be taking
sick leave tomorrow...to rest up." Then Along-for-the-Ride
Tyde's lungs displaced precisely enough air to make
a sound that could be recognized as a laugh. Having
arranged the duty board, he checked his wristwatch,
sat back down at his desk, returned to his pipe-smoking
rest position.
Red Haynes shuffled into the room. He looked as if he
had been running.
|