brute’s back and, weighing only 160 pounds, clamped a couple of wrestling holds onto 275 pounds of crack house thug and rolled in the dirt and the dirtballs with him until the brute became utterly depleted in breath, power, willpower, heart, and manhood… and gave up… like a pussy. How could any man pretend not to realize that, faced with death, even a cop experiences an adrenal rush immensely more powerful than all chains of polite conversation and immediately seeks to smother his would-be killer with whatever vile revulsion comes surging up his brain stem from the deepest, darkest, most twisted bowels of hatred? How could any man, even the mildest and most sedentary, fail to understand?!
But nothing on YouTube could possibly let that man know the first half of the story, the crucial half… Nothing! And without that first half, the second half becomes fiction! A lie!
I’m telling you, Nestor, we’re gonna be knee-deep in this shit by daybreak and waist-high by noon. For it is already rising, and it is still dark outside.
And it was still dark outside at 6:00 a.m., when the Chief, an early riser, took a call on his personal line from Jorge Guba, one of Dio’s boy Fridays, saying the Mayor wanted him at City Hall in an hour and a half for a meeting. Seven-thirty? Yes. Had the Chief seen YouTube yet?
So the Chief took a look at YouTube. In fact, he watched it three times. Then he shut his eyes and lowered his head and massaged his temples with one hand… his thumb pressing one temple and his middle and ring fingers the other. Then he said aloud, under his breath:
“Like I really need this, don’t I.”
Grumpily he roused his driver, Sanchez, and told him to have the car ready. When they entered the circular drive in front of the little Pan Am–leftover City Hall at 7:20—one look, and he immediately grew grumpier. Waiting for him, and whomever else, in front of the City Hall entrance, was a platoon of the so-called media, about a dozen of them, dressed like the homeless but lent gravity by all the microphones and notepads in their hands and, above all, by two trucks with telescoping satellite transmitters extended a full twenty feet up in the air for live broadcast. The Chief was not so jolly this time as he got out of the big black Escalade. Hell, he wasn’t even able to take a deep breath and expand his massive black chief chest to the max before the so-called media were swarming over him like mosquitoes. Police abuse and racist slurs were the two terms they kept biting him with in their whining mosquito buzz as he bulled his way through them, without a word, and into City Hall.
Like he really needed this, didn’t he.
The Mayor’s men’s-gym lounge of a conference room was heavily populated with more of his boys Friday: his flack, Portuondo, and his city manager, Bosch, as before… plus Hector Carbonell, the district attorney ::::::district attorney?:::::: and his two gray eminences, Alfredo Cabrillo and Jacque Díaz, both lawyers Dio had known since law school and frequently called upon when confronted by big decisions ::::::big decisions?:::::: And the Mayor made six. The whole platoon was Cuban.
Dio was his usual exuberant self as the Chief entered the room. Big smile and “Aaaaay. Chief! Come in! Have a seat!” He pointed at an easy chair. “I think you know everybody in the room… Right?” The other five Cubans gave the chief little thirty-three-degree smiles. When they all sat down in the room’s jumble of easy chairs and armchairs, the Chief had an odd feeling. Then he realized the Mayor and the boys Friday were arranged in a horseshoe pattern… a sloppy horseshoe, but a horseshoe… and he was seated midway between the horseshoe’s prongs… with a big space between him and the nearest seat on either side. The Mayor was directly opposite him in a straight-back armchair at the crest of the horseshoe’s curve. The Chief’s chair must have been suffering from spring failure, because his bottom sank down so far, he could barely see over his kneecaps. Dio, in his armchair, appeared to be looking down at him. The choir had some chilly looks on their mugs… no smiles at all. The Chief had the sensation of being in a sunken dock, facing the grim visages of a jury.
“I think everybody knows why we’re here?”… The Mayor scanned his platoon… lots of yes nods…