tone. “Look, Cy, when I appointed you chief, I had total faith in your abilities, your courage, and a lot of other things that would make you a natural leader, and I still do. You’ve never done anything that’s made me feel like I made the wrong decision… and one of those other things was my hope that with you as our chief, we could overcome many mistakes that had been made in the past. For example, I hoped to show our African American community that yes, they may have gotten the short end before, but now they were going to have not just somebody to stand up for their interests… they would have the Man himself. That’s a good thing, and it’s also a powerful symbol. Now, when that Man on the Mast thing happened, I told you to put Camacho on ice for a while. So what did you do? You gave him a medal and a ‘lateral transfer,’ and not to a horse in the park, because the only ones he could annoy there would be the goddamned rats and squirrels. No, that would be a lateral transfer with a ‘dip,’ I think you said.” The Mayor was heating up again, and slipping the leash off his sarcastic attack dog. He seemed to know that the Chief was down for the count. “In a situation like this one, no one person is the issue. You know what I mean? You want to stand up for one of your men, and that’s commendable. But right now, you and me, we got the obligation to stand up for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people who can’t follow the fine points. You know what I mean?”
The Chief found himself nodding yes… and immediately realized that he had done the same thing, meekly nodded yes, a moment ago… They must be marveling at their leader’s jujitsu powers of persuasion… Just like that he reduces Black Superman to about the omnipotence of a smoked oyster—they being the boys Friday. They’re all staring. They’re not glowering. No, they’re fascinated, like little boys. They’ve got the best seats in the house… for watching the Incredible Shrinking Chief… shrink. You can’t put anything past our Dionisio Cruz, can you! All of five-feet-six, but he can handle any six-foot-four Supernegro who gets in his way. That’s why he’s… the caudillo. He doesn’t accuse el negro of anything, he doesn’t threaten el negro with anything… or not in any form you could introduce as evidence… he just lays out his net, and in no time… Gotcha!… el negro’s inside the net, struggling… punching thin air… trapped in a net of words.
“All they know,” the Mayor continued, “is that here’s this young cop, this kid—what?—four years on the force?—and everywhere he goes, the Four Horsemen follow… Racism, Chauvinism, Ethnic Slurs, and… uhhh…” He had been going great until that point. Now he was stuck. He couldn’t come up with a fourth mounted equestrian scourge. “… uhhh… and all the rest of it,” he finished off with, lamely. “You know what I mean?”
What bullshit! He couldn’t sit here and nod yes to stuff like that! So he said, “No, I don’t, Dio.” But it came out just as lamely as little Dionisio’s uhhh… and all the rest of it. It came out just as faint as his own yes nods. He put no heart into it… It was very noble, defending one of his men, a lowly one, too… but was it really noble if it put in jeopardy all the things you could do for your real brothers?
::::::It was as if Dio was reading my e-mail.::::::
“Look, Cy, the issue is not whether Camacho is a bad cop or a good cop. I’m willing to grant you that point. Okay? But he’s become something bigger than himself. He’s become a symbol of something that cuts everybody in this town to the quick. Your loyalty, which I admire, doesn’t alter the situation. I’m sure the kid never even thought about it at the time. But the facts are the facts. Twice in the last few months he’s made whole communities see red… He’s gotten their bowels in an uproar… He’s treated them like dirt; don’t you think your department could possibly get on with its work without this twenty-five-year-old kid’s services?”
::::::I wondered when he was finally going to get to this point. And when he did, I was going to draw a line in the sand and dig in.::::::