presence at the heart of Miami city government… Him! Chief Booker, reduced to this insulting insignificance, lurking in a lobby… playing a stupid defensive game… trying not to lose instead of risking whatever it took to win… Him! Why should he be cringing before anybody? He was born to lead… and he was young enough, only forty-four, to fight his way back to the top… if not in this role then another one where the top was even higher, although he couldn’t think at this very moment what that might be… if necessary, he’d build it!… and what was all this pants-twisting fear about the house and the mortgage? What difference would a house in Kendall make in history’s verdict?… but then he thought of another verdict… his wife’s… She would be anguished, for maybe twenty-four hours… and then furious!… ooounnnghhh Jesus God!… but a man couldn’t flinch at a wife’s fury if he was going to risk all… to achieve all, could he? Shiiiiiiiit! She’d be on the warpath… “Nice going, Big Shot! No job, no house, no income, but noooohhh… you’re not gonna let that—”
His phone rang. He answered it as he always did: “Chief Booker.”
“This is Cecelia at Mayor Cruz’s office”… “at Mayor Cruz’s office,” as if he wouldn’t have any idea which Cecelia, out of the thousands in this city, in this world, this particular Cecelia might be. “The Mayor can see you now. I went to the waiting room… and I couldn’t find you. The Mayor has a very busy schedule this afternoon.”
Frosty? Goddamn freezing over!… Well, up yours, Horse Head! But all he said was “I’ll be right there.” Damn! Why had he stuck in the “right”? Made it sound like he was going to hustle… obediently.
For security reasons, you could only reach the second floor by elevator. Damn and damn again! On the elevator he was trapped with two more Hi, Chiefs, and one of them was a nice kid who wrote bulletins for the Bureau of Environmental Management, a black kid named Mike. He gave Mike a Hey, Big Guy… but he was unable to smile! He could only show his teeth!
He practiced smiling as he walked down the narrow hallway. He had to have one ready for Cecelia. When he reached her desk, she pretended for a moment not to see him. Then she looked up at him. How big and horsey that bitch’s teeth were! She said, “Ah, there you are,” and even had the nerve to flick a glance at the watch on her wrist. “Please go right in.” The Chief spread the smile he had been practicing from cheek to cheek. He hoped it read, “Yes, I understand the petty little game you’re playing, and no, I’m not going to get down to your level and play it.”
When he walked into the Mayor’s office, old Dionisio was seated in a big mahogany swivel chair upholstered in oxblood leather. The swivel chair was so big, it looked like a Mahogany Monster, and the oxblood leather looked like the inside of its mouth about to swallow Old Dionisius whole. He was leaning back into it with a gloriously bored self-satisfaction at a desk with a surface you could land a Piper Cub on. He didn’t get up to welcome the Chief the way he usually did. He didn’t even straighten up in the chair. If anything, he leaned back still further, to the limit of the chair’s joint springs.
“Come in, Chief, and have a seat.” There was a confident note of summons in his voice, and a nonchalant flip of the wrist indicated the other side of the desk. The seat was a straight chair immediately opposite Old Dio. The Chief sat down, making sure his posture was perfect. Then Old Dio said, “How goes the tranquility of the citizenry this afternoon, Chief?”
The Chief smiled slightly and indicated the small police radio clipped to the belt of his uniform. “Haven’t had one call in the thirty minutes I’ve been here waiting.”
“That’s good,” said the Mayor. His dubious look of mockery remained on his face. “So what can I do for you, Chief?”
“Well, you probably remember that incident at Lee de Forest High? A teacher was arrested for assaulting a student and spent two nights in jail? Well, now he has a trial coming up, and the courts consider a teacher assaulting a student on par with some lowlife assaulting an eighty-five-year-old man leaning on an aluminum walker in the park.”