The 500 by Matthew Quirk

Author:Matthew Quirk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2012-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HIS HEAD WAS shaved bald and he was built like a football center. The back of his neck had rolls like a pack of hot dogs. He sported tinted sunglasses, wraparound-baseball-player style. He walked stiffly, elbows out, like he either had a backed-up colon or thought he was in a Western. He wore a sack suit and a cheap tie. In other words: a cop.

With my family history, I get a little nervous around cops. Granted, now that I had the thick wallet and the cozy house in the city, I could see their appeal, but old habits die hard. Especially given my recent string of unorthodox activities, I was not at all happy when this palooka sat down next to me at a lunch counter and starting looking me over.

There are no decent diners in the neighborhood where I work. There’s a spot called the Diner, but it’s a retro/meta thing where a sandwich costs ten dollars. So I spend more lunches than I should at a restaurant called Luna’s. It’s one of those Berkeley-earth-mom places, the kind with a bathroom mural of Noam Chomsky and Harriet Tubman holding hands and sliding down a rainbow, but the burgers are good and cheap. If you tuck in at the counter and focus on the food and free coffee refills, you can hardly tell it from a regular greasy spoon.

But it certainly wasn’t the kind of place I’d expect to find this red-faced peace officer.

“Michael Ford?” he asked.

“Do I know you?”

“Erik Rivera,” he said. “I’m a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department, Special Investigations Division.”

“Okay.”

“This is a friendly visit,” Rivera said, which to my ears threatened an unfriendly future run-in. “How’s the cobbler?”

“It’s good.”

“Good.” I guess this was how they taught cops to rapport-build at MPD summer camp. It left a little to be desired, but thankfully Rivera got down to business.

“I was hoping to get your help on a few questions we had about some goings-on at the Davies Group,” he said.

Goings-on? Was I on Dragnet? I took a deep breath and, in a perfect monotone, gave him my best lawyerese:

“I regret to inform you that we have confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements with all of our clients and I am legally bound to refrain from discussing, well, anything with you unless I am subpoenaed. Even under that circumstance, the obligation varies according to the relevant case law. I suggest you direct your queries to the general counsel at Davies Group. I would be more than happy to give you his contact information and see that this matter is addressed in a manner satisfactory to all parties involved.”

I turned back to my cobbler, scooped some ice cream on top, and took a bite.

“Fair enough,” he said, bringing himself up to his full tough-guy stature. “I’ll just let you know a few things, then, while you enjoy your dessert. What if I told you that the Davies Group was systematically corrupting the most powerful people in Washington?”

I considered responding, Oh, you mean the Five Hundred, or No shit.

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