WATCHA GONNA DO?
When cowboy Ronnie comes to town
Forks out his tongue at human rights
Sit down, enjoy our ethnic meal
Dine on some charbroiled nuns
Try a medal on
Smile at the mirror as the cameras click
and make big business happy
-The Dead Kennedy's, 'Bleed for Me'
-Wobbling on the Ladder-
You hated waiting around for your boss to get off the phone. You leaned against the closed door, fingers tapping on the manila folder you hugged to your chest. Analysts, secretaries, attaché's and messenger boys flooded the endless canyon of cubicles in front of you, buzzing with coffee and ticking with keyboards. This side of the Interpol compound, a panopticon with trained dogs, infrared snipers, nuclear-fallout shelters, and an eighty-acre training mountain, smelled of Kinkos and Sharpies.
Normalcy was always just around the corner.
Usually, you just went off for a few minutes while you waited for that barking chief of yours to stop salivating on his telephone receiver. Break rooms were scattered around the complex. What would it matter if you walked away? Stole a cup of coffee from the corporals, watching each catch himself from mouthing off? Chatted with the female analysts in the ladies' room, savoring each piece of gossip? Which bosses had the small penises? Which officers were cheating on their wives? Gossip was a voodoo doll in this bureau of secrecy.
Who was next to be stuck with a pin?
Camaraderie? The world was filled with strangers. Most didn't give out candy. If they did, it was tossed in the air like a basketball at game-start. Each woman had the same invisible sticker: 'Hello, my name is Egotistical Bitch.' But it couldn't be helped. Charles Darwin and his Galapagos Islands equaled the shredder machines downstairs.
So what kind of vagina clawed a hole through that notorious glass ceiling? The kind with an attitude of a rusty hammer? Either a rusty hammer or a fucking shoe. Whatever was at hand, standing on a wobbling ladder.
Still, you and all the other women, checking contact lenses or brushing teeth in the ladies' room, had cuts from those broken, falling shards of glass. The glass was as clear as a used douche bag.
When would he get off the phone? You began to bite your nails. The fake acrylics hurt your teeth, but the report on your desk was serious. It was important. You couldn't just dally off. Only a couple days had passed since your interrogation of that goddamn mafia dog. This just didn't make sense. There was no way a report, stamped with the red-inked 'Case Closed,' could be waiting for you on your desk this soon.
What the fuck was going on?
Your palm enclosed the doorknob, impatient to open it. HUH! It wasn't locked? The decision was an easy one to make.
"Chief! How could you just let my man walk out?" You waved a mug shot that flashed of silver hair and scowls, with a few russet red blood drops staining the corners.
"Hold on for just one second, Kusakabe-sama," Chief Ronald Nicholson said, cupping his telephone's mouthpiece hurriedly, his growl rather tame as he pulled the line closer to his chest.
"Get out of my office, Captain! It has been weeks since we captured him." He used a special piece to muffle the conversation.
"But sir!—"
"Even if that bastard was in the mafia, which I doubt, it's too late now. Information like that is time sensitive." His voice was rife with bullets. "The trail is cold."
"What are you talking about? Chief! He knows names. He knows the identities of the other members." You paced the office, then closed the blinds, covering the soundproof window. "He knows how they have been evading every goddamn trap we set. You can't just let him walk out!"
"Well, what were you doing? Having a tea party with him every afternoon?" He quieted and sat back sneering. "Or having too much fun beating the shit out of him?"
You slowed down. Since when had that been a problem? "Sir, he's not human. He's a monster. The Rights groups—"
"What's your name again? I'm sorry. I forgot," he interrupted sarcastically. He had turned around to rummage through a file cabinet behind him, the telephone and muffler pushed together, pinned by his ear against his shoulder.
You were silent for a while. He knew your name like a high school principal knew all the delinquents, the kids who mouthed off when a couple cops dragged them out of the school. Not that you were any delinquent, of course.
You told him your name slowly, venomously stabbing each syllable, mouth like those gargoyles suicidally leaning off of a cathedral's flying buttress. Then, you pulled back, patting your neat, professional up-do. You bitterly stared at the portraits of previous Interpol Chiefs, dressed in fine military regalia. Not his panoramic office view of the training mountain. If you cried, your mascara would run. So your eyes just ached in the corners.
"Sir, this is ridiculous!" You turned back the Chief. "IT'S NOT ENDING HERE! Fifty years of planning, sir! We've been after the Vongola Organization for fifty years!" You pointed at the stoic faces, faces as strong as a grandfather clock in an old, leaky house.
"Fuck—" he swore under his breath. His hold had slipped and the phone had fallen on the floor. He immediately picked it up, now with a folder similar to yours in hand. Only the Interpol seal was from another department, of another color.
"No, no, sir, I assure you, nothing is the matter. Yes, Kusakabe-sama. Are you sure you don't want to speak in Japanese?" He seemed to be biting his tongue, but it was hard to tell. His cheeks were always chubby like he was chewing on something. "Thank you for your concern. I am sorry you had to hear that just now. Our workers are very passionate about their duties." The evil eye lifted like a hunter hearing a twig snap. "Your foundation's most generous grant is not being wasted, I assure you." He eyed you coldly and waved his hand to shoo you out of the room.
You huffed. You looked at the 'case closed' report, and then back at him. Since when did Interpol take grants? Military research was only funded by a budget agreed upon by an international council, not by any private millionaires. And what did he think you were, an idiot? To say this right in front of you!
"Sir!" He swiveled around in his leather chair to face the wall and ignore you.
Where was the loyalty? The dignity? The honor? Did he have any sense of cause? Would he really take a bullet for Interpol? Whatever corporate pushover he was talking to, he was kissing his ass. Fine. You slammed his office door behind you and the loud bang resonated through the main room. The workers gaped, mostly men, some couriers from other divisions.
What was she doing? Did they have a lovers spat? You took a moment to try and calm yourself, but it was useless. You had a squish-ball in your desk….
" CAPTAIN, Get back in here, RIGHT NOW!" You thought it was sound proof. You painfully bit the inside of your cheek, the muscles of your jaw shaking in frustration. With what had been shouted... How could you work under such a man?
He was off the phone now, his face shining with sweat. He was kneading his temple and eyebrows with his forefinger and thumb. You crossed your arms over your chest, intolerant of fascist, greedy tyrants. You always gave your boss the benefit of the doubt, but now, he had made his corruption all too obvious. Fallen to bribery. What was money when there were psychos out there, waving their dandy swords and blowing up shit all over the place.
It was a war out there.
"I've had enough of your behavior," he emphasized softly, combing his fingers through his slick oiled hair. "You're fired." Maybe it wasn't bribery. He said it like a dream come true.
"I'm what!" you shouted, eyes ablaze like you're outfit. He looked up, tired, but resolute.
"You're fired. Now get out of my sight." He looked away from you, out the window. Your eyes narrowed, but you refused to leave.
"Sir, you cannot fire me without a legitimate reason." You knew your contract. He couldn't fire you for raising your voice. Men shouted all the time over their sports. PAH! SPORTS!
"Sergeant Bristol gave me his opinion of your interrogation with Gustav Platera, the suspected mafia man. You know of him." You burned at the name from the real passport. "Certain outside parties found your method's unacceptable." He flicked a report across his desk to you.
"What parties?" The Rights Groups? "I used standard interrogation procedure! That's the only party that matters!"
"You can't taser or water-board an innocent civilian, Captain. We had no evidence to connect him to the mafia." Suddenly, the Légion d'honneur pinned to his chest became much more intimidating.
"People who associate themselves with Mafia Organizations are not civilians, sir. What was the ring? The crest?" Just you and that old burnt up rocket ship that got you through college, now. "They are thieves and murderers." You took the report and flipped through it, admiring all the made-up bullshit. "If there is a problem with protocol, sir, perhaps you ought to fire the idiot who can't even forge a believable report."
"It's real and you know it is." He was famous for that face. "As for the ring, it was found to be a fake by Dr. Ludlov. Probably planted."
Your carpet had been pulled from underneath you.
"It was a set-up. You should have seen that."
Innocence was not something you tripped over every day.
"When's he being released?" You knew enough to change the subject. No one you interrogated had ever been released. This complex was the end of the world.
"When?"
"It doesn't concern you. I don't even know why you got that report."
But something else was on your mind. How many murderers thought of you while they were strapped in the chair? How many thought about crouching, giggling on the wet forest floor poking your guts with a stick?
"Sweetheart." The correction, 'Captain,' was on the tip of your tongue, but now, you had nothing to say. He was smiling differently.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you."
Witness Protection Program?
That didn't work for the Vongola.
"You bastard." A blistering middle finger flashed up.
"Out!" His temper returned like an orca rushing onto the beach, all black and white and chomping hungry.
You glared at him, hating every inch of his silk suit, as he fanned himself with the returned evaluation. You opened your mouth. He pointed at the door. His famous face was television set turned off, interrupting the speech of the desperate anchorman.
Your teeth clicked shut with the same noise.
The door clicked shut with the same noise.
Two blue uniformed guards found you outside the Chief's office. One had a semi-automatic slung over his shoulder, the other carried a clipboard with paperwork.
"We're here to escort you across the premises, Ms.…," he ruffled through the sheets on his clipboard.
"It doesn't matter," you said, rushing back toward your desk, not on this level, but three flights up in the forensic psychology wing. They trailed behind you.
"Ma'am, we've cleared your possessions from your office. They're waiting for you at the parking garage." A piano, hurtling ten meters per second per second, dropped on your back. Did they catch the change in your perfect-straight poise? This was an emergency ejection. Only traitors had their office packed up for them.
What did it mean? The piano still pushed down on your back. One fucking heavy piano, all pointlessly grand.
You quickly slipped a glance down a narrow cubicle corridor.
"I'm not going to my office, gentlemen. I've left some valuables in Noble Hall's locker room." Like a game of blackjack with only one card shown to the opponent, a partial truth. But hey, some people might die for lipstick, towels, and cigarettes. Your burgundy heels turned down the corridor, the click absent, hushed on cheap, thin carpeting.
In Noble Hall, well-behaved prisoners set up targets on an indoor firing range, setting up the dummies that would soon be black with bullets. It was a joke to aim at them like golfers aimed at the ball-collecting machines.
You told that joke to an old college friend. It didn't go over very well. She looked sick, not like a ripper's crazy tongue, pushed through the bars, licking the smell of a woman's perfume. The other kind of sick.
So was it normal? Golf balls were normal.
Right?
But anyway, Noble Hall was right next to the prison.
Weren't you fired?
A crooked smile graced your wry lips like a soldier falling into line.
You simply just couldn't trust your boss with that kind of decision.
