Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [213]
"Michael, I'm not going to tell you again," Casimir said.
"You can't talk to me like that, O'Hara!"
"I just did. What are you going to do about it?"
Mr. Michael J. O'Hara assumed a fighting crouch and cocked his fists.
Mr. Roscoe G. Kennedy rose to the challenge.
He threw a roundhouse right at Mr. O'Hara. Mr. O'Hara nimbly dodged the punch, feinted with his right, then punched Mr. Kennedy in the nose with his left, and then in the abdomen with his right.
Mr. Kennedy fell, doubled over, to the floor, taking with him the Bulletin's computer terminal.
Casimir J. Bolinski, Esq., erupted from Mr. O'Hara's $2,100 Charles Eames chair, rushed across the office, wrapped his arms around Mr. O'Hara, and without much apparent effort carried him across the city room--past many members of the Bulletin staff--and into an elevator. Mrs. Bolinski followed them.
Mr. Kennedy regained his feet and sort of staggered to the door.
"You're fired, you insane shanty Irish sonofabitch! Fired!" he shouted. "When I'm through with you, you won't be able to get a job on the National Enquirer."
Mrs. Bolinski stuck her tongue out at Mr. Kennedy.
Ten minutes later, after an application of ice had stopped his nosebleed, Mr. Kennedy gave Mr. O'Hara's latest--and as far as he was concerned, certainly last--contribution to the Bulletin some serious thought.
And then he called his assistant and told him to save space on page one, section one, copy to come, for a three-column pic, plus a four-hundred-word jump inside with three or four pics.
[FOUR]
When Inspector Weisbach came into the Internal Affairs Unit Captain Daniel Kimberly was talking with Lieutenant McGuire and another man he sensed was a police officer. He didn't see Payne.
Kimberly anticipated his question.
"I put Sergeant Payne in an interview room and asked him to wait," Kimberly said. "Nothing else. And I called the FOP."
"Good," Weisbach said.
"Who called back just a moment ago to inform me that Mr. Armando C. Giacomo is en route here to represent Sergeant Payne."
"How fortunate for Sergeant Payne," Weisbach said.
"Inspector, this is Lieutenant McGuire. . . ."
"How are you, Lieutenant?"
"Good evening, sir. Or good morning, sir."
"And this is Sergeant Al Nevins, Inspector," McGuire said.
"You were the first supervisor on the scene?"
"Yes, sir."
"A uniform got there ahead of you?"
"No, sir. Mickey O'Hara got there first--by about thirty seconds. When Nevins and I got there, he had already taken Payne's picture, standing over the man Payne put down."
"I understood there were two men shot?"
"Yes, sir. One fatally. Payne blew his brains out."
"How do you know that, Lieutenant?"
"Well, sir, Payne told us. And we saw the body. The bullet struck right about here."
He pointed at his own face.
"Did Payne also tell you what happened?"
"He said there had been an armed robbery of a couple picking up their car in the lot; that he'd walked up on it right afterward, told the robbers to stop. They ran, he went after them. They fired at him with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol, and he put both of them down."
"Did they hit him?" Weisbach asked.
"No, sir," McGuire said, and hesitated.
"Go on, Lieutenant," Weisbach said.
"He was a little shaken up, sir."
"How shaken up?"
"Acted odd, you know," McGuire said.
"No, I don't know."
"Well, there was the business about his weapon," McGuire said.
"What about his weapon?"
"I took it from him, of course," McGuire said, and pointed to one of the desks in the room. There were two Ziploc bags on it. One of them held Matt's Officer's Model Colt .45 pistol, and the other a magazine.
"Of course?" Weisbach asked.
"Yes, sir, and he gave me some lip that I was supposed to give it back to him. He didn't give me any trouble, but he told me I was supposed to give it back to him after I counted the rounds left in the magazine."