Moondogs - Alexander Yates [144]
Efrem can’t speak for a time. Even after he feels capable of making words, he’s unsure which ones to pick. “How is that … it isn’t …” He gawks lamely. “This is not sticking up for the unstuckup for.”
Lorenzo and Racha howl at this. Reynato hops three steps back, dancing from foot to foot like a child with an answer. “Right there! That’s it. That’s the problem with you, Mohammed.” He points, as though the problem is floating in the air—a ghost between them. “With you, and with the whole damn country, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve seen too many of those moronic movies. You want to talk about the un-fucking-stuckup for? How about yourself? How about the people on that island you come from, strangled and half-starved by rich incompetents? Politicians like Charlie Fuentes, who now gets his at-bat, his turn to see how much shit he can break or steal before the voters get wise and replace him with some song-starlet or beauty queen.”
“This isn’t about my people,” Efrem says, wary that Reynato is trying to confuse him. “And it’s not about how jealous you are of Charlie Fuentes.” Yes, he’s noticed—he’s not as simple as everybody thinks. “It’s about Howard Bridgewater.”
Reynato’s arms fall to his sides. He becomes less manic, less excited, giving off an air of limp danger. “Howard Bridgewater? The wealthy hotel manager with a suck-my-dick investment visa? The man with a whole embassy full of people out to save his ass? The man who reporters talk about like he’s already died and been sainted, the man whose rescue is the highest priority of a national police force up to its nostrils in some of the worst smelling shit this side of Baghdad? That guy? No, sir. People have been sticking up for Howard for his whole goddamn life.”
Reynato gets in Efrem’s face again, and now all the playfulness is gone. “I’ll forgive you the snotty reaction,” he says, his voice leaden with menace. “I know that when I just say it flat like that—We’re killing Howard!—it sounds pretty rotten. Especially given what I’ve asked of you in the last few weeks …” he pauses long enough for Efrem to remember the shabu dealers in Davao, the executed warehouse men, and all those people he struck down anonymously from the high-rise rooftop, surer now than ever before that he’s going to hell. “But what you don’t appreciate, Mohammed, is that I operate in contexts. I’m not always the freewheeling bruho you know from Task Force Ka-Pow. Nine times out of ten—fuck, more than that—more like ninety-five times out of one hundred, I do things right, rigid and upstanding. I’m talking about boring stakeouts. By-the-book arrests reported to superiors in triplicate. Painstaking evidence preservation, even when I know it’ll be misplaced and mishandled. I spend whole fucking days deskbound, jumping through silly hoops, explaining to the preteen from tech support why I need write permissions on my C drive, moving my shit from office to office in search of walls without dryrot and ceilings that won’t drip on me. Be thankful, Mohammed, that I save you bunch for what you do well. Which brings me to another, say, four cases out of a hundred. When I use rulebenders like yourselves, my own little ends and means committee, to do right things the wrong way. Like with your friends on the list, and Lorenzo’s pirate mishap. Maybe we get a little rough, maybe some bills go missing, but it’s a net plus. And besides, it doesn’t happen every day.”
Reynato pauses here, eyeballing his newest recruit. He links elbows with Efrem and begins walking again, slowly. With his free hand he unbelts Glock and aims it casually at the asphalt.
“Which brings me to the last, the one out of one hundred kind of scenario. Every once in a rare while, I break the rules and I break them just for me. That’s what tonight is about. I’m not going to contrive