The Last Don - Mario Puzo [211]
Dante left the bath and showered to get all the soap out of his ropy hair. He anointed his body with the colognes from their fancy bottles, sculpted his hair from delicate tubes of aromatic gels, reading the directions carefully. Then he went to the suitcase that held his Renaissance hats and chose one encrusted with precious jewels that had the shape of a custard. Its threads were gold and purple. Lying there it looked ridiculous, but when he put it on his head, Dante was enchanted. It made him look like a prince. Especially the row of studded green gems sewed along the front. This was how Athena would see him tonight, or failing that, Tiffany. But the two could wait if necessary.
As he finished dressing, Dante thought of what his life would come to be. He would live in a Villa, as luxurious as any palace. He would have an inexhaustible supply of beautiful women, a self-supporting harem dancing and singing in the Xanadu Hotel showroom. He could eat in six different restaurants with six different national cuisines. He could order the death of an enemy, reward a friend. He would be as close to being a Roman emperor as modern times allowed. Only Cross stood in the way.
Jim Losey, finally alone in his apartment, was contemplating the course his life had taken. He had been, for the first half of his career, a great cop, a true knight defending his society. He’d had an intense hatred for all criminals, especially blacks. And then gradually he had changed. He resented the charges in the media that cops were brutal. The very society he was defending from scum was attacking him. His superiors, with their gold-braided uniforms, sided with the politicians who talked shit to the people. All that bullshit about how you couldn’t hate blacks. What was so bad about that? They committed most of the crimes. And wasn’t he a free American who could hate whoever he wanted to hate? They were the cockroaches who would eat away all civilization. They didn’t want to work, they didn’t want to study, burning the midnight oil was a joke to them unless it meant shooting basketball under the light of the moon. They mugged unarmed citizens, they turned their women into whores, and they had an intolerable disrespect for the law and its enforcers. It was his job to protect the rich from the malice of the poor. And his own desire was to become rich. He wanted the clothing, the cars, the food, the drink, and above all, the women the rich could afford. And surely that was American.
It had started with bribes to protect the gambling, then some frame-ups of drug dealers to make them pay protection. He had been proud of his “hero cop” status, the recognition he received for the courage he had shown, but there was no monetary reward. He was still buying cheap clothes, he still had to be very careful with his money to make his paycheck stretch out. And he, who guarded the rich against the poor, received no reward, indeed was one of the poor. But the final straw was that in public esteem he was lower than the criminal. Some of his friends, law enforcers, had been prosecuted and sent to jail for doing their duty. Or fired from their jobs. Rapists, burglars, lethal muggers, armed robbers in broad daylight, had more rights than cops.
Over the years, Losey sold himself his story in his head. The press and TV reviled law enforcers. The fucking Miranda rights, the fucking ACLU; let those fucking lawyers do patrol for six months, they’d grow a lynching tree.
After all, he used the tricks, the beatings, and the threats to get some scumbag to confess his crime and to put him away from society. But Losey could not sell himself completely, he was too good a cop. He could not sell himself on having become a murderer.
Forget all that; he would be rich. He would fling his badge and his bravery citations into the face of the government and the public. He would be security chief for the Xanadu Hotel at ten times the salary, and from this Paradise in the desert, he would watch with pleasure as Los Angeles crumbled under the assault of criminals he would no longer