weekends and, on weekdays, for the city workers in One King Plaza to gather for a smoke.
Chief Gavin Reardon was one of them. He wore a tailored suit and sat on top of a picnic table, his feet on the bench, smoking a cigarette and looking at the Grant Street Bridge, which resembled an enormous number eight made out of steel and lying sideways over the water.
The chief was a lifelong cop from a family of lifelong cops and ran the department as if it were his birthright. Perhaps it was. He was a star quarterback in college and could have gone pro, but he preferred a badge. At fifty? five years old, his hair was totally gray, and he still looked like he could run over a linebacker and keep right on going.
He hadn’t spoken to Wade since that night at Roger’s house. He’d immediately put Wade on indefinite paid administrative leave and told him not to get within a hundred yards of a King City police station.
Wade stayed on leave throughout the countless hours of depositions and testimony that stretched over the next two years as the Justice Department prepared and prosecuted its case, winning convictions against all seven of the cops. That last conviction came down only two days before this moment in the park.
The chief flicked his cigarette into the river as Wade approached.
“There was a time in this city when the police would hang the worst criminal offenders from the bridge and leave their corpses to rot as a warning to anyone who thought about disrespecting the law.” The chief spoke without acknowledging Wade’s presence with even a glance. “It was a very effective deterrent. Sometimes I miss those days.”
Wade looked out at the bridge and imagined the corpses swinging on ropes over the river. Welcome to King City.
He shifted his gaze back to the chief. “They had a broad interpretation of disrespect,” Wade said. “Men were hung for demanding safer working conditions in the factories.”
“It kept the peace,” the chief said.
“It was intimidation to prevent anyone from challenging the rampant corruption and abuse of authority.”
“Those were violent, chaotic times. The law had to take a hard line to maintain order,” the chief said. “As a result, King City was probably the safest, cleanest, and most productive city in America.”
Wade sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “Is there a reason we aren’t having this thrilling historical debate in your office?”
The chief turned to him, gave him the once?over, and frowned with disgust at what he saw.
“I wanted a smoke and it’s against the law in public buildings. You might call the feds on me. Besides, the place is full of men with loaded weapons who’d like to shoot you. I’m pretty tempted right now myself.”
“Gee, was it something I said?” Wade asked.
“I promoted you to the MCU because I thought you were made out of the right stuff. I didn’t think you’d go crying like a little girl to the Justice Department the minute you saw some mischief.”
“We aren’t talking about hardworking cops stepping on a few civil rights or bending a few regulations to get the job done,” Wade said. “They were taking bribes, extorting drug dealers for a cut of their action, skimming from the cash and drugs that they seized as evidence, and running a protection racket right out of police headquarters.”
“You should have come to me,” the chief said. “I would have handled it.”
“You would have buried it.”
“I would have done what was best for the department,” the chief said. “That’s our sworn duty.”
“Our duty is to enforce the law.”
“We are the law,” the chief said.
Wade nodded. “That’s why I went to the Justice Department.”
“You spied for them for sixteen months, bugging conversations, taking pictures, stealing papers. You lied to everyone. Your fellow officers. Your family. And then you shot one of your own in his kitchen, right in front of his wife and kids.”
“He was holding them hostage,” Wade said.
“You drove him to it,” the chief said. “All of that ugliness, all of the embarrassment you caused the department, would have been avoided if you’d just come to me. Instead, you betrayed us all. Even your wife can’t stand to look at you anymore.”
Wade took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to keep his rising anger in check. He wasn’t going to let himself be baited.
“Seven detectives that you considered the best of the best are sitting in prison for the next twenty years,” Wade said. “Apparently, you’re a lousy judge of character, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not all broken up about losing your respect. Are we done here?”
The chief’s face reddened with rage. Wade looked him right in the eye, unapologetic and unbowed.
“Not yet,” the chief said. “I’m launching a new community policing initiative by establishing substations staffed by a few uniformed officers in some of the city’s most troubled areas. You’re going to work in one of them.”
“You’re demoting me,” Wade said.
“Hell no, I wouldn’t do that,” the chief said. “You might see that as retribution and use it as grounds for a lawsuit.”
“So what’s this?”
“A reassignment, a lateral move. You’ll have the same rank, pay, and benefits as you do now.” The chief picked up two files that were on the picnic table beside him and slid them toward Wade. “You’ll have two officers under your command and we’ll leave you alone.”
That meant no support, no backup, stuck on his own in some urban Siberia.
“Where is this substation?”
The chief smiled. “Darwin Gardens.”
Wade knew the place. Every cop did.
It was four miles from where Wade was standing, fifty miles from the lake where he grew up, and light?years away from anywhere any sane person would want to be.
It was the old industrial core of King City, bordered on the east by the rotting factories and docks along the river, by a Berlin wall of squalid apartment blocks to the south, and by the decaying railroad yards and the freeway to the west.
Darwin Gardens had the highest homicide rate in the city, but that was a dirty little secret that the chief, the police commission, and the chamber of commerce kept to themselves and didn’t factor into the official stats.
The neighborhood was run by criminal warlords who operated with virtual impunity. Any cops who entered became chum for shooters looking for target practice. For the people who lived there, it was survival of the fittest- which was how the neighborhood had earned its nickname.
The city fathers ignored the problems there because it would cost far too much in blood and money to make a difference in a place that didn’t matter. And because the people who voted, and paid the most taxes, and financed campaigns didn’t live there anymore.
They’d start caring about Darwin Gardens only when the crime came to their doorsteps in Abbott Park, Meston Heights, or the swanky shops along McEveety Way.
Wade looked at the chief’s big fat grin. “When did you start giving a damn about Darwin Gardens?”
“Not until I needed a shithole to put you in,” the chief said.
Chapter three
The last time Wade wore his uniform was a few years earlier at a police funeral. Two rookie cops had chased a stolen car into a cul?de?sac in Darwin Gardens and an ambush. More than two hundred bullets were recovered from their vehicle and their obliterated bodies.
The police staged a massive crackdown, arrested anyone who didn’t look middle class and white, and that was it. Things went back to the way they were before.
Wade wasn’t going to a funeral today, although as far as Chief Reardon and the department were concerned,
