Supervolcano: All Fall Down

“Now tell me something I didn’t know,” his father broke in. “Your clothes smelled like a hemp farm outside of Veracruz.”

How Dad knew what a hemp farm outside of Veracruz smelled like. . was a question for another day. And he hadn’t even squeaked about the way Marshall’s clothes smelled till Marshall raised the subject. Discretion, from my old man? Marshall wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. But there it was.

“Dad. .” There was something in Shakespeare that Marshall couldn’t quite recall about doing it quickly if you were gonna do it. He brought the words out in a rush: “Dad, he bought the shit off Darren Pitcavage.”

Marshall’s father held Deborah in the crook of his elbow. Even so, all at once it wasn’t Dad standing there any more. It was Lieutenant Colin Ferguson, in full cop mode. “Tell me that again. I want to make sure I heard it straight.” Most unhappily, Marshall repeated himself. His father took a few seconds to work things through, his face as expressionless as a computer monitor while the CPU crunched numbers on a big spreadsheet. Then he asked, “How much dope are we talking about here?”

“Tim had, like, I dunno, a few ounces,” Marshall answered. “Like, enough to get us loaded but not enough to go into business for himself.”

“Okay,” his father said. To Marshall’s amazement and relief, it did seem okay; Dad wasn’t going to give him the sermon out of Reefer Madness. Instead, his father went on, “Did Tim say whether Darren Pitcavage was in business for himself? Or was this one friend selling some to another friend?”

Marshall had to think back. “Um, Tim didn’t say one way or the other. But I know for a fact he’s not tight with Darren or anything. He was, like, cracking up on account of he was buying dope from the police chief’s kid.”

“Uh-huh,” his father said.

The grim finality in that almost-word made alarms blare in Marshall’s head. “Dad,” he said urgently, “for God’s sake don’t drop on him. If you do, he’ll know I talked to you, and-” He didn’t-he couldn’t-go on.

For a wonder, he didn’t have to draw his father a picture. “Nobody loves a snitch,” Dad said. Marshall managed a nod. Dad continued, “But when somebody knows something important and he keeps quiet about it, a lot of the time that’s worse.” He waited. Marshall nodded again-not with any great enthusiasm, but he did. Dad set a hand on his shoulder, and Dad was anything but a touchy-feely guy. “This may be that kind of important. I don’t know for sure that it is, but I think I’d better find out.”

“Try not to drag Tim’s name into it,” Marshall said again. “And-” He stopped short once more.

“Try not to drag yours in, too?” his father finished for him.

“Yeah.” Marshall hated the dull embarrassment in his own voice.

“Darren Pitcavage is a nasty piece of work, no matter what his father does for a living,” Dad said. “If it weren’t for his father, I think we would’ve taken him off the streets a while ago. Well, maybe better late than never.”

“If you say so.” Marshall wasn’t sure of that, or of anything else.

XX

Colin Ferguson contemplated ways and means of busting his boss’ son without making it look like a coup d’etat inside the San Atanasio Police Department. The more he contemplated, the gloomier he got. The case would have to be dead-bang, one hundred percent airtight. And it would have to get made without Mike Pitcavage’s finding out it was even cooking.

Because if the chief did find out, something else would cook instead. Colin knew what, too: his own goose.

If, of course, there was a case. If Darren had sold Tim a few ounces and that was the only time he’d ever seen that side of the business, that was one thing. But if he’d sold a few ounces to a good many Tims, Dicks, and Harrys, that was something else again. That was a serious felony, was what it was.

If. Marshall didn’t know for certain. Maybe Tim didn’t know for certain. (Colin suspected Tim didn’t know anything for certain, the alphabet very possibly included.) But the vibe was that Darren Pitcavage was doing some real dealing.

Do I want to put my neck on the block because of the vibe? Yes, that was the question, much more than To be or not to be? Or Colin thought it was at first. Then he realized they were one and the same, only his version wasn’t in iambic pentameter.

It was well before noon when he walked over to Gabe Sanchez’s desk and said, “Let’s go Code Seven.”

Gabe blinked. “Early,” he remarked, but then he patted his midsection. “Hey, I can always eat. Where you wanna go?”

“How about the Verona?” Colin suggested.

“Kind of a ways,” Gabe said. And it was-the old-fashioned Italian place was closer to Colin’s house than to the station. That was why he wanted to go there: he didn’t want other cops overhearing him. He couldn’t very well say that here. A clenched jaw and a raised eyebrow got some kind of message across-Gabe stood up with no more argument. “Well, I’m game. What’s it doing outside?”

“We’ll both find out.”

It was chilly and cloudy, but not raining. Gabe lit a cigarette. They climbed onto their bicycles and pedaled off. Colin did a good deal of talking on the way. No one except Gabe could hear him then.

He finished just before they got to the Verona. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Holy shit,” Gabe said.

Colin chuckled-not in any happy way. “Yeah, I figured that out for myself, matter of fact.”

“I bet you did!” Gabe exclaimed. “You better watch who you talk to, too. Word gets back and you’re walking around without your nuts.”

“That also crossed my mind,” Colin said. They went inside. The Verona was a refugee from the 1950s, with red-checked tablecloths, candles stuck in Chianti bottles (often useful now, not just for show), and posters of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Colosseum on the walls. They made spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, ravioli-stuff like that. And they had a wood-fired pizza oven, so they stayed open even when the power went out.

Colin and Gabe decided to split a medium sausage pizza. The dough would be odd by pre-eruption standards. So would the cheese. The sausage would be pork or maybe chicken. By now, Colin made such adjustments almost automatically. Almost.

“I’ll tell you who to go to,” Gabe said when the pizza got there. “Talk to Rodney, man. He hates dealers with a passion, and he won’t screw you.”

“Even if it turns out to be nothing?” Colin said.

“Even then.” Gabe took a bite from a slice of pizza. He chewed thoughtfully. “Could be worse. Could be better, too.”

“Sure could,” Colin agreed after a bite of his own. But he ate with more enthusiasm than he’d expected. The black detective had been on the mental list he was making, too-and, by the nature of things, that list wasn’t very long.

He paid the tab. The cops unlocked their bikes from the little curbside trees to which they’d been chained. Gabe smoked another cigarette on the way back to the station. It started drizzling just as they got there. They hurried inside. Chief Pitcavage was gabbing with the uniformed officer at the front desk. He nodded amiably to Colin and Gabe. “Hey, guys. Wet outside?”

“Just a little, like it doesn’t know whether to piss or get off the pot,” Gabe answered. Colin was glad to let him do the talking. Dammit, he didn’t have anything against Mike Pitcavage-except for raising a worthless kid and letting him decide he would get away with anything because his father was a bigwig in this town.

Pitcavage wouldn’t think like that, of course. He’d think it was because he got the chief’s badge and Colin didn’t. Were things reversed between them, it would have been, too. Colin was positive of that.

He quietly checked which cases Rodney Ellis was working on, then ambled over to his desk. “Want to talk with you about the witnesses to the robbery at that check-cashing place last Saturday,” he said, as casually as he could.

“Well, okay,” Rodney answered. That wasn’t Colin’s usual style, but it wasn’t too far out of line, either. “Drag