Booked to die

“It goes like that,” Neff said. “You get a run, then it peters out. When that happens, you can’t find a goddamn Dr. Atkins diet book.”

“Millie Farmer found the Kings,” Ruby said. “She’s gonna be a good bookscout yet. I told you we’d get our seven bucks back.”

I nudged the Golding. “This one’s yours. Your store, your book, I’ll take your check, if you want it for a hundred.”

Ruby had already started reaching for the checkbook. Neff said, “Can’t do it.”

“The hell we can’t.”

Neff reached across the counter and snatched the checkbook away. Ruby bristled and for a moment I thought a fight was coming. The moment passed and Ruby laughed it off, though his face was still flushed with anger.

“Everybody in this business is crazy, Mr. Janeway,” Neff said. “That probably includes me. But I’m not so crazy that I’ll let my partner write a hot check to a cop. You keep the book.”

“I’ll tear up my check,” I offered. “Write you one for a hundred less.”

Neff sighed. “We need every dime of that check, Mr. Jane-way.”

“I just remembered something,” Ruby said. “I just plain forgot about it in the heat of battle. That’s Peter the Book-scout… you wanted to talk to him about Bobby, remember? If you hurry, maybe you can catch him before he gets to the bus stop.”

We went outside, but Peter was gone.

I guess we all had a lot on our minds that day.

“When he comes back, tell him to call Hennessey,” I said. I packed my books carefully in a small box and again opened the door.

“I’m not on that case anymore,” I said.

17

The press was ugly. You could avoid radio and TV, but those newspaper headlines, when they came, were everywhere.

I had made the decision to go light on myself. I would read each paper once, to know what I was up against: then I’d forget it.

The Denver Post was simple and sweet: cop charged with brutality, it said. Beneath that, in a smaller headline: handcuffed and beaten, jeffco man alleges.

The Rocky Mountain News wanted me shot at sunrise: cop’s badge demanded in wake of brutal attack was what News readers read over their morning coffee. Nice objective slant.

I had made top headlines in both daily rags.

They were, as usual, about ten hours behind the tubes. The later developments, I knew, would help keep the story on the front pages for another day.

I had been summoned to Internal Affairs to give my statement on the charges of John Randolph Newton. I told it to two steely cops I barely knew, and they took it down without comment and asked only a couple of questions at the end.

It all sounded silly and unjustified a day later. I must seem like a character out of a 1945 movie: a cop with an Alan Ladd complex. And that was according to my version, which was supposed to make me look good. Jackie’s version was another story. In that, I had beaten him with his hands cuffed behind him. He had the scars for evidence—the chafed wrists, the broken nose, the hamburger face. And he had a witness, Ms. Barbara Crowell, who was prepared to back up his version in court.

Let no one doubt that this was going to court. Even as I gave my statement to Internal Affairs, Jackie and his lawyer— a tough New Yorker named Rudy Levin—were still in the building raising hell.

Boone Steed, chief of detectives, was not happy. Boone was a tough cop who knew the ropes. He told me what to expect, what I already knew. Jackie would sue. He would sue us all, but it was me he really wanted. He would break me if he could. The department would do what it could for me, but I had acted illegally and that gave our insurance a loophole. I might end up having to mount my own defense, at my own expense. Goddamn lawyers and insurance companies, Steed said. I could run up a $20,000 legal tab in no time. And the weights of the system were all on Newton’s side: they were always on the side of the guy with the dough. Newton would drag me over every bump in the courts: he’d stall and prolong it so that he could drain my account of its last dime.

I was called to Steed’s office again at the end of the day. I had been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the investigation by Internal Affairs.

That night I went out to Ruby’s and dropped another grand on books.