“We don’t have SWAT, we have SERT under Pinkerton. They’ve got fifteen including him, sir.”
“Pinkerton.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s the one who successfully broke up that mob last night?”
“No. That was Reverend Green . . .”
“But it was Pinkerton’s team on site that was the thin blue line between order and chaos. Yes?”
“I think that’s the wrong question.”
“I beg your pardon?” Howard steps forward. The door closes behind him, trapping everyone inside with him. The bell that had been resting on his head now slides off and finishes its ring.
Howard’s voice possesses a deep and chambered resonance like a Howitzer being loaded. She looks around the office for support but everyone, including Cory, has bunkered behind a desk.
“All I mean, sir,” Melinda clarifies, “is that Reverend Green was the one who deescalated the situation. The SERT stood down on Irv’s instructions after Green solved the problem. I mean . . . there are still problems, obviously, but he averted an incident. It all worked out OK.”
“Maybe we should send the Reverend Al Green—”
“Fred Green, sir.”
“. . . to apprehend the foreign fugitive who pushed an Afro-American woman out a window to her death. Is that a good idea?”
“We’re wondering if it wasn’t a suicide,” Melinda says.
“A few blocks from the Norwegian’s house? A suicide by an aunt over the death of a nephew? When does that happen? It wasn’t a suicide. Our job is to arrest the man and hand him over to the prosecutor, who—with his juris doctorate degree from Fordham, and his membership in the Bar Association, and his sworn duty to the state of New York—may be as philosophical about such matters as he likes. But that’s not our job. Is it, Deputy?”
Melinda looks at Muppet. Muppet looks at Howard. Melinda gives the dog the evil eye and the dog doesn’t care.
“The commissioner wants to send our team to Saranac to assist. That’s why I’m here. Seven officers is not enough. And they’re SWAT, not SERT, because they don’t have their own team like we do.”
“Yes, sir. Or, no, sir. I’m not sure.”
“Saranac Lake is . . . Gregg Allman?”
“Frank Allman, sir.”
“Get him on the phone. And Irv, too. I want a word with your Supreme Leader.”
Alfonzo’s magical boat-repair gunk needs thirty minutes to harden. It’s as good a time as any to eat, so they do.
When Frank’s phone rings Irv is finishing off a Kiwassa Burger from Blue Moon Cafe.
“Hello?” says Frank.
It is Howard Howard. Howard is going to send them a team and they’ll be there soon. How are things going? Howard asks.
Frank muffles the phone with the heel of his palm and speaks to Irv: “Howard is sending your SERT to help. He wants to know how it’s going.”
“Same old, same old, you can tell him,” says Irv, reaching for a napkin.
Frank finishes absorbing instructions from Howard and eventually stops his nodding and starts his frowning. Irv doesn’t like the look on Frank’s face and shows this by mimicking it.
“Howard wants to talk to you,” Frank says.
“Tell him I’m not here.”
“He knows you’re here.”
“How?”
“He can hear me talking to you.”
Irv takes the phone and watches Alfonzo tap the repaired hull with the pommel of a fixed-blade knife. From this distance it sounds like glass. Alfonzo gives a thumbs-up to the rest of his team. They halfheartedly return the gesture as they eat.
“What do you want, Howard?” he shouts into the cell phone.
“I’m sending Pinkerton,” Howard says.
“Pinkerton is a fascist with little testosterone-deprived testicles looking to put lead into something because he’s unable to produce semen. There might be a need for people like him someplace, Howard, but not on Lake Flower. I have seven guys here who constitute a crackerjack assault team. I’m watching them prepare right now and it’s like the Harlem Globetrotters with guns. You send a guy like that over here and you’ll throw a wrench into the works.”
“I’m not only sending him. I’m sending your whole team. Give me the coordinates,” Howard says.
“You don’t have the authority to do that.”
“The commissioner agrees.”
“I’d like to talk you out of this,” Irv adds more quietly.
“I will not let this fugitive of yours get away and complicate matters in New York State even further.”
Irv calls Howard something other than Howard and says that he is going to need a moment to find the exact coordinates that are “here someplace.”
There is a small notebook in Irv’s side pocket with addresses—an old-fashioned little book with tabs for each letter of the alphabet. He skips to the W section to see if a friend’s number is there and, finding it, decides that now is the time to take a hint from Sigrid and boldly grasp this shitty situation by the short ones and turn it right around.
Irv had been taught in a business course once that all strategic action has four components: a goal, resources you’ll use, methods you’ll perform, and—at the center of it all—a theory or argument about why using those resources a certain way will bring about the desired goal. In this case, Irv’s strategy to deal with Howard and the commissioner and Pinkerton is held together by a simple theory that Irv thinks is rock solid: People in government are assholes and will always sell out others to save themselves. So the question becomes What resources do I have, and how might I use them to get all these people fired in one go?
It is quite an ask, but he’s an innovative guy and he has an idea.
Irv finds what he needs in his address book, pulls up a bit more information from his phone, and reads the GPS coordinates to Howard with resignation. He hangs up without wishing Howard a nice day.
Frank stands and brushes about half of his lunch from his shirt, which has collected on his belly.
Irv stands too, adjusts his Magnum, and strides out onto the boat with the rest of Alfonzo’s well fed and slightly bored team.
Frank unties the rope for them and tosses it ahead of himself and into the boat. He’s not coming. On
