Middle Of Nowhere

   "Keep me up to speed, will you?" Boldt requested, handing him a card with his cell phone number. Heiman returned the gesture. "While you're putting this to bed," Boldt said, viewing the bloody landscape, "I think I'll have a beer over at the Cock and Bull."

   Heiman understood the implications: Boldt was known on the force as a teetotaler.

C H A P T E R

19

The Cock & Bull had been fashioned after an Irish pub, with low ceilings, exposed beams, low lighting. It served up fifteen micro-brewed and specialty beers on tap, another sixty in the bottle, fish and chips, burgers and sixteen-ounce T-bone steaks with Idaho baked potatoes. The place smelled of cigarettes, hops and campfire charcoal. Irish music played a little loudly, forcing patrons to shout, lending the crowded pub a sense of celebration and revelry. There was no explanation for the bars cops picked or the short-order grills they frequented. Sometimes the connection seemed obvious—an officer's brother owned or managed the establishment, or the proximity to a precinct house made it an obvious choice. In the case of the Cock & Bull, a favorite haunt of the North Precinct, Boldt thought it was probably the name of the place and the emphasis on beer.

   A few heads turned as he entered. Then elbows nudged. No one noticed that it was Lou Boldt; they noticed a lieutenant from the West Precinct. Two young waitresses ushered trays through the throng of lustful eyes and rude comments, used to it. A cop bar was part junior-high locker room, part mortuary, an uncomfortable blend of the morbid and the adolescent.

   A pair of elevated color TVs at either end of the bar showed a stock-car race. Boldt attempted to contain his anger and rage at those in the room, all Blue Fluers. He wanted to drag one of them by the hair over to the alley and rub his face in the spilled blood. To show all of them the eerie electronic silence of Sanchez's hospital room. He knew damn well there wasn't going to be much sympathy in this room for two assaulted officers, and he had to wonder at how one week of absenteeism could change people so dramatically. How some overtime pay could wipe out all signs of loyalty. How could they go on drinking and telling jokes as if nothing had happened?

   Would a thorough search reveal a baseball bat in the truck of one of the cars parked out back? Had it come to that? So quickly? Could the trust built via years of working side by side be cancelled out by the edict that there would be no more off-duty work and the denial of overtime pay?

   He found himself drawn to one particularly raucous group, a dozen or more men crowded around a table like gamblers at a cock fight. Boldt edged up to the outside perimeter of this knot and caught the balding reddish tinge of a scalp he knew to be Mac Krishevski. The guild president held court at the center, explaining in a loud, drunken voice the difference between the fuzz on a peach and a sixteen-year-old girl and winning peals of laughter with the punch line: "licking the pit." He and Boldt met eyes—Krishevski's glassy and excited, Boldt's narrow and fierce.

   "Dudley Do-Right rides again," Krishevski said, not averting his gaze.

   "We've got two lieutenants with their heads beaten in," Boldt announced. He added disgustedly, "You guys aren't celebrating that, are you?"

   "We're aware of the situation, Lieutenant," Krishevski replied, suddenly sober, "and there's not a man in this bar who isn't pulling for Schock and Phillipp, so don't go suggesting otherwise. If you've got business here, state it. Otherwise, find your own corner and let a fellow officer enjoy the camaraderie he's entitled to."

   "My business is to gather information useful to the investigation."

   "Yes. Well, I'm sure you'll want to start at one end or the other and work the room. Certainly not in the middle." He indicated their location—dead center in the bar.

   "If you have time between the tasteless jokes," Boldt said, "you might discuss amongst yourselves what you know about the incident tonight."

   One of the drunker men said, "I know that by morning my head's gonna feel worse than theirs do now."

   A couple of the others laughed, but not Krishevski, who once again met eyes with Boldt. There was a flicker of recognition there, a moment of understanding. Krishevski stood, addressing the drunken man, "You want to joke about a fellow officer's injuries, you drink without me." He moved to a different table, where he was greeted like a general returning from the front.

   Boldt received a half dozen evil eyes from the men that Krishevski deserted. He turned and glanced around the room. He hadn't taken a step before he felt himself the attention of someone's stare. He thought nothing of it, realizing he was odd man out: a working lieutenant in a den of strikers; an officer based in the Public Safety Building, a world away from the North Precinct.