“Anderson hates me,” I said. “He’ll do anything to see me burn.”
“But that’s just it!” Vince said. He put down his water glass with a thump so hard it scared him. He flinched, and then pushed the glass nervously to one side. “It’s not just Anderson,” he said, back to a near-whisper again. “It’s the whole department, and even—” He shook his head and sighed. “When I saw the first report Anderson turned in, I thought, Okay, he’s got a hard-on for Dexter.” He looked startled by what he’d said and stammered out, “Ah, I mean, you know, metaphorically…?”
“Yeah, I got that,” I said reassuringly.
He nodded, relieved. “Right. So I thought, No way he’ll get away with this. And I reported it.” He leaned toward me as far as he could go without climbing onto the table. “I was told to mind my own business.”
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“What? No, how could I? I mean, it’s my name on the forensic report, and it’s not what I wrote!” He rubbed his hands together, hard enough that I could hear a kind of whispery-raspy sound coming from them. “I can’t let him do that—not my name.” He frowned. “Um, and, you know—when they’re framing you, too?”
“Unthinkable,” I said, thinking it was a nice sentiment, even if my life and liberty got second billing to Vince’s good name.
“So, I kept at it,” he said. “I mean, I tried to tell somebody, anybody, and everybody told me to mind my own business.” He gave a one-syllable not-funny laugh and spread his hands. “Mind my own—I just, I always thought it was everybody’s business when somebody does that sort of thing.” He shook his head in wonder. “I even told the captain, and it was the same thing. ‘Stay out of it. Mind your own business. Don’t make waves, Masuko.’?” He blinked at me, looking like he had reached a new and deeper level of despair and degradation. “He calls me ‘Mah-soo-ko,’?” he said.
“Some people’s ignorance knows no bounds,” I said.
“Ignorance and…and…” He picked up his water glass and chugged the rest of the contents. “So I went to the state attorney.”
“And he told you to mind your own business,” I said, hoping I could urge him to the finish line. After all, I’d heard a recap of all this from Brian, and I was really hoping to move on to some sort of understanding on the future agenda.
“He told me…” Vince started to say. He sounded like he was choking on something, and he turned his head and coughed violently for a few seconds. Then he looked back at me, took a deep breath, and in a soft and raspy voice he said, “He told me that these were very serious allegations involving an ongoing case, and was I aware that I was bringing them against a distinguished officer?” He gave that one-syllable not-laugh again. “Distinguished. Anderson is distinguished now.” He coughed again, just once. “I told him they weren’t allegations; I had proof, and when I tried to show it to him, he said no, he would have to recuse himself, and I should just stay out of it and let justice take its course. Otherwise, he would speak to the commissioner and see that I lost my job.” He blinked and looked away. “And then it got even worse. The next day at work, Anderson grabbed me from behind, lifted me up, and slammed me against a wall.” He turned to me. “He’s very strong,” he said unnecessarily.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said.
“He told me if I tried anything like that again, he’d break my neck.” He made a limp-wristed gesture of despair, raising both hands and then letting them flop back down onto the table again. “He knew, Dexter. Somebody at the state attorney’s office must have told him.”
“Probably the state attorney,” I said.
He looked at me with his mouth open, moving it like a grouper struggling to breathe. Then he sagged over, looking defeated and helpless. “Well, shit,” he said with a very nice mix of hopelessness and despair. “If the state attorney is in this…” He shook his head, and he made it look like his skull weighed fifty pounds. “What the fuck can we do?” he said, and I looked at him with mild surprise. I couldn’t remember hearing Vince use dirty language, except sexual, in the course of one of his awful jokes. Here he had just done it twice in ten seconds. The poor fellow really was on the ropes.
“This is crazy,” he went on. “I’m trying to do the right thing, and the people who are supposed to help me, supposed to be grateful…I mean…” He shook his head. “Dexter, my whole life, I couldn’t—”
I didn’t get to find out what he couldn’t, because our food arrived. And if I showed more than my normal enthusiasm in attacking it, it’s only fair to point out that I had quite nobly abstained from following my restaurant map in a pilgrimage of gluttony, and I therefore truly deserved to enjoy my lunch now, since there was only one of it. And I did—all the more because Vince just picked at his food. Waste is a terrible thing, so I helped him finish the hand rolls. One of them was quite good—spicy, with a little crunchy something in it, and a burst of umami at the finish.
When I was happily full, and somewhat tired of watching Vince mope and push sushi around the platter with a chopstick, I leaned back and decided to get down to the real business at hand.
“I appreciate what you’ve done, Vince,” I said. It’s always nice to start with kind words, especially when you want something.
“That’s…But I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Not really.” His eyes got very moist, and there was even a little quaver in his voice. “I wanted to help you,” he said.
“You still can,” I said with firmness and an optimism I didn’t feel.
For some reason, he didn’t look any more optimistic. “You don’t know,” he said. “They’re watching me now, and it’s…I know it’s stupid, but…” He leaned across the table again and lowered his voice. “I actually started to think, like, my life might be in jeopardy. From cops.”
“It might be,” I said, and he goggled at me, and then nodded, took a deep breath, and leaned back again.
“This is completely insane,” he whispered. “I mean, the whole system is against us, the captain and the state attorney and…They might kill me and there’s nothing I can do about it?”
The smile I gave him was not quite a shark’s smile, but I did feel like I could taste red meat as I did it. “Actually,” I said, “there’s one really good way to guarantee your safety.”
He looked at me dubiously, as if he couldn’t believe there was any way out. “That’s not…I mean, you can’t do any, because…What?” he said, and the way he said it was so fragmented that for just a half second, I thought of Rita, my dear dead wife. That was the way she had talked.
But of course, nostalgia for run-on sentences in a female voice would not get the job at hand done, so I pushed her memory away. “Do you still have all those doctored reports?” I asked Vince.
“Yes,” he said. “I kept the originals and filed copies.”
I looked at Vince with surprise. His behavior is usually so eccentric and even goofy that every now and then I forget that he’s actually very smart, too. “Well done,” I said. “Where are they?”