Birth of a Monster (4 page)

If there was one thing the Sivingdel
Police were known for cracking down on, it was stingy
donors.

If they didn’t get involved quick, they
expected the seizure would turn out to have been one of those
misunderstandings that large sums of cash had clarified.

Thus, it was with no leisure that they
kneed their horses’ sides, as they headed towards the police
station. The wind caressed their crewcut scalps.

Chapter 10

When Harold set Righty down in the most
wooded area of the city park—an area Righty had hoped not to
revisit after the first visit had revealed to him that it was an
area the city police found pleasant to patrol—he knew that he might
be making his final good-bye to his faithful friend.

He gave Harold a pat on the back and an
appreciative look but knew words would only enervate his soul.
Harold quickly ascended to a large tree, and Righty, with exactly
two million falons in his various secret coat and pant
compartments, set off on foot towards the nearest trail, which
would then take him to the park’s circular opening, from where it
would then would only be a five- to ten-minute walk before he
spotted a coach available for hire.

He tipped his hat politely at a couple
of patrol officers he found sauntering around the park and
concluded he must look more confident than he felt, which was like
a broken man being led to the scaffold in prison garb.

The walking itself, he thought, should
have calmed his nerves slightly, but every step was one closer to
the police station rather than away from it and thus only served to
put him more on edge.

He almost blurted out, when
the coachman asked for his destination,
To
jail!
But instead, he made an attempt at
discretion, stating coldly, “Oh, I can’t remember the address, but
it’s merely a stone’s throw from the police station, so just take
me there.”

The coachman, who was quite
argumentative in his private life, almost said,
You sure you’re not going
to
the jail? Most customers at least know the name of
their destination, if not the address.
But
he was rather tolerant in his professional capacity and set off
towards the jail, a place he himself had once visited after a nasty
dispute with his wife.

It was a dreary ride, and while neither
knew it, they shared a nearly equal displeasure with the
destination. Nor did either know that some of the coachman’s
particularly long shifts were given a little help from some plants
grown at his passenger’s ranch.

“There she blows,” said the coachman,
stopping the carriage.

As he looked at Righty’s face while he
nervously fumbled for pocket change, the coachman realized his
passenger had reached his destination after all.

“Heck, friend. I’ve been there. Today
is on the house.”

Righty’s mood felt slightly elevated by
the goodwill he had found in such an unlikely place, but he
responded, “On the contrary, today you’ll be generously rewarded,”
handing the coachman several times the normal fare.

“May luck be with you today, friend!”
the coachman said happily, and then lay the whip to his horses
before his customer had second thoughts.

Chapter 11

Righty knew he should have pushed
himself forward, like a man dragging a stubborn work bench across a
rough floor, because with any loss of momentum, he was likely to
turn tail and run in the opposite direction.

But he could not deny himself a moment
of reflection. While his heart continued to gallop, it seemed as if
his surroundings were slowing down, almost to the point where an
accomplished artist would have time to capture the individual
expressions of the passersby.

A rising wave of analysis loomed in the
background, growing ominously by the second, full of questions and
objections. He stepped forward to the door, knowing that if the
wave landed upon him, he would run back to the forest, call Harold,
fly back to Ringsetter, leave the country, and live in hiding for
the rest of his life, perhaps shunning even the mirror, which would
remind him of his cowardly betrayal.

He grabbed the door and opened
it.

And walked inside.

He tried to act calm as he approached
the front desk.

“I’m here to see David Havensford,
ma’am,” Righty said to a stern-faced, uniformed woman sitting
behind the desk.

“Are you his attorney?” she asked
suspiciously.

Righty had never been to jail before. A
couple of times, during his drinking days, the tavern owner had
thrown him out by the ears, but no one—at least in those days—knew
how to spend the better part of a week’s pay on a Friday night than
Righty Rick, and so the tavern owner had never escalated things to
the point where the local sheriff got involved. Thus, Righty knew
as much about jail protocol as a fish knows about tap
dancing.

“No, ma’am. I’m just a
friend.”

Righty noticed a nearby male officer
was sizing him up suspiciously.

“May I see the chief of police?” Righty
said, wishing he would have started with that approach but
realizing it was too late now.

The male officer was now looking at him
with as much interest as a cat hovering over a mouse.

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman
asked.

“No, ma’am, I’d like to make
one.”

“What’s this in regards to?”

“I would feel more comfortable talking
to him about that directly.”

“Oh, you would, would you?” the male
officer asked, having left the role of spectator behind. The menace
in his voice was clear.

“So, you’re not a lawyer,
but you
are
the
friend of a person we just arrested in the largest drug seizure to
date?”

“I’m sorry if I wasted your time,”
Righty said, turning to leave. His heart was really galloping now.
He thought he was going to keel over.

“Frisk him!” the male officer ordered
curtly.

Righty was too petrified of making a
scene to protest as two burly officers approached him and then led
him towards a wall, where they instructed him to place both hands
while they began searching him.

While his secret compartments made
their job a bit harder, they quickly noticed the large lumps inside
his coat, as well as the dagger inside his sleeve.

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of
being a co-conspirator of David Havensford, aka Tats. Cuff him and
book him!”

They tore off his large coat rudely and
smiled greedily when they saw the cash there.

“Take him to the back!” an officer
ordered.

When they realized his pants and shirt
were filled with money too, they told him to disrobe, permitting
him only the dignity of keeping his undergarments on, but those too
were subjected to a meticulous inspection.

Righty seethed with shame and impotent
anger, and his heart sank as one of the officers fondled his
dagger.

“She’s a beauty!” he said, letting out
a whistle the same as if he were viewing a naked woman.

“What’s your name, you punk?!” one of
the officers said.

“Sam Higler,” Righty said
calmly.

“What kind of a made-up name is
that?!”

The burly officer threw his hardest
punch to Righty’s gut.

When Righty merely grimaced slightly,
but didn’t so much as bend over an inch, a chill went down the
officer’s spine.

He knew the chief wanted to do business
with the head of the gang, but he had marked this guy as nothing
more than a low-level courier attempting to negotiate on the boss’s
behalf. He had heard the rumor that the head of the gang was a
boxer, and when he saw his right uppercut to the gut—that had
doubled over some of the toughest criminals in town—embarrass
itself thoroughly like a kitten pawing at its hulking mother, a
terrifying apprehension swept over him.

But he had the chief to worry about
too. He had given strict orders to rough anyone up who was sent by
the mysterious Mr. Brass. A middle-of-the-road approach suddenly
seemed like a good idea.

“Well,” he said, trying to
sound tough but polite, “you can take a punch, sir. If this is your
first arrest we’re going to have to sketch you. If you try escaping
the sketch by telling me you’ve been arrested and sketched here
before, you’re going to have to wait a
reeeal
long time while we look for Sam
Higler’s dossier.

“And the chief don’t see nobody without
an appointment unless he’s been sketched. It’s your choice, Mr.
Higler.”

“I’ve never been arrested,” Righty
said.

“All right, now we’re cooperating, you
see,” the officer said.

Righty was taken to a seat in a room
where one person sat directly in front of him. Off to the side,
mostly hidden by shadows, was another person. This person was a
journalist, and for a fee, the officers let him sketch prisoners.
He had showed up as soon as he got wind of the drug seizure and had
been sketching anyone who was processed and suspected to be
involved in drugs.

The chief knew nothing of this, but the
processing officers felt it wasn’t necessary to burden him with
every last detail of the police department’s activities. And the
journalist’s contributions, while small by the chief’s standards—at
least, based upon what they had heard—meant a steak dinner per
sketch for them, which was no measly amount.

Righty felt somewhat relieved by the
drastic change in the officers’ mood and tone after he had
effortlessly withstood the uppercut, but nonetheless he burned with
fury that he was being sketched and thus put into the police
department’s records.

“We’ll see what the chief says, but
usually we don’t release first-time arrestees until we see an
original birth certificate confirming their identity,” Mr. Uppercut
said, with a glint of condescending amusement in his
eyes.

Righty was impressed by the swiftness
of the sketch. A mere ten minutes later he was being led down the
same dreary hallway Tats was led down before being
deposited—unbeknownst to either of them—in the cell abutting that
of his loyal criminal associate.

As soon as the door was locked shut,
Mr. Uppercut, whose real name was Officer Carl Maher, was
practically sprinting down the hallway.

Destination—Chief Lloyd Benson’s
office.

Chapter 12

As Benjamin and Willis entered the
police station, they were promptly noticed by the secretaries and
officers of the station, who eyed them balefully, with a
combination of jealousy, resentment, and distrust. They were
outsiders, but could make things really uncomfortable if they
wanted to. The chief’s mandated policy had been to treat them with
counterfeit kindness while simultaneously undermining them at every
turn through excuses, lies, and red herrings.

With smug satisfaction, Willis leaned
his crewcut head over the desk and eyeballed the same male officer
who not too long ago had enjoyed belittling Righty. With his
muscle-bound forearms serving as a perch for his contemptuously
smiling face, he looked at the officer and said, “Hear you guys
caught some big fish yesterday.” And then his eyeballs scanned him,
looking for the truth in his face, since it would be unlikely to
emanate from his tongue.

A small, but unmistakable, gulp was all
Willis needed.

“Drugs are
our
specialty,” Willis
reminded the officer, whose neck he could probably crush with his
bare hands in seconds.

“Now, you don’t want to have this place
swarming with federal agents trying to find out why you’re hiding
drug peddlers from the NDP, now do you?”

The officer’s face turned red with
anger and shame.

“Show ‘em,” he barked to the female
secretary, attempting to resurrect his manhood.

“Now thatta boy,” Willis said, smiling,
and the officer’s head nearly exploded, though he remained
silent.

As the plump female secretary led
Benjamin and Willis down the hallway, she said, “We caught a big
one yesterday, and some dumb fella come in here today trying to
save him with money,” she said with a self-righteous indignation
that suggested she had been left out of the loop when it came to
bribery and corruption at Sivingdel City Jail.