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Issue Number 8
Interview with a Weary Knight, by Barry Boone
I step into the fading glory of early Imperial architecture that is Regina Police Station Two and feel that old “under siege” twinge these grey walls always give me. I report to the desk sergeant and a young patrolman guides me back; he hesitates a moment at the “fence” and I travel over a decade in a heartbeat. The “fence” is a low rail across the Detective Bureau at Station 2, which encloses the desks and cubicles of dozens of cops and the frenzy of people trying to do too much with too little. Caffeine and sugar, paper and computer screens all jumbled together on scarred desks and piled in cubicles. Just the way it was almost twenty years ago.
I was a green reporter, a cub on the crime desk until the old Register could find a place for me. I was waiting for the word on a big organ-legging case the then new Major Case Squad had broken. We and our editors expected a flashy bust of some little fish. They had landed a shark, a real mankiller called Carmine Camilla. He was red faced and angry with a world class shiner growing over his left eye, being propelled along by two uniformed cops on either side of him. They pushed him past the fence in front of the quietest reporters I have seen before or since, before bedlam erupted.
Then the detectives came in, Seymour Globber and Zero Aioulou. I remember Globber looking a touch flushed and keeping his hand in his pocket as they retreated past the fence. Ten minutes later Ridley Bancroft the old Register city editor had his best people on the job, I was covering fires and accidents, and I didn’t see Globber again until he had made Chief Inspector. All of that came flooding back by the time the absurdly young cop had the “fence” open.
The Commissioner’s real office isn’t two floors above, where the old Commissioner reigned, but rather just off the maze enclosed by the “fence”. In the tight room where Globber works an old metal desk cuts the room in half. On that desk is a Times expert crossword, done in ink with precise letters. A dozen pictures on the walls stare down at me, a young Globber escorting Camilla to court, half a dozen precinct group pictures, and more now mostly forgotten blue knights. It’s a cop’s room, not an administrator’s sanctum and I knew I had seen part of the man behind the careful words and the title.
Then the door springs open and the Commissioner strides in, his hands full of folders and phone. He mimes a greeting and beckons an older Varg’r lady with a pair of plastic cups to give me some of the vile liquid cops call coffee. The lady, Globber’s long time secretary Gharli Vahr, is a magician because the coffee is good and hot. By the time I realize I can swallow the coffee, Globber is behind his desk and hanging up the phone. Mrs. Vahr disappears with the folders and I finally get to speak with the man who was doing the Times crossword in ink.
“I’m afraid this may be a bad time, Barry,” he says with a tired shrug. I ask if there are any good times to interview someone tasked with keeping Regina under control. He gives a caught off guard chuckle and shakes his head. “We’ve missed it,” Globber replied with smile, “because the day after Holiday is very quiet, except in the holding cells.”
Before the first question can be asked his phone makes an urgent triple chirp and reality comes to call. “Keep the scene clear,” he orders. Then he is off, the slightly mincing steps half a dozen gunshot and stab wounds have left him with are out of place on such a large, imposing man. He tries to sneak past Mrs. Vahr who calls out “Doctor’s appointment at 1800!” in a commanding tone. Then we are in a Regina prowl car headed for a murder scene.
The phone rings again, and the conversation is terse. “Tell me what’s going down, Sheila.” he rasps slightly, then “Hold on”. He pulls a pad out and glares at it’s numbers. “Seven holes and five corks,” he mutters. The Commissioner calls for a riot squad but only six patrolmen already through with their shift are available. He dispatches them and then calls four other numbers and asks for uniformed armored security forces to be sent to where we’re going. Three agree, one refuses.
We arrive at the end of the conversation down on level ten. Globber gets the driver’s name before he gets out. “I didn’t even notice the ride, Chong, good work.” Then he stops and looks over the entire scene. Two covered corpses, chalk lines and a circled sawed off shotgun. And in the crowd half a dozen half to full armored mercenaries with the patches of “Satan’s Slammers”. Their comrades are under the sheets. Globber walks up to a uniformed sergeant and a plain clothes cop. I watch the mercs and am very glad when the Regina Police show up in the familiar “Bumblebee” armor. But there are a few more “Slammers” here too now. Then Ling Standard, Sternmetal and Nakamura security arrives with their respective Mega-corporations colors on their armor. Only then Globber sauntered over to the mercs.
His words are profane and hard hitting, backed up by lots of armored figures. He says he’ll get the person who did this and tells them the Forensics experts need room, so move along. They mutter but they leave, and I wonder how he can be calm facing an armed and angry proto-mob. Globber waves me over to where he is speaking with a detective. He is frowning at the scene, looking back at the shotgun, then the corpses. He looks closely at the bodies and the blood flow while I remember how much I hated working accident and murder stories. He nods slightly and motions me over. He and the detective are talking when Globber asks me to sit on the ground next to the weapon.
“That does explain the angle and the pellets getting under the armor,” the younger earnest detective says, “But these guys were no tourists and our killer got behind them.
“They never saw him. This explains how he’s gotten past the other’s security as well. We never see him or his kind.” The other detective looks skeptical as Globber motions me to place my hat on the ground. “Put out your hand.” he asks. All of a sudden even I can almost see the crime happening, why the hardened soldiers looked but didn’t see. The detective and I frankly stare at the nodding, tired Buddha who has brought us this enlightenment. “Beggars fade from our sight as we toss them alms,” Globber quoted. He also ordered the review of an old case file involving the unsolved murders of other Slammers on Regina, and for the circulation of a wanted poster for a woman named Paula Barnard at all Precinct Roll Calls.
“Beggars, refugees, and all the rest of the ones supposed to be victims” said the young detective. “All of it comes back to that.”
The phone chirps again and the Commissioner is back. “Take it from here, Mr. Weseli.” Globber says as he speaks into the phone. It is a one sided conversation, Globber and an unnamed Senator. Globber only saying a few words here or there, until the end when he snaps into the hapless instrument “Because I was out of officers again and needed to put a lot of presence on the street so no one else got sent to the morgue!” Later that night people would question his decision to call in the private security forces on all the chat shows. None of the callers were there.
I realize suddenly this would never have happened in the Imperial days of Regina. The IBI and Imperial Military Police were here along with the Starport Authority’s Customs and Immigration and half a dozen other law enforcement groups. Today two thirds the number of people with half the money try to control a population even bigger and more transient.
Globber glares at the now dead phone and sighs. The prowl car starts to take us back but a call comes over the comm unit Globber carries tuned to the frequency of his old unit. Major Case Squad has found the “chicken farm” and they’re going in. It’s nearby and Chong gets us there in a heartbeat or three. I hear gunshots and screams on the radio and see Globber’s lips tighten. It’s over as we drive up on a scene I never want to see again.
Death comes all too easily in the starport, but when your hope starts to die there is an emptiness as large as space itself. Children are being bundled into a Police van as we arrive. Three large figures under sheets and a small one, pathetic in it’s stillness, await inside. Globber’s face is unreadable as he speaks with the detectives. A story of exploited children and evil men will appear tonight for a moment or two, but we expect that sort of thing these days. The cops who had to put cringing twelve and thirteen year old girls and boys, human and Varg’r, into a van to send them off to a creaking, overworked Juvenile Services will remember longer.
This is why I side with those who want to make Regina a better place.
People like the Regent who is trying to salvage hope.
People like the man who dropped me off up on Level 3 so I could make my next, now seemingly unimportant, appointment.
On our way up I finally got to ask real journalist questions between phone calls. I asked Globber about the rumors, the rumors that he has said he dislikes being so far off the streets but is afraid to let go. The rumors that say he hangs on lest the next Commissioner be totally unfamiliar with how it feels to survive on the Cr 12,000 Regina pays patrolmen.
The rumors that after twenty-five years he may just walk away from all of the turmoil.
He is about to answer when the phone rings again. This time the Commissioner hears from the Regent’s office. The Zhodani ambassador is demanding more security for his delegation. It is 18:45 and he’s missed the appointment. “I’m a cop.” His answer to all my questions, and an answer to his own.