Henry Drake and Jack Bailey sat alone in the Special Response Team Office after their public dressing down and demotions. Bailey felt intimidated and beaten. He slumped in morose silence. Drake had—by now—recovered his skin color and famous temper.
“Fifteen million bucks he got. The director told me this morning before we went up for our ass-chewing. Kennedy—that murderer—comes out smelling like a rose, and we get the whole load dumped on us. Can’t really blame the high kahunas on the Task Force; they aren’t about to take the blame. It always rolls down hill; that’s the American way. That Slavich creep sitting there enjoying the sun and sand in Florida or someplace thinks he is about the cleverest guy goin’. I swear that he’s goin’ to pay and pay hard. I am going to get a line on his WP status if it takes the rest of my life.”
Drake’s soliloquy was concluded with a low menacing growl.
Bailey perked up, lifting his head off his chest for the first time that day.
“I still think Kennedy is dirty, and it galls me no end that he gets to be a millionaire compliments of the taxpayers and us two schmucks take it in the shorts. I hate to think that he just gets away with this. It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.”
He slumped again.
Oliver Quatraine walked in. He was ignored as usual.
Drake spoke in a low, foreboding snarl, “Maybe we can change all that, partner. He’s gotta be dirty, and we’re gonna keep on him until he makes his mistake. Then, we’re gonna roast ‘im. I’ll see the day when they cart him out to Hart Island.”
“Who’s dirty?” asked Quatraine.
He had overheard the reference to the island in New York Harbor that served the city as its Potter’s Field.
“What’re you guys working on?”
“Nothing that’s any of your business,” snapped Drake.
Quatraine let it bead up and run off his ebony skin as usual.