Damn!

I walked back to the media room and resumed my seat. Trying to sound casual, I said, “Pretty sunrise out there. Looks like it ought to be a nice day.”

Karl gave us a razor-sharp grin. “Shit,” he said. “I never even noticed.”

“Well, that was the object of the exercise,” Rachel said. Although she still looked tired, her face had a glow about it now that made even exhaustion look kind of attractive.

“Eagle, this is Houston,” I said, trying to imitate a super-serious space program guy. “Your mission is a go.”

Phillip Kevin Slattery, the Patriot Party’s candidate for mayor, was one of those guys some people refer to as Black Irish. Although his great-grandparents supposedly all came from County Cork, he didn’t look like anybody who’d be invited to dress up like a leprechaun for next year’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade – besides, everybody knows they use real leprechauns for that.

Slattery’s thick, carefully combed hair was the same dark brown as his eyes, and his complexion wouldn’t have earned him a second look at any Sicilian’s family reunion. I doubted he’d ever known a freckle in his life. He had a heavy beard growth that I’d bet he shaved twice a day to avoid looking like a common thug. That impression would have been misleading, anyway – as far as I was concerned, Phil Slattery was a very special kind of thug.

His blue pinstripe suit was good quality, and the shirt he was wearing – white with thin blue stripes – went with the suit well enough, but whoever had picked out that tie for him must have been either color-blind or demented.

The interrogation rooms that we use to question suspects were way too small for the number of people who’d be involved this time. Besides, the Media Room had the advantage of being windowless – good thing, too, since the sun was well up in the sky now, shining bright and clear.

Slattery had brought three men with him. The thin, balding one with wire-rim glasses had been introduced as Bob Franks, his campaign manager. He had the pinched look of somebody who has ulcers on his ulcers. The stocky guy with prematurely gray hair was somebody I already knew. Jerome Duplantis was a partner in Archer, Duplantis, and O’Brien, the biggest law firm in the city. I guess he was along in case we tried to violate Slattery’s rights or something. His own suit made Slattery’s look dowdy, but then Duplantis wasn’t running for anything.

The last man’s name, we were told, was Robert Brody. Slattery referred to him as “my personal assistant.” In my experience, that’s usually a fancy name for “gofer”. but not this time. Brody had big shoulders and a narrow face, with blue eyes that were colder than a five hundred year-old vampire’s – and I ought to know, since I’ve met a five hundred year-old vampire. He had a way of standing, with feet spread and the right foot slightly forward, as if he was waiting for someone to knock him down – or try to. Personal assistant, my ass – I know a bodyguard when I see one.

McGuire had ordered every detective on the squad who wasn’t on the street that morning to be sitting in one of the media room’s uncomfortable folding chairs, even if it meant he had to pay overtime to several of them. There were even a couple of guys from Homicide there, because McGuire had asked Scanlon for a few warm bodies to fill the seats. The chairs were laid out in twelve rows, with a central aisle running down the middle.

Most of those cops didn’t have speaking parts in the little drama we were staging, but that didn’t make them unimportant. For one thing, they would provide strength in numbers, which McGuire thought might intimidate Slattery and his people a little. Fat chance of that – the Patriot Party crew looked about as bothered as a bunch of cats at a mouse convention.

But more important, such a large group of detectives meant that introducing them all was impractical. We didn’t want any of Scanlon’s group to hear a name that might raise a red flag, and lying about who Karl was could come back to bite us later. Besides, McGuire and I had figured that a crowd this large gave us a chance that neither Slattery nor his entourage would notice one of the detectives in the room was a vampire. Karl knew enough to keep his fangs out of sight, and none of our visitors would be expecting one of the undead, anyway. It was broad daylight, after all, which meant that all vampires were asleep snug in their coffins. Everybody knew that.

Karl had remained in his back-row seat, just as we’d planned. I was down front, since I intended to take an active part in the questioning. As I took my seat, I resisted the urge to look behind me and see how Karl was doing. Being awake during daylight hours must’ve been a weird experience for him. I hoped he could make his Influence work under such unusual conditions.

Four chairs had been moved to the front of the room, and that’s where Slattery and his crew were asked to sit. Once they were in place, McGuire got up from his front-row seat and turned to the audience of cops. “Alright, quiet down,” he said, loud enough to cut through the buzz of a dozen quiet conversations. “We’re about to get started.” The low murmur of voices stopped almost at once.

McGuire then turned to Slattery. “On behalf of the Scranton Police Department, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come down and talk to us,” he said. His voice held nothing but formal politeness. Me, I wouldn’t have been able to deliver a line like that without wrapping some sarcasm around it – I guess that’s one reason why McGuire is a lieutenant and I’m not.

“You’re quite welcome,” Slattery said. He took a slow, deliberate look around the room. “But I can’t say I was expecting such a large group of inquisitors.”

McGuire had sat down by now, and he didn’t rise again as he said, “This is no inquisition, Mister Slattery. Most of these officers won’t be asking you any questions today.”

Slattery tilted his head a little to one side. “Then why are they here?”

McGuire was ready for that one. “My understanding is that, like me, they are concerned about the recent violent events and want to hear your views on what’s been happening,” he said smoothly, then made himself smile. “Although I’m pretty sure that some of them are fans of you and your party. I’m afraid you might be asked for a few autographs before you leave here today.” McGuire paused, then took the big gamble. “Of course, if having so many police officers in the room makes you… uncomfortable, I can send most of them back to their duty stations before we start.”

McGuire and I had talked about this earlier. It was important that he offer to clear the room before Slattery could ask him to, which he just might do. But now, if he said, “I want them out,” people might start to wonder what he had to hide. After all, as a politico, he was used to speaking to crowds much bigger than this one.

Of course, if Slattery took McGuire up on his offer, we were screwed, blued, and tattooed. But I didn’t think he would – and I was right.

“No, it’s fine, let them stay,” Slattery said with a tight smile. Then Duplantis, the lawyer, piped up.

“I want the record to show that my client is here of his own free will, Lieutenant,” he said. “He is under no legal obligation to answer any of your questions, and is prepared to do so, for a limited amount of time, purely out of his sense of civic duty.”

That was as fine a layer of rhetorical bullshit as I’d heard in quite a while – but then, for what Duplantis charged, it ought to be good.

“There is no record here, Counselor,” McGuire said, still polite. “This meeting is not being recorded in any fashion, although I suppose I can’t stop some of these officers from taking a few notes, if they want to. But if there was some kind of record, I’d certainly want it to show my appreciation for Mister Slattery’s… exemplary citizenship as shown by his willingness to come down here today.”