Snitch Factory: A Novel by Peter Plate Page B

to accept the consequences of his actions. He’d been through an ordeal; I couldn’t deny that. Somehow I remained unaffected by his suffering. Was I being cold-blooded? I didn’t think so.
    “Hassler? You got a second?”
    “Yeah, Rocky. Come in, please. Here’s a chair for you. Sit down.”
    A reflexive, self-protective voice in my head told me to gather my wits and my nerve because the man was festering. I plucked a fag from the pack on the desk, lit it and threw the match to the floor. It expired on the carpet like countless numbers of its predecessors.
    “How’re you doing, Rocky?”
    “What do you think?”
    “I don’t know. How’s your wife taking it?”

    “Irene, she didn’t like it. We got into it, and she says I got to cut this stuff out.”
    The Pinkerton was wearing a new blazer, not a bad fit. Maybe he had a tailor do it for him. He had a plaster cast around his belly; the thing was riddled with get-well messages from his friends.
    “I think you should listen to Irene.”
    “Gosh, thanks for the advice.”
    His black face was frozen like an unplowed field in December in dire need of being thawed out. He hunched his still-considerable body in the seat, meaning to present a smaller target.
    “C’mon, Rocky, Let’s not be like this, okay?”
    His eyes coruscated in their pouch-like folds. Certain things that couldn’t remain hidden any longer, that didn’t have the ability to camouflage themselves and that couldn’t stay out of sight, were starting to show through in him.
    It used to be that people who had trouble with their lives were an invisible feature of this nation. You never saw them, or heard about them. Now they were everywhere.
    Like the man on the news who’d stolen a tank from the National Armory in San Diego. He’d driven the armored vehicle through a bunch of residential streets, plowing up lawns, tearing up trees, smashing cars parked in their driveways. He took it down the freeway, chased by nearly thirty police cars. The final segment of the clip showed the tank stalled on an embankment; dozens of helmeted cops were swarming on the turret.
    Rocky said, “The chick that shot me? She was so fucking close I could smell the lavender oil in her hair.”
    “Who was she?”
    “The police asked me that yesterday. I had to tell them I wasn’t certain. I’ve seen her somewhere before. Around,
you know? But she could be some girl who looks like somebody else, if you catch my drift.”
    The Pinkerton had launched into the anecdote as though he’d begun the sentence in his head. His jaws were moving even before the words started coming out of his mouth.
    “You know, I really wanted to blame you for what happened to me. It would have been juvenile, but warranted, too. It would have been logical.”
    I was taken aback. “Why are you telling me about it?”
    “It felt like the right move.”
    “Do I have to hear it?”
    “Don’t fucking whine. They’re your clients.”
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    “It was one of them that done me.”
    “How come I never have any problems with them?”
    “That’s because you brown nose everybody.”
    “Give me a break, and take responsibility for your own life, will you?”
    “Well, well, did they teach you that in group therapy?”
    “Hey, where do you get off with this? Go fuck yourself.”
    It was the wrong request to make. The Pinkerton rose to his feet and never taking his eyes from my face, he staggered over to my side of the desk. For one ludicrous moment, how his arms were extended toward me, I thought he was going to hug me. Instead, he put his hands on my shoulders.
    “You’re a chickenshit for saying that, Charlene.”
    I threw my cigarette at him; it bounced harmlessly off his cheeks. His face was close to mine. I got wind of his potent breath, a destroyer. I tried to catch his eye to mention something to him, something that might appease him. I forgot what it was in a blur of indigo. Inside my own skull I