Reflections on the Broadway Murders Case
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I’m sitting in the office at Alpha – Anna’s west-side Manhattan brownstone. It’s a pretty September morning. Things have been a bit slow lately. But I don’t mind – much.
The most exciting thing this week was the drive down from Omega. You see, Anna has this understanding with the New York state bulls. Anything under one seventy-five is fine as long as there are no civilians on the parkway. We’ve done them big favors so they do her this little one. The Lamborghini loves the deal. The passenger’s seat’s a whole different matter altogether. You see Anna takes great satisfaction in putting the car through her paces. That means drifting across three or four lanes with the tires screaming and all twelve cylinders of the 5707cc V-12 just a churning and burning. Just past the Jackson Avenue overpass and north of the Grass Sprain Reservoir, she did a seven twenty and ended up heading south just like it was planned!
The strangest thing about the drive is how relaxed Anna is afterwards. You would have thought she just had a full body massage. I suspect that it is a form of meditation for her. Me, I needed a drink when we arrived at Alpha.
The Broadway murders case was settled four months ago. The FBI, lead by Amos Terrin, the current Agent in Charge (AIC) of the Manhattan office, is closing in on a covey of targets. Many of them Wall Street investment bankers and sitting politicians. The bible thumping Senator with the Paris mistress has resigned and is currently on the rubber chicken tour giving speeches to whoever will pay his fee for exposing himself in public. His wife is standing by her man. A new one who is not in politics.
The cooperation between the feds and NYPD has never been sweeter and tighter. Even Rosen (Chairman of the Senate Banking Housing and Urban Development Committee) and Katz (Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission) have grabbed an oar. Justice is proceeding at its slow but steady pace. We’ve been called upon to provide information but it looks like testifying will not be required.
I’ve finished reading the five newspapers that I go through online every morning. The aroma from the kitchen tells me that Chang is in a festive mood this morning. Breakfast is just a few minutes away. But something is working its way under my hide. Burning my toast. I suppose that it’s the waste. Or maybe the uncontrolled avarice. Or perhaps just the inhumanity of it all. But the case has left a sour taste in my mouth.
Most people muddle through their lives making ends barely meet. They live descent lives. Raise their kids. Pay their mortgages and taxes. Treat their neighbors kindly. Donate to their favorite charities. And, generally, they treat each other with at least a modicum of respect. But we’ve just come up against a batch that seems to see all of humanity as prey. They are all about taking. Too much is never enough. None of the morality that guides the lives of ordinary people seems to touch them. No consideration for the community that lifted them up. And apparently none for the future generations of their countrymen and women. It’s all ‘get as much as you can’ and ‘take whatever is there to take’. Maybe that seems okay to you, but it really gives me the red ass.
Okay, maybe that’s just part of the deal. I am, after all, a private detective and confidential assistant to a paranormal genius. Nobody brings us the j-walking cases. We get the dregs of humanity that have risen to the top by feeding on their fellow humans. But it would be nice, every so often, to run into a fellow human being that has not morphed into a parasite. As Einstein once said, “I’d rather be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right.” I keep hoping. How about you?