we don't get a lot of positive attention from the boys in the press these days, so it's good to be here when there's a positive story, don't you think?
i take it you've been treated well by my boys in the department?
technicalities aside --
good, then you won't have any problem telling that to the press, and how the lapd is concerned first and foremost with the safety of --
the los angeles police department is thankful for all the hard work done by the de kalb county sheriff's department in helping to make this joyful reunion possible. the lapd is dedicated to serving the public at all times, and --
we will hold court on gunmen in the los angeles streets. i want them brought in dead, not alive, and i will reprimand any officer who shows the least mercy to a criminal.
i don't know if you're aware of it, captain, but i have an exceptionally good vocabulary. i'm a terror at scrabble, crossword puzzles, but even i'm in awe of the vocabulary that the press and the city council have been exercising in reference to this department courtesy of the christine collins. incident. incompetent. cowardly. bullying. reprehensible. mendacious and invidious. those two courtesy of that prick gustav briegleb. bonus words in scrabble, both of them. especially invidious. hard to work that one into a conversation. but he managed it, all right.
the key, of course, is the context in which words like this get used. you have to do that in scrabble, you know, when somebody challenges a word. show how it's used in a sentence. so "incompetent," as in -- "a department so incompetent that they never realized that up to twenty children were being kidnapped and murdered under their very noses." and here: "so incompetent that they insisted they knew better than a mother the identity of her own child, forced him upon her, and then incarcerated her when she confronted them with evidence of their own reprehensible behavior." that was a two-fer. incompetent and reprehensible in the same sentence. guy must be a real terror at crossword puzzles.
captain, your handling of the collins case has exposed this department to public ridicule. there is even the potential for civil and criminal liability.
no?
maybe he was. which raises the obvious question: so what?
the mayor wants this to go away. i want this to go away. the way you do that is to stop insisting that walter collins was not among those kids killed up at that goddamned ranch. because if the boy you brought back isn't walter collins, and he's not dead up at that ranch, then where the hell is he? people will want to know why we haven't found him. why we aren't we doing our job. but if, on the other hand, he is, or could be among those poor boys killed up in wineville. then the inquiries stop. it's a momentary embarrassment that you'll have to live with. but better a short inconvenience than a lingering problem, wouldn't you say, captain? jones doesn't like it, but he swallows his pride. nods.
the boy's been gone for nearly a year. if he was going to be found, it would've happened by now. whether he was up at that ranch or not, the truth is he probably is dead somewhere. better his mother accepts that now rather than later, don't you think?
good. that'll be all, captain.
let me worry about the commission. but it wouldn't hurt to find out just who the fuck that kid is you brought back from de kalb and why he did this, because the press bought into his bullshit same as we did. that we were all taken in by the scheming little bastard may help take some of the sting off this.
mayor cryer. this is unexpected.
goddamnit.
it is going away, sir. i instructed captain jones --
mayor cryer. i stand by my men. you know that.
precocious little fellow, isn't he?