Pop Goes the Weasel

and embassy affairs just to be available for Thursday nights. He had played when he had pneumonia, and once when he’d had a painful double-hernia operation the day before.
    The Four Horsemen was unique in so many ways, but most important was the fact that there was no single gamemaster to outline and control the action of the game. Each of the players had complete autonomy to write and visualize his own story, as long as he played by the roll of the dice and remained inside the parameters of the character.
    In effect, in Horsemen there were four gamemasters. There was no other fantasy game like it. It was as gruesome and shocking as the participants’ imaginations and their skills at presentation brought them.
    Conqueror, Famine, and War had all signed on.
    Shafer began to type.
    DEATH HAS TRIUMPHED AGAIN IN WASHINGTON. LET ME TELL YOU THE DETAILS, THEN I’LL LISTEN TO THE GLORIOUS STORIES, THE IMAGINATIVE POWER, OF CONQUEROR, FAMINE, AND WAR. I LIVE FOR THIS, AS I KNOW ALL OF YOU DO AS WELL.
    THIS WEEKEND, I DROVE MY FANTASTIC TAXI, THE “NIGHTMARE MACHINE,” ONCE AGAIN… . LISTEN TO THIS. I CAME UPON SEVERAL CHOICE AND DELECTABLE VICTIMS, BUT I REJECTED THEM AS UNWORTHY. THEN I FOUND MY QUEEN, AND SHE REMINDED ME OF OUR DAYS IN BANGKOK AND MANILA. WHO COULD EVER FORGET THE BLOOD LUST OF THE BOXING ARENA? I HELD A MOCK KICKBOXING MATCH. GENTLEMEN, I BEAT HER WITH MY HANDS AND FEET. I AM SENDING PICTURES.

Chapter 14
    SOMETHING WAS UP, and I didn’t think I’d like it very much. I arrived at the Seventh District Police Station just before seven-thirty the following morning. I’d been summoned by the powers-that-be to the station, and it was a tough deal. I’d worked until two in the morning trying to get a lead on Nina Childs’s murder.
    I had a feeling that the day was starting out wrong. I was tense and more uptight than I usually let myself become. I didn’t like this early-morning command appearance one bit.
    I shook my head, frowned, tried to roll the kinks out of my neck. Finally, I gritted my teeth tightly before opening the mahogany door. Chief of Detectives George Pittman was lying in wait in his office, which in fact consists of three connecting offices, including a conference room.
    The Jefe, as he’s called by his many “admirers,” had on a boxy gray business suit, an overstarched white shirt, and a silver necktie. His gray-and-white-streaked hair was slicked back. He looked like a banker, and in some ways he is one. As he never tires of saying, he is working with a fixed budget and is always mindful of manpower costs, overtime costs, caseload costs. Apparently, he is an efficient manager, which is why the police commissioner overlooks the fact that he’s a bully, bigot, racist, and careerist.
    Up on his wall were three large, important-looking pushpin maps. The first showed two consecutive months of rapes, homicides, and assaults in Washington. The second map did the same for residential and commercial burglaries. The third map showed auto thefts. The maps and the Post said that crime was down in D.C., but not where I live.
    “Do you know why you’re here, why I wanted to see you?” Pittman asked point-blank. No socializing or small talk from The Jefe, no niceties. “Of course you do, Dr. Cross. You’re a psychologist. You’re supposed to know how the human mind works. I keep forgetting that.”
    Be cool, be careful, I told myself. I did the thing Chief Pittman least expected: I smiled, then said softly, “No, I really don’t know. I got a call from your assistant. So I’m here.”
    Pittman smiled back, as if I’d made a pretty good joke. Then he suddenly raised his voice, and his face and neck turned bright red; his nostrils flared, exposing the bristly hairs in his nose.
    One of his hands was clenched into a tight fist, while the other was stretched open. His fingers were as rigid as the pencils sticking up from the leather cup on his desk.
    “You’re not fooling anybody, Cross, least of all me. I’m fully fucking aware that you’re investigating homicides in Southeast that you aren’t assigned to — the so-called Jane Does. You’re doing this against my explicit orders. Some of those cases have been closed for over a year. I won’t have it — I won’t tolerate your insubordination, your condescending attitude. I know what you’re trying to pull. Embarrass the department, specifically embarrass me, curry fucking favor with the mayor, making yourself some kind of