[center][i]“Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.” 
-- James Ellroy[/i][/center]


[b]The Gotham City Dining Car
10:22 PM[/b]


The headwaiter brought him in through the back. Jim walked through the kitchen. Puerto Ricans chattered in their native tongue while music blasted out a boombox above the stove. A steak sizzled in a pan of oil. Fire flared by Jim's shoulder. He flinched. The Puerto Ricans laughed and said something to him he couldn't understand. The waiter shot them a look and reeled off a stream of words in Spanish. He apologized to Jim and pushed through the kitchen door into the rear dining area.

The restaurant was made up to look like the old dining cars trains had. Big booths, small tables, cheap steak and watered down hooch all for the low low price of forty bucks a plate. David Kane sat in a booth in the rear, his head down and in his plate. Jim was led to the booth. Kane looked up at him. He gnoshed a rare porterhouse with a baked potato and asparagus. A buck fifty soaking wet and he could put away amounts of food that would make a fat man blush. Off to the side sat a tumbler of scotch.

"Commissioner," Kane said with a mouth full of food.

"Councilman."

The waiter left quickly. Jim sat and watched Kane continue eating. Jim's eyes darted towards the scotch. He felt his mouth get wet. He licked his lips. Kane wiped his mouth and finally took a break from the food.

"Thank you for meeting me here today, Jim. We don't get a chance to interact outside the usual meetings. Do you want something to eat? Something to drink?"

"I'll pass."

Kane nodded. Dug back into his baked potato. Food crumbs flaked his Armani suit. The white shirt collar stained with steak sauce. Jim did the math. The suit would cost him a month's salary.

"You made your bones as a detective, yes?" Kane stared at him, a piece of steak speared onto his fork. "Can you tell me why I wanted to meet you here today?"

Jim adjusted his tie. He looked everywhere but at Kane. The food, the slop, his beady eyes. He didn't want to meet his gaze. He was afraid of what he might say or do at the sight.

"You want to make a run at mayor this year. Before doing anything official, you want to put out feelers and see where the winds blowing."

"Come come, Jim, you can do better than that. I read your jacket, you know. You took some law classes. Dissect my motives."

Jim sighed and adjusted his glasses. Kane put his fork down and leaned forward, tie dangling over the plate of food. 

"You need my help if you want to take a serious run at it. You're an experience councilman, but you come from the 2nd District. You represent upper middle-class people in a city where eighty percent of its residents straddle the poverty line. Mayor Krohl has that vote sewed up by being from a working-class East Side family. Furthermore, you're a WASP and rich, two things most people in Gotham are not. Krohl is Armenian and has had to fight for everything he's ever had. You might make a good mayor, but you are not a good candidate."

"Don't lead me on, Jim." Kane smiled. Jim saw a splotch on his cheek. Steak sauce or blood, he wasn't sure. "Finish your thoughts without my interruptions."

"Your biggest advantage comes from your work on the public safety board. You're chairman and have more day to day responsibility for the police and fire departments than Mayor Krohl. You want to run as a law and order candidate who has done everything necessary to turn the GCPD around in the name of the people... or something like that."

Kane unknotted his tie and stretched.

"Or something like that. In order to be the law and order candidate, I'll need cooperation with the police force to adequately portray myself as a friend of public safety. That's where you come in. The GCPD is a very powerful political organization is could be used just right. Pounding pavement and getting interested parties to vote."

Jim saw through the double talk. Pounding pavement = shakedowns. Interested parties to vote = stuffing ballot boxes.

"I don't play politics. Neither does my police force. We are non-partisan and we will stay that way."

Kane took a long sip of the scotch. Jim licked his lips. The Thirst called to him. He could hear it singing from the glass.

"Everybody plays politics. Everything is politics, and politics is everything. You're serving out the last two years of Commissioner Loeb's original term, right?"

"Hard for Loeb to serve as police commissioner when he's doing five to ten upstate."

"The next mayor decides who the next police commissioner will be, Jim, remember that."

Jim stared across the table at Kane. The suit and money and fancy dinners were all window dressing. It obfuscated the true image of David Kane. It made him look like a man of means. He was a man of one mean only. Fear. He was a Gotham politician, and they used fear the way the stick-up boys on the corner used their guns. Two sets of criminals divided by simple perception. 

"But the election is a long way off. If I do announce, it won't be until the spring or summer. Plenty of time to mull over my offer of support. Just think if over."

Jim stood and left without saying anything.



[center]*****[/center]


[b]Eastern Gotham
12:15 AM[/b]

"Well... shit."

Crispus Allen failed to get his lighter to start outside the rowhouse. His partner, Renee Montoya, worked the crime scene inside of the house. Uniforms from the Eastern District kept the crowds back. Words was Inspector Essen was inbound. The call: Multiple 187s at the address. Three DBs all gunned down execution-style, their hands and legs bound with duct tape. A normal murder would rate simple homicide. Something like this drug in the MCU. Per Gordon's mandate, they got priority over potential gangland killings, even above Flass' own mob squad. 

Allen gave up on the smoke and went back in. Tech cameras flashed through the room. A two man crew covered every inch of the living room taking shots. Three adult bodies covered in black tarps lay on the floor. One positive ID: Lil Walter Perkins, eastside dealer known to traffic huge amounts of horse and dope. A single black female killed was probably Perkins' woman, the man some kind of friend. Allen lifted the tarp and looked at Perkins' body. Contusion around the chest and head, at least what was left of the head, and broken fingers on both hands. 

"Renee?"

Montoya appeared from another room, eyebrow raised.

"Yeah?"

"You do a once over on Perkins' body?"

"Yeah. I caught the bruises and bones. Think it's torture?"

"If I were a betting man."

Allen stood and started to walk the room. Nothing missing from the pad. Sixty inch TV on the wall still intact, same with electronics. Somebody wanted Perkins' stash. He put on latex gloves and carefully tossed the living room behind the CS techs. Nothing around the couches or chairs. All the walls were solid. Allen pulled up short on the mantle. Wood grain inconsistency. Lines stood out. He ran his fingers around it and found a catch. The lower half of the mantle swung open. A hidden compartment. Allen looked in and saw... bupkis. Narco had Perkins pushing a hundred K in drugs a month and... nothing in his stash spot?

"Renee! I think I may have found out why they were killed."