Fools Trade

Fools Trade TJ Arant Copyright Copyright © 2023 by TJ Arant All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious or used in a fictitious way. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Contents Epigraph 1. Chapter 1 2. Chapter 2 3. Chapter 3 4. Chapter 4 5. Chapter 5 6. Chapter 6 7. Chapter 7 8. 9. Chapter 9 10. Chapter 10 11. Chapter 11 12. Chapter 12 13. Chapter 13 14. 15. Chapter 15 16. 17. 18. Chapter 18 19. Chapter 19 20. Chapter 20 21. Chapter 21 22. Chapter 22 23. Chapter 23 24. Chapter 24 25. Chapter 25 26. Chapter 26 27. Chapter 27 28. Chapter 28 29. 30. Chapter 30 31. Chapter 31 32. Chapter 32 33. Chapter 33 34. Chapter 34 35. Chapter 35 36. Chapter 36 37. Chapter 37 Also By TJ Arant Epigraph "He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, . . . or a whore's oath." King Lear (III, vi, 19-21) Chapter 1 A pril 1980 Anson Sayers looked across the desk at me. His gray eyes bored like a frozen laser into mine. Cold but meaningful. “How do you feel about the police academy, Jackson?” Typical shrink question. Not leading anywhere. “I was invited. I guess I feel… invited?” “Do you feel special? Does the invitation imply anything like that?” I didn’t feel special. Any more special than I’d felt in the jungle in Vietnam. I was there not because I was special but to do a job. “It’s a job.” “Some might say that it’s a special job. One that’s difficult to do.” As usual, Anson was doodling on a notepad in his lap. Even when he looked at me, he seemed to be drawing, like an artist savant who didn’t need to look at the pad to create something. I corrected him. “Difficult to do right.” Any damn fool can wear a shield. Lots of damn fools did. “Still.” He sketched at something. “The feeling must be a good one. An important part of society has invited you in, has said that they want you to be a part of them. Yes?” More circles. More lines. “Do you feel validated in some sense?” To be honest, I didn’t know how I felt about it at all. Detective Bobby Flood had greased the skids. He knew someone who knew someone. I was ex-military. I didn’t have a record. I had a college degree. And I’d been in on three prominent busts that Metro had missed. Two they’d missed because they were lazy. One they’d missed because they didn’t care. Flood believed it was skill, that I had a talent. “Luck,” said the monster inside my head. Right place, right time. Nothing more than that. Anson was my therapist. I’d started seeing him because I had stopped drinking so much, but I hadn’t stopped being the person who needed to drink. Battle fatigue, some called it. Shell shock. All I knew was that the nightmares kept coming. Loud noises still shot me through the roof. Everything in the world, anything in the world, made me hypervigilant, ready to spring. Or ready to run. And I wasn’t getting any better. Drinking through the day didn’t help, and I’d given it plenty of time. I didn’t want to try something stronger, like drugs. Or something different, like losing my mind. So I was trying therapy. Anson was good at letting the silence happen. All I could hear was his pencil scratching on the notepad. Finally, I spoke. “I may not make it through the academy.” “It can’t be harder than basic training was.” I imagined his pencil making bombs, blowing everything sky high. “What’s so hard about it?” It wasn’t the physical training. It wasn’t the weapons instruction. I’d even abandoned my post-enlistment dread of firearms and bought a couple for myself. It wasn’t the driving or the ethics or the intricacies of patrolling. All those things had analogues in the army, and Anson was right, there wasn’t anything in the academy that was as hard as combat, even if the instructors would have you believe that it was combat out on the streets every night. Or could be. No, I hated the return to a chain of command. Vietnam had demonstrated that the chain of command was a chain made to strangle the enlisted man. Out in the bush, leading a squad, I had some small measure of control, of flexibility, but get me in a situation where an officer was around, and I was always one smart-ass comment from the stockade. Being a cop, starting at the bottom of a rigorously hierarchical organization, was likely a recipe for failure. Eventually. I could see it already in my academy class. I was one of the best in all the curriculum elements. I had a four-year degree. I excelled in firearms. Despite my old Impala, I also finished top of class in emergency operation of vehicles. And combat had done one thing in spades: it made me someone who aced all the practical exercises. Once you have been shot at for real, everything else seems easy. Or at least predictable. My mouth finally opened. “What’s hard is taking orders.” “Is that a problem for you? You’ve taken orders before, haven’t you?” “This is different, Anson. This is taking orders when I’m used to being on my own. When I’m content to do my own thing.” He raised his eyebrows and softened his eyes so they didn’t bore in on me. “Isn’t that the reason for the order of command? So that the work can be done safely and effectively?” “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just one big clusterfuck. Like the Army.” He