Zimmerman's Algorithm

1.01 Sun. Feb. 15

Gideon awoke to the sounds of two uniformed officers pulling a man with a video camera out of his room. Gideon had just opened his eyes, and for a few moments all he could focus on was the fish-eye lens of the camera, and his own reflection in it. He looked like hell.

Then one of the officers reached a hand over the lens, pushing the camera back. The cameraman didn't move quite as fast as the officer was pushing and the camera tilted back over his shoulder. The camera fell with a crash to the floor. "That's private property," the cameraman yelled as the two officers pulled him out of the door.

"And this is a private room," said a familiar voice from the opposite side of the room. Gideon turned his head, and felt the pull of tubes that went up his nose and down his throat. He wanted to spit up the foreign object, but he could only manage a hacking wheeze. He tried to raise his hand to his throat, but it was immobilized in a heavy cast.

Gideon managed to turn enough to confirm that the speaker was who he thought it was. It was Chief Conroy, which explained the cameraman. Every step Conroy took was controversial, if only because everyone thought of him as the token white on the force. Whatever he did, someone would accuse him of being racially motivated. The man had a lot more respect from inside the force than he had outside it. Very few D.C. residents, most of whom thought of the police as the enemy in the first place, understood why Mayor Harris dragged in some white guy from California to run the police department.

Gideon had to close his eyes. Waking up here, with chaos swirling around him, was disorienting enough to make his head ache. He felt light-headed, drugged, a sensation as if his body was tumbling through space with only the most tenuous connection to his head.

Outside, the reporter shouted, "This is suppression of the media!"

Gideon forced his eyes open to see Conroy shake his head and turn to one of the three staffers who'd accompanied him. Conroy waved at where the camera had fallen. "Get that camera—and an appropriately-worded letter of explanation—to that man's employer."

The staffer walked toward the door.

"And empty it first," Conroy added. The staffer nodded as he left.

Gideon tried to say something, but he found it too hard to talk. His throat was raspy, and there was a tube down it.

"Detective Malcolm?" Conroy approached Gideon.

Gideon shook his head. It was beginning to sink in, what had happened, why he was here. The memory was painful enough that Gideon tried to recapture the sense of floating disorientation he'd had before.

He had seen Raphael die.

He remembered his brother's death, and his mind wouldn't let go of the image.

Conroy shook his head, attempting to be sympathetic, and the sight only made Gideon angry. He tried to yell at him to get out, to leave him alone, but all he managed was a painful cough. All the anger and frustration balled up in Gideon's gut with no way out. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, and it felt as if the acid in his stomach would burn a hole in him all the way to the floor.

His vision blurred, and he closed his eyes.

Gideon felt Conroy's hand on his good shoulder. Gideon wanted to pull away, roll over, but he didn't even have the strength to flinch.

"I know," Conroy said. "It's an awful mess."

Gideon shook his head. He felt a wave of resentment for Conroy. Who the fuck was he to sympathize? Conroy must have sensed Gideon's sentiment, because he withdrew his hand.

Mess? Gideon thought. It was a disaster. What happened? He stared at Conroy, trying to will an answer from the man. What the hell happened?

Conroy took out a business card, and placed it on the nightstand next to Gideon's bed. "You can call my office if you need anything."

Gideon stared up at Conroy's face and felt a burning, unreasoning hatred. He wanted Conroy to feel just a little of what he felt right now.

Conroy turned and walked around the front of the bed and spoke. Gideon felt as if Conroy was talking through him, rehearsing a speech. It intensified Gideon's feeling that he wasn't completely here with Conroy, that he was watching everything from a great distance.

"What happened to you and your brother was a disastrous case of mistaken identity." Conroy looked up, past Gideon. The loss of eye contact made everything seem even more far away. "Apparently the Justice Department had custody of the Daedalus thieves about twenty-four hours after the computer was stolen.

They kept their capture, and the recovery of the supercomputer, under wraps because the Secret Service wanted to run a sting operation to nab the 'terrorists' who contracted the theft." He shook his head. "I'm not surprised nobody informed our department about it, but I don't have any idea why no one apprised the Bureau."

Gideon felt his gut tighten in a knot. It was one thing to get taken down by the bad guys. That was a risk that he, and Rafe, accepted as going with the territory. The idea that this had happened because of some interdepartmental screwup was worse than infuriating.

"The papers are already talking about this in the same breath as Waco and Ruby Ridge. The Secret Service has promised me its own internal investigation, and there's talk on the Hill of a Congressional hearing."

Gideon closed his eyes. He wanted Conroy to leave. He didn't want to hear anymore. All he wanted to do was find that little corner of unconsciousness he had before these men had awakened him.

He heard Conroy say, after a moment, "We better leave him to rest."

Gideon was gratified to hear the Police Chief and his entourage leave the room. He was left mired in his own thoughts about himself, and Rafe, and the Secret Service, and what the hell went wrong.

After that, his only other visitor was a uniformed cop stationed outside his door to keep out reporters.

He came in and ate what passed for dinner and told Gideon what a raw deal the Feds had given him.

Gideon just shut his eyes until the man went away.

There was no one else. Rafe was his only real family since his dad had died. There was his sister-in-law, Monica, but Gideon hardly knew her. They'd married after Raphael had moved to New York. Now she was burying her husband because he'd come down to "visit." Gideon suspected that she would blame him for Raphael's death.

Gideon found it pretty easy to blame himself. It had been his call, his tip. It should have been him taking the fatal shot. Rafe was the one with a decent career, a wife, a family . . . Who the hell would miss the fuckup, Gideon Malcolm?

He couldn't sleep. He spent most of the time drifting through a haze of semiconsciousness. During one particularly lucid moment, when his self-loathing had reached a momentary nadir, he could hear a television from beyond the open door to his room.

". . . from the Treasury Department. While there was a federal warrant issued, there was no notification of local authorities. Beyond those basic facts, neither the Treasury Department nor the Justice Department have issued any comment. Attorney General Alexander Lloyd told the media in a press conference today, quote, 'This entire episode is a tragic accident, and I take full responsibility for it.'

"Elsewhere in the Capital, there is growing sentiment in Congress for a full investigation of the shooting."

The sound changed, and Gideon heard a different voice giving a sound bite. "It's clear here that some segments of federal law enforcement have gotten out of control. We have a federal culture that is completely without accountability. Congress abdicated its task of overseeing the executive branch when President Rayburn was elected. . . "

Gideon closed his eyes and tried to tune out the news broadcast.

Not only had he gotten Rafe killed, he had done it before a national audience. It was ridiculous, Congressional hearings? Christ, every problem D.C. had was because Congress was directly involved in the city government. Congress was why the city couldn't afford new police cars, or more and better-trained police officers. It was why the city government was constantly on the edge of bankruptcy—so much so that the city offices didn't have basic things like paper clips or staplers.

The haggard D.C. police department was a direct consequence of federal control of the District budget, and Chief Conroy—the white knight from the West Coast— couldn't do much about it.

Gideon wasn't one of the blacks who thought Conroy was part of some racial conspiracy, but he also wasn't one who believed that Conroy was turning the force around single-handed. As far as Gideon was concerned, as long as Congress was involved in city finances, nobody could.

The idea of a Congressional investigation of what happened came across as some kind of sick joke. What they would probably find was that Rafe had died because some bureaucrat in the city government couldn't afford toner for his fax machine, and never received the warrant from the Treasury Department.

But even as his consciousness slipped away again, he couldn't help thinking about the silencers.