Ring of Fire II(199)

That spoke well of her, of course, but Noelle still thought it was silly. She and Eddie had nailed the bastard, sure enough. It hadn't even been all that hard, once they started digging. Like untold thousands of officials before him, Bolender had been sloppy about his demands for kickbacks before he assigned contracts. That was due more to arrogance than actual stupidity, probably, but the end result was no different. It was easy for an up-time official to get careless on the subject of bribes, since most down-timers took bribing officials to be a routine cost of business.



He'd get a long, hard sentence, too. Bolender was not the first up-timer to have been caught breaking the law, but he was far and away the most prominent. Judge Tito was well known for his lack of leniency toward up-timers, because he was bound and determined to prove to the citizens of the SoTF—which had one million people in it all told—that the tiny percentage of them who were of American origin weren't going to be getting any special treatment or favors from the law.



Tony looked back at Noelle. "What else looks to be turning up? Besides Bolender and the Cunninghams and Norman Bell, I mean."



"Nothing definite, yet. But Eddie and I are still digging. We don't think we rooted it all out, by any means. We're almost certain that Stan Myers' tip regarding Mickey Simmons is a good one."



"How about Myers himself?" asked Carol. "It wouldn't be the first time a crook tried to deflect suspicion by fingering somebody else."



Noelle shook her head. "Eddie and I don't think Stan's dirty. For one thing, because we just don't. Beyond that, Stan's in charge of the fire department's training program. He simply doesn't have access to the kind of temptation to ask for kickbacks that somebody like Bolender did. He's got a hard enough time, as it is, getting volunteers for the fire department, given all the other economic opportunities around."



Tony chuckled. "True enough. I can remember my dad complaining when he had to pass the dispatcher a five dollar bill to get work out of his union  's hiring hall. Which was not the UMWA," he added self-righteously. "But those jobs paid well, so he thought it was worth the baksheesh. Most of the fire department posts are volunteer. Don't pay anything more than expenses."



Carol nodded. "I was just raising the possibility. I like Stan, myself, and I've never gotten any sense he was crooked. Mickey Simmons, though . . ." She made a face. "Well, I should keep personalities out of it, I suppose."



"He's a prick," stated Adducci. "He's always been a prick. Why the hell it took Lorraine so long to give him the heave-ho was always a mystery to me." He straightened up in his chair. "Just for the record. But I agree we should keep personalities out of it. There is such a thing as an honest assho—uh, butthead, here and there. But I won't be surprised at all if Mickey turns out not to be one of them."



He mused for a moment, apparently lost in remembrances of things past. "He really is a Grade A prick. But let's move on to the rest. How about the down-timers, Carol? Any decision yet from the attorney general?"



"I just talked to Christoph yesterday. He feels in an awkward position, given that he's a down-timer himself, so he stressed that he'd defer to your judgment on the matter. Still, he thinks it would be a mistake to press charges against any of the down-timers, if their only involvement was having their arm twisted into paying the kickbacks. I'm inclined to agree."



Adducci grunted. "Yeah, so am I. Not that seventeenth-century Germans haven't got at least as fine-tuned a sense of lawyering as any West Virginian ever did. They knew damn good and well they were breaking the law too. Still, you have to make allowances for the chaos caused by fifteen years of war half-wrecking the Germanies. People slide into bad habits in situations like that. For us to run around hammering everybody probably wouldn't be a good idea. Still, this is it, folks. You also gotta watch out for being paternalistic about these things. Down-timers ain't children. Once these cases break and we start putting people in prison, let's make sure the message gets out to every businessman in the province who's thinking of cutting a deal beneath the table. Do it again, and we'll bust you, sure and certain."



Noelle thought their attitude was probably the right one to take, though she was even more inclined than they were not to err on the side of paternalistic tolerance. It's just their traditional ways, baloney. Her partner Eddie Junker was a down-timer, and he'd never had any trouble recognizing that paying a kickback was just as illegal, if not perhaps as personally reprehensible, as demanding it in the first place.