The Good Boy Read Online Free

the place a once-over first.
    It was also natural that he was more pissed when Butch didn’t find anything.
    After the search, Jetty cornered Pete and went into this whole thing about how he thought K9 was nothing more than a public relations unit the bosses liked to parade around—to schools, the occasional crime scene, and, well, parades—so that moms and kids in nice neighborhoods thought the police were nice, too. That’s magic, he had said, except that the real part—the work part—might as well have been part of the act. Butch was trained above all else to please his master, and would sooner have sniffed out a packet of mustard than come away with nothing.
    Pete said Jetty’s argument was backward, because what it implied was that Butch would find something that wasn’t there, and in saying so, he realized that what Jetty was actually pissed about was that Butch hadn’t found the drugs that Jetty didn’t have the chance to put there.
    Everybody knows Jetty is loyal to the blue, third-generation CPD, all that. They also know he thinks a junkie he talked to six years ago qualifies as today’s snitch if he’ll help move a case. But until that night, Pete didn’t know evidence was as adaptable, and that Jetty was the one planting the mustard.
    “Pony,” Majette says, stalking brick-shouldered toward Pete, hands in fists, eyes dilated, the Job his drug of choice. “What the hell are you doing police work for?”
    “Vehicle matched the description for the Hustler car that Dispatch put out citywide. Turns out the bangers inside are just regular assholes.”
    Majette looks at the van. “It’s not them.”
    “I just said.”
    “So you stop them and what, you’re waiting around for them to get themselves arrested?” Jetty’s being a dick, but he knows—hell, every cop who works the street knows—that all it takes to arrest a guy like Ja’Kobe White is a little time. And that’s because a banger is always up to something; it’s just a matter of waiting long enough to catch him while he’s up to it.
    The rub of the Job, once again, is that Pete can’t do anything. A badge doesn’t give him the right to stop White from doing wrong; a badge only gives him the so-called privilege to go get the guy after he’s done it.
    A light rain starts, angling off Jetty’s balding head, and Pete knows he should cut them loose—Ja’Kobe and friends, because they’re more trouble than the bust is worth and Jetty, because he’d base a narc case on the munchies—so he says, “I’m going to let them slide.”
    “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Majette says. “Is this how it goes with you? You stop them. You’re the one with the dog. And you’re going to waste my time?”
    “You can go, Jetty.”
    “What I mean is, I’m on this BFM case now three weeks, and I come over here, and you’re not going to take your dog for a walk around the vehicle?” He licks a raindrop from his upper lip. “What. Is he still afraid of the rain?”
    “Butch is fine,” Pete says. It’s Jetty who’s jonesing for a bust, and he must figure Pete owes it to him.
    “Then how about you get your sidekick, and I’ll get mine.” Majette waves a stiff hand toward his squad, summoning a young cop Pete doesn’t recognize. He gets out, gets rain gear from the trunk.
    “Who’s that?” Pete hopes it’s somebody who doesn’t recognize him, either.
    “Name’s Bellwether. Comes over here from Twenty-three after the redistrict. Curious as a retarded cat.” Majette has a habit of saying everything in the present tense. It bothers some people, mostly the kind of people who pick a stupid thing to get bothered about and then let it be important enough to be the basis of an opinion about the guy, an opinion which can’t be any good, especially if it’s based just on the one stupid thing. What should bother them is that talking like that makes him sound like he’s telling the truth—the story as it happens, facts over recollection or