Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

Sig Scarr didn’t fall in with Torstein instantly the way some of us had. I suppose because he already had a very strong addiction vying for his allegiance. He still stumbled home from Sharky’s many a night, highly intoxicated. But some nights, he would come and find us after work, before he went drinking, and some nights, he would go home sober.

Little by little, if there weren’t too many people around, he would share bits of his work, which was such a great source of heartache to him. A few of our city’s finest had been wooed by Nikolai to help him in little ways — to warn him when a drug ring was getting close to busted, to turn a blind eye to the streets where his stable of prostitutes plied their trade, to ignore illegal betting and black-market trading ... a few, sadly, had been enticed or pressured into doing more than just ignoring crimes and had begun to commit them.

These were the ones Sig was tasked to discover and weed out. If he found one, and got the goods on him, then his mission was to maneuver that one into rolling on another. It was gritty work, and Sig was good at it. But it required secrecy and long-term planning. He might watch a particular officer discreetly for a year before ever making any kind of move on him.

“You get to know the guy in a year,” he told us one night. “He’s not a criminal. He started out a good cop with a good heart. He’s got a wife and two little boys, they maybe have a big German shepherd dog. He doesn’t see any harm in not busting some pitiful crack whores. They’re just trying to make a living. And he gets a nice bonus from Nikolai, enough money to take his wife and kids to Disneyworld once a year ...”

Torstein nodded in sympathy. “How do you feel about having to ruin a man like that?”

“Terrible!” Sig said. “If it was just that, if it ended there, I wouldn’t interfere. The kid’s otherwise a good cop. But once Nikolai gets his hooks into them, it doesn’t stop. He might ask the kid to bust a pimp from a rival gang trying to muscle in on that street. Now we got a basically good cop doing a favor for a mobster. Yah, it’s part of his job what he’s doing, but he’s doing it because Nikolai asked him to. It’s little things, little things, and then you’re in so far with the little stuff, when he asks for something big you have to do it or else you’re screwed.”

“Or maybe you turn up, asking questions,” Torstein suggested.

“Yeah. That might be it, too.”

We could tell, the way Sig leaned forward hunching his shoulders, rubbing his forehead, it wasn’t hypothetical. There was some kid-cop he’d been watching for a year, and now either he’d discovered something horrible, or he was going to start pressuring the kid with what he knew.

“Maybe I should just quit,” he said. “I could go into private security like a lot of officers do. Get out of this mess. Maybe I could just retire and spend more time down here, with you.”

Sully and Tartan were rolling in the grass just a few feet away. The dog was so smart, it would run through the playground like an obstacle course with Sully, jumping over the swings from the swing-set like hurdles, climbing the ladder up the slide and running down the slide, and when Sully went hand-over-hand hanging from the monkey bars, Tartan would bite onto a rope around Sully’s shoe and be carried across hanging by his teeth. It was hilarious to watch.

Sig looked up at them now, and said, “I could forget all this and just sit in the park with you.”

Torstein reached out and put his hand on Sig’s shoulder.

“You could,” he said. “You’d be welcome.”

Sig looked away from Tartan and Sully into Torstein’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said.

“Your wife, too, you know. Whatever we can do to help you ...”

“I’ve thought about it a million times. The job is getting to me, has been for years now ... but I’m a good cop. And I don’t like to see an officer betraying the people we’re supposed to protect. I don’t wanna hurt this guy ... but can I let him go on down the path to hell? I don’t know what to do.”

Torstein’s hand was still on his shoulder.

“It’s not up to you to bring justice to the world. You can get out of the game.”

“If it’s not up to me ... who’s it up to?”

“What’s up to you is to do justice in your own life. You can’t make someone else do it. You could retire, you could spend the rest of your days discovering what it means to do justice, to love mercy ... You could join us here, in a heartbeat.”

Their eyes were still locked on each other, but now Sig turned away, changed the subject.

“I got wire taps a few places.” He grimaced as if the idea were distasteful to him. “Nikolai doesn’t understand what you’re doing here. He sent a message one of the guys should check you out. You oughta be careful who you take in.”

“Thanks,” Torstein said. “I can afford not to be careful, because people like you are being careful for me.”

“Guy’s name is Waverling. I think you know him.”

The detective who had taken us in when Angel thought Sully had been kidnapped.

Torstein’s eyes brightened. “He seemed like a good man. I am sure if he comes to check us out, he won’t be telling any tales to Nikolai.”

Sig nodded. “Okay, forewarned is forearmed. I have to move on this other thing, pretty soon now. I’ve been putting it off, thinking maybe I’d just retire ... I know I won’t. I’ll see it through. But I may not be around for a while. Things will get busy once I put this in motion.”

“I understand,” Torstein said. “We’ll be here, any time.”