Mario Balzic
4 total works
Rumors of cutbacks during election time were hardly a novelty, especially in the wake of the Reagan-Bush trickle-down eighties. Already the Sanitation Department, the city's vehicle mechanics, its plumber, and two carpenters were history, replaced by private contractors. Nevertheless, Rocksburg hadn't had a big firing in years. When Balzic gets a summons from the mayor, the last thing on his mind is police layoffs. The chief finds himself forced to eliminate five officers, leaving him twenty-five members to police a city of fifteen thousand. As Mayor Kenny Strohn puts it, a city with a boarded-up Main Street and an empty treasury hardly has a choice. Yet Balzic - profane, arrogant, occasionally dangerous, and up until now, a survivor - is losing more than his policing capability. He's also losing his imagination. From somewhere inside his own department, a new and even more unexpected menace has surfaced. Witnesses report a small number of heavily armed, camouflaged commandos rappelling out of blue-and-white helicopters. Rocksburg may not have much left, but someone is willing to outfit and deploy a small private army to get it. They call it privatization. They say it works better than government. But Balzic's job is to protect his city. And Balzic's city is not for sale. It's all been happening under Balzic's chin, and he never saw it. The cop who never voted, who always pretended he was above power plays and politics, now has to perform the easiest and the hardest act of his career. Look down.
Gliding on his pension and reflecting on his life, Mario Balzic wishes he could start all over. He's about to get his wish. Balzic is haunting his home, driving his wife, Ruth, crazy. She wants him out of the house, but she doesn't want him back in law enforcement. Balzic's haunting Muscotti's, driving Vinnie the bartender crazy. He's at the tavern, a man whose single greatest asset is time on his hands, when Deputy Attorney General Warren Livingood, the well-dressed refugee from Philadelphia's Main Line, walks in - and makes his case to western Pennsylvania's crankiest and canniest ex-cop. Seventeen years before, a drug deal went sour in a mountain log cabin, yielding two corpses and an ensuing history of mistrials, appeals, and verdict reversals. Now a variety of cons from a variety of prisons are spilling several variations on this single sorry tale. The stench of police misconduct and coerced perjury is in the air. High political reputations are on the line. As a former professional with no debts to settle, Balzic is the man for the job. Livingood gives him the title of special investigator, state credentials, and thirty-five dollars an hour. It seems like the answer to everyone's prayers. Then Balzic's jailhouse interviews lead him into a jurisdiction that could be the devil's own. There he confronts his counterpart, but hardly his brother: a small-town police chief, now paralyzed by stroke, who in his prime ruled his borough by blood and terror. In uncovering the history of one monster in human form, Balzic will enter his personal heart of darkness - and shoulder a staggering debt that will be hell to pay.