The Uprising

NOTE: In college, I directed a performance of “The Real Inspector Hound.” It’s a great little play, sort of a more surreal take on “Amadeus.” In it, a third-rate character takes his revenge on a second-rate character, after the second-rate character complains about the first-rate character and how unfair it is that he gets all the opportunity and glory. I ran with this idea, playing with the concept in a more eat-the-rich format. A lot of youth in this one…

CW: Descriptions of Suicide.

“Looks pretty cut and dried, Sir. Wrote the letter, pinned it to his leg, nicked himself as he did, and hung himself.”

Deputy Commissioner Rupert Keily stared up at the grotesque corpse of Bill Chesterfield, CEO of Cesterfield Inc. The slack form twisted gently in the AC from the overhead vents that were busy keeping the victim’s home office cool and breathable in the summer heat. Rupert slowly circumvented the corpse, noting the folds of the wrinkled slacks and rolled up dress shirt sleeves. He carefully lifted the left pant leg with a gloved finger, noting the small black clot of blood right beneath the safety pinned note. Deftly, Rupert unpinned the note, and inspected the sharp point. A small blot of dried blood tarnished the otherwise shiny pin. Rupert pulled the note off, and tossed the pin into a small evidence bag being held by Inspector Dryfuss.

“It does look simple, doesn’t it?” Rupert straightened up, gesturing for another bag. “Get that to the lab, check there aren’t any other fingerprints. Same with this note.”

“Something the matter, sir?” Dryfuss offered a second bag. Rupert shook his head.

“The Commissioner has been riding my ass lately,” he muttered, half to himself. “Ever since Lipton was killed, he’s got some kind of bug up his butt.”

Rupert circled the office, looking around corners of furniture. He poked at the window seams with a pencil, and ran his gloved fingers over the edges of the desk and filing cabinets. Dryfuss grunted sympathetically

“Well, I don’t blame him. The Mayor dies on my watch — it’d make me go a bit weird too. My wife’s trying to get me into Numerology. You ever heard of that?”

“No,” Rupert lied.

“Yeah, you turn your name into numbers — you know, the letter A equals one, that sort of thing. Anyway, your number tells you things about yourself, and who you’re compatible with — stupid as hell, but every day now she’s been doing algebra to figure out if she’s going to get a promotion, or if our kid’s going to ace a test.”

“So you feel my pain? Is that what you’re telling me, Inspector Dryfuss?” Rupert snickered. Dryfuss rolled his eyes.

“Fine, see if I ever reach out again. You just go brood by yourself. Without my shoulder to cry on, you end up like this guy. You ever wonder what would make a guy do this?” Dryfuss said, writing on the evidence bags with a thick black pen. “Why someone with this much money and power would up and off himself?”

“Must not have liked money and power all that much,” Rupert muttered, carefully feeling behind the couch. “I don’t pretend to know what it’s like, being a CEO, Inspector. I don’t think you know either.”

“Well, no…” Dryfuss shifted uncomfortably. “It’s just… if something was wrong, why didn’t he fix it? He had money for a doctor, or… I don’t know, whatever it was… I just can’t think what problem he had that he couldn’t fix, is all.”

Rupert stood up and looked again at the slowly rotating body. His face was pale with bloodshot eyes open and staring. Almost comically, his tongue had swollen and was sticking out of pale blue lips. “Dissatisfaction, Dryfuss,” Rupert shook his head. “The only reason anyone ever kills themselves — they think it’s better than the alternative.”

“Deputy Commissioner,” A woman officer stuck her head in the office, knocking on the door-frame. “Commissioner Jackson wants to speak with you.” Rupert’s jaw tightened involuntarily.

“Fine, I’ll give him a call when I’ve finished up here.”

“No need, sir,” the officer smiled awkwardly. “He just pulled up. I thought I should give you a heads up.”

“Thank you,” Rupert cringed. “You and the others head on home. We have everything here.” The officer nodded, and gave a little half wave as she left. So this was how it was going to be, was it? He turned back to the room, sighing theatrically as he pulled off his rubber gloves, tossing them to Dryfuss.

“Here — see if you can find anything,” he muttered as he began to collect his thoughts. He didn’t have long before a deep rumbling voice began to carry throughout the hallway. Commissioner Lucas Jackson had been a large, muscular man in his late thirties, but after five years as City Commissioner, the once rock-hard chest and chiseled jaw had begun the slow erosion to small jowls and a beer gut. His bright auburn hair had solidly embraced it’s middle age salt-and-peppering. His eyes were still sharp, though, and his voice still harsh and piercing. Lucas burst into the room like a cannonball, barking into his phone at one of his officers.

“I don’t give a fuck! You tell Goldman to either have a signed warrant on my desk by tomorrow morning, or Beeks is out on the streets again before lunchtime!” Lucas angrily slammed the phone into his palm several times until it hung up. His temperament was not one that took easily to the gentle and unassuming touch-screen.

“Goddamn fool moved on Beeks before the warrant moved through. Now we’ve got five probable convictions — Five! — that could be overturned by Tuesday. Goddamn Mickey Mouse baby shit! Now I’ve got to show up late to the Mayor’s party while I clean up!”

Rupert knew what that meant. Lucas was going to run around for a few hours yelling at anyone he could find who hadn’t gone home yet, while Rupert did all the clean up. Lucas would probably call in his two secretaries to handle all the day-to-day running of the department that the commissioner hadn’t finished, too. Stacks of payroll needed to be signed, reports read and summarized, duty rosters updated, and schedules put together and synchronized. They ran most everything in the department, while Lucas got to go off to parties and rub elbows with other rich men.

And it was important, of course, because without the benevolent charity of the wealthy, the department wouldn’t be able to fund itself. Lucas was already getting started, grumbling while he rubbed his head.

“We’re going to have seven kinds of hell from the ACLU again, and we just got through the last mess. Tell me, please tell me, Rupert, that you have something that will make my evening better.”

“It’s a suicide,” Rupert shrugged. “I’m sending some things to the labs, but I don’t see anything suspicious.”

Lucas grunted, and glanced sidelong at Dryfuss. Rupert could see his brain working furiously, and finally come to a decision. Lucas rubbed his head, and gestured Rupert into a corner of the room, licking his lips. They both stared at the blank wall for a few moments before Lucas finally rumbled in a sotto voice.

“Look — I didn’t want to talk to you about this,” he began, staring at nothing. “Lipton. The Mayor-elect doesn’t think it was an accident.”

“Lipton died in a car crash,” Rupert started, before Lucas hushed him.

“I know that, but he says Lipton was neck deep in some gambling debt. I don’t know how accurate all the rumors are, but I told him we’d check it out. No sense in burning bridges before they’re crossed, eh?”

“Sir,” Rupert coughed gently. “Isn’t this a bit of a waste of our resources for soothing a paranoid replacement?”

“Maybe,” Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “But I’m not going to tell him. I’ve put Dryfuss on special duty — he’s going to be looking into this for the next few weeks, and if anything else pops up, you put it on my desk, his, and no one else’s, you get me?”

Rupert swallowed carefully. Lucas had an odd look in his eye, like he was expecting Rupert to protest, or scoff. He could guess why. Inspector Dryfuss was relatively new to the precinct, transferred from out of town — not the ideal candidate for tackling something so publicly sensitive. Rupert put his hands in his pockets, and decided to give Lucas what he was after.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Sir? He’s new to the City — to this department. People won’t like him being given special privileges and poking around more than anyone else. He’s a good officer, but I think he’ll get some trouble from the lads over this. I’m not sure he’s the best choice for -”

“I know, I know, but who can I trust, eh?” Lucas rubbed his forehead again. Rupert raised an eyebrow. Of course — he could trust the new kid who hadn’t warmed up to anyone much yet. Then, if things went badly, he could shove Dryfuss under a bus, and no one would bat an eyelid.

“Commissioner,” Dryfuss’s voice sounded muffled. Lucas and Rupert both turned to see the bottom half of Dryfuss as he leaned out of the window. Pulling himself back in, he turned to them both, his brow furrowed. “Found some sort of symbol scratched into the siding. Might be a gang sign?”

Rupert’s heart sank as both he and the Commissioner walked to the window. Carefully, Rupert leaned over, dipping his head beneath the shrubs that lined the house. Sure enough, a small design, no bigger than the palm on his hand, was carved into the siding. It looked like a dollar sign, with the number two substituting for the S. Rupert sighed as he hoisted himself up again, moving out of the way for Lucas. He turned to Dryfuss, his face dour.

“Go call Sergeant Mitchell in Vice. He’s had some dealings with gangs, he might know who this is.” Dryfuss nodded, and walked out of the room, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

“Drag his ass down here by the short and curlys!” Lucas barked as he levered himself out of the window. “Have him run it through the gang files, if it’s a gang sign we’ll have it! God, I just hope we don’t have another cult problem like last year — that’d just be all I need.”

Rupert spun like a dancer, whipping his arm out at hip level. A muted bang echoed through the room, and Lucas felt something punch him in the chest, just below the shoulder blade, and then a spreading warmth. He tried to touch it with his hand, but his arm wouldn’t move. He looked at the smoking silenced gun in Rupert’s hand, and collapsed into the chair behind him as he felt his lungs slowly start to fill with blood, gently suffocating him. His surprise and anger must have shown on his face, because Rupert shrugged sadly.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Commissioner,” He waved the gun aimlessly around the room. “I know you probably think it’s jealousy, or madness… I promise you it’s something far more important than that.”

“You ever pay attention to the people who are more… hm… I guess, successful than you?” Rupert put his hands in his pockets, and moved around to Lucas’s side. “I mean really pay attention, not just glance or fawn, but really study? Watch them move, and talk, and eat? I can’t remember who said it — ’the Rich are just like everyone else, only richer.’ I checked — you’re worth seventy-five million dollars. That’s a lot of money, and I had been wracking my brain for months trying to fathom — trying to understand exactly what it is about you that makes you worth that much money, and then we figured it out.”

The door opened, and Dryfuss walked in, holding his phone with a bemused look on his face. He barely had time to look up before Rupert turned, gun in hand, and fired twice, hitting Dryfuss in the face. Blood sprayed into the room, and out into the hall, and Dryfuss staggered once, and collapsed, his corpse twitching. Rupert sighed, and placed the gun in Lucas’s limp hand. Walking carefully, he moved around to Dryfuss’s limp form, and pulled a second gun from his coat. Carefully, he lifted Dryfuss’s hand, and placed the gun underneath.

“Too bad you only winged him before he shot you twice, isn’t it?” he said soothingly to the body. “Sorry Dryfuss, I screwed it up. You were never supposed to see that sign.” Rupert stood as he slipped the photo into his pocket, and faced the quivering commissioner.

“You’re worth that much because that’s how much you say you’re worth. You schmooze, and that gets you to commissioner, and then you have friends, and you work well with them — and that means more schmoozers. An inverse pyramid of inept bosses, leaking all the way down to the streets. I suppose we can’t blame you — everyone has a talent. But here’s the kicker, boss. All that talent you have — the talent to make people believe you’re worth it — we don’t need it. And that’s the real tragedy. You, and all the CEOs, and Presidents, and Popes, and everyone on the very top… you don’t do any real work. It’s your secretaries, your deputies, and your caddies. We’re just as good as you, and we don’t need you. This world is run by the second in commands, and we’re tired of you claiming you’re worth so much. So we’re fixing it. One parasite at a time.”

“Don’t worry, Sir,” Rupert smiled as he saw the last light flicker and die in Lucas’s eye. “We’ll take care of everything.”

Rupert carefully stepped around the pooling blood on the floor, and walked out into the police station. Sergeant Mitchell would take over from here, making sure the right story was given to the press, the right evidence found, and the right statements made and replayed time and time again until everyone believed. Tomorrow, or perhaps next week, he would be commissioner. He grinned. It really was quite ironic, really. For the City, nothing would fundamentally change. He had run the department for six years — it wouldn’t change at all.

Smiling, Rupert switched on the television in the central office, just in time to hear the special announcement from the Vice President of the United States.