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Technically, that was robbery, but…  
    “How can there be a robbery without any intent?” I asked.  
    “I can’t talk about the case,” he said. “Get in touch with your union delegate.”  
    I did.  
     
    As a union delegate, Butch always seemed like a sharp enough guy.  
    Then again, I never had any real union problems.  
    One time about a year before, I got beefed on a demeanor. It was a pretty righteous complaint insofar as I did call the guy a piece of shit. I guess it didn’t matter that he was a prolific thief with a record dating back to diapers, which he also probably stole. I called him a piece of shit because he was stealing money from his own grandmother. The last person in the world who seemed to think he had some good left in him. But what I found out was that it didn’t really matter to the chief of police whether or not calling the guy a piece of shit was true or not. It only mattered that it was rude and unprofessional and the piece of shit in question decided to complain about it.  
    Problem was, my demeanor complaint happened during a period of time in which one shit storm after another hit the department. Half a dozen officers were being investigated for excessive force in one case, sexual misconduct in another and racial profiling in a third. Major cases, with lots of media play. Most of the cases turned out to be complete bullshit, but they still ate up tons of investigative resources. My little demeanor slip up barely registered, so by the time Internal Affairs got to it, went through the mandatory interviews and sent it to the Chief’s office for disposition, the process took too long.  
    Butch came in with a copy of the contract, said he’d grieve the finding if the Chief went through with a founded complaint, regardless of how light the sanction was. It didn’t matter, he said. “They gotta play by the rules,” he told me, pointing at the contract. “Everyone agreed.”  
    The Chief clenched his jaw and glared, but in the end, the whole thing was dropped.  
    In hindsight, the timeline thing seemed less like a stroke of brilliance and more like an Easter egg, but at the time, it gave me some hope to have Butch on my side for this so-called robbery beef I was facing now.  
    We met at a quiet coffee shop that I’d never been to before. When I mentioned that, he nodded and smiled. “Yeah, cops never come here. Don’t have to worry about running into the brass, either. No one can overhear what we talk about. It’s a good place. I call it my office.”  
    The coffee was shitty, but I suppose that was the price you paid for having a brass-free hideaway. I sipped the brackish brew while Butch went through my file with me.  
    “See, here’s the thing,” he said. “There’s no intent.”  
    “That’s what I told the IA Lieutenant.”  
    He scowled. “Like he’ll listen. That fucker is too busy running his side business from his office. You don’t have to worry about him. What you gotta worry about is whoever they assign the case to in Major Crimes for criminal investigation. The IA dick will just piggyback off that, anyway.”  
    “Who’s that?”  
    “Kyle Falkner.”  
    I stared at him.  
    “What?”  
    “You’re kidding me.”  
    “No. Falkner was up. He caught the case.”  
    “Shit. Can you change it?”  
    He frowned at me. “You’re asking me if a union delegate can ask the Major Crimes sergeant to reassign a robbery case? No, wait…an Internal Affairs robbery case?  Is that a real question?”  
    “Yeah, it’s a real fucking question. Can you?”  
    He shook his head. “Dude, I can’t even ask something like that without some compelling reason. And even then, they don’t have to do it. It’s an operational call.”  
    I leaned back in my chair. “Fuck.”  
    “What’s the problem with Falkner? Besides him being kind of an asshole, I mean?”  
    I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”  
    “It could. You got a personal issue