Descendants of Giants

Descendants of Giants:

Some men might want what I have. But they don’t know the price I paid: the price we all paid for where we now stand. And it won’t ever be something that can be quantified, or numbered.

What we give up is our motivation for more, for better. What we give for our power is something precious that we can’t have the right to give, even if that something was half ours to begin with.

Chapter:

My name is Mckine; a detective for the great state of Florida. Known as the land of retirees, and relentless days of sun.

“George! Chief wants you in his office—NOW.”

The chief’s wife is by no measure, a small woman. She’s known me since I was in high school—so; her calling me George was probably warranted. Not that our history matters to those guys a few desks down from me; who either cower in fear at her mention or laugh like the fools they’ve earned their names for being.

“On it,”

I put a few report files in a stack by my work monitor; big, clunky and as in need of an upgrade as anything else in this office.

When I pull back the old wood door, the characteristic grunt of the telephone slamming down on the rough old receiver comes through. The chiefs’ metallic lined boots glint in the flash of fluorescents’ from outside—breaking the chiefs’ dim light noir office until it shuts slowly behind me.

“Chief?”

Those boots stay planted as he nods to a little piece of imitation period furniture. A small red couch with leather sewed down into its wood back. He takes a long draw from his cigar, before snuffing it out in an ashtray.

“A call just came in. Woman mentioned your name, Mckine.”

He took another long draw from the cigar, lighting it briefly before snuffing it out again.

“…Damn smoke alarms, a man has a right to his habits…Don’t you think so, Mckine?”

“…Chief, the woman?”

The chief lived life in a noir film. Up until now his wife had been dreading the day he started to use the films dialogues’ in his everyday life. But there was no stopping it.

“She wants you down at the museum on fourth; they found a body in one of their exhibits.”

The file was covered in a layer of grey ashes. It had been sitting underneath the ash tray probably from the moment the woman had called it in. But complaining wasn’t worth the time it would take; as much as the feeling of ashes on my fingers made me cringe.

“The womans’ name—the one who called it in?”

“Minney-Molly something or other; anyway, you’ll find her Mckine. You’re a detective.”

I headed out to the car, facing a blast of heat from the famous, bright sun-filled sky. Part of me had never understood why my parents had driven us here to live all the way from Nebraska—the same part of me that wondered why I hadn’t left when I could.