"Other than the fact that he's crazy? Not much else. We got no name, no history, no record of him ever existing when we ran his prints. What we know about him could have been written on the back of a postage stamp."
Jim took off his glasses. They were still scratched up from when he fell; struck by Harvey on the back of the head. He was usually so careful with them, and now that he was here, he had neither their case nor his spares. He felt the imperfections on the surface rather than saw them, running his thumb back over the scratches.
"You see a lot of criminals in a career like mine. Everyone is doing it for some reason. People do it because it's easy, or because they can't see any other way to support themselves or their kids. Mostly it's money. What isn't? But him? He stole the mob's money; millions and millions of dollars. And from what I hear he burned it. It's easy to write him off as crazy, but he's not. He's a genius. The DNA evidence he left on a body belonged to his next victims. The traps he'd planted were carefully chosen so they wouldn't be triggered until exactly the right time. He even maneuvered us into shutting down the bridges and tunnels so that we'd end up shipping prisoners out by ferry."
And the last bit, the bit that really stung:
"I faked my death to catch the son of a bitch, and you know what? He was planning for that, too. I've never had to deal with that kind of criminal before. Someone who's so much leaps and bounds ahead of the mobsters and slum lords that it's all I can do to keep up, let alone get the jump on them." A look. "It was all you could do, too. That's why it couldn't just be you--that's why I had to save you."
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Jim took off his glasses. They were still scratched up from when he fell; struck by Harvey on the back of the head. He was usually so careful with them, and now that he was here, he had neither their case nor his spares. He felt the imperfections on the surface rather than saw them, running his thumb back over the scratches.
"You see a lot of criminals in a career like mine. Everyone is doing it for some reason. People do it because it's easy, or because they can't see any other way to support themselves or their kids. Mostly it's money. What isn't? But him? He stole the mob's money; millions and millions of dollars. And from what I hear he burned it. It's easy to write him off as crazy, but he's not. He's a genius. The DNA evidence he left on a body belonged to his next victims. The traps he'd planted were carefully chosen so they wouldn't be triggered until exactly the right time. He even maneuvered us into shutting down the bridges and tunnels so that we'd end up shipping prisoners out by ferry."
And the last bit, the bit that really stung:
"I faked my death to catch the son of a bitch, and you know what? He was planning for that, too. I've never had to deal with that kind of criminal before. Someone who's so much leaps and bounds ahead of the mobsters and slum lords that it's all I can do to keep up, let alone get the jump on them." A look. "It was all you could do, too. That's why it couldn't just be you--that's why I had to save you."