One Department

by Thomas A. Young

  “You know,” he began, “you’ve had some time to rest up from your adventures, so it’s getting to be time we took care of business. Now I don’t know what sort of issues you have going on, but if I’m going to be of any help with them, then I sort of need to.”

  Elena looked down at her food. “Could we just finish eating?”

  Randy nodded. “Sure.”

  * * *

  Elena had appetites of her own. On a typical evening, (and this one was typical,) as soon as dinner was down the hatch it was into the sack, and please don’t bore me with any goddamn foreplay.

  Elena would shove him down on his back (literally shove him) then climb aboard and rock back and forth until she got happy. She didn’t take her time either, she liked getting right to the point. After that it was Randy’s turn to do whatever made him happy. Not knowing how long this situation was going to last, he was indulging in a little variety.

  The only trouble Randy had with all this was that she wanted that treatment every single day. Which aside from killing the time he normally spent on projects, was really testing his stamina. He was forty-one and she was twenty-six. He could keep up with her, but not by a hell of a lot. When he thought about it though, he had to admit that he’d contended with bigger problems in his life than a twenty-something sex predator. Better enjoy it while it lasts, he’d tell himself.

  * * *

  The time finally came for sleep. Randy turned the lights out, and they looked across the pillow at one another. “Elena, you came to me for help,” he said, and watched while her smile faded and she began to turn away. “If I was a doctor, there’s no way I could make you better without knowing what was wrong. See?”

  She rolled over and scooted her back against him. “Randy, I love staying here and being with you. And I trust you. You risked your life for me the night we met. But if the wrong people found out certain things, you would have risked yourself for nothing.”

  “You have a body count you’re not telling me about?”

  She turned her head back over, her eyes huge. “No!” Then she scooted back against him so he could put his arms around her. “But I’m really scared right now too.”

  From where he lay, he could see the three-dot tattoo on her hand, and he knew what it meant. Pretty much anyone who wore that tattoo could be counted on to come with some baggage. “If leaving your past behind is what you want to do, then that’s what I want to help you with. I can only promise that I won’t judge you by it, and I won’t do anything that might endanger your safety. In fact, I won’t do anything at all without checking with you first.” He put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a little rub. “So will you talk to me?” She sighed, and thought about it for a moment.

  “Tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  It was around a week later that Randy showed up at the police station to drop the bomb. He and Elena had had their talk as they had agreed. Randy found it more than a little bit disturbing, but he adhered to his word to keep her story to himself. And they talked about what he could do to enable her to live an independent life without getting her shipped away in the process.

  Then he had asked a little tiny favor in return. Just a phone call was all it was, to a certain state representative. In that call she told the story of how she had nearly died recently, who had nearly killed her and why. It had precisely the effect Randy was looking for.

  Now, holding a manila envelope, Randy walked in through the glass front door of the police station. Inside the door there was a small waiting room with a few bench seats, and a counter with thick bulletproof glass across the front. He walked to the counter.

  Behind the glass sat Esther Keel, a graying and bespectacled woman in her sixties who was known for some of the best customer service in her profession. She wore a uniform shirt with a badge, but of course no weapon. “How can I help you?” she asked Randy.

  “I have a appointment to talk to the chief,” he replied.

  “Well, he says he’s really busy today and he’ll only have a few minutes.”

  Randy smiled. “That’ll be plenty.” She hit the silver button on her side of the counter and buzzed him in.

  * * *

  Randy walked into Burt’s office to find him chatting with Jack Hayward. Burt motioned him to the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat please.” Randy sat down, and Burt sat in his own chair. Hayward stood beside the desk with his hands clasped in front of him like a bouncer waiting for the next excuse to toss somebody. “I presume you are here for something important.”

  “Chief Grandstone, you recall the woman whom your officers nearly blew away.”

  “That very young woman, yes I do. As I understand it, you’re getting quite the hero treatment out of her.” Jack chuckled without trying to hide it.

  Randy smiled in return. “Indeed I am, and that being the case, I have to continue assuring her safety. This is part of that project. Do you recall seeing this before?” Randy took a sheet of paper out of the envelope and handed it to him. Hayward walked around so he could see too. Burt and Jack skimmed down the page, and it quickly rang a bell.

  “This is the solution to your problem of out-of-control cops that I’ve been pushing at the State Capitol,” Randy went on. “It’s the one that says if they threaten or otherwise mistreat someone for being legally armed, they must be criminally charged, and if convicted, they can’t be a cop for five years. I came here to get your professional opinion on this, so please tell me, what do you think?”

  Burt looked up from the paper, rolling his eyes back and forth. “Well sure, good luck with this…”

  “My luck’s getting better all the time. That near-homicide was the last straw I needed to get some progress going, and it’s just been introduced.” Burt and Jack both stared at him with arrows shooting from their eyes.

  “The session is already ending,” Jack said, “it’s too late for this to go anywhere.”

  “This is the first year of the legislative biennium. Now that it’s been dropped it’ll automatically be reintroduced next year.” Randy was enjoying their reactions even more than he expected, which was a lot. “So tell me, you think this might resolve that particular issue?”

  “What I think,” Burt began, “is that when people meddle with things they know nothing about, it tends to backfire. Our policies did not come into being overnight, they were developed over many years of experience, which happens to involve a lot of incidents of cops who got killed because they did something wrong. Is that what you want to perpetuate?”

  “What I want to perpetuate,” Randy fired back, “is lawmen who respect the law instead of treating it like an inconvenience that needs to be circumvented, in exactly the same way that every other manner of criminal does. Not to mention respecting people’s lives and safety at least as much as their own. In short, I want you to remember who you work for, and that after you’ve pushed us around for so long, we can, and we will, start finding ways to push back.” Randy let that sink in for a moment. “I’ll be dropping a copy of this off at the Gazette. I look forward to seeing your response in the paper.”

  Randy stood up and left. Burt and Jack didn’t say it out loud, but their thoughts were on exactly the same page. That was the page that read Buddy, you just fucked with the wrong people.

  * * *

  Elena took aim and fired. The shot, which came from her Colt Mustang, was on the paper but not exactly on the silhouette. She had fired guns before, but it had been a really long time, and Randy was pretty much training her from scratch. Beginning with stances and grip, and she wasn’t proving to be a natural, at least not at this point. She seemed a lot more dangerous that first night, he thought.

  The snow had gone away and they were at one of Randy’s gravel pits in the mountains. Vincent was with them, and he was engaged in demonstrating good form to Elena. Basic Weaver stance, gun at low ready with a two hand grip, then bring it up, line up sights and pop off two quick s
hots. She was getting the hang of it, but it was taking time.

  To Randy this was like the Dick and Jane level of firearm instruction. See Dick. Dick’s all happy ‘cause he’s packing heat. See Jane. Jane’s having a crappy time of the month so she’s playing Twirl The Glock.

  Randy decided to break that train of thought, so he stepped up alongside Vincent as Elena fired another group. “Where’d you learn Spanish?” he asked Vincent.

  “Spain,” he replied.

  Randy nodded. “Well, I guess that makes sense…”

  Vincent pointed toward, Elena, who was figuring out how to clear a jam. “How’s she treatin’ you?”

  “Honest? I think she’s gonna kill me.”

  Vincent laughed. “The thing about Spanish women,” he said, “is that they want your fucking soul. But they’ll reward you for it really, really well. Besides, she seems to be doin’ you some good,” he said, patting Randy’s spare tire, which had gone down quite noticeably.

  “I know she has. I call it the ‘psycho girlfriend weight-loss plan.’” He meant that in a good-natured way. Mostly.

  Finally, Elena put two quick shots onto the target, not exactly on center, but the hits were solid enough. She took off her hearing protection, as Randy and Vincent walked to the target to look. “I do believe you’re getting the hang of this,” Vincent said. Elena dropped her magazine, handed it back to Randy to reload for her. Loading your own mags is going to be your lesson for next time, Randy thought.

  “I’ll tell you what I want to know,” Elena said. “What if those cops had started shooting at me? What could I have done?”

  Randy and Vincent exchanged a grim glance. “Well,” Randy said, “the honest answer is, not a hell of a lot.”

  “If it happened, should I try to surrender?” she asked.

  “That’s what they would tell you, but it wouldn’t work,” Vincent replied. “The cop philosophy is, if the first shot is justified, so is the last one.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well, you hear about shootings where every cop on the scene dumps an entire magazine into someone,” Vincent said. “The official line is that they’re ‘trained’ to keep shooting until the threat is eliminated. But what that really means is that they’re supposed to keep shooting until the person is too dead to come back and sue the department. If you’ve been so much as fired at once, you’re a liability, even if they missed you clean. You could throw your gun out of the car, throw your hands up, throw yourself on the ground, scream that you’re surrendering, and it won’t make any difference. They’ll kill you anyways, and afterward they’ll claim that you ‘could’ have still been a threat.”

  “Or that you ‘rushed’ them,” Randy added.

  “So if even one shot had been fired at my car, there’s nothing I could have done to come out of it alive?” The men could tell this question was really bothering her.

  “Randy, that’s a pretty damn good question,” Vincent said. “What could you do?”

  Randy grimaced. This very question had been on his mind a lot too, and it was tougher than algebra. “Well, it’s been well established that once the shooting starts, surrender has a pretty low success rate. So if you want to live, that leaves escape and fighting back. Escape is unlikely, they’ll just shoot you in the back as you run.” He pointed at Elena’s .380. “And if you were going to fight back, first thing you’d need something bigger than that. Lots bigger.” She frowned and held her gun close to her bosom. She liked her pretty little gun. “After that… let’s see what we can figure out.”

  Randy got into Vincent’s Bronco and turned it around in the gravel pit, parking it with the rear end facing toward the backstop. He rolled down the driver’s window and waved them over beside him. “Let’s say they’re all lined up behind me with their guns on my back. What would I have to do first?”

  “Well, if you stay in one place you’re toast,” Vincent replied.

  “Okay, so first thing I need to do is get out fast.”

  “Doesn’t that just leave you in the open?” Elena asked.

  “Not necessarily. Put your hearing protection on.” They both did as asked, then Randy jumped out and sprinted to the left of the vehicle, firing a rapid burst at the imaginary vehicles parked behind the SUV. He fired half the clip, then reversed direction on a dime and fired the other half. His slide locked back. Then he walked back over to Vincent and Elena. “If I can get out and move fast, I’m harder to hit.”

  “True,” Vincent replied, “but the scenario is still four or five against one.”

  “That’s true, if they’re all shooting. But gunfire is a scary thing, especially when it’s coming at you. If I can make them dive behind cover with the first quick burst, then I can hopefully figure something else out.”

  Elena pointed to the front of the SUV. “What if you jump in front and shoot from behind there?”

  “You’d have cover,” Randy replied, “but you’d be stuck in one place trading shots with four or five cops, and you’d lose. To win, you’d have to be mobile so they couldn’t get an easy fix on you, and also so you could get into position to nail them.” Randy thought for a moment. “Let’s try some drills and see what we can work out.”

  They began to set up their target boxes to simulate patrol cars. “Here’s another question for you,” Vincent said. “Suppose they come to kill you. You fight back, and you do manage to win. Now you’re a cop killer, so what then?”

  Randy grimaced again. “Please, one nightmare scenario at a time.”

  * * *

  In the lobby of the Forest Hill police station, a shadow fell on Esther Keel, and she looked up to her window. Standing there was a vato in his thirties, who bordered on hulking. “Can I help you?” she asked through the speaker.

  “My car is in impound,” he replied with a smile. “Can you tell me where to pick it up?”

  “Which car would that be?”

  “Blue Datsun. I hear it has a broken window now.”

  Esther went to her paperwork shelves and picked out a sheet of paper with a map. She passed it through beneath the window. “This is where the impound yard is,” she told him.

  “Thanks,” he replied. “There was a girl driving the car that night.”

  “Yes there was,” she replied. “Did you want to file a stolen vehicle report?”

  “Nah, I don’t roll like that. I’d just like to talk to her is all. You know where I could find her?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t give out that kind of information. The only person who could authorize that would be the Police Chief.”

  The man nodded with some disappointment. “Any chance I could talk to him then?”

  “It could take two or three weeks to get an appointment, but hold on.” Esther went back to a phone, picked it up and spoke on it for a minute while the man waited. Then she set the phone down with a look of surprise on her face. Borderline stunned, in fact, as she returned to the window.

  “He says to please come on back,” she told him. “Who should I tell him is coming?

  “Armando,” he replied. She buzzed him in.

  Chapter 6

  Takin’ Care Of Business

  June, 2006

  Elena was alone at home when Armando came to call. Randy was at work, and she was on the Internet with business of her own to take care of.

  Randy was helping her get enough documentation together to get her drivers license so she could find work and properly care of herself. It was proving to be a long process, as her parents had left her with almost nothing in the way of identifying documents. They had started by searching up all the past records pertaining to her from L.A. County that they could find. There was a good stroke of luck when a search of her juvenile records turned up a social security number that her mother had gotten her when she was little. That would be an enormous work-saver. There were also records from about six different schools she had attended, but it appeared that none of them had any yearbook photos of her. Those wou
ld have been helpful, but they’d have to make do without.

  All they had to do was cobble enough documents together to get the drivers license, and then as long as she avoided jobs that required solid proof of citizenship, she’d be able to live like normal people. It was becoming a somewhat frustrating venture though.

  She was sitting at the picnic table with Randy’s laptop. It was plugged into his wireless broadband modem and she was looking at an L.A. County Courthouse website. They had discovered that court records would serve as one of the forms of identification they needed for the Department Of Licensing, so she needed to contact a court clerk and get copies of some court records pertaining to her. It didn’t matter much which ones she got, there were lots to choose from, but something not excessively embarrassing would be good to find.

  Summer was just getting underway. The hot weather wouldn’t hit for another month, but it was at least sunny and calm. It was so quiet in fact that she almost didn’t notice when the Datsun rounded the corner on the gravel road that led to Randy’s driveway. When she did notice, she was sure it had to be a different car, because there was no way Armando would know where to find her. But then she saw the plastic sheet covering the driver’s window.

  She jumped out of her seat and bolted inside the mobile home. There, she grabbed her .380 and cellphone. She looked out the window, and saw the car park outside the driveway. Armando got out with a couple of others. “’Lena!” he yelled, and her heart started skipping beats. She opened the phone and speed dialed Randy. Unfortunately she only got his voicemail. Randy had told her that at critical times, like when he was running the crane, he had to turn his phone off. “’Lena, come on out, pleeeeeze?” Elena left Randy a message to call her right back, it’s a fucking emergency, and then hung up. She thought about calling 911, but only briefly, remembering what that had nearly gotten her the last time someone did that for her. “I just want to talk, but I reeeeelly need you to come on out, okay?” She looked outside again, expecting him to be right outside the front door by now. But he wasn’t; he was still standing just outside the driveway.