by Trudy Doyle
“Yes,” I say, equally discreetly, every muscle in my body tightening.
He turns toward me. “I should explain.”
“I’ll certainly listen,” I say, still looking out the window, all my senses on full alert.
“It’s simple. I used to be a cop.”
I turn. “You did?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “And after twenty years of it, it’s a hard habit to break. Because even after you turn in your shield and your head tells you you’re out of it for good, you know that’ll never really happen. Because once you’re in it, it’s like you’re branded, signed up for life. You can’t stop being a cop any more than you could stop being human.” He looks away, straightening his back against the seat. “You can leave it, but let me tell you, it’ll never leave you.”
“So that’s why Doug asked you along.”
He laughs softly. “Maybe he hopes I’m missing it.”
I think on that as we sit in silence, letting the soft hum of electric car on rail speed us on, the unspent tension suspended between us. After a minute or so I say, “So why aren’t you a cop anymore?”
He sighs as if he was expecting that. “I got shot,” he says, maybe too matter-of-factly.
“Roark…” I say, my hand covering my mouth.
“Ah,” he waves me off, “I didn’t get hurt, not really. I had my armor on, so it just knocked the wind out of me. But it made me think that after twenty years maybe my luck was starting to run out, that maybe I should take that as my exit cue. Especially when my wife told me if I didn’t quit she’d leave me.”
Another sock to the jaw! “Your wife?”
He laughs slightly. “Don’t get excited. I’m not married anymore. It happened two years ago, and a month after it did, she left me anyway. It seems over the years she got real used to my not being home a lot.” His mouth crooks ironically. “After I retired it was my being around too much that kind of cramped her style.”
The woman must have been insane. How anyone could tire of looking at that face I’d never understand. “Did you have any kids?” Tell me I just didn’t ask him that!
He looks toward the other side of the car. “No,” he says, so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “And now I’m too old to try.”
“How old is that?” I ask, feeling the little hairs on the back of my neck starting to rise.
“Forty-four, next month.”
“That’s not so old. You still have time.”
“Right,” he says aridly, turning to me. “So that would make my pension, what, a college fund? A bit ridiculous, don’t you think?”
“Even so, plenty of people are doing it.” I need to throttle myself; apparently, I’m channeling Dr. Chatterling.
“Well, I’m not everyone. And you’re forgetting at the moment I seem to be lacking a partner in that endeavor.”
Golly, how that conversation’s coming back to bite me. Still, it’s all I can manage to stifle a laugh. The man can’t be serious. I’m reasonably sure if Roark decided to reproduce he’d literally have to fight off the volunteers with a whip. But there’s a kind of resignation in the way he’s told me, as if he had long ago accepted the reality of it. Much, I know, as I have.
“Anyway,” he says, his smile instantly lightening the mood, “now you know my deep, dark past. Anything you care to confess?”
Hoo boy, not at the moment. “I’m an open book,” I say, mirroring his sunniness, feeling the tension drain out of my limbs. “It’s all out there.”
He stretches a long leg into the aisle. “Then it’s true writers use their own life in their writing?”
“Well, just look at us. Tanaka and Shields heading to a stakeout. The only thing we need is a big drug dealer posing as a business tycoon.”
He stares at me. “How’d you know that?”
“What do you mean? It’s from my work in progress.”
He grins. “Seriously? How weird is this? The suspect has backed some local ventures. With dirty money, Doug’s saying.”
The hairs that had risen on the back of my neck were now joined by every other one my body. “Wow.” I laugh. “We’ve become my characters.” I recall our conversation at the piano bar. “Looks like you got your wish.”
“Well, hot damn,” he says, beaming.
Men. No matter how tough they think they are, they still go to mush when it comes to their vanity. Even so, for the next twenty minutes, Roark does a very nice job stroking my ego, asking me about my work-in-progress and my writing routine, segueing very neatly into books in general. Through all of it, he’s very attentive, only interrupting me long enough to insert some of the most insightful literary commentary I’ve heard lately.
“You certainly sound like you do your homework,” I say.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret, and if you tell Doug I’ll never speak to you again. He thinks I’m this hard case, and I don’t want to blow my image. When I was in college,” he says, sotto voce, “I minored in literature.”
My brows shoot up. “Really? I would have never—”
“You’ll take that to your grave, woman,” he warns me, standing up as the train begins to slow. “Promise?”
I make an X over my heart. “Your secret is safe with me, caveman.” He stifles a snort as he steps into the aisle, letting me in front of him as the train glides to a stop.
We see Doug almost immediately as we exit the platform. “That’s one of the more convenient things about being a cop,” Roark opines, jutting his chin toward Doug’s car. “The parking is always excellent.”
“We gotta hurry,” Doug says as Roark takes the front seat and I slide in back, hitting the gas a second after I close the door. “Right now the last thing I want to do is leave Bennie alone.”
I grab hold of the front seat. “What’s happened! Is he in trouble? Did the bad guys show up?”
Doug flashes a smile over his shoulder. “No, the Chinese takeout did. And I sure as hell don’t trust him with my sweet-and-sour chicken. Hey, I hope you’re hungry. We ordered a crap-ton.”
I can almost hear my expectations deflating; sounds like we’re building up to a perfectly riveting evening. “Thanks, but I already ate.”
“Well, in case you want dessert, Bennie’s wife made a chocolate cheesecake. Man, can that lady bake. Last night she sent éclairs.”
Roark stifles a yawn. “So where’re we going anyway?”
“An old warehouse on Pearl where we park. Then it’s through the office and a couple or three rooftops later we’re home.” He turns his head toward me. “You think you’re up to that?”
I fling my Nike-shod foot atop the seat. “Got my running kicks on, see? I’m ready for anything.”
“Well, let me tell you, getting there might be all the action you’ll see tonight. Mostly it’s just sit, sit and sit some more as we listen to taps of mostly nothing. That’s about it until the big guy finally shows up. Hopefully it’ll happen tonight.” Doug looks to Roark. “Disappointed?”
He sniffs. “So much for my comeback.” The two of them then toss around some juicy cop-speak I know I’ll have to drop in my story somewhere, and after some deft back-alley maneuvers, we’re at the warehouse. Someone peeks out from a tiny and extremely dirty window, and a door slides opens into a cavernous space. Doug drives through the near-blackness to the far end, stopping at a rickety-looking wooden staircase. We get out.
“Up there,” says Doug, switching on a flashlight, and we follow his lope up the stairs to a small landing outside a heavy-looking door. He looks to me, his hand on the doorknob. “Last chance to bail, Pam. I know you’re expecting glory, but about all I can promise you tonight is grease, bad carbs and the distinct chance my fellow card sharps will rob you blind. If that’s too much to take, just say the word, and Tommy back there will take you home.”
I glance to the uniform standing by his squad car. “I don’t want to bail,” I tell him.
“Are you sure, Lieutenant Shields?” This from Roark, tongue firm
ly implanted in cheek.
I look at him, ready to laugh, and immediately I see something else. Although I can barely make out his face, his eyes burn through the thin light, assuring me whatever the situation, he’s got my back. How could I possibly be nervous after that? “Ready, Lieutenant Tanaka.”
“All righty then,” says Doug, twisting the knob, and in we go.
It’s just moonlit enough so Doug can douse the flashlight, and we cross the long, low-ceilinged room to the far end and a window barely a foot off the floor. The inside reeks of mildew, mold and chemicals, and when Doug grabs the window to shudder it open, it’s a welcome blast of clean air that hits us. “Keep low,” Doug says. He leans into the window, checks to the left and right, then steps out onto the flat roof. I follow, Roark close behind me.
Our footsteps make faint crackling sounds as we trot across the asphalted rooftop, Doug pausing when he reaches the edge of the first house. I can’t help cringing when we hop the foot-and-a-half of space between roofs, thinking what a lovely death scene a plummet of three dark, narrow stories into a pile of filth would make in one of my books. At the end of the third roof and against the side of a taller building we stop at what looks like a wooden shed. Doug shoves a key into an ancient lock and we enter into a landing for the way down. After we’re all in Roark shuts the door to an inky darkness.
“This way,” whispers Doug, angling a beam of flashlight down a steep stairwell to a door opening to a darkened hallway. We creep through it to the steps at the end where Doug stops cold.
He turns to Roark, dousing the light. “Something’s wrong,” he whispers. He points down the faintly illuminated staircase to a room just to the left. From my vantage point I can see a few chairs and a table with unopened cartons of Chinese takeout atop it. “It’s a rule. We always keep that door closed.”
Immediately Roark pushes me back the way we came. “Go back to the uniform.”
I balk. “But—”
“Now,” he whispers, reaching for his gun.
As Roark and Doug steal down the stairs, I run blindly up the nearly pitch-black hallway. Then either acute stupidity or writerly curiosity intervenes and I skid to a halt. Just a peek, I promise myself, because how often will I get a chance like this, and wasn’t this precisely the reason I came? I whip around, shooting back to the top of the stairs. I can see Doug almost at the door of the room, Roark right behind him, both guns cocked in their upraised hands. I press myself against the wall, my heart hammering. Any second they’ll be inside, and I brace myself for what they’ll find. Then something goes click in the dark.
Amid the darkness and the urge to crap my jeans, I see the door directly across is open and a figure coming out of it twitching a gun.
“Shit,” finds its way out of me.
He lunges and I’m shoved toward the stairs. “Get going.”
But I can hardly move, my first thought being someone’s going to be mighty pissed when he sees me, followed by how stupid I’m going to feel when he does. Still, in the grand tradition of making lemonade out of lemons, I ask myself—what would Dana Shields do? The answer arrives immediately.
Improvise.
“I said move, bitch!” he hisses, gun dead on my temple.
As I do I stumble on the ancient carpet and his gun slips from my head and suddenly there’s a couple of feet between us. I twist my body and hurl it toward the steps.
“Roark!” I scream, grabbing hold of the banister.
He turns and falls to his haunches, weapon aimed into the darkness. The man loses his footing and trips over my legs, tumbling face first down the stairs, his gun spinning from his hand to land at Roark’s feet. Roark kicks it behind him and shoves his boot to my assailant’s throat, but the man’s already out cold. His eyes shoot to mine. “Pam!”
I calmly slide down the banister, my butt hitting the newel post. “You looking for me, Tanaka?”
All at once my blood runs to ice; he is most definitely not amused. There’s an iron cast to his face, immediately sobering. I swing my leg over the railing and he grabs my arm, pushing me against the wall.
“Stay there,” he says, his voice low and lethal.
Doug tosses him a pair of cuffs. “Backup’s on the way.” As Roark bends to the still-unconscious man, Doug cracks me a wary smile, knowing better than to say anything while Roark’s so cranked. Beyond him I can see who must be Bennie rubbing the back of his head and wincing.
“Sporto here cold-cocked Bennie,” Doug answers my unasked question.
Bennie stands, slapping his pockets. “Son of a bitch—he stole my wallet!”
Roark reaches into the man’s grimy hip pocket, tiny plastic vials tumbling out before he yanks out a thin fold of leather. “This it?” he asks, holding it up.
Bennie winces again. “Does it say—”
“Bad mother fucker on it?” Roark finishes.
“That’s it,” Bennie says, and Roark tosses it to him. He catches it midair then walks over, giving the unconscious man a kick in the gut. “Douche bag. Isn’t even a player. Just an old-fashioned piece-of-shit crackhead.”
“A crackhead with heat,” Roark says flatly, eyes fixed on me. He pulls a handkerchief—a handkerchief?—from his pocket and deftly lifts the gun from the floor, snapping open a paper bag which recently had been housing dim sum. I lean back against the wall, regarding the puny mold of gray steel. So that’s what I heard in the dark, what I felt pressing against my head. I wanted to touch it, finger the trigger, my morbid curiosity running rampant. But I wouldn’t dare to ask. Roark drops it into the bag and, crumpling it closed, hands it to Doug, just as Officer Tommy from the warehouse and another uniform stomp down the steps.
“Hey, I know that guy!” Tommy says, eyeing my assailant on the floor.
The man stirs, opening an eye. “Wha…?”
“You know him?” says Roark.
“Yeah. That’s JuJu,” says Tommy. “Likes to steal wallets.”
“Stole mine!” says Bennie, rubbing his neck. “Cold-cocked me, the fucker.”
“But Pam saved the day,” adds Doug, grinning at me. “The real Dana Shields flushed him out.”
Bennie eyes me. “You mean…?”
“That’s her,” says Doug. “Pam—”
“Pamela Flynn! No shit!” says Officer Tommy. “Well, let me shake your hand.”
As he does, Bennie palms his hand over his heart. “My hero!”
They all laugh and clap me on the shoulders and call me the real Dana Shields—Bennie, Doug and the uniforms, all but Roark. He just looks at me with those dark eyes, his face impassive. I have no inkling how to read him other than he’s supremely pissed at me, but what could I have done? Even if I ran back to the warehouse like he said, who’s to say this JuJu wouldn’t have caught me anyway? And besides, what could I do about it now, so I might as well make the best of it. Before long Roark drifts away with the others, caught up by the familiarity of police procedure. So I wait and watch, absorbing every bit of it like the proverbial fly on the wall.
After about an hour or so, after Bennie pops two Advil and the uniforms cart JuJu away, after Doug chomps back a couple of spring rolls while giving me an overview of the fine art of wiretapping, Roark announces it’s time to go. So I thank them all for an exhilarating evening, and the next thing I know I’m staring at the back of Roark’s head from behind the cage of a Camden police cruiser.
I’m really trying not to read anything into our seating arrangement.
The cop drops us at the Light Rail, the platform packed with Rutgers students awaiting the last train. After the cruiser pulls out, Roark slips his hand to my elbow and we walk toward a bank of shelters, people milling about, the seats full. When we reach it his hand drops off and he leans against the Plexiglas, his gaze fixed on the tracks. I stand a couple of feet away, my feet stamping at the chill, the sounds of the city night the only thing between us.
“Well I had a good time,” I finally say.
He says nothing,
still watching the tracks, his coat ruffling in the breeze.
There’s a clock above us. Somehow, I can hear it tick. I look to Roark and his face is still impassive, a face that has haunted me for several nights now. I want him to say something, to acknowledge me, and if he’s angry then dammit, tell me why, because surely it’s beyond the obvious. I start to say this but suddenly I’m stopped, watching him shift his powerful body, ruffle his hair, scrub a hand over his face. Oh Lord, there’s something he’s definitely not telling me.
A minute passes and we see the train gliding toward us. I walk to the red line as it stops, the doors opening with a pneumatic whoosh. As I step inside I feel Roark behind me, his hand at the small of my back, guiding me, pressing me forward. Even though we pass several empty seats in the quickly filling car, he steers me to a wheelchair space at the end. When we reach it he grabs a pole, bracing his legs as the train starts to move. I eye a seat but quickly dismiss the idea of taking it. It’s as obvious he prefers to stand as that he wants me next to him, his hand pressing into the curve of my back.
As the train glides along, the heat from Roark’s body flies at me in waves, his hand on me like a flatiron. His scent fills my nose, different now, a spicy richness dizzying in its intensity. We hit a bump and I lurch back against him, his hand sliding to my hip, his fingers curling around me. I can’t help it—I flinch, and it falls to his side and all at once I’m chilled, wanting him so badly to touch me again my head starts to swim, so much that I can’t take it any longer. I turn, catching his hardened face in the flickering fluorescent light.
“I’m still here, you know,” I say insistently enough that finally he looks at me.
I am, above all, a watcher. Any writer, to be successful, must be a covert observer, an undeniable Peeping Tom. But this time I find myself as snared as a rabbit in a trap with Roark’s gaze fixed on mine.
His eyes may as well be a gun to my head; I can’t think, breathe. The train passes in and out of stations, lights, people exit, board, but still, I can’t tear myself away. In what seems a snap of the fingers we’re at our stop, and again his hand finds its way to the small of my back. Before I know it we’re standing under the shelter on the platform, the train leaving us in a swirl of mist and thickening fog.