“You’d stay with it, then; stay with MTac?”
Panama was probing. Soledad didn’t care for it.
To Panama: “You ever work MTac?”
Panama nodded.
“So what’s your story? You don’t look like you ever got it bad from a freak.”
“Maybe I’m too good for that.”
“If you were so good, you’d still be MTac, so maybe you suck and got bounced to DMI.”
“Lift your shirt,” Raddatz said. “Show her your torso.”
“The girl’s eating.”
“I stopped being a girl when I started kicking little boys like you in the teeth.”
“She’s not eating.”
“I don’t mean right this second she is,” Panama said. “But she might want to eat again someday. Why spoil her appetite for life?”
“First call I went on an operator got a hole hand-burned in her chest by a fire freak. So unless you’ve got something else to show me . . .”
Panama lifted his shirt. What he showed Soledad was some whole, other, hideous thing. It was . . .
Just . . . some other, hideous thing.
Soledad had to make herself, make herself stare at the damage just so not to come off like a bitch.
Panama lowered his shirt.
“Would you give your back,” Raddatz rejoined the conversation, “to an MTac who wasn’t in things for the long haul?”
Shirt down, and Soledad was still staring at Panama’s torso. Soledad shifted her look to Raddatz. “No.”
“So you can see why we’re curious.”
“We?” The word stuck out to Soledad. So did the fact that, with Raddatz, it probably wasn’t a casual slip of the tongue. He was tossing bait. She wanted to know: “When did I become a departmental concern?”
Pulling a laminated menu from a holder at the edge of the table: “You hungry, O’Roark? Can’t ever go wrong with a five-dollar steak.”
“I’m good.”
“Think about things.”
“And you’re not talking about the steak.”
A bit of a smile from Raddatz. He wasn’t laughing, but he appreciated her, appreciated Soledad. Soledad had that effect on people. Usually, right before they tried to terminate her in some fashion, they gave her their regard. “I’m talking about what you’re going to do with yourself. Think about that.”
He put down the menu. With one hand—and for him there was no other way—Raddatz pulled his wallet, picked out some money, tossed it on the table.
At some point early on, almost all kids have a moment where they want to grow up to be policemen. They want to be honorable. They want to aid the community, and in return be looked on with gratitude for serving the public good. Then kids actually grow up, wise up, go for jobs that pay six figures. At least that. And where you don’t have to dodge bullets in the process.
Most kids do that.
Not all.
Not Tom Hayes. At a young age Tom got caught in the wanna-be-a-cop frame of mind. Or rut, however you want to look at it. Got in it. Never got out. He’d been indoctrinated by the ads. Not just the slickly produced, near-Hollywood-quality ads the Los Angeles Police Department ran every recruiting season. He got caught up in the actual Hollywood-quality ads. Every movie, every TV show that portrayed the LAPD as the toughest roughneck shield-wearing MFs on the planet, drawing their guns weekly, wrapping up every crime, no matter how major, in some length of time between forty-four minutes and two hours.
Creative license, sure. But it had to be, Tom figured, an approximation of real life. And for Tom, for having grown up in a trailer park in Palmdale, a cop’s pay was the icing that shined like all the gold in Fort Knox laid out end-to-end in the noon sun.
So Tom took the entrance exam, aced it, went to the academy, became a cop.
Then the boredom set in. Even in LA, even in a city of eight-plus million, there was mostly not a lot for a cop to do. Not a lot that was exciting. You could make traffic stops for minor infractions day-night-day. You could settle disputes between/among bums, alkys and vagrants of every known race, creed, color, ethnic and religious background and sexual orientation until you felt like you were working security at a skid row UN meeting. Occasionally, you could get into a beef with some scofflaw punks of the rich, white variety whose snobbery begged for reduction from the polished, forged aluminum of a Monadnock baton. And very, very rarely there’d be some actual trouble—the real-world version of movie/TV show trouble—that maybe just might require the removal of your gun from its holster. The chances of pulling the trigger? What were the chances of getting elected pope?
And even if trouble ever happened that it was so severe it necessitated the pulling of your piece, even in LA that was a once-, maybe twice-in-a-career kind of thing.
If you were a beat cop.
In LA real trouble got dealt with by SPU or SWAT.
Real, real trouble, and MTac got the call.
Everything else, every mundane thing was for cops like Tom Hayes.
Could’ve been worse.
Tom could’ve been a cop years back in the Age of Heroes.
Age of heroes used to be capitalized. Not anymore.
Back then, in the age, there was next to nothing for a cop to do. Drug dealers, gangbangers, carjackers got dealt with by the likes of Nightshift, Street Justice, Urban Legend. Guys—and women—with just enough supernormal abilities to be able to kick the ever-lovin’ shit out of your typical punk-with-gun.
Bigger trouble—punks with automatic weapons, terrorists with bombs, superevildoers with particle weapons—got handled by the likes of Élan, GammaMan, Nubian Princess.
Cops worked crowd control, directed traffic around the inevitable damage done when supertypes mixed it up.
Then San Francisco. May Day. Then the age of heroes got written in lowercase. Then beat cops like Tom Hayes got elevated from doing absolutely nothing to doing barely anything.
So when Officer Hayes got the call from dispatch to “see the man” down at the LA River, it gave him no spike. Another bumfight. A couple of white kids, rolling on E, in need of an attitude adjustment.
When he got to the river—a river by name, in actuality a concrete ditch used as an aqueduct to flow the water the city stole from the northern part of the state—and talked to “the man” who’d put in a call to the Hollywood station re: a body he’d found, Officer Hayes didn’t make much of it. Bodies, like abandoned cars, got found constantly.
But if he’d had so much as a sliver of an idea that, staring at the body, he was witness to a portion of a play that featured God and man, Officer Hayes would’ve made more of the moment. Probably, he would have bent over and puked in the face of it. More intrigue than his internal organs could handle.
But he was aware of nothing but a dead body.
He waited for a hearse from LACFSC to come and take it away.
Then Officer Tom Hayes went and got himself some lunch, writing up a moving violation along the way.
There was one message on Soledad’s integrated cordless phone/digital answering machine. Her mother, Soledad figured. About the only other person who called at home—besides telemarketers who had no regard for the Do Not Call Registry—was Vin, and Vin hardly ever called Soledad.
Soledad played the message.
The voice she heard had all the distinctiveness of a Swedish automobile. So free of spirit and character it could not be recognized. So bland she had to listen—Soledad actually had to work at hearing—to absorb what the speaker was saying, the voice not self-compelling. Couldn’t manage it the first pass. Halfway through, Soledad started the message over. A request for a private meeting, a sit-down to talk about . . . What was to be discussed was vague, as ill defined as the voice that spoke. At the end of the message: “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I should have said: This is Tashjian calling.”
Soledad had once been nearly dead and buried. Metaphor, of course. Actually, considering her job, not “of course.” But in terms of living a life th
at made her feel alive, the business with IA had just about killed her. Could have landed her in jail too. And the guy who dug her grave—dug it deep, dug it well and was ready to toss the first shovelful of dirt on her not-even-cold body—was Tashjian.
Sapless, swashy, milk-and-water. Tashjian. His voice on her answering machine was reminder to Soledad of what little there was of distinction to the guy. Except for being quite the creep. And being undeniable. He was a fellow who got his way, got what he pleased.
What he wanted was to have a talk with Soledad. And never mind their history—or because of their history, because she ended up free and clear of him—Soledad was glad to take the meeting. To look the bogeyman dead in the eyes.
“I’m not scared of you.”
Soledad, Tashjian, were at Pan-Pacific Park, strolling around under the LA sun that was—thanks to a population that refused to stabilize let alone diminish—again losing the fight against the smog that only a few years prior it had begun to get a handle on.
Tashjian responding to Soledad: “I would doubt there’s very much you are afraid of. Certainly not me.”
“You better believe I’m not.”
“And I do.”
“You tried to take me out. Didn’t work. If you think I’m going to run and hide when you come knocking—”
“You have no fear of me. I take you at your word. But the more you talk . . . exactly who are you trying to convince, Officer O’Roark?”
At that point, to say nothing more was equal admission Tashjian was right. To let his comment go was backing down, and backing down never felt correct to Soledad. As middle ground: “Just so you understand where I’m coming from. It’s not so much that I’m interested in what you’ve got to say as I am in letting you know I’ve got no problem with you saying it to my face.”
“Understood.”
It was odd being out of doors with Tashjian. He was, seemed as though he were, a creature of the shadows. More comfortable in dark than light where his designs could be more easily seen and therefore exposed. A requirement of prestidigitation is that actions be masked. Sleight of hand was Tashjian’s expertise. The conceptual dark of others’ ignorance was his stage. But here Tashjian was strolling around, walking in the sun just the same as anyone. No longer an object of apprehension, just more of what he really was. Incredibly normal. Maybe daylight changed Soledad’s perception. Maybe it was the change of circumstances; the crushing stone of disciplinary action no longer hanging by a threadbare twine over Soledad’s head. Either way, Tashjian didn’t seem quite the creep.
“At any rate,” he said, “my ultimate objective wasn’t to remove you from the department.”
“You put a gold medal effort into things for a guy who wasn’t trying.”
“I told you at the time, I might have been there to help you. You didn’t believe me. My intention, my intention was not to bring a good cop to false justice for no reason. It was about getting to the truth. That’s what detectives do, be they Homicide, Robbery or Internal Affairs.”
“I don’t have a problem with you getting to the truth. What I’ve got a problem with is that I told you the truth and you wouldn’t take it.”
“What kind of detective would I be if I accepted things at face value? It’s in the looking you learn to appreciate what you see.” As if to demonstrate, Tashjian took a glance around the park. A little spot of green and trees lined by the low-rise apartments, the orthodox business of the Fairfax District.
Tashjian said: “It’s in these moments, the casual ones, that I see the reason we do what we do.”
“We? You worked MTac?”
“No. I haven’t. I was speaking of police work in general. This”—an arm arched before him—“is why we do what we do.”
Soledad looked around, looked at what Tashjian was seeing. A bum, his whole world packed in the Sav-On shopping cart he pushed around the city. A couple of Asian guys, palish skin, shirts off, potbellies revealed, lying out sunbathing. Two softball-playing, Harley-
riding, phys-ed-teaching dykes fornicating without care for, concern of, anyone who might be watching.
A cross section of the carnival Los Angeles. Small but representative.
In response to what she saw, to what Tashjian had said: “This? It’s a freak show.”
A tic of Tashjian’s head. “You and I both know what a freak show is: things disguised as normal but far from. Things that fly, things that change shape or size. Things that can execute feats which you and I could perform only in our minds and with our best imagining.
“So the oddity around us now, within the city, these very people in the park: They are not so odd, Officer O’Roark. They exist, they are human. They perform simple acts of living. They search for love, companionship and meaning in life beyond the cycle of eat, work, sleep. It is these acts that make them human, that drives humanity. And though, per individual, we may not understand or wholly agree with the desires of others, the obligation that you and I and those who are like-minded have undertaken is to ensure normal people have the opportunity to fulfill their legal desires. Our obligation is not just, not merely to protect normal people but also to secure the acts of living to which they are guaranteed. Without that sense of guarantee, would we as people continue as a race or succumb to an emotional extinction? It is hope that gives us a future. So, in aggregate, our job is not to enforce the law. It is nothing less spectacular than to protect the future of humanity. We provide no other service except to ensure a certain peace of mind; that to the best of our abilities we will prevent acts of living from being interrupted. If they are threatened, we will protect. If the life itself is lost, then we will pursue the guilty. For this social compact to work, you, I, people like us, must follow the letter of the law regardless of our feelings, our personal prejudices or favors. It is the law, as written and interpreted without bias, that must be our guide. Those you may have quarrel with out of uniform, you will offer your protection to under the color of authority.
“If this critical aspect breaks down, I believe—and I say this believing the statement is free of hyperbole—we will find ourselves on a path to anarchy. Worse. To our own destruction.
“We are on such a path, Officer O’Roark. I believe we are. But there is still an opportunity to correct ourselves. So I come to you to ask for your help.”
There was nothing but confusion and questions for Soledad. “Help you how? With what? What . . . what anarchy?”
“You know, of course, of Israel Fernandez.”
Soledad’s nod “yes” became a head shake of disgust. A quiet editorial of what she thought of the man.
“His is a death which remains in question,” Tashjian said.
“For the freak fuckers. If that’s the anarchy you’re talking about, as far as I care—”
“You don’t. You don’t care. For you, yes, that’s the natural reaction. But the anarchy I’m talking about is more than a death, or the conspiracy theories that surround it. There have been, over the past fifteen months, several deaths involving people associated with the metanormal community. Some were certainly more questionable than Israel Fernandez’s. Some, five of them quite frankly, were murder.”
“They were sleeping with the enemy.” Not knowing the specifics, not caring for them, Soledad was unmoved, analytical. ”Somebody wanted to, wanted to set them straight and went overboard. That’s for R/HD. It’s not my concern.”
Then Tashjian added to the equation: “The five I believe were murdered were metanormals.”
And that gave Soledad pause.
“What are you considering?” Tashjian asked. “How people with extraordinary abilities could be killed by anything short of an MTac assault? Or are you pondering the fact that most metanormals now live incognito and in fear of the law, police. If Fernandez was in fact murdered, he was an obvious and easy target. But how did the killer know his metanormal victims were in fact metanormals? The logical conclusion, the unpleasant one: The murders were carried out by those a
lready collecting intelligence on metanormals. Those with an understanding of their weaknesses and how to exploit them, and with a severe desire to destroy them.”
“Like a cop.”
Tashjian nodded. Added: “Such as an officer within DMI.”
“Does it . . . somebody’s doing our job for us—”
“It is not ‘our job,’ Officer O’Roark. Executioners under the guise of the law is what the liberal media, the bleeding hearts wish us to be. But we aren’t. If there was a . . . There is a child killer living down the block. You know this, you have evidence. You wait for him at night. And when he emerges from his house, as he passes, you press a gun to the base of his skull, and you—”
“That’s not what I’d—”
“For the price of a bullet you save society the cost of a trial, the family the incalculable agony of reliving a nightmare.”
Soledad said nothing. Tashjian’d made his point.
“As rational,” Tashjian said, “as it might seem, there is no rationale for vigilantism. Merely empty justifications. There is also no account in murdering metanormals or their supporters. Their supporters have a right to free speech, and metanormals have the right to due process, the opportunity to turn themselves in, receive reparations. They are incarcerated in the Special Protection Area, yes. At times deported. But they are not executed. They only face harm when they attempt to do harm, or when their identities are disclosed, a warrant is issued and they refuse to surrender peaceably.
“How many MTacs would still be alive, do you imagine, if they were allowed to fire first instead of waiting to be threatened or until they had delivered so-called Civils to a suspect?”
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