by John Ridley
"Who's this?"
Uneasy breathing, then: "Ian…"
Soledad thought, tried to collate names with faces. She came up with nothing. The voice on the phone clarified things for her.
"You don't know me. I mean, you do… We… I was the guy you hit. You hit my car."
Jaguar Guy, Soledad thought."Jaguar Guy," she said.
"Yeah." Not mumbling. Relaxing some.
"My insurance company should've already—"
"They did."
"Then I don't think we have anything—"
"I'm not calling about that; about the accident."
"There's something else you wanted to—"
"I wanted to…" Back to the mumbling.
"Can't hear you."
"I wanted to see you."
"See me?" Soledad noncomprehended."See me for what?"
"For… because…" His voice sounded like a lot of effort was going into looking for the right thing to say, the right way to say it.
Couldn't find it. All he could come up with was what he'd said before: "I wanted to see you."
"You mean a date?" Soledad asked.
"A date," Ian confirmed. Barely.
Now it was Soledad who had trouble with the language."That's… uh…"
The conversation was devolving into sounds and non sequiturs.
"I don't know if you have a guy. I know you're not married. No ring, and I checked your insurance record…"
"Jesus, you stalking me?"
"No! No, I just wondered if… I wanted to…"
"See me," completed Soledad. A date. A date with some guy she'd run into, literally, who'd seen her once for a couple of minutes or so standing in an intersection, and wanted to see her again.
And real quick she felt, Soledad felt… flattered?
Soledad worked at remembering what Jaguar Guy—Ian—looked like. She knew she wasn't repulsed by him, so that was something. Maybe he was six or six-one. Good height. Not fat. It came to her that he was in shape enough that he probably worked out regular. Soledad liked guys who weren't body-obsessed but cared enough about themselves to at least know where a gym was located.
"Well…" Soledad hesitated. She'd been on the phone, what, three, four minutes with this guy, and not more than twelve words exchanged between them."Maybe not a date date."
"Okay. Okay. Then… what?"
"I don't know. Just not a date date."
"A date date?"
"Not a real date. We can do… something, but not like—"
"A date date. No, that's cool."
"You have a phone number?"
Ian did, of course, and gave it to Soledad. Gladly. Soledad took it down, checked it as he repeated it, promised to call. Soon. They good-byed each other and hung up.
The phone cradled, in an instant, a dozen variations of a hundred dates and the endless variety of relationships they'd be potential birth parents to visited Soledad. A prophetic flash that caused her to sit and smile, and to stop smiling when she realized she was. He was just some guy. Some guy she'd had a crack-up with who'd gotten the hots for her, Soledad propagandized herself. That's all he was. Maybe he was a nice guy. Maybe he was a fun guy. Maybe he was just a guy hardly different one way or the other from most of the rest of the guys in the world. So drop the excitement, the anticipation, she ordered herself. Just because he was the one guy who— for whatever reason in however long—decided to throw a little attention her way, that was no reason for her to feel… good?
The phone rang. Soledad's hand shot for it. Forcibly she pulled it back, let the phone chirp on. Shameful. At her age, and here she was playing schoolgirl games.
She answered the phone driving all expectation from her voice."Hello?"
It was only after Soledad was across the room grinding right fist into left palm that the memory of slamming down the phone caught up to her. She did a rewind: the phone ringing, her answering, a woman's voice saying hello, then asking: "Bullet?"
Again the phone rang. When it didn't ring itself out, Soledad crossed back over and picked it up saying nothing.
A woman's voice again. Same woman who'd just called a minute previous."Sorry. I should have said: May I speak with Soledad?"
There was a Chinese place in the Beverly Connection. Dollar for dollar, far as Soledad cared, it cooked up the best Chinese food, or Americanized version of Chinese food, in Los Angeles. And that was the thing: dollar for dollar. You could spend more, get better for your money spent, but Soledad was living on cop's pay—which, in LA, on MTac, wasn't as bad as the cliche'd lead you to think. But saving money was never a wrong idea. Soledad got her Chinese food in the Beverly Connection. She waited, ate the house fried rice, read the Daily News. Typical LA stories: gang shooting, bank robbery, actor beats up girlfriend. Harsh, dark, violent, but at least nothing like: the giggler nabs mister disaster or major force ends the liquidators' crime spree. The days of such headlines—laughable, except that the perps were deadly psychopaths—were thankfully done and over.
There was even a little good news buried in the pages. Six-year-old girl runs out into the street, gets hit, hit hard by a car and lives. A picture of mother and daughter and stunned onlookers at the scene. Mom: "It's a miracle."
Soledad flipped the paper aside, checked her watch. Eighteen minutes past the time she was supposed to meet Gayle.
It'd be another ten minutes before Gayle actually arrived.
Gayle Senna, the woman who'd phoned up Soledad the day prior, had done a workman job—in spite of making the mistake of calling her Bullet—of talking Soledad into taking a meeting. The Bullet thing Gayle apologized for as she sat.
"Sorry about the Bullet thing."
"I don't like," very firmly Soledad pointed out,"to be called that."
"Obviously. When I was asking around about you, some cops I—"
"I don't like to be called that."
A shrug. A nod. Gayle put the subject to bed and moved on."So let's talk about helping you."
"Except I don't need help."
The thing about the Beverly Connection: It's a series of shops and cafes built around one big parking garage. Sitting al fresco really meant sitting around while cars crept by looking for open spots and spewing fumes.
Gayle sucked carbon monoxide and tried to figure how long it was going to take to get to the heart of things with Soledad.
"Look, we started things wrong, and that was my fault. But let's not keep going wrong by slinging crap at each other. You need help, and if you didn't, you wouldn't be here."
"I came because me saying yes was the only way to get you off the phone."
"It pays to be persistent, Soledad." Gayle stressed the name, stressed her acquiescence. Stressed it to the point of nearly being snide."I'm tenacious like that. Good trait for a lawyer. Get it from my mother's side. Always stuck with things. Married six guys till she found one she could stand. Talk about not letting go." Gayle crossed her legs, which jutted from the skirt of a smart business suit. She had great legs, long and shaped by muscle. Even Soledad had to notice them. Gayle's great legs went with her great body, smooth skin and dark hair. She wasn't model beautiful, but she didn't miss the mark by much. That didn't give Soledad a lot of confidence in Gayle's legal abilities. In a city where good looks traded at a premium, Soledad figured the counselor never had to pay full freight for anything.
Helping Gayle get back on track: "What you were talking about was helping me."
"Yes. You're being investigated by IA. Potentially you could face disciplinary proceedings. I'll keep that from happening."
Soledad waited for more, but all that happened was Gayle flagged a waitress, ordered some potstickers.
"That's it?"
"Well, I can make you a media darling too, but I get the feeling it's not what you're looking for."
"Just like that you're going to get me out from under?"
Ignoring the question: "It's got to be eighty degrees. Are you warm at all with that turtleneck?"
&nb
sp; Warm, yeah, but Soledad was getting used to it.
Ignoring the question: "You're going to keep me from being brought up on charges? How?"
"We're talking about the law. There's always a way around it. Provided you step carefully. The first mistake you made—"
"Didn't know I'd made any."
"Two. The first one is you're not even represented."
"I'm not on trial."
"Anytime an officer is under review by IA, or DAID, you're entitled to have an attorney present during questioning." Gayle waved away the exhaust from some kind of eighties version of Cadillac."Is there somewhere else we could—"
"You wanted to meet. Here's where we're meeting."
Letting it go, letting Soledad feel like she was running the show: "Your second mistake… let's just call it an error of judgment: You are on trial. Just because you're not staring down twelve of your peers, don't think otherwise." Gayle dug a pen, a legal pad from her bag, pushed aside the soy sauce to make room. Poised, ready to write: "So tell me what's going on."
"How about we slow things down for a second? How about you tell me about you. What do you… what…" Simplest way to put it: "Who are you?"
"I thought I was pretty clear on the phone—"
"How do you know about me? Does your firm—"
"I'm not with a firm."
And Soledad downgraded her assessment of Gayle. Good-looking, and couldn't get with a firm? Her skills have really got to be suspect.
"So how'd you find out I was… I'm having troubles?"
"I'm well connected."
Soledad laughed derisive.
"What?"
"You mean you sleep around."
"Sure. Because I happen to look good, and I get the job done, so, of course, I'm a whore."
"If you were a whore, you'd have landed a firm instead of having to make cold calls."
With her pen, Gayle drew a little box between the lines of her legal pad. Drew another. Drew another. She set the pen down."You know something? You and I are going to do good together. You've got an attitude that's as pleasant as a fist to the face. So do I. I modify it for work. Have to. But with you, I think I can relax and just be the difficult woman I am. So, no, I haven't landed a firm. Don't want to. I'm trying to build a rep, and it's not the kind most of those leather-couch establishments'll touch."
"What kind is that?"
"Defending the constitutional rights of metanormals."
And Soledad said: "Fuck you!"
And Gayle asked the waitress for hot mustard as she set down the potstickers.
"Fuck you!"
"I heard you the first time." Gayle looked over her plate of food. Six dumplings. All the same. Still, she inspected them carefully, finally settled on one and harpooned it with a chopstick.
"Those things don't have rights."
"Well…" Gayle talked around a mouthful of food."That's still being debated."
"You got a thing for muties."
"Did you know they like to be called 'extra-otherly-abled'?"
"Why?"
"Remember the Northridge earthquake, the section of the 10 that went down?"
Soledad remembered but didn't respond.
"Tavor, the Expandable Man saved my brother-in-law and about fifteen other people."
The sound Soledad made was like something had caught in her throat."You have any idea how queer those names even sound? What kind of person calls himself the Expandable Man?"
"I'll have my brother-in-law ask. He sends Tavor a Christmas card in Belgium every year."
"And you're telling me I've got problems? You're soft for freaks—"
"I told you, they like to be called—"
"Metanormals, M-norms. Muties. Whatever. You're soft for them, but you're trying to put a gun back in my hand. Meanwhile, the IA cop who's trying to bury me thinks I did right."
Gayle smiled."World's an odd place." Another potsticker got harpooned."Thing is, handling your… problem gives a young, hardworking girl like myself a lot of credibility. Freaks, as you say, used to be heroes. Maybe they could've done without the funny outfits and snappy names, but they were heroes; they saved lives, put their own at risk. Nobody told them to, nobody told them to look out for us normal people, but they did.
"Now they're killed—"
"Lawfully arrested."
"Sure. Just like Japanese Americans were lawfully rounded up and herded off to internment camps during the Second World War."
"Yeah, there's a good comparison. Normal humans to freaks."
"The comparison is racial profiling to genetic profiling: taking away someone's rights not because of what they've done, but because of who they are, what they are. It's like shooting a bird just because it flies. But then, they do that, don't they?"
"They're treated same as every other suspected perp."
"And what's cop talk for serving a warrant on a metanormal? Hunting? You hunt them?"
Soledad gave a hard shake of her head."You ACLU bunch, everything works as a concept to you. Tell you what, you try holding up the Constitution when a fire freak's throwing thousand-degree flames your way. See how much it protects you then."
"So you shoot metanormals because the law says you can?"
"When they resist arrest, yeah."
"You just enforce the law?"
"That's all we do."
"Well, I'm just trying to change the law. Then you can enforce it my way."
The sounds of cars circling the structure; over that, at close range, Gayle could hear Soledad's teeth grind.
Gayle: "A lot of stuff got shoved past us after San Francisco; a lot of politicians wrapping their careers in the flag and reactionary politics in memorial statements. Doesn't mean everything that got done was done right. When it comes time to make the change, I think a lawyer who's proven her impartiality could come in very handy."
"And I've got no say in any of this? I'm supposed to let you use me to help yourself?"
"You don't want me, you don't want me." Gayle made a show of digging in her bag, looking for her car keys."But I don't see anybody else running to your side. Cops talk big about all bleeding blue, but when it comes to facing IA charges, nobody wants to bleed with you. You've got no PPL lawyer, no legal aid. Just me." Keys in hand."So go on, tell me to fuck off one more time."
Soledad didn't say a thing.
"I'm using you, yes. But like you said: the guy who sees things your way is working against you. So if me using you gets your neck out of a noose, take it. Take what I'm offering."
A beat. No words exchanged. Armistice.
Gayle, putting back her keys, picking up her pen, getting back to things: "So tell me what's going on. The IA cop: What'd he ask you?"
"Not much of anything. I think he was just, you know… trying to get a rise out of me; get me to say something stupid. Went through my history, how I moved up through the department, why I wanted to be MTac…"
"Why did you?"
"Metanormals are a known and real threat to us, our society, and—"
"You sound like Mussolini's parrot. Forget the cop school propaganda. You: Why did you put in for MTac?"
Soledad didn't answer.
"That's got to tell you something, doesn't it, if for whatever reason you can't say why?"
Nothing… then from Soledad: "I always liked San Francisco. Can't say why, just thought it was a cool city. Maybe 'cause the 49ers didn't know how to lose a Super Bowl when I was a kid. Anyway, always wanted to go visit. Never got a chance. Now I never will."
"And that's why you're an MTac: because the metanormals blew up your football team."
"My family was going to take a trip there. I'd talked them… I'd bugged them into it. Would've been my first time going. I got sick, we didn't make it. The day we were supposed to go; first day of May. Fourteen years ago."
"May Day." And Gayle got it. Gayle understood.
For a moment Soledad's eyes went slick."I should have been there. I should have been in San Francisc
o." For a moment her edge faded."By some fluke I'm sitting here, when I should be…"
"… If you had been there," Gayle, voice soft,"you realize you were just a kid. You couldn't have done anything except gotten killed with a couple hundred thousand other people."
"Probably. But I didn't. So I decided to do something with being alive. I decided I wasn't going to let something like San Francisco happen again. Not if there was anything I could do about it. Anything at all."
"Like work on a new kind of gun. One especially made for dispatching metanormals."
"Yeah."
"So now you're… you're driven by a failure that wasn't your fault, that you couldn't have prevented if you'd wanted to. Or worse, you're motivated by guilt because catching the flu means you're alive instead of dead."
"I never… I don't think of things that way."
"That's called denial. I could understand if you lost family there, but this… Look, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not saying your thinking's psychotic, but somebody could spin it that way."
"Somebody like the IA."
Gayle nodded.
"So… what do we do?"
"You saying you want my help?"
"I'm asking what do we do?"
"For starters, from here on, anybody wants to question you about anything, do yourself a favor: don't say a word."
You gotta get yourself some glasses. A good dark pair. Keep all the shit out of your eyes."
Lesker was talking.
Soledad wasn't paying attention. Was trying not to. She was looking out the window of their squad. Nothing to see. They were patrolling LAPD's Central Division. Downtown LA. Streets that used to be full with foot traffic were now just full of traffic. Decades ago GM had conspired with the city to rip out all the light rail so it could fill the streets with buses and cars. Now there was nothing but buses and cars. No more people to walk and window-shop. So no more upper-end stores. No more chain businesses. Bodegas and street vendors and flea markets and the low-end customers and high crimes that went with them. Better, for Soledad, to look at all that nothing than to have to look the other way, catch a glimpse of her new partner. Patrolman Willie Lesker.
"Ride around like this for the next twenty years without glasses and you'll go blind. Jesus, look at this bunch on the corner."
A few Hispanic-looking guys standing around hoping to catch some work.