Those Who Walk in Darkness so-1

by John Ridley

  Lesker yelled at the Hispanic guys: "Hey, Ese! Como estd?" To Soledad: "Look at 'em. Grinnin' like a bunch of donkeys." To the Hispanic guys: "Arriba to you too, Poncho." To Soledad: "Christ, nobody's got jobs anymore?"

  "Maybe they're taking a business lunch. Open air, you know."

  Only three shifts. Soledad couldn't stand looking at her partner anymore. Listening to him wasn't much better.

  "Check that one over there. Swear I rousted him not two weeks ago."

  "Which one?"

  "Take your pick. These people stand around yapping on a corner, then always seem to come up with enough scratch to make bail. Explain that? Don't earn that kind of money selling oranges by an off-ramp." Talking about Soledad's face: "Let me see."

  "I'm okay."

  "Just wanna see if you're swelling up."

  Soledad didn't care about showing her new bruise to Lesker. He was there when she got it. She didn't want to show him because, really that much, she didn't want to have to look at the guy.

  "C'mon, let me see."

  Soledad turned from the window, got an eyeful of her partner. Lesker was overweight, but not so much to get kicked off the force. Unfortunately. He tended to be unpleasant in an annoying way, was free of ambition and was just marking time until he could draw pension. Combine all that, it was no accident he was partner free, available to work with whatever cop came along.

  He checked out Soledad's face. A bad bruise had formed on the right side between her eye and temple."Shoulda just popped the bitch back."

  Soledad had gotten careless on a domestic disturbance call. Not careless. Not really. No matter his years on the job, Lesker's police skills were weak and he was lazy about using them. Soledad found herself having to do two things at once. Domestic disturbance calls are not a good place to get distracted. More cops are injured refer-eeing those than any other kind of calls. Including MTac. Soledad had got herself between a drunk husband and an angry wife. Lucky all she got was an ashtray to the temple.

  "Shoulda just popped the—"

  "I heard you. Should've popped the bitch. It was an accident!"

  "Coming at you with an ashtray? Those people don't hit cops by accident."

  "What kind of people is that?"

  "Those kind. That's what kind."

  Old school, Bo had said. Old school didn't begin to describe Willie Lesker.

  "Those fucking people. We're supposed to be protecting them, then every time a cop gets shot they have a holiday; break into a liquor store and burn it down or some shit. Christ. What the fuck are we out here for?"

  "If they didn't have us, they'd only have each other to shoot at all day long."

  "Hell, let 'em."

  If it came glazed, Soledad wasn't sure Lesker would recognize sarcasm. Didn't matter. His focus was across the street. Another of" those people" rubbing him wrong just by existing.

  "Jesus, look at homeboy in the Benz. Yeah, we're winning the war on drugs. Fucking oughta roust him."

  Soledad's head swung the opposite direction, looked out her window. Only the third shift.

  "Oughta roust him. Ten to one he's got an outstanding on something. Probably child support for baby number thirty-two. Got to get yourself some glasses, O'Roark. A good dark pair, before all the shit gets in your eyes."

  We could go somewhere else."

  "That's okay."

  "I mean, if you wanted to—"

  "I'm good."

  When Soledad'd told Ian it was okay if they went out on a date, long as they didn't go on a date date, he figured that meant shopping or going to a bookstore or tossing around small talk in the middle of the afternoon over a couple of Jamba juices. What Ian hadn't figured on: To Soledad a nondate date was sitting in an auto shop on Little Santa Monica while the front end of her Honda got worked on. Except for the heat and the noise and the auto repair smells and the grease-covered guys sneaking Soledad the eye while they chewed their lips, it was very close to almost being something like a date.

  Ian tried one more time to get Soledad around to the idea of going somewhere—anywhere—else.

  "You know, across the street there's this little cafe—"

  "Want to keep an eye on these guys. Minute you walk away they start making up stuff that's wrong with your car."

  And she had sunglasses on. Bad enough all the other distractions, but here they were inside and Soledad kept her eyes hidden.

  Ian fell back in his chair. Not defeated, but definitely taking a between-rounds breather. Ms. O'Roark was going to be work. A whole lot.

  She said: "Thought you'd like this."

  "Like what?"

  "Thought you'd like coming to the garage with me. I mean, you like cars, right?"

  "I like them, but—"

  "And this place… I don't know, it's got character."

  And it did. Right among the overpriced boutiques that littered Beverly Hills, the banks and finance companies, movie and television production houses corralled in Century City, the garage was a little brick throwback of a building that couldn't hold more than three vehicles at a time. Driving regular speeds down Little Santa Monica, you'd miss it if you weren't looking.

  Soledad'd missed it plenty of times. Wasn't until a cop on SPU had given it a recommend that she'd driven real slow and found the joint.

  They did good work at Grimmet's, the garage. Had to. Family-owned since the days when the cars that rolled through the door had names like Packard and Studebaker. They'd done a lot of star business at Grimmet's too. Headshots on the wall: Cornel Wilde, Barbara Stanwyck, the Fonz.

  It was funny about LA: every shop, dry cleaners and hole-in-the-wall restaurant you went to had headshots autographed by stars. But in all the years she'd lived in the city Soledad'd never seen anyone particularly famous. Not a one. Just a guy who could light himself up and shoot flames. That Soledad had seen.

  "The Jag you drive: What kind," Soledad asked,"is that?"

  "Sixty-seven Series I XK-E." Ian tripped over himself answering, happy Soledad showed the slightest interest in something about him."It's nice, you know, but way too temperamental. All the Brit cars are like that. The old ones. What I really want is a Sixty-four and a half Mustang."

  Soledad frowned.

  "What?" Was he talking too much? Did she really not care about cars?

  "That's what guys say. Whenever a guy goes on about old cars, he always says he wants a Sixty-four—"

  "Sixty-four and a half."

  "Mustang."

  "That's because it's a classic. It's a classic car."

  All Ian earned with that was a shrug out of Soledad."Camaros are cooler."

  "I thought you didn't know anything about cars."

  "How much do you have to know to know cool?"

  Shaking his head, dismissive, adamant, not caring he should be working to earn points on their first nondate date: "You can't even compare the two."

  Dismissive, adamant back: "You got that right."

  "I'm talking about a classic piece of automotive—"

  "Classic. Classic, not a muscle car. What I'm talking about is a muscle car, okay? I mean, yeah, you want to go pick up some drapes from the store, take your grandma to dialysis, an old Mustang is real nice, but..

  Ian stared Soledad right in the sunglasses. He saw a teeny-tiny version of himself getting exasperated."You know who drives Camaros? White trash. White trash drives Camaros. They love them. That big V-8 is good for towing around their mobile homes."

  "Lots of people drive Camaros." Soledad tried to think of a few. A bunch of pale trashy faces popped into her mind."… Lots of people."

  "White trash and New York goombahs."

  "They drive Trans Ams."

  "Same shit. The shit's the same."

  She fought it hard, but she couldn't help herself: Soledad smiled.

  Ian got energized by this tiniest of victories. A foothold while storming the beach O'Roark. He pressed his advantage."You have nice eyes," he worked at being smooth."At least I rememb
er them that way. I'd love to see them."

  Soledad dropped her smile. For a second Ian thought he was going to be repelled back into the cold, cold water. A few seconds after that, Soledad's hand came up, slid off her sunglasses. Hard as she made that little bit of a chore seem, she might as well have been lifting a bus over her head.

  And they were pretty eyes. Green. They looked good against her caramel skin. Would've looked even better if most times they weren't always burning so hot.

  Soledad said: "I was really surprised when you asked me out."

  "Because you'd just wrecked my car?"

  "Hey, I saw the insurance claim. It's not wrecked. And wasn't just that. The look on your face when you saw my gun."

  "Yeah. Well…" Ian's ass squirmed, looked for a comfy spot on his wood chair."I've got a bad habit of being attracted to the wrong women. Women with guns are about as wrong as it gets."

  Out on Little Santa Monica someone was trying to make a left turn across a double yellow into the drive of the Peninsula. Traffic behind the car was getting held up. People were getting pissed. People were laying on their horns. Eventually the car made the turn. The other drivers went on to wherever they were going—now short of temper—to infect the rest of the city with their freshly acquired anger.

  Falling dominos.

  "So… what's with yours; your gun?"

  "Hit woman for the Triads."

  "No, really…"

  "It's legal, it's registered. Can we talk about something else?"

  "But is it, is it like protection? Do you have a restraining order against—"

  "Let's talk about something—"

  "Something else. Yeah, I'd like to, but you don't want to talk about anything else: your family, what's going on in your life, what you do for a living."

  Shooting the mutie, the trouble over her gun, IA and lawyers: All that thrashed around in Soledad's head. Did this guy need to know any of that? Did she need to rehash it?" Maybe we should—"

  "Talk about something else. Yeah. I know."

  "How about we talk about you?"

  "We talked about me."

  "When did we talk about you? We didn't talk about you."

  "Yeah, we did."

  "I don't know where you're from, I don't know anything about your family…"

  Between his teeth Ian gripped his lip.

  Soledad: "Okay, so the sharing only flows in one direction? Why don't you like to talk about things?"

  "Why don't you like to talk about things?"

  There was just the sound of the cars getting worked on.

  Ian said: "Told you about my job."

  "Barely. Said you were an architect, but you didn't—"

  "I'm not an architect. I do industrial design."

  "I thought… I'm sorry, I wasn't…" Soledad trailed off into the incomprehensible.

  "Landing gear," Ian said.

  "Oh, yeah," Soledad remembered.

  "I design landing gear for commercial jets. Business has changed a lot since Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. Then they shut that down, no more MD designs. I don't think there's going to be as much innovation as the—"

  "That's a weird job."

  Ian shrugged."It's decent work."

  "I guess not weird. I guess I meant… It sounds kind of odd. Never thought of landing gear being designed. Not in particular. I always figured…" A little laugh. An honest laugh."I didn't figure anything 'cause it's not like I sit around thinking about landing gear." Heels to the edge of her chair, Soledad pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs. Went a little fetal."So I'm really bad company and I'm way too intense and I kind of was… part of me was hoping this would be a shitty time so you wouldn't call me again."

  "Why?"

  "I have a lot of guilt and I want my life to be miserable."

  "… Fuck…"

  "Yeah. I'm fucked-up, huh?"

  "And they let people like you have guns?"

  From Soledad, a sideways glance.

  "For real, though, that's just… that's, like, that's a helluvan honest thing for someone to say about herself."

  "I'm going through a situation. The kind that forces you to be honest about things."

  Ian, again: "Fuck. Who's your therapist?"

  "Don't have one. Just this lawyer…"

  A couple of the mechanics working on a Volvo got into an argument about something. A lug nut or a timing belt. They went at each other good and loud, and one of the guys had a wrench, gripped hard and held low, that he looked like he wasn't afraid to use if things ended up going that way.

  Ian: "I think… I think you're an interesting person, Soledad. I wouldn't say it's been a shitty time, but I don't get the feeling you and I…"

  Soledad looked to Ian.

  Ian didn't return the stare.

  Soledad said: "You want to call it a day, I don't blame you. Really don't. Like I said, I was kind of hoping for that. But you should just know, I haven't been testing you. I've been testing myself. My world, it's not very big; there's not much to it, and I'm not used to letting other people wander around in it."

  "At least we start off with something in common."

  Ian looked to Soledad.

  No fire in her eyes. Not anymore.

  "I want to try," Soledad said."I want to, but this is going to take a while."

  "How long is a while?"

  "Longer than most guys would want to stick around. What you're doing now, it's a deposit on a long-term investment. If that's what you want."

  Ian slumped, let out a breath long and slow.

  Back on went Soledad's sunglasses.

  Ian said again for the record: "Always did pick the wrong women."

  The mechanics settled their dispute, quit arguing. There was nothing to fill the quiet between Ian and Soledad.

  "In Japan they have this thing called haragei."

  "You know about Japan?"

  "There're all kinds of things to me, Soledad. Some of them aren't that obvious."

  "Japan…?"

  "Japan. They have this thing called haragei, and it's… it's talking without talking; without saying anything. It's just people sharing an experience. Maybe we could do that, for starts, just… share an experience."

  No need to think about it: "Yeah. Let's do that."

  The two sat and shared the experience of Soledad's car getting its front end worked on.

  After a while the mechanics finished up, handed Soledad the bill. Handed her a little more eye. Soledad paid up, suspicious of the charges.

  The experience ended.

  Soledad and Ian got ready to go. Ian walked out to Little Santa Monica, to where his Jaguar was parked, started it up. When the road was clear, he pulled out into traffic and drove home.

  It was opposite the direction Soledad was heading.

  Had it always been there? That or one like it. Was she just noticing the picture of the girl—actress or model or singer—more endowed with chest than talent, ass than ability. She had on a bikini, a size too small and then pulled tight. She'd been yanked from the middle of Maxim or Stuff or FHM and stuck on a wall next to someone's desk.

  Fine.

  If the girl looked hot and wasn't good for much but looking hot, if a guy somehow felt high on himself for being stupid enough to pay hard-earned cash for a one-dimensional version of a woman… everybody was happy. Nothing to write NOW about. So the idea of a little cheesecake around Parker Center didn't bother Soledad.

  Alone it didn't.

  But there was that picture and there were other pictures torn and ripped and tacked and scotch-taped all over Parker Center— this desk, that locker… And there was that detective by the window, the one with the coffee mug. The one with the coffee mug that read: save a mouse, eat a pussy. How long had he had that thing? Was she just now noticing it, same as she was just now noticing…

  That uniform: Was he staring at her? Just looking in her direction, or was he staring at her? That cop he's talking to: was he just
talking to him, or talking about Soledad? Was he really saying…

  Had it always been there? Was she always oblivious to it? Was it even, really, there now, or was she somehow making more of the stares, the cheesecake? The lips that moved slowly, were read clearly, saying: "What a lucky fucking bitch."

  Had they…

  Was she…

  Soledad went for the motor pool. Head down, blinders on.

  That's some crazy shit, I'll tell you that. Some crazy, crazy shit."

  Willie Lesker was in the process of letting Soledad know the shit was crazy.

  He continued to illuminate her."Just don't make good sense to me why anybody would get it in their head they want to be an MTac cop."

  "We've talked about this, Lesker. Talked about this yesterday, day before…"

  "Just don't understand—"

  "Month and a week, how many shifts? You don't get it, you're not going to get it. I can live with that, so why don't you?"

  "Just saying—"

  "The shit's crazy. Somebody's got to do it."

  Bad as Lesker was, for Soledad it was good to be in uniform, to bear the appearance of being a cop and a stepchild to an MTac officer. Even with the midday heat, the traffic she suffered through cruising with Lesker, it was good—she reminded herself—to be wearing a gun, small and useless as her service revolver felt in her holster.

  Except for all that, it was good. Pretty good. Would've been better without Lesker.

  "All I'm saying, running after them muties, ought to be glad you're done with it."

  "I'm not done with it." Soledad was both being defiant and expressing a personal truth."You go after a freak once, you see what they can do… you're never done with it."

  "Good goddamn way to get yourself killed."

  "Being a cop is a good way to get yourself killed."

  "Shit, had my share of trouble with crackheads and gang bangers, but I've never had one start flying around shooting heat beams from its eyes."

  "Freaks only have one ability, not multiple. It couldn't fly and—"

  "Never once." Not even hearing Soledad, or hearing and not caring.

  "You learn to deal."

  "Yeah, bet you do. You learning to deal with that shit on your neck? A freak give you that as a going-away present?"

  The blues she wore left the burns on Soledad's neck exposed. She wished for one of her turtlenecks. She wished she was Yarborough and didn't care how many scars she'd collected.