What Fire Cannot Burn so-2
Page 7
That knife. That knife of Eddi's…
There was absolutely nothing in the article about the MTacs' procedure, about how they took out the freak. It was in her head Soledad saw Eddi putting it down, solo, with her blade. And Soledad could hear, again in her head, she could hear Eddi chiding: How about that, Soledad? Chalked a freak and didn't even need your fancy little gun.
That knife of hers…
Undoubtedly, it'd been multiple clips emptied by all of the element into the freak that'd dropped it. But Soledad, her feelings of uselessness that had festered in her leg and were now infecting her imagination, couldn't help but score the victory to that knife.
And Soledad'd been worried about Eddi worshipping her? Why should Eddi? Probably, Eddi made a better MTac than Soledad.
What was that Soledad was feeling now? Obsolescence doing an insect's crawl on her
flesh?
Eyes.
It was eyes rolling over her, sensed so strongly they came to her as an actual feeling.
Beyond the doorway, in the corridor, the one-handed, one-hooked cop-that particular cop with one hand, one hook-was standing where he had a couple of weeks or so prior. Staring as he'd done previously.
And, same as before, Soledad: "Yeah?"
"O'Roark, right?"
"Yeah."
"People talk about you."
Soledad gave a shrug indicating how much- how little-she cared about other people's talk. "People are saying-"
"Whatever." Soledad had no interest in the conversation and aborted it before it was fully formed.
The one-handed, — hooked cop kept up his stare, kept it going. And Soledad returned one. She maintained her intensity, not mocking him or imitating the guy. She was actively staring him down.
Then the cop came into Soledad's space. "Tucker Raddatz." He held out his left hand, offering an awkward shake.
Soledad joined his left hand with her right hand, didn't bother with her name. Obviously, it was known to him.
Raddatz said: "Welcome to DMI."
Where a thank-you would've been fine Soledad said, too honest for her own good: "You've got to come around, stare at me twice, two weeks apart, just to offer a hello?"
"Wanted to be sure."
"Of?"
"That you'd still be working here in two weeks' time."
Another shrug from Soledad. "Here's where I want to be."
"Which is why you waited until you got your knee messed up before making the move from G Platoon to DMI. A temp transfer at that."
"If I'd known the cops here liked to stand outside office doors like peeping pervs, I would have been here years ago."
Not so much as a smile from Raddatz. "Some gave a lot to be here." Signifying. He was obviously talking about his lost hand. Maybe some other wounds unseen. Those of other DMI cops. "Hard to take the sort-of-injured coming around for a temporary visit."
"I don't know if I'm supposed to feel a certain way because you're disabled."
"I'm not disabled. One hand, and I can still do more than-"
"I don't know how I'm supposed to feel that you're a gimp; if I'm supposed to feel guilty, or sympathetic, or what. Mostly, I don't feel anything. Not for you guys. You got the way you are because you were messing with freaks. Mess with freaks, sooner or later you get messed up. So I don't feel anything because, same as the rest of us, you knew the risk and you took it. And I don't feel anything because, well, how would you take the sympathy of a stranger anyway? Not well at all."
"How would you know?"
"Because I wouldn't take it well. I wouldn't want it."
Their mutual stare remained in a locked loop. Stayed that way.
Raddatz said: "Want to get coffee?" Soledad said: "Sure."
Soledad felt better about Raddatz after he'd directed her to a Norms. Norms were diners. Oldschool. Trapped in a Googie era. Value-priced. Highlights of the menu: a patty melt and a fajita salad and a California Reuben sandwich and a chicken-fried steak that Soledad had never had- she had never had anything of the kind anywhere-but promised herself to try before her death. She didn't care about seeing the Eiffel Tower. She didn't care about going skydiving one time before she bit it. She just wanted to try the chicken-fried steak. Only, not today.
Norms's coffee, porcelain-cup-served, varied only by the cream and sugar the drinker dumped in it.
Raddatz, deftly, used a combo of hand and hook to rip open his sugar, his little packets of cream. How many years of practice did it take to get good at mixing coffee like a two-handed person?
Soledad had tea. Regular Lipton. Lot of milk. Lot of sugar.
Panama had nothing.
Raddatz had brought a tagalong with them. Another cop. Chuck Panama. About Raddatz's age. Not a bad-looking guy. Only, he knew he wasn't a bad-looking guy and it had probably gotten him a lot of play in his younger days. So now he slung around his "ain't I fine" attitude same as some high-trading currency that ought to automatically buy him something.
Bought him nothing from Soledad except instant contempt.
And he was nondisfigured. He had no visible defect. No limp. No scars that could be seen. For a DMI cop that was remarkable to the point of being unique. Soledad's neck alone owned a souvenir-a palm-shaped scar of burned flesh- of her very first call. Panama's flawlessness was a curiosity to Soledad.
For a minute the three talked, mostly Raddatz and Soledad doing the talking. Panama seemed slightly above engagement. The talk was about nothing. The way smog was making a comeback in the city, the way the Clippers weren't and probably never would. They spent time on insignificance, but their talk wasn't about the conversation. Their talk, seeing who stood their ground, who held their convictions over matters of little consequence, served the function of a couple of sparring partners going around and around the squared circle waiting for the other to demonstrate if things were going to be gentle or if there was some pugilism to be done. In the process Raddatz gave a little primer on himself. Married, a couple of kids. Boys. Was with West
LA MTac four years ago. Twenty-first call, eighth on point-and he remembered the exact number it was-a freak got the best of them. Got three of the operators, got his hand.
Three cops dead, one gimped.
And here was the kicker. As the cops were fighting for their lives-more rightly, as they were losing their lives in a slaughter-one of the cops squeezed off a round that: went stray and did a through-and-through to some guy a coupla blocks away. The guy died.
The LA Times ran an op-ed piece. Heavy-handed. Anticop, Anti-MTac. MTacs were offing innocent people in their cross fire. Israel Fernandez led a protest rally. Not even a hundred people showed up. But that was a start.
Three cops dead. And the Times, the liberals were saying the cops were out of control?
Raddatz did his hand/hook thing, put cream and sugar in some fresh coffee.
He took a sip, took in some of the brew. He let out nothing but bitterness.
Raddatz said: "That damn Fernandez."
Panama nodded to that.
Soledad got where that came from. Here Raddatz was with one hand, and other people with two good ones wanted to wrap them around the freaks and give them a big, sloppy, "oh, you poor victims" hug. And of them, of that bunch of freak fuckers, the worst had been "Damn Fernandez," Raddatz said again.
Soledad said something to the effect that it had been how many,… how few, really. How few years since San Francisco? Already people were starting to forget.
"That's the thing," Raddatz said. "You try to make people remember, they say you're wallowing in tragedy. You do nothing, they just let it slip out of their minds."
"Month after May Day, everybody's like: Yeah, we want the Feds to do something; yeah, we want DNA testing." By the string, Soledad bobbed her tea bag in an empty cup. Something for her hand to do. "A couple of years go by, people were already bitching the Executive Order's not constitutional. DNA testing's an invasion of privacy."
"How about we just let freak
s back into the country? All of you in Europe, c'mon home." Raddatz's sarcasm was high. "How about we give them their spandex back? Let them fly around, get in fights… start knocking over buildings again. Shit, if we're just going to act like San Francisco never happened…»
Panama gave a laugh.
She knew he was just going off, agreed with Raddatz's core philosophy, but still Soledad shook her head to all that. "They think that way, the bleeding hearts; they just want to roll back the clock in their heads to the day before yesterday ended." Soledad got the psychology of the liberal fringe. At least, she was able to articulate the thought process she ascribed to them. "They want to believe, they want to make themselves believe… some of them, maybe they actually think they're doing right. But I think most of them just want to make themselves believe San Francisco could never happen again."
"How the hell could they-"
"They just want to feel safe. Ignorance and bliss, right?"
Panama: "Bullshit."
"Yeah, it's bullshit. Absolutely it is. So people like us, not only do we never forget what happened, we've got the added chore of having to remember for the bleeding hearts."
"That why you went MTac?"
"There another reason to try and arrest things that can make you burst into flames with a look in your direction?"
"Some operators are just action junkies." Panama was accusatory in tone. Slightly, bur. just enough. "They get off thinking they're BAMF."
"And those operators mostly never get past SWAT." Soledad was adamant about the point, having worked with enough jarheads, youth wasted on PlayStation and thinking cop work, was nothing but. a video game, to last a lifetime. A lifetime that was likely to get. fractionalized when the jarhead found out too late that when you're going after a freak you don't get do-overs. "They can play badass all day, all night. Doesn't make them anything of the kind. Every other cop job. the odds are you're going to live, retire, get fat off your pension. MTac, every day you survive you've beat the odds. You know that. And you know, a job where being dead is the norm, you've got to be down for the cause."
"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. Ever)' movie, every TV show that portrayed the
LAPD as the toughest roughneck shield-wearing MPs 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. Torn 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 Elan, 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.
&
nbsp; 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 that 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.