Exploded View

by Sam McPheeters

  “Is this supposed to be downtown?”

  The men turned and made nearly identical hissing noises.

  “Spoiled-ass pieces of shit,” Babylon said. “‘Waah! Our Indian brothers have to live in high rises! It’s not fair! Wahhh!’”

  “All they need are some little meatballs.”

  Babs bent his flexible spoon backward and flung a ball of curry at the base. When this fell short, he reached into the container, pulled out a fresh glop barehanded, and hurled it with the true aim of a Major League pitcher. The projectile hit not quite dead-on, making a satisfying splat against the thick cardboard.

  “And there’s the R-A-L-A.”

  She finished her coffee and said, “I ran into her last week, not far from there.”

  “Ran into who?”

  “Chandrika Chavan. RALA.”

  “Jesus, that fucking twat slot.”

  Ruben smiled and said, “Aw, all that lady needs is a good long dumpster fuck.” His voice was reedier than Terri remembered.

  “A humpster! Face down in the trash,” Babylon agreed, adding, “Monch,” making a quick downward-palming motion and then high-fiving his partner.

  “Hey guys, don’t hold back on my account,” she said, no longer smiling.

  “That lady is a goddamn liar, too. After all that shit she talked when they took out the last pay phone downtown, public works still puts in those pedestrian footbridges. Then, when the time comes for her to good mouth us, for once, Reggie Flores goes all the way to her office, says, ‘Okay, we held up our end of the bargain. You get the footbridge for the pay phones. Now we need you to keep up your end, and tell everyone that this was the deal we made.’ You know what she said?”

  Terri realized he was talking to Ruben, not her.

  “She’s all, ‘I never said that. We never had any conversation about that.’”

  Ruben murmured something, but Terri was already tuning them out, thinking first about Stacy—Had she ever sat at this table? Was she one of the kids who built this sad shantytown?—then thinking about the name, Palm Desert, best of both worlds. She realized this was the farthest she’d physically been from Los Angeles in nearly three years. She had enough money for a nice vacation. But where would she go, alone?

  On Monday morning, Zack picked her up nearly two hours before dawn. Usually he brought her a drink in these situations.

  “No coffee? What’d I do to deserve this?”

  “I blew up my rotator cuff. I can’t really lift anything with my left arm. Let’s get some. There’s a Coffee Siege up in Feliz that’s already open.”

  “Blew out? Or up?”

  “Right. Whichever. It hurts.”

  “Wade’s party get wild?” she said, amused. Terri had an advantage this early in the morning, being able to bounce back to life quickly. All she ever needed was a splash of cold water on her face and she was up. Zack was a cinder in the mornings.

  “Oh God, it’s too complicated to tell without coffee.”

  The city was dark and private, and she felt strangely optimistic, passing lavanderias with their tumbling anonymous laundry, a glimpse of a walking couple, the man holding a sleeping child and the woman cradling a tiny sleeping dog. She flashed back on Jersey, being driven somewhere by a parent. Terri always wished she had the correct music to go with these moments. She could probably find the right songs, but it would be too much work, she’d have to get out her shades, turn them on, find a radio app, and tell it to make up its own DJ banter. By then the moment would be gone.

  Matching her thought, the car’s radio played a squealing guitar solo. She turned up the volume by hand, hearing a husky man’s voice croon,

  Well I’m high on rock n roll

  And ain’t never gone be told

  What to dooo-a-hoooo-hoooo

  So momma off my back

  You better cut me slack

  Or I’ll rock and roll all over you-a-hoooo-hoooo

  Zack followed her stare and slitted his eyes, placing a thumb on the radio’s tranquil blue button, as if speaking with a tiny band playing just behind the dashboard.

  “Write better music.”

  The husky voice switched gears, busting into a throaty power ballad,

  Rock n roll, Rock n roll

  It’s all over my soul

  Gonna Rock n roll overload

  To Rock n roll you

  “Sorry,” Zack said. “It gets in a rut sometimes.” To the radio, he said, “Write a song about homicide detectives solving important murders.” A jaunty piano and sax number started up, and a different man’s voice sang,

  Well I’m a rock n roller cop

  And baby I won’t ever stop

  Till I’ve caught the rotten cock

  Who murdered yoo-a-hooooo …

  He nodded. “Not bad.”

  The car pulled halfway into the coffee shop’s crowded, tiny lot. As they emerged, Zack said, “Hey, I’m out of ghost stickies.”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  A line of frowning working people waited at the far counter for their drinks, the poser shop being open too early in the morning for actual posers. A quiet underburble of flamenco guitar gave the space a formal, grim air.

  The barista, young, not smiling, said, “Yop.”

  “Yeah, two large.”

  “Two large what.”

  “Two large coffees?”

  “Regular coffees.”

  “Yeah.”

  She traced a finger in the air and said, “Twenty-eight.”

  “Check it again. I’ve still got some on my prepaid.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said as a drawn-out sigh, as if talking with a child caught in a repeat offense.

  “No, actually I do.”

  “Would you like me to pull up your transactions?”

  “Yeah, you do that. This was a goddamn Christmas gift, there’s no way I killed it this quickly.”

  She squiggled her finger in the air a few more times, then tapped the bridge of her nose. Zack pulled down his PanOpts as the barista said, “It’s in 19, channel 41.”

  Terri put on her own shades and brought up the public layer, seeing a brightly lit array of small boxes floating over the counter, footage of all of Zack’s transactions for the previous two weeks, arranged like rooms in a living dollhouse.

  “Jesus, okay,” Zack said. “Overkill.”

  The barista smiled at his defeat, handing over a small square of paper which he signed, saying, “In the old days, management would’ve just given me a coffee pro bono, you know that?”

  As they left, a customer said something while looking over at them and half the room laughed.

  The car pulled them back onto the freeway, Zack shaking his head like a dog and then wincing, touching his shoulder with the hand holding the coffee.

  “Auugh. Faccckkkkk.” Zack sipped thoughtfully, returning to life, growing quick eyed.

  “So,” he said. “Before the party yesterday, we pick up the first floor, we still have time for a nice Sunday brunch before anyone shows up. I get the nice French press going, some crullers; I’m thinking life is good. I sit down at the big table, I’m about to bring up the Sunday Times and Janice plops down a stack of papers. Like, actual paperwork. On my table. On Sunday. I go, ‘What’s this.’ She says, ‘Those refi papers you promised we’d do last weekend.’

  “So already I’m pissed because A, I don’t remember promising anything, and B, if it was so fucking important that the bank had to send actual paperwork, why did it wait until Sunday? We clear off space, spread this crap out all over the table, I’m mad at her, she’s mad at me for being mad at her, Wade is already high as a kite on gummi trolls or something.

  “I go get the French press, put it down next to me, pour myself a mugfull and instantly—I mean, like on cue—Wade jumps up to grab something and knocks my mug over. So then I reach over to tip the mug up and because I’m wearing that big robe? With the big floppy wizard sleeves? I knock over the
whole fucking French press. Now there’s this tsunami of scalding hot coffee spreading out in all directions on the table, Janice is screaming, Wade is screaming, I’m furiously trying to blot up everything with the mortgage papers, it’s like a war movie. Then I realize Hyperion is sleeping in the far chair, and one big steaming stream of coffee is heading right toward him. I mean, what a way to go out, right? A blast of hot death in the snout? I’ve got handfuls of bank documents in both fists, I’m trying to blot everything up, but it’s like I can’t get to that side of the table fast enough.”

  She nodded in sympathy. Hyperion’s real name was Chaz. He was a mopey, dopey basset hound Janice had owned since before she’d even met Zack. The dog’s absurd longevity was due to her strict regimen of ground venison and imported vitamins. But as a young dog, Chaz had been known for his voracious appetite for all things shit: diapers tossed in alleys, any stray animal droppings, including his own. Zack had nicknamed the dog Hyperion Waste Eatment Plant. Janice had painstakingly trained Hyperion to bypass these dark impulses and then banished the nickname from their house. Zack only used the moniker when not at home. These days, Chaz was barely there, a milky-eyed survivor who had to be hoisted up and down from their couch.

  “So I did this pretty amazing jump, got the spill just before disaster, totally saved the day. The punchline is, I’m up on the table, robe soaked with steaming hot coffee, ruined, Wade looks at the bottom of the tipped-over mug, reads ‘Made In China,’ and says, ‘Mommy, where’s “China”?’ And Janice just starts bawling. I mean, out of the blue. Happens to all of us, but still.”

  This surprised her. She’d always found a slight impenetrable formality to Janice, a woman well versed in socializing with cops, but who seemed to match their on-guard formality with her own reserve. At Zendejas barbecues, no cop made Uganda-style jokes.

  “It was only later, surrounded by little kids, that I realized I must’ve really done something bad to my shoulder.”

  “I’m not sure what to say. ‘Wow’?”

  “Or ‘ouch.’ Either one.”

  The car slowed to eighty-five miles per hour, curved onto surface streets, slowed, and halted at a stoplight in front of the train station, one of the few working lights in Central, passage for the tourists that would flood the block in two hours. In the distance, past the train station, she could make out the perfect silhouette of the decaying crane the city was still in the process of suing the owner of, black matte on lambent night sky. A pregnant woman shuffled across the sidewalk in front of them, her head low with shame or purpose.

  Zack took another sip of his coffee and said, “Ha ha, you had sex.”

  In the years before Terri had made detective, commuter railroad surfing had become an epidemic among the refugee population, rush hour trains chugging along their routes as unrecognizable, train-shaped masses of humanity, thousands of refugees clinging to every possible surface that didn’t touch the tracks. The problem had gotten so bad that the Southern California Regional Rail Authority simply shut down for two months to assess their options. Several high visibility and extra-gruesome train deaths in Chicago and DC had given those cities the political leverage to install a variety of people-repellant roofs, including spikes, shock strips, and grip-resistant alloys. Some trains rolled into stations festooned with barbed wire.

  Los Angeles trains, being slower, didn’t produce such photogenic carnage. So their workarounds had to be creative. And SCRRA’s solution was indeed a rare feat of political vision: the First Ride / Last Ride program, adding two extra trains, one at the beginning and one at the end of every route. Refugees got steep discounts in return for the waiving of maximum occupancy rules. The result was a pre-dawn and late-evening crush of humanity at Union Station. These trains rolled along with their huddled masses smooshed safely inside.

  Terri and Zack waited in the car for ten minutes, knowing that the 5:38 First Ride had rolled out by the sudden upsurge of racial diversity in the throng of predawn commuters, the crowd transforming from all-Indian to cosmopolitan multicultural in sixty seconds, like an elaborate piece of choreography. As they crossed into the mighty lobby of Union Station, the foyer of a great city, Zack said, “You know they shot Blade Runner here?”

  She’d come along today because she’d been unsure how to proceed with the Stacy Santos thing, knowing from experience that sometimes the best way to solve a problem was to work on a different problem, give her brain time to process information in the background. Now it felt like procrastination, drifting farther from the real work she’d been charged with. Terri opened a web box in the air between them, pulling up the JoyRide schedule and scrolling over to the San Bernardino trains.

  “So … first arrival is in eighteen minutes. You want front of house or back?”

  “I’ll take back. I’d rather stand for a while. Probably easier on my fucked-up shoulder. Also, stickies please. Solly Cholly.”

  “Yeah, that is some deeply sorry shit,” she said, digging in her pocket and producing two thin Ghosting Sticker packets. “So if you were a betting man, what odds would you place on us catching fish today?”

  “Good. Maybe. I mean, I have a good feeling about the guy.”

  “Really.”

  Last year, Lydia Orozco and her half-blind Cuban lover had killed Lydia’s husband, Sid, set fire to the body, drained the Orozco Pallet Company bank accounts and fled to Manila. Her twenty-two-year-old son, Jerry, had apparently aided and abetted the conspirators, but hadn’t been able to get out of town before the dragnet had snapped into place. There was no record of his having left the city. Escaping by car or bus was out of the question, the guy couldn’t afford a flight anywhere even if he could catch one, and if he’d set out on foot, one of a million automated eyes would surely have nabbed him.

  “Yeah, really. That LA Doings article on the department came out last night.”

  “And?”

  “And I know for a fact that Jerry Orozco is an avid Doings reader. And the article explicitly mentions the end of overtime. The math is so simple, even this numbskull can figure it out. He’s going to assume that the force ran out of cash and manpower and thus lost interest in his case …”

  “And of course no one ever loses interest in a case …”

  He ignored her jab. “So today’s the day he’s going to bump. I can feel it. And there’s only one way out.”

  “That’s not true. He could hop a freight.”

  “That’s still called a train,” Zack said, his mysterious solemnity almost making it make sense, setting off for the far end of the station, his audio sounding as if he were still standing next to her.

  She meandered halfway into the vast waiting room, feeling something close to love for the beauty of the space, the hard-edged eternal grandeur, the building surely having predated Los Angeles by many millennia, waiting patiently for passengers to arrive. Halfway in, she found a free chair, parking herself in the worn leather seat, wide enough that she could fit both hands comfortably on her thighs with plenty of maneuvering room.

  Arm space was important for ghosting. The department issued official Ghost Control fobs, but fewer and fewer cops carried wallets anymore, and they’d become just one more piece of unnecessary clutter. Some cops drew the eight buttons on pieces of paper, but that was problematic, as it meant you always needed to keep your hands in sight. And a few cops still used hand gestures, although she’d never been able to figure out how to do that for more than a few minutes without getting arm cramps.

  Yawning, she retrieved her own ghost sticker set from a jacket pocket. From the flip side, she peeled off two stickers and slapped one to each thigh, halfway up from the knee. Each clear square came imprinted with four buttons. On her left thigh, she had up/down and left/right. On her right thigh, she had forward/backward and go/stop. She placed her coffee on the floor between her feet, straightened in her seat, and pressed the up button, thinking of an old-timey elevator.

  Terri slid up, out of the top of her head, floating up
to stop twenty feet above the station floor. She looked down out of some primal superstition, confirming that she was still there, seeing herself seated below, one stranger in dark glasses among many. Older cops preferred controllers when working out of body. She’d spent a year getting used to working without direct, mechanical feedback, but now she couldn’t imagine going back. Guiding her body in the ghost zone—the real-time parallel to the Basement—intuitively felt the most comfortable when using fingertip motion, or, when necessary, full hand motion. But hands and arms tire easily, and once she’d got into the right rhythm of finger gestures, it would have been a needless chore using any other interface. Everyone had their own way of doing things.

  With near-absolute coverage, Union Station was a cop’s dream. In the few opportunities she’d had to do ghost work here, she’d always searched for blinds and come up wonderfully short. In the entire station, there couldn’t be more than a half-dozen spaces not surveilled, mostly confined to the thin wedges above the hallway’s light sconces, or in the low nooks below each vending machine.

  Sixty-five percent was the general magic number for making faces. A person wearing wraparound shades, EyePhones or otherwise, showed sixty-five percent of their face. But citizens could and did wear protective dust masks with shades. Those people could not be identified, and it was those suspicious citizens that she and Zack needed to watch. Jerry Orozco stood 5’11” and had a small mole on the side of his neck. Any face-obscured male passenger coming close to that description was to be questioned.

  She fiddled with a stats box, reading that one face out of eighteen wore a dust mask with shades, although the number fluctuated as she watched, the proportions constantly changing with the orderly flow of the crowd. She zoomed over to the Orange Julius kiosk, turning back to face the main room at eye level, a phantom in the horde. Two young girls passed, each holding pet turtles in translucent portable terrariums, crossing close enough to her that she could catch the shallow water sloshing. Further back in the main room, a loud gaggle of students had gathered before embarking on a trip, legs up on their massed suitcases and sleeping bags. Nearby, a young couple stood holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes as if frozen in a photograph. They hugged and parted, and then a sparrow flitted in one of the open doors and hopped along the smooth, worn terra-cotta toward the coffee before her feet, turning only when she shifted her foot, the sensation of seeing herself move making her slightly uneasy.