by Julie Vail
When we exited the boat, Dale B. was there waiting.
“Hey, let’s get lunch.” He looked from Alex to me then back to Alex again. He’d gotten word of what we’d found.
“Sure,” I said enthusiastically. “I’m starved.” I looked at Alex and he flipped me the digit, then turned around and retched. Nothing came up, which prompted me to say that he maybe needed some food in his stomach.
“Come on Al. We’ll get some Kung Pao. It’ll fix you right up.”
“Fine,” he said. “You drive.” He retched one more time before getting into the passenger seat. I pulled out of the lot and followed Dale B. to Uncle Mao’s for lunch.
††††
Mark Gonzales flagged us down as we were getting ready to call it a day.
“Hey, Dale was looking for you two.”
“Okay.” And just as we were about to look for Dale, he found us.
“Gregg Patterson is back in surgery. It’s not looking good.” Patterson was the officer shot during the bank robbery. After he was taken away, we’d heard only brief details on how he was doing. Gunshot victims can take a turn quickly.
Patterson was a fifteen-year veteran of the force and never wanted to be anything other than a patrol officer. He loved working his beat and has had the same partner for his entire time on the force—Mike Shin. Patterson was an alright guy but seemed to find too much to bitch about lately. I’m trying my damnedest to keep myself together and so far I’ve been okay. But hang around for too long with someone who’s lost his edge and it rubs off on you like the Coxsackie.
Alex and I clocked out and went over to County Hospital. The rain stopped but the traffic was still heavy. Gonz and Amelia would catch up. County looks like it was built in the dark ages. It’s so big that the floor has three or four different colored lines that you’re told to follow depending on where you’re being sent.
After obtaining our visitors’ badge we followed the green line to the third elevator which we took up to the second floor. Then we followed the yellow line to ICU. Nothing gleamed in here like you see on TV. Everything was dull; the floors, the walls, the equipment. This was the best trauma hospital on the west coast and it was also a teaching hospital.
We went through the double doors and ran into the nurses’ station. Clearly they weren’t expecting us and we did sort of bust through the door like Starsky and Hutch. As soon as they saw the guns on our hips they stood at attention like the Secret Service was escorting the President. We walked up and asked where Gregg Patterson was and they told us that friends and family were gathering in the waiting room and that he was still in surgery. A very appealing young nurse showed us the way to the waiting room. I realized as I watched her ass wiggle that I’d never dated a nurse before. An x-rated doctor/naughty nurse role-play scenario quickly entered, then left, my mind and I made a mental note to check her left hand for any sign of a commitment.
We entered the waiting area which was nothing more than a giant room. Several cops mingled. Two people, whom I guessed were Gregg’s parents, sat amongst it all. I introduced myself.
“Thank you for coming, detective,” Mrs. Patterson said. Her voice was robotic, her movements on auto-pilot. I’ve seen it before, those rigid movements that keep you from coming unraveled. Choosing to become a cop was a shitty thing to do to the people you loved.
“We don’t know anything,” she continued. “They took him back into surgery a couple of hours ago.” I asked if I could wait with her. Her husband sat next to her in a daze. I spoke to him briefly then got Mrs. Patterson a cup of coffee.
Gonz and Amelia showed up and spoke briefly to the Pattersons and to Mike Shin. He stood with Gonz most of the time. Eventually Gonz extricated himself and came over and stood next to me.
“God, John, I don’t ever want to end up here, like this. With my parents sitting here wondering if this is it, my ex standing around waiting for me to die, or live, so she can say goodbye again.” He looked around and shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder if this goddamned job is worth it. I mean how many more fuckin’ funerals can we go to?” He shook out a cigarette, lit it, and within seconds a nurse walked by, gave him the stink-eye, and pointed to a sign on the wall above his head.
“Fuck,” he mumbled. He put it out on the wall then threw the butt in the trash can. And I thought Patterson was a downer. Gonzales was killing me here.
“Hey, tomorrow’s Friday. Talk to Alex and Mike, see if Amelia and Dan are free . . . come to the house, huh?”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Yeah, John. That sounds like what we need, eh?” My house seemed to be the place everybody liked to come and I didn’t mind one bit.
An hour or so later a woman came through a pair of swinging doors that hissed as they opened. She wore blue scrubs with matching booties that covered her feet and a long matching gown that opened in the front. Her hair stuck out of a midnight blue scarf covered in glow-in-the-dark stars. Her eyes were blue and compassionate. Her face was angular and set on serious. She walked with the confidence of someone who belonged here. Crouching down in front of the Pattersons, she spoke to them in a low, calm voice. All eyes were on her because she literally changed the air when she walked in. Everyone felt it but I was sure none more than I. Mrs. Patterson started to cry. The woman in blue took Mrs. Patterson’s hand in hers and continued to speak and then took Mr. Patterson’s hand. I feared the worst. A moment later she stood and everything moved in half-time. She turned and walked past us with her head down, and as she passed she looked up and her eyes met mine. They were the deepest of blue. She disappeared through the same doors as quickly as she’d entered only moments ago. I stood staring at the space she occupied long after she left it.
I walked over to Mrs. Patterson. “Everything okay? Who was that?” I asked her.
“The surgeon, John. She saved his life. Doctor Gennaro saved my son’s life.”
I don’t know much on any given day but that day I knew two things: one, a life was a good thing to save—a cop’s in particular. The second and most important thing was that I would definitely be seeing that lady again.
FIVE
They walked around the corner, the boy’s small hand disappearing into his father’s. He and his friends had built a fort out of fallen branches, and he wanted to show his father what they had done. He was allowed to go over to the park with his sisters, but never alone. He was eight. They entered the park, and the boy led his father over to the corner behind the shed, where they had built the fort.
Say, now. Isn’t this something. You have a door and everything. You did this? And the boy nodded, smiling proudly.
Can we sleep here some time, dad?
It isn’t safe to sleep in the park, John. You and your pals can build a fort in the backyard and sleep there sometime, huh? He ruffled the boy’s soft hair. Suddenly his father turned and looked toward the street. What was he looking at? It was just some lady, standing there, looking for her kid, he thought.
Why don’t you run along and play. I’ll be with you in a minute. He walked toward the lady, and when he stopped in front of her his whole body changed—relaxed. He spoke to her and when he noticed the boy standing there he told him to go play, more forcefully this time. He put his hand to her cheek, then he turned to the boy.
Johnny, I’ll be right back, okay? You stay right here. He left the park with the lady.
The boy followed, undetected, and saw his father kissing the lady. His body pressed against her, his mouth moving over hers like he was devouring her, the boy thought. The boy ran back to the park, climbed the ladder up the slide and slid down. He did it over and over again, even when the father came back into the park and told him it was time to go.
I stopped at the market to pick up some beer. Generally when we got together at my house I supplied the booze and the appetizers, and everyone else did the rest.
I grabbed some six-packs and picked up a bottle of good scotch. Mark and I usually capped the evening off with a glass and I had a feeling that to
night it would be appreciated. I also got some soda for Mike shin, who didn’t drink. His wife Janis, however, did. She and Alex’s wife, Lisa drank wine, and usually brought their own. Mark always came alone, no matter who he was dating.
I was dating two girls at present, if what we were doing could actually be called dating. I buy them an occasional meal and I take them to bed. It never once occurred to me to bring either one of them around. The first one, Rachel, is a cocktail waitress at a cop bar around the corner I frequent. I see her once in a while. Trish is the other one. She’s a cop. Clearly shitting where I eat isn’t a concern.
I thought about the lady at the hospital, that doctor. How do you get next to a lady like that? I have been working lately on becoming a better man. Being a cop you sometimes pick up a lot of bad habits; habits of language, habits of behavior. That type of shit went over fine with a certain type of lady, and unfortunately, she wasn’t the type of lady I wanted to spend a whole lot of time with. And once I realized that, I decided I needed to make some changes. So, I’m trying. I wondered, as I was grabbing some dip for the chips, how this doctor, this classy woman with the deep blue eyes, would fit into our little group. I imagined her at my house, tonight. Would she be bored? Would she wish everyone would leave so we could be alone? Or would she light up the room, like she did today?
The sun was just setting and it cast an orange glow through my front windows as I unpacked the groceries and got the beer on ice. I left the front gate open and two ducks were roaming through my front yard, while a third sat in a big pot of rain water I left out for them every day. He raised his head and looked at me like I owed him something.
I went into the bedroom and took off my suit. I stored my gun in the top drawer of my dresser, then threw on a pair of loose chinos and a green striped button-down shirt—a Christmas present from the Ortiz’s. Lisa enjoys dressing me, probably because her husband’s a lost cause. It was all broken in, and it was one of my favorite articles of clothing.
Alex and Lisa were bringing carne asada, so I went out to the deck and fired up the barbecue. I kept the flame low so that we could kick it up in a hurry when we felt the alcohol begin to render us incapable of doing much else except sitting. It’s happened before.
Mark Gonzales was the first to arrive. I was in the middle of drying off the furniture that had not been tucked underneath the overhang. I finished and opened a beer for him, and one for myself. He took a seat, reached under the chair and grabbed his ashtray. It said, ‘Mark’s Butts’ on it, so it was definitely his. He flicked a spider off the edge and set it on the table, then shook out a cigarette and lit it. At six feet and about 220, he looked and carried himself more like the president of Citibank than a cop. He smelled good, he looked good, and all the women were crazy about him. Gonzo’s a deep guy. As close as I am to Alex, I have had my deepest conversations with Gonzo. He has a hard time with many of the things he sees in our line of work, and he has the hardest time of all of us with letting shit go. His divorce made him just another statistic, and he hated that. We both admired Alex and what he had.
The ground was almost dry now. That was the thing about the rain in southern California: the humidity generally fell around fifty to sixty percent, so things dried off quickly once the rain stopped falling. Gonz took a piece of bread out of the bag I set out, tore it up and tossed the pieces out to the four Mallards that now gathered at his feet.
“An arm?” It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me.
“Yeah. That’s a first, for me. I’ve seen a lot on this job, but an appendage . . . that’s a first.”
“Life is becoming one big fuckin’ horror movie, John.”
“Tell me.”
“Any word? On, you know . . . the arm?” We’re off the clock, I wanted to remind him.
“Nothing yet.” I fell into a lounge chair and put my feet up. He tossed the remaining bread to the ducks and took a long drag on his cigarette.
“You lucked out with this place. I love coming here.” And then he turned and smiled at me.
“You’re not movin’ in. I told you already.” He had something on his mind. I waited. He stubbed out the cigarette, which he’d only smoked down about a quarter.
“A cop goes down it’s a drag. I praise God every time it’s not one of us.” He looked over at me and blinked, then he crossed himself. Superstition, not religion.
“It was one of us.”
“Yeah, I know. You know what I’m sayin’.”
“Yeah. I know what you’re sayin’.” I got up and got him another beer as Lisa and Alex walked up. Lisa was bogged down with packages, while Alex held a six-pack lamely.
“Could you be a bigger asshole?” I inquired of him, as I took the load from Lisa and brought it in to the kitchen. He smiled sheepishly and tried to hand me the six-pack, too. Lisa noticed this and turned to him.
“You’d better get in here with that.” Then she turned to me and said, “I’m making him carry me all the way to the car just for that, and we’re parked in Culver City.” This was a running joke because, in spite of the beautiful surroundings, parking in the canals was abysmal.
Alex set the six-pack down on the counter and came up behind his wife. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck, then took all the beers out to the deck and put them in the big metal tub I had filled with ice. He clapped Gonz on the shoulder, opened a beer and sat down.
Lisa unloaded dips and sauces from the bags, and I looked at her and wondered what brought two people together like these two. Lisa was a good-looking lady—dark hair, dark eyes, and a huge smile. She turned to me as I unloaded the bags and set the meat aside for later.
“I heard Gregg came out of the surgery okay. That’s good news, Johnny, right?”
“Yeah. It is. I’ll go see him tomorrow.” She nodded, then she moved past me to put something in the refrigerator. She grabbed my forearm and gave it a squeeze. Wives had it the worst, sending us out the door, wondering if we’ll come home at the end of the day.
The Shins and the Carter-Rios’ came up the path together, and I could tell right away something wasn’t right with Dan and Amelia. Mike Shin was the first through the door carrying a bag, followed by Janis. He dropped the bag on the counter and said, “There’s gold in that bag, brother. You just leave that bag to me.”
“Oooh,” Lisa purred. “Very exciting.” We all greeted each other, and Lisa asked about Patterson, as if Shin carried a different answer, just for her.
“He’s okay. Touch and go there for a while, but he’ll make it.” I thought of the lady doc again. Saving a life. Worth a huge ‘atta-boy’.
Mike Shin had a thin face, pocked by childhood acne. It gave him a rugged, masculine look. The Kirk Douglas chin and the huge smile made him look more like an actor than a cop. But he looked pale tonight. He’d been through a lot, with his partner shot up and in the hospital. He was tall and lean, and looked more American than Korean. We all settled on the deck with our drinks.
“So what’s in the bag, you crazy Korean?” Alex asked.
“Ah. Have a drink and I will reveal what is in the bag in due time.”
“It better make me come then light my cigarette after all this bullshit,” Gonz muttered.
“Then you may get your wish,” Janis answered. “This is something we’ve never done before.” Janis was my age, a good ten years older than Mike. She was short in stature and a little on the stocky side, and not a beautiful woman at first glance. Her sense of humor, her grace and style was what attracted people to her.
Amelia was very quiet, and Dan was sitting on the other side of the deck talking to Lisa. Suddenly Mike looked around and saw that we had completed our first round of drinks, so he turned to me and asked quietly, “How high is the flame on that thing?” pointing to the barbecue.
“It’s low,” I answered.
“Turn it up, brother. Train’s pullin’ out.” He chuckled and smacked me on the leg. I rolled my eyes and turned up the heat.
>
He disappeared into the kitchen and came out a few a minutes later with a platter covered with what looked like rocks. He opened the lid on the barbecue and placed his hand over the grill. “Not yet,” he said, almost to himself as he closed it again. He looked around at all of us, enjoying our confusion.
“My turn?” Janis inquired.
“Go to it, baby,” he answered, and Janis disappeared inside. Mike opened the lid again and placed his hand over the flame.
“Okay,” he announced, and began to place the rocks on the grill. I looked closer and I could see now that the rocks were actually fresh oysters. Janis came out with a tray of small bowls, about seven of them, filled with different sauces.
“Oh, my God,” Lisa groaned, as the briny scent of the oysters filled the air. Mike opened the lid and they had all opened beautifully. With a gloved hand, he transferred the open shells to the platter and set it on the table.
Janis passed small plates out to everyone, along with small forks, and then she introduced all the sauces she had prepared.
The oysters seemed to cool off pretty fast, so Mike removed the top shell from all of them and we started in. I took one and used my fork to dig out the oyster. I dipped it into the first sauce. The flavor of the sea exploded in my mouth, and mixed with the sauce, the flavors together were like nothing I’ve ever had. I couldn’t wait to try another one. We all had the same idea, and within minutes all the oysters were gone. Mike got up and came out with another platter of fresh, raw oysters on the half shell. These were different from the ones he had grilled. These were much smaller.
“The oysters we had on the grill are pacific oysters called Yakima Bays. Not too good raw. They’re too big. These flat ones here are Belons from France, and these over here are Blue Points.” We didn’t care. We dug in like we’d never seen food.
“Incredible, guys. Seriously,” Dan said, and everyone nodded in agreement. We took a break and opened more beer for everyone, then slowly waded through the dozens of raw oysters still sitting on the chilled platter.