A night of sleep revitalized me, and waking up that morning next to somebody who cared for me filled me with even more life. My phone told me it was 7:48 on a Sunday; Captain Somers and her assistant wouldn’t be in for another 23 hours and 12 minutes.
I put on a pot of coffee for us. The drip filled the air with the smell of cheap-but-palatable arabica, and as the brewing slowed down, Judith stirred, stretched, and asked, “How did you sleep, Detective?”
“I’ve never slept this good. I feel like Superman. You?”
“Fine. I started off with a nightmare about Alex being murdered, but I’m a lucid dreamer so I was able to change the subject. I’m glad you slept well. You’re gonna have a hard time once your return to duty starts fucking with your conscience.”
“Hm. Probably. Coffee? Sorry I don’t have an espresso maker or grind the stuff myself.”
“Drip from a can is fine—a fucked sense of smell makes it hard to tell the difference. Black.”
“You got it.” I poured us each a cup and we sat on the couch and sipped.
“So, I didn’t get a look at this captain lady. How much of a looker is she?”
“Well… She’s not a lot older than me, maybe 10 or 15 years, so she still looks kinda youthful to me…”
She smirked and shook her head.
“…which I don’t prefer over maturity…”
Her smirk morphed into a full smile, and her head shake turned into an approving nod. “Smooth recovery, Bachman.”
“…and her features are kind of severe, androgynous even—objectively speaking, she’s very striking, and her strange mixture of beauty and handsomeness has grown on me quickly, even if she’s on the edge of what I find attractive.”
“‘The edge of what I find attractive.’ That’s a mouthful. What’s the core of what you find attractive?”
“Um. Womanly? Nice hair, soft features; and she has lots of life experience, so that she can hold my hand while I learn how… how intimacy works.”
“Do you know anyone who fits that description?” she fished.
((—If she’s going to feign ignorance, I should consider being coy—))
((—Or downright sarcastic—))
((—And yet I wish so much to be sincere with her—))
The wish won. “You fit my ideal pretty well. And you know it.”
She tried to keep a straight face, but pride oozed out of every corner of her mouth and eyes. “I drive you crazy, don’t I?”
“I’ve already told you, the only thing I’ve been able to think about since we met is having sex with you.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sexy for an old broad, aren’t I?”
I smiled. “(Mm-hm.)”
“You really don’t think I’m too old for you?”
“Your age is a feature, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You are so sickeningly sweet,” she replied with mock disgust.
I winked. As we finished our coffee I pointed out, “The captain won’t be in until tomorrow, so I have a day to burn. How about some Martian Marine? Or… sex?”
“Gotta work.”
“Aww. When does your day start?”
“2 hours ago. Slept in.”
“You start at 6 in the morning?”
“Yes. And you are going to be expected to wake up at even odder hours as a detective. Get used to it.”
“Damn. You’re right.”
She washed her empty cup and said, “I’m taking the long trek home so I can change into my work clothes and grab the packages. If you want, I can give you a tour of my pad.”
“I’d enjoy that.” I put on my Hallmart jeans and a Blade Runner T-shirt, and she led me to the door neighboring mine, which opened into a very well decorated studio—the same layout as mine, but with infinitely more love put into its appearance. As I entered, I admired the neon signage—including a glowing figure of a nude woman reclining in an Adirondack chair and an illuminated Saint Pauli Girl sign—and gawked at several marvelous paintings portraying fantasy and science fiction subjects beyond just Martian Marine.
But what really caught my eye was the guitar nestled on a stand, its body scintillating like tiger’s eye, framed by a dark, amber-tinted edge, connected by a long cable to a series of small boxes and pedals, before terminating in the front panel of a big brown speaker box (which I thought might have been called an ‘amp’).
“Wow. I like your taste.” I took a seat on her couch.
“Thanks!” She reached for her waistband. “Andy… Would you mind averting your eyes? I’m a little shy when it comes to undressing my bottom half in front of others.”
“Of… course.” I turned my attention to the decor, brushing aside thoughts about the why of this double standard about nudity… and let my subconscious get to work figuring out a way to persuade her to (((take off your pants and show me that pussy!))) “These paintings, were they done by hand?”
“Yes—I commissioned them from breathing human beings, nunna that AI bullshit, and they’re all real paint, acrylic and oil, except for a couple of digital ones.”
One was a moonscape with what looked like a bridge to nowhere; another was a spaceship, a fighter perhaps, flying over a much, much larger ship or space station; and a very wide one had a man in red robes with a pointy hat—a wizard, perhaps—leading a column of various fantastic creatures through the jungle: a unicorn, a giant spider, a phoenix, a harpy, a cockatrice, a sphinx, and many others. “Original works. Very cool.”
“Yes. There’s some inspiration from books and movies, but they’re all bespoke. I’m done with my pants, you can stare at my tits for the two seconds it takes me to put on my bra.” I whipped my head around and caught one nipple in the brief moment between her removing her shirt and putting on her bra. She chuckled as she fastened it, then donned a Soundgarden shirt decorated with a yellow blob among a purple mess on the front, patched up with scraps of T-shirt fabric and embroidery floss of various colors, pairing well with the well-worn skinny black Levi’s she’d donned. “God, you’re funny. How did you remain a virgin this long with that sex drive of yours?” From the side, her butt looked superb in those jeans.
“(Uh… I… Well… Y’see… I, uh…)” Whatever my explanation for being a virgin may be, I also needed to contend with my claim at our meeting that I had never even masturbated. “(I didn’t know… that…)” ((Ah-ha!)) “I never realized that this feeling that’s been constantly gnawing at me since puberty was actually sexual arousal. I thought it was just anxiety—I generally avoided people and… and I never felt attracted to anybody, so I never realized that I was craving sex. If I’d figured it out earlier… I probably would’ve started masturbating compulsively to the neglect of the rest of my life,” said the woman who masturbated compulsively to the neglect of the rest of her life. “I suppose I dodged a bullet.” I chuckled unconvincingly. “Now, maybe, can you… turn around, so I can… ogle your butt from behind?”
“Sure.” She presented her ass.
I drew a breath between my top teeth and lip. “(Ah. Damn… I want to squeeze that.)”
“Knowing you, that would probably turn into sex, and I don’t have time for that. I’ll let you touch it later. — So even if you had known about your libido, you still would’ve stayed a virgin.”
“Without a doubt. Maybe I would have become a compulsive masturbator.”
“Heh. Alright, let me get my things, then I’m kicking you out. You mentioned shrooms, but I don’t fully know your history with cannabis, so I don’t want you to be tempted to sample my goods while I’m away.” She grabbed a spacious yet inconspicuous bag.
“You’re afraid I’m addicted to weed.”
She stopped short of opening a drawer. “N… no, I just…” She sighed. “This is very expensive, rare weed, with a very limited production volume, and I only have in stock the products that my clients have ordered, and not a gram more, so I can’t afford… anything… being… out-of-place. I don’t know if you might be tempted… to…”
“You’re afraid I’ll steal your weed.”
Guilt weighed down her eyes.
I shrugged. “Eh. That’s fair. I’ll chug tequila straight from the bottle if given the chance, so you can be assured that my self-control is far from perfect, and I also have a history of kleptomania… so I can’t deny that pilfering your stock would be uncharacteristic of me.”
“You’re a kl—an alcoholic?”
“Yeah, once upon a time I’d have a few shots before bedtime, every night, but when my shrink put me on welpropion, I started going to bars and drinking extra heavily, then driving home buzzed as a beehive.”
“(That’s… not… good…)” She joined me on the couch.
“It took me two weeks to realize that what I was doing was dangerous. I narrowly escaped getting a DUI by buzzing the officer who pulled me over—”
“‘Buzzing’?”
“Showing them my badge. I told my therapist, and she chewed me out. I also told my psychiatrist, and he said my binge drinking was caused by something else, because welpropion is supposed to discourage drinking by making you nauseous if you have any. I convinced him to take me off of it anyway.”
“When was this?”
“About a year ago. I’d had a couple of good years at work, then the drinking thing kind of ruined me. I never thought I was capable of being so careless, of getting plastered and stumbling into the driver’s seat of my car. I never thought I was capable of abusing my status as a law enforcement officer to get out of trouble. The situation wrecked me—my own actions wrecked me.”
“Do you still drink?”
“Vodka, vodka everywhere and not a drop to drink, for the past year and three days. Celebrated my 31st birthday with a new leash on life…” Sic. “…and some wonderful withdrawal symptoms.”
“(Leash on life…)” she muttered. “You’ve taken the steps to make sure you don’t repeat your mistake, and you’ve kept it up for a while. That’s good. That’s plenty. Don’t be hard on yourself.”
“I try not to be,” I lied through a fake smile. ((Sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’m nothing but a fuckup. The rest of the time… I’m convinced.)) I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed her for comfort, to ease the pain of being a failure, and she gave me exactly what I needed: a squeeze in return, and an olfactory reminder of how much I liked her. “That’s a pretty guitar,” I told her, hoping to distract myself from my self-hatred.
“’59 Gibson Les Paul standard, original issue, all factory parts except for the tremolo bar—and it was a pain in the ass to acquire, involving quite a lot of aggressive deal-making, and it’s technically hot, so given the trouble I went through to get it and the risk I’ve assumed by holding onto it, I hoped you might call it something more than just… pretty.”
“Alright… it’s gorgeous. It’s nice to just look at it. The orange part is very pretty—I mean, beautiful.” She chuckled softly. “What are those boxes on the floor?”
“Effects pedals: wah, fuzz, uni-vibe. They give the guitar a rich, psychedelic rock sound.”
“So you play rock?”
“To pass the time.”
“Can you play me some rock-and-or-roll?”
“I really have to get ready for work.”
“Just a few pretty notes…”
“Too busy.”
I expressed my disappointment in the form of an ugly, scrunched-up pouty face.
“Christ, you’re pathetic. You want a recital?”
“I don’t know about a recital, just… a demonstration. If you’re not willing to do it for me, maybe you could play a little something to show off for your own gratification.”
“(Hmm.)” She shifted in my embrace, so I let her get up. She strolled over to her musical equipment, strapped the guitar over her shoulder, and with her left hand gripped the long part, which had several narrow metal speed bumps spaced at gradually narrower intervals as they approached the body.
“What are all the different parts of a guitar?”
She indicated from top to bottom, “This is the headstock, this long part is the neck and facing you with the metal frets is the fingerboard; these are the pick-ups, bridge, and tremolo or whammy bar.”
“Thanks. A little ditty, if you please?”
She shook her head and muttered, “(A little ditty.)” She flipped a switch on the amp, and a gentle hum gradually built up and emerged. She rested her foot on one of the pedals and plucked one of the strings once with a guitar pick, causing the amp to emit a raspy but pleasant twang-buzz that warbled and wiggled in timbre; then twice, then continuously, tilting the other pedal back and forth with her foot as the buzz of the notes morphed between {bright and dark, a voice talking, singing, crying, laughing…}
A finger hammered another string against the fretboard, creating a softer but higher sound; she repeated this within the rhythm of her plucking, then alternated this with another finger hammering another string, then with a third finger and string, in rapid succession. Suddenly her fingers danced down the fretboard, stepping-leaping one over another, causing the tones to dance back and forth in their descent towards the pick-ups, before her fingers came to the end of the fretboard next to the pickups and dwelled there, rising and falling on the strings, spelling out a maze of sound with the fingers of both hands, a pushing-pulling wa-wa-wa-wa fractured into tiny, homogeneously diced but diversely voiced notes, an engaging and pleasing show of speed and precision and coordination—
Then she hit a high note—stretched the strings and strummed them violently, and pulled her fingers back towards the headstock until they and the strings’ frequencies bottomed out; at which point she slowly rocked the pedal back and forth and back again, causing the sound to smoothly dip and swell in brightness, while aggressively dropping the pitch by flexing the whammy bar, then slowly easing off of it so that the pitch returned… allowing her song to fade into a drawn-out wwwaaawwwaaawwwaaa of fuzz—with a smirk on her face. “Was that the kind of little ditty you were looking for?”
I was rendered speechless for a few seconds. I clapped slowly but firmly. “Wow,” was all I could say in the wake of something the likes of which I had experienced before only at Shosh’s birthday Mötley Crüe concert.
“If you’re impressed by that, you need to listen to better music.”
“That was amazing, though!”
“Trust me, there are musicians way more amazing than me.”
“But they aren’t you. Part of why that was mind-blowing was that it was you who did it, not some famous person I’ll never talk to face-to-face, let alone get to know intimately. Someone I know personally who’s good at something will always be more impressive than a celebrity who’s technically more skilled. Especially since you don’t have the time to practice all day, every day like they do.”
Her smirk morphed into something less cynical. “You get it.” She arranged her fingertips across the strings then plucked them all at once with a circular, easygoing flow, a laid-back chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a that turned into something bluesy as her hand shifted in a pattern that repeated in 12 sets of 4 beats, alternating between 1 chord for 4 sets of beats, then another for 2 sets, then the first for 2 more, then a third for 1, then the second for another, before finishing with the first chord for the last 2 sets. “I wanted to be a famous guitarist.” She plucked and hammered little flourishes on the higher strings and hummed along to her steam locomotive of a tune until she confessed, “But music doesn’t pay well, and despite my parents’ best efforts to teach me their hippie values, I very much liked money as a young woman. Still do, as a middle-aged woman. I like owning stuff. I like buying stuff. I like having money.”
“You’re a capitalist,” I concluded with disappointment.
She didn’t stop playing but continued onto the middle chord. “Hell no, I ain’t a fucking capitalist! I’m an ancom, through-and-through. But—!” Lower chord. “I appreciate the importance of financial security, and I like having nice things, just like anybody else.” High chord. “Working towards those things doesn’t invalidate my principles…” Middle chord. “…because whether you like it or not, under capitalism you hafta play by the establishment’s rules.” Low chord. “And if I’m forced into that game of theft-as-property, I figure I might as well do everything I can…” She played a little flourish. “…to cut down on the pain of living in this hellscape with a few harmless creature comforts. It isn’t capitalism, it’s survival with a cherry on top. Sure, economic materialism is self-defeating…” Middle chord. “…a downward spiral of dissatisfaction… but this guitar brings me happiness, so I carry on.”
Low chord. “Oh. I guess that… makes sense. It also sounds like bullshit—” She guffawed in amusement. “—but reasonable bullshit.”
She played the high chord as her amusement faded into a giggle. “Yes! Thank you. Finally, someone gets it.”
Middle chord. I narrowed one eye. “I get it, that doesn’t mean I think it’s good.”
Low chord. “It isn’t. And it’d be consumerism, which is even worse, if I didn’t insist on only buying second-hand.” She threw in a little ornamentation. “‘Good’ is impossible. You can be kind, you can be considerate, you can be righteous—but you can never be good, not when things are as shitty as they have been since we as a society started buying and selling bodies.”
Middle chord. “That outlook is so… cynical, though,” I observed.
She nodded. Low chord. “My parents went to peace protests when I was barely old enough to read…” High chord. “…and I wouldn’t see them for days…” Middle chord. “…while they waited in jail for their court dates.” Low. “They were idealistic hippies who loved me—” She hammered out a mini melody. “—but decided not to teach me how to survive under capitalism, because we lived in an intentional community where capitalism was against the rules.” Middle. “I was unprepared for life outside our little bubble…” Low. “…and it hit me hard when I went off to live on my own.” High. “I had to adapt to a culture that was hostile…” Middle. “…to sympathy, reason, and compassion.” Low. “I grew up during the Cold War, when everyone was afraid of nuclear annihilation and the destruction of the nuclear family.” She strummed a little flourish leading into the low chord. “I was queer and sexually active in the era of President Bonzo and miraculously escaped a certain venereal disease. I watched the Gulf War play out on live television.” Middle. “I witnessed Monica Lewinsky being slut-shamed and vilified as a conniving, slutty homewrecker by the media.” Low. “Those things are over, now, but have they really gone away?” High. “The bullshit’s been scooped up…” Middle. “…but the bull itself is still crapping everywhere.” Her guitar fell silent when there should have been a low chord. “Honey dear, tell me, why aren’t you a cynic, too?” She resumed the cycle of chords.
I sighed. “Okay. Yeah. Things suck.”
Her sour frown broke into sarcasm. “On the bright side, you can be glad you aren’t a cop anymore.”
I feigned displeasure. “Right… I was a decent human being for half a day before deciding to return to being a bastard. Play me another little something virtuoso-y to cheer me up.”
“You got it.” She kept up the bluesy sound as she tapped and plucked to produce a bittersweet melody, here and there bending the strings with her fingers to subtly raise their pitch, humming the notes as she played them, all to my satisfaction. “Like this?”
“Yeah.”
“You know I gotta get to work eventually.”
“Aww. If I let you go, will you play for me later?”
“No doubt.”
“Then you have my permission to stop.”
She chuckled. “Permission!” She finished the progression of chords then concluded the ditty with that classic blues downward march into a low string of notes and sustained the concluding low chord until it had faded into fuzzy obscurity, before turning off the amp and putting her hot guitar back on its stand. “I will play for you whenever you are in the mood to listen. Having an audience is nice.”
“So is being your audience.”
She blushed and smiled. “Okay, I need to pack my deliveries.” I toured her room and admired the decorations as she pulled opaque glass jars and packages wrapped in butcher paper out of drawers and stowed them in her capacious bag. “Alright, that’s everything. You don’t have a search warrant, leave.”
I stuck my tongue out. “Ha, ha. I’m not a cop yet, Judith.”
“Call me ‘J’, A.”
“How about ‘Judy’?”
“Someone… One of my exes called me Jude,” she informed me, ambivalently. “Which is very similar to the name you’re proposing.”
“Uh… Then J it is.”
“Our relationship showed a lot of potential, but her career was sending her to another city, and we both agreed we were too early into it for me to drop everything and commit to a new life with her. Go ahead, Andy. Judy works between you and me. May our friendship last longer than any of my past romances.”
I gave her a smile, and she returned it with one of her own. “Best fuckbuddies forever, Judy. Can I follow you around while you’re delivering?”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea? Think about it for just a couple of seconds.”
“Why wouldn’t it be? I’d learn more about your job, build my network of underworld connections, maybe see a side of town I’ve never seen before.”
“And these ‘underworld connections’ you’ll be making, Honey—my customers, who are for the most part upstanding citizens within their otherwise-crimeless white-collar worlds—will stop trusting me if they find out that the redhead bombshell I allowed to learn about them after having built with them a relationship of confidence and trust… is a cop.”
“How could they find out I’m a cop? We’re keeping it a secret.”
“Well… I know I made a big deal last night about you keeping your new badge a big secret, but I’ve given it some thought and I’ve concluded that working permanently undercover like that is actually impossible. Somebody will eventually catch you ‘buzzing’ your badge to get into a crime scene, and after just a few minutes of a single hoot incubating, the whole town is gonna know about it. It’s not a how question, it’s a when question, and my guess is it’ll happen when a sex worker witnesses you enter the hotel and flash your badge as you duck under the ‘police line do not cross’ tape, which they will see as proof that you’ve become a cop—if they don’t assume you were a cop the whole time, having pulled the wool over their eyes and convinced them they could see just fine.”
I considered her words thoroughly, then hissed, “(Fuck…)”
“Not only that, I had your back and held your hand, which makes me a Dirty Fucking Traitor, so they’ll never trust me again.” Guilt smothered my soul. “But that’s the price of justice, and I’m willing to pay it. The whole thing sucks, yeah, and—”
I processed and reprocessed her words, then yelled, “No!”
Once she recovered from her shock, she told me matter-of-factly, “It is what it is, Andy. Sacrifices have to be made.”
“She’s right,” said Shosh. “She’ll deal with the fallout so that you can deal with the kidnapping.”
“That isn’t fair, that’s unjust,” I whined. “I can deal with them hating me and treating me like I’m a traitor—but I can’t stand the thought of my best friend being exiled from the world she’s known since… probably since I was born. That isn’t dealing with the fallout, that’s living at the fucking epicenter when the bomb goes off.”
Judy nodded mournfully. “That’s… probably what it’s gonna feel like. Is there any way to rescue him that doesn’t involve you becoming a detective?” I thought and thought but had nothing by the time she reminded me, “You told me the only person you trust to be a good detective is yourself, and if there be such a thing as a good cop, you might—with a little self-reflection, self-control, and compassion—be one of them. You told me you needed to take this path. Is there any other way?”
“Does it matter?” asked Shosh. “This is everything you’ve wanted since you were a little girl. Who gives a shit what anyone has to sacrifice for your dreams? She wants you to have this, let her give it to you.”
“I want so badly to give into that way of thinking, but… it isn’t fair to put my friend through that, but… (I… can’t…)” I trailed off; I believe that I tried my damnedest to come up with an alternative.
Judy curled her hand around mine. “Can’t what?”
“(…can’t…)”
Then again, I really wanted this.
“Take it,” urged Shosh.
“(…think…)”
But can you blame me?
“Don’t think, just do!”
“(…of…)”
Nearly every book, movie, and television program I had voluntarily consumed from childhood up to that moment had centered on the exploits of one or more detectives—the most glamorous among them being the ones who were public employees with guns and handcuffs and plain clothes and authority and teams of officers under their command scouring their crime scenes for the tiniest clues and canvassing neighborhoods for testimony.
“C’mon, Esti!”
“(…any.)”
“Become a detective to save the day” was the only future I could conceive of… because it was the only future I was fed as a child—and it was the future I continued to cling to as an emotionally stunted adult who shrank at the mere suggestion of abandoning her childish dreams.
Judy waited a little for me to change my mind. “Not even something half-baked?”
“No.” I hung my head. “Nothing. I’m absolutely certain the police dumped this one in the cold case files as soon as the first 72 hours were up. We need somebody inside the department who can thaw the case and direct and supervise the investigation, who can uncover any deviations from proper procedure, who can gather and act on evidence without having to go through someone who will more likely than not refuse to help.” You can’t say that I lacked talent in the art of rationalization, to myself as much as to others, especially when it was to fulfill a desire so deeply ingrained into my capital-I Identity that rejecting said desire would have resulted in a slow ego death more thorough than the kind a pound of shrooms had to offer, and far less pleasant.
“Well. That settles it. You’re becoming a detective—may God have mercy on your soul.”
Shosh sighed in relief, smiled, and gave me a pat on the back. “Be more excited, Esti-Besty. Soon you’ll finally have that badge, and then you’ll be the real deal!”
Meanwhile, I was chewing on the stump of my thumbnail. “(There’s no cause to celebrate, this isn’t a good thing,)” I muttered.
Shosh shrugged dismissively. “Give it a little time, you’ll come to appreciate your choice.”
“Judy… I wanted to keep those connections. Sex workers can spot suspicious goings-on in their neighborhood, and they can gather intel from their johns, and…” ((My plan, my world, is falling to pieces.))
“Easy there, Andy. The world isn’t falling to pieces.”
“A detective without informants is blind to the happenings around her. If I’m gonna hit the ground running with this case, I need friends on the streets, but after becoming a cop I’m gonna have no-one. This was a terrible idea. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m screwing myself, I’m screwing you, I’m dooming this case to the cold files, if it isn’t already on ice.” Even I couldn’t rationalize myself out of a downward spiral brought on by the realization that ((the job I want so fiercely is, through Catch-22, going to be impossible to do because the people with all the information I need to do my job as a police detective aren’t gonna trust me because I’m a police detective.))
“Okay, okay, calm down, listen… Maybe my initial prognostication of how this is going to go down was too pessimistic—you might be able to have your cake and eat it, too. Besides, if they’re guaranteed to discover you’re a cop again, you might as well out yourself on your own terms.”
“It was hard enough getting them to trust me even when they knew I wasn’t a cop anymore. When I tell them I’ve become a full-blown police detective, they’re going to take away my membership card—even though I’m a sex worker—they’re gonna take away my guild card—I’m not going to be a sex worker anymore—they’ll never let me work that street ever again—the escort agencies won’t work with me—I’ll be blacklisted from acting in porn…” Hope was dwindling rapidly; I caught myself beginning to hyperventilate; through the torrent of despair I reached blindly for something to keep myself from flying away, exerted my will upon my diaphragm, and wrestled it for control of my lungs.
“You okay?”
“Just… need a… sec… ond…” ((Slow down. Out four seconds, pause four seconds, in four seconds, pause four seconds, out four seconds…)) After a minute of deliberate breathing, I nodded numbly and murmured, “Okay.”
“Andy, listen… There’s a chance they’ll trust you, as long as you’re open and forthright. You’re trying to rescue one of our community leaders, and that counts for a lot. You’ve shown that you respect our work by doing it yourself and acknowledging your complicity and privilege as a former cop. You asked all the right questions, questions that reassured them you’re after justice, and you didn’t ask any of the wrong questions, things that are none of your business. You worked for the trust they’ve given you, and they’re going to remember that when they’re trying to decide what to do about you. Okay?”
As I finished regaining control of my diaphragm, I nodded. “Alright. Okay. I guess that’s what I’ll take care of today.” I checked my phone. “In like half a day. Does anybody work Adams at this hour?” ((In… pause… out… pause… in…))
“Nope. You’re gonna hafta wait till evening.”
“Damn it, I hate waiting. Fine. I’ll find something else to do.”
“Good. Let’s go, I was behind schedule when we came in here and I’m even further behind after the song and the chat.” She ushered me out and left for the bus stop, which was mercifully close—but as I was about to unlock my door, I had an idea. I caught up with her and tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned around. “Are you stumped about how to find allies, Miss Marple? You could go on Hootr and start friending nosy neighbors.”
“How long does it take for you to finish your route?”
“All fucking day, and as you are fully aware, I am currently way behind schedule. Why do you ask?”
“Would it be quicker if you had a chauffeur?”
She closed her eyes and sighed irritatedly, but when she opened her eyes, she said, “Fine.”
We got into my banana yellow M6 and took off.
“Left up here, down Reagan—” Under her breath she added, “(rest in piss)—keep going for a mile, take a left on Valencia, then stop at the corner of the first one-way street.” I followed her directions, and we arrived in front of a very nice house in one of those gentrified neighborhoods that occasionally metamorphoses from a row of old track homes on the East Side.
“What kind of fancy weed are you delivering?”
“I have a strict client-dealer confidentiality policy.”
“Can you at least tell me whether it’s flower or resin?”
With sobriety that rivaled my year and three days of teetering precariously over the side of the wagon, she told me, “I can tell you what I have to offer you, but I can’t tell you what’s in the packages meant for other customers. For both of our sakes, don’t ask questions about their purchases.” She got out and rang the doorbell. A man answered—to the best of my ability to discern his age from such a distance he was somewhere between 20 and 40, 5′8″, build on the slight side, brown hair cut short, jeans and a red T-shirt, no visible tattoos, and too far away to see if he had any scars smaller than a cigarette burn—and let her into his home.
I looked around the mildly affluent neighborhood while waiting for her to emerge and return to Banana Shark and decided to survey the neighborhood automobiles to pass the time. “Silver Acura Integra.”
“Blue Dodge Charger,” observed Shosh, “red Ram Longhorn; black Audi A4, plates FORTIORI. Sounds Italian.”
“It’s Latin. Probably a lawyer,” I suggested.
“Besides it being Latin, what makes you think the owner’s a lawyer?”
“A fortiori is a principle in argumentation, used by lawyers on a daily basis.”
“Oh. My Esti is so smart.” She tousled my hair. “Silver Lexus RX…”
We finished our census just as Judy got back into Banana Shark, three minutes later. “How’d it go, Scarface?”
She snorted. “I delivered, he paid. Ideally, that’s exactly how it would go every time, but sometimes a new customer will try something funny, which is why I carry a knife.”
“I didn’t see you pack a knife.”
“I shoved it in my pants when I was putting ’em on and you weren’t looking.”
“I wish I could have been looking,” I muttered.
“Get used to me keeping my pants on, buddy.”
I pouted.
“Don’t give me that shit, I have body issues,” she growled. “Don’t you fucking pressure me.”
Her aggression caught me off guard. “Okay…” I responded meekly. “I’m sorry. I’ll avoid exerting improper pressure in the future.”
“Thank you.”
“She’s scary,” observed Shosh. “Just when she was beginning to grow on me, she goes and impresses me even more. I’m gonna level with you, I was a little nervous about this lesbianism thing, but you picked a solid chick. Used to be a hooker, sells drugs, gets into sex-centric relationships with women half her age, carries a knife, and guards the contents of her pants like the Maltese Falcon. Very alluring.” It was among the most caustic of sarcasm I’d ever had to endure from her.
Her acerbity didn’t much matter, though, because I was still recovering from Judy’s outburst, and was only half-paying attention to Shosh’s comment. “(Right. Very…)”
“‘Right’…?” asked Judy, still on edge. “‘Right-very’ what?”
“(Never… mind. What are we…) Where next?”
She gave me directions, I followed them, parked outside an apartment complex, and let her out. She disappeared through the gate. We resumed our automobile survey; this time there were more on the curb: ((red Honda Pilot, white Honda Accord, white Nissan Armada…)) We poked our heads out to see further behind us. ((Green Nissan Leaf—))
“Esti, didn’t we see a blue Dodge Charger earlier?”
I spotted the one she was pointing at, a couple cars back, then quickly got out to get an angle on the plate: W776BBO1. Not only had we counted a car of the same description just minutes prior, but I had also seen it weeks before that, in the garage down at the station house…
Since we had seen a car matching precisely that description behind us only a little while ago, I developed a suspicion that wouldn’t stop buzzing in my brain until it had been confirmed.
“Shosh… that was a very good catch.”
“What makes you say that? I thought it was just an interesting coincidence.”
“I’ll explain when Judy gets back.”
Judy returned 3 minutes later. “Next one is 2 blocks straight ahead.”
“We’re being followed.”
“Wait—really?”
“That blue Dodge Charger, two cars back, is an unmarked car. I recognize the plates.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“A few blocks back a few minutes ago, and a couple months before that in the HQ/First Precinct garage.”
“Do you normally notice random license plates?”
“I’ve been tasked with every semiannual inventory since I was sworn in because I was the only person who actually wanted to do it. I have a knack for remembering things pertaining to cars, so I had every automobile in the garage shared by HQ and First Precinct memorized—color, make, model, license plate, VIN, dents, scratches, aftermarket modifications. HQ and First Precinct together have more vehicles than the rest of the precincts combined, so as a result of being responsible for the chore that nobody else wanted to do, I have most of the department’s fleet stored in my head—as well as their personally-owned vehicles.”
“Wow. That’s… freakish. Alright. Why are they following us?”
“Well, you are a drug dealer.”
“I’m small-time though, and I sell weed, that’s six months or a 500-dollar fine—I’m small potatoes, they have no reason to be investing any resources to catch me. You, on the other hand, slept with a police captain for money. It could be an internal thing.”
“Could be. IA might be investigating Somers, and maybe they’re tailing me because they want to see if I have any seedy connections that extend beyond the sex industry. Or… they’re onto us.”
“Our investigation?”
“Yes.”
“(Shit.) Shit. What do we do?”
“I could… go over and find out why they’re following us.”
“They aren’t going to tell you just because you ask them nicely.”
“I won’t have to ask a single question, and they won’t have to tell me jack. I’ll be able to deduce why they’re after us based on which unit they’re from, and I’m as good at remembering faces and names as I am at remembering models and license plates and paint scratches. I don’t know all of First Precinct, but a good chunk of them.”
“So you’re just going to look through the window and immediately intuit their motive?”
“I’ll try, but they’re usually tinted nearly black on plain cars. I might need to get them to open up.”
“Andy, this sounds like a good idea, but I think it’s actually a bad one. You’d be poking the bear.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Well… no. Other than pretending they aren’t there.”
“And just let them surveil us?”
“I suppose that’s what willful ignorance would entail.”
“If you don’t have any better ideas, we’re going with mine. Well?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never been tailed before—that I know of—so I guess just spotting them makes you the expert on this stuff.”
“You’re damn right I am.” I got out and calmly strolled up the street to the blue sedan with tinted windows. I couldn’t see its occupants’ faces through the darkened glass, but I could tell that there were people in there. I knocked on the driver’s window and waited. No response.
I knocked again. Nothing.
I knocked again and threw in a friendly wave to sweeten the deal. I could see their heads move, so that I was barely able to make out two individuals—hair short, either shaved or buzzed, probably males. “I see you in there,” I yelled. “I wanted to say ‘hi’ to my fellow police officers.”
They ignored me.
“If you don’t roll down that window I’m going to take a picture of the car, the plates, and the VIN, and post them on Hootr, and you’re going to have to explain to your captain how you blew your cover so badly the vehicle’s status as an unmarked car became public knowledge and now they have to file off the serial numbers and get new ones issued by the manufacturer, as well as new plates and a paint job in a new color.”
If it had been an undercover car, the brass would actually care about me posting the plates and VIN… but unmarked cars are little more than police cruisers without the black and white paint jobs or the push bumpers. They’re even the same damn model as the standard issue cruiser.
The driver must not have known that, though, because he rolled down his window. “Really, Red?” asked Officer Samuel Prince, Parking Enforcement Squad, First Precinct.