“I’d rather eat.”
“What kind of food do you want?”
“Don’t cops know the best spots? How about a cop place?”
“Okay. But there’s no turning back.”
I drove south, through a canyon of office towers, to the edge of downtown, hung a left, past a string of fashion district sweatshops and warehouses—the walls covered with savage graffiti, the tops bristling with razor wire—and stopped in front of a vacant lot overgrown with wild fennel, the breeze scented with the smell of licorice. A lunch wagon was parked across the lot, next to a liquor store, its windows opaque with soot.
“You wanted Mexican and you wanted a cop hangout,” I said. “This is both. It’s a roach coach, but they make the best tacos in the city.”
“I’ve been wined and dined at the finest restaurants in Santa Monica and West Hollywood,” she said, surveying the gritty landscape. “But none of them has the ambiance to compare to this place.”
I bought two cans of Tecate from the liquor store, slipped them into brown paper bags, and handed her one. We walked to the lunch wagon and waited behind a dozen Hispanic people in line. Ranchera music blared from inside the lunch wagon, and the smell of sizzling beef and cilantro filled the air. I had to kick several mangy dogs that tried to sniff Nicole’s pants. A woman behind the grill cranked out freshly made corn tortillas with a small hand roller.
When we reached the front of the line, I ordered, in Spanish, four tacos. I slipped in some cilantro and a few sliced radishes and sprinkled on peppery salsa thick with chopped chilies. We returned to my car and munched on the tacos, leaning against the trunk and hunched forward so the juice did not spill on our pants. We washed the tacos down with slugs of beer. I asked her if she liked the first taco I gave her. She nodded, her mouth full. I told her it was a
sesos
—cow brain—taco. She took a long, theatrical pull of her beer.
I drove over to 4th and Main and parked in a lot. We walked past a menacing-looking wino, shouting and swearing at a shopping cart, and into a restaurant located on the ground floor of a turn-of-the-century building that was once a cigar store, but had recently been renovated. We sat in the bar, ordered beers. I glanced at Nicole and watched her move her head to the sound of the jazz quartet, her eyes half-closed, her tongue peeking through her lips. I realized that tonight, for the first time in a long while, I didn’t have a lingering headache, a knot in the pit of my stomach, a tightness in my chest.
She asked me about growing up in L.A., and then told me she was born and raised in Detroit, but moved to Venice to attend grad school at UCLA.
“Both parents Lebanese?” I asked.
She shook her head. “My mom’s French.”
“Both parents Jewish?” she asked in a challenging tone.
“Very.”
“You don’t seem too religious.”
“I’m not. I’m Jewish culturally, I guess you’d say. The thing that ties me to Judaism, more than anything else, is the Holocaust. That, unfortunately, kind of shaped my Jewish identity. So I don’t go to synagogue much and my relationship to God is pretty tenuous. The Holocaust made a lot of Jews skeptics. I figure, if there was a God, what good was He?”
“You sound like a Jewish agnostic.”
“I wouldn’t say that. There’s some symbolism in the Kabala that suggests that God, like the Jews themselves, is in exile. That captures where I’m at. How about you?”
“A Lebanese-French atheist. You ever been to the Middle East?”
“Yeah—Israel.”
“What do you think about what the Israeli army did to Lebanon in ‘06?”
“Let’s discuss it another time. That’s a topic that could ruin our evening.” I decided not to tell her about my army patrols on the Lebanese border. “Any priors?”
She laughed. “One. He was another grad student. But the marriage didn’t last long. You?”
“One. Five years. Then she walked. But I always thought we’d eventually get back together.”
“Why’d she walk?”
“Irreconcilable differences, as they say in divorce court.”
“So was there another woman who alientated your affection, as they also say in divorce court?”
“Yeah, but it’s more complicated than that.”
“It usually is.”
“Let’s blow this place. You ready to go home?”
“I’d like to see your building. Finish off the architectural tour.”
I downed the rest of my beer in a few long gulps, stalling for time. I knew that, because of department regulations, I shouldn’t have asked her out; when she said no, I knew I shouldn’t have pressed her; and now, I knew I shouldn’t take her back to my place. A date was just an LAPD rules infraction; an affair would be something more. But I had a buzz from the beer, and she was looking damn good.
I pulled out of the lot, parked behind my building, walked around to the front, and punched my code in the keypad. We walked through the
lobby, with its stamped tin ceiling, and entered the elevator, paneled in burnished mahogany. We rode to the top floor in silence. When we were inside the loft, Nicole stopped, and looked around. “I like the space. But you’re not much of a decorator. I’d call it Monk Modern. We need to get you some art on the walls.”
I flipped on the CD player and skipped past “So What” to the second cut—the bouncy, bluesy “Freddie Freeloader.” I grabbed beers from the refrigerator, and joined her on the sofa.
“The CD collection,” she said. “The window to the soul. What’s playing on the box? I like the sound?”
“It’s a Miles Davis album. I play it over and over. Whatever mood I’m in, there’s a cut on it for me.”
“And what kind of mood are you in now?” she asked, sipping her beer, but keeping her eyes on me.
“I used to be in a ‘So What’ mood. Tonight I’m in a ‘Freddie Freeloader’ kind of mood.”
“This a very old CD?”
“The album was recorded before we were born.”
“What’s the name?”
“Kind of Blue.”
“Good title for a cop like you.”
She closed her eyes and listened to the interplay between horns, piano, and drums. She opened her eyes when she heard the next cut. “What’s the name of this one?”
“Let me tell you a story about it. When I was a boot, my training officer and I were talking about music. He was an old salt who liked Tony Bennett and people like that. I figured he could relate to Miles. So I told him about this cut, “Blue in Green,” and how much I liked it. He told me that’s because it was the story of a young cop like me who didn’t know shit, only the words were twisted around. He said they should have called it, “Green in Blue.”
“So you’re really into jazz.”
“No. I’m really into ‘Kind of Blue.’ Most jazz today is too crazy for me. Space music. I like the straight-ahead sound. Not much of that around today.”
She walked over to the window and pointed to the crumbling St.
Vibiana’s Cathedral, the cream-colored cupola catching the moonlight. “Pretty,” she said.
I walked up behind her, clasped my hands around her waist, and kissed her neck. She sighed and turned around. We kissed, standing by the window, for several minutes. She pulled away, looked into my eyes for a moment, then took my hand and led me across the room to the bed. She pulled my shirt over my head, kissing my neck, licking my nipples, running her forefinger along the jagged shrapnel wound beneath my ribs.
“I’ll bet there’s a story to explain the scar.”
“Actually a short one. About a hundredth of a second.” I lightly touched her cheek and said, “I’m not really ready for this tonight. I don’t have any protection here.”
She walked across the room, opened her purse, and tossed me a Trojan like she was flipping a Frisbee, the metal packet sweeping across the loft in a long, slow ellipsis. I stood there, frozen, as the Trojan seemed to hang in the air forever. Finally, I reached up and snatched it.
When she walked back to me, I began to unbutton her jacket, but she turned around and flicked off the lights. Then she kicked off her shoes, slipped off her leather pants, tossed her jacket on a chair, and unhooked and dropped her bra on the floor. It was dark, but she was back-lit by a faint nimbus of moonlight shining through the window, and I could see her silhouette: slender, high-breasted, her metal navel pierce shimmering when she turned toward me. After she slipped her arms around my back and kissed me again, I guided her down to the bed, but she resisted.
“I want you to do something for me,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Hurt me.”
I took a step back. “I’m not into that.”
“No big thing.”
“It is to me.”
She ran her finger down my chest. “I
want
you to.”
“No.”
She reached back and slapped me across the face.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted.
“I told you what I want.”
I shook my head.
Then she slapped me again, so hard that blood began to bead at the corner of my mouth.
My face burned. I grabbed her shoulder so hard that she fell to her knees. Her eyes were shiny with a wild look of abandon and defiance. She leaned over, licked the blood off my lips, and kissed me, probing deeply with her tongue.
I pinned her wrists to the corners and held her legs down with my knees.
“I want you to—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
She wriggled her legs free and wrapped them around my waist. As she pulled me toward her, I could see the reddish outline of my palm print on her shoulder.
The bedspread and sheets were twisted on the floor. The mattress was half off the box springs. She wiped my brow with her fingertips, daubed the moisture on her lips and kissed me. “I like that voodoo that you do,” she said, crawling out of bed and dressing.
“What’s going on?”
“Having some work done at the gallery early tomorrow morning. Got to get back.”
I wearily climbed to my feet, feeling hungover, dressed, and drove her home. She rested her head on my shoulder and dozed. At her door she kissed me and said, “I had a swell time.”
“So did I. But what’s up with this?” I said, swatting the air.
“You’re a little numb for my taste.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I do.”
“If that’s what you need.”
She shut the door and called out as I walked to my car, “Maybe it’s what
you
need.”
I drove home thinking about the night. I didn’t know if it was the violence or the intensity, but Nicole had tapped into some part me that drew me to her. I didn’t know why, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I just knew I wanted to see her again.
When I was at my desk in the squad room, I called her and left my home, work, and cell numbers on her answering machine. As I hung up, Ortiz pulled a chair over and sat down. “Let me lay out the facts as I see them.” He pointed to his watch and said, “You’re ninety minutes late for work. I called you three times last night, and you didn’t answer your phone. And when I check out your demeanor and body language right now, I notice that you’re not wound as tight as usual. Now I’m a detective. So putting all these leads together I come to one conclusion: You ignored my advice, went out with that broad last night, and nailed her. Am I right?”
“Let’s go downstairs,” I said.
As we stood outside PAB, sipping our coffee, Ortiz extended an arm toward me, wiggled his fingers, and said, “Give it up.”
“Guilty as charged,” I said.
“I hope this doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass.”
“Why shouldn’t I go out with her? All she did was give me a little background info. She’s not a witness. She’s not a suspect. Big fucking deal.”
“I.A. might not look at it like that. So just keep this thing on the Q.T.”
“You’re the only one who knows.”
“Who’d you say put you on to her?”
“Papazian in art theft.”
“That geek? Then she must be a real firecracker,” Ortiz said sarcastically.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“You’re pathetic,” Ortiz said. “You’re so desperate, you’ve got Papazian pimping for you.”
“She’s just some art expert he met on a case. He figured she could help me.”
“She helped you all right,” he said, leering at me. “You know, homes, this whole deal doesn’t sound like you. Pumping some broad you just met on a case.”
“She’s different.”
“Famous last words,” Ortiz said.
I tossed the rest of my coffee on the grass and walked back to the elevator.
I headed out to South Central and cruised down the street where Fuqua’s sister lived, a working-class neighborhood of tidy homes and freshly cut lawns a few blocks east of Crenshaw. I hoped he’d show up for her birthday. There was an empty lot about thirty feet from the sister’s house with an 18-wheeler parked in front. I parked behind the truck, which gave me a clear view of the sister’s front door, but my car was obscured enough so I could take Fuqua by surprise. Setting my binoculars next to me, I rolled the window halfway down and waited.
The afternoon was warm and sunny, blue overhead, the horizons the color of burnt butter. I could see a few fleecy clouds hovering above the Hollywood Hills. I loosened my tie, pulled the six-pack out of my murder book, and fanned myself.
When my cell phone rang, I made the mistake of not checking Caller ID.
“No visits, no phone calls, no nothing,” my mother said. “How am I supposed to plan for Shabes dinner?”
“Sorry, Mom. But I just located a suspect. Been very busy.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“You coming for Shabes?”
“I’m tied up with a case.”
“And you consider
that
a good excuse?” she snapped.
“Look Mom, I’m parked on a South Central side street, on a stakeout. I can’t talk.”
“How long have you been there? Have you eaten? Do you want me to bring you something to eat?”
“I’m trying to keep a low profile here.”
“I could just drive by, slow down, and hand you a sandwich.”
I massaged my temples with my thumbs. “No.”
“So how was your date?” she asked coldly.
“What date?”
“The date with that Syrian person.”
“Lebanese.”
“Does it matter? So how was it?”