I opened my hand and showed him the shield, and right away his face changed and started waking up again.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” he said.
“Leary, Third Precinct,” I said. “All right, move along now,” I snapped to the rubbernecks. Maybe it doesn’t take much to collect a crowd in New York, but it usually doesn’t take much to break one up, either. Because they’ve seen it all.
“You’re new,” I said to the cop.
“My first day.”
It showed. More than the new uniform, his first day out of rookie costume showed. He clearly couldn’t remember what to do next. I gave a little sigh and showed him. First I frisked all three, taking just a little extra time with the woman. A pleasure. She even said, “Oh, please.” I almost looked around for the movie cameras. Then I said to the young cop, “Okay. Now you’d better handcuff them together.”
Which he did. Not exactly deftly — “No, the two men together,” I had to tell him.
The woman said, “Oh, thank you,” and even started to walk away; maybe she thought it was my first day, too. I said, “Get back there,” and she did, but frying out a look on me. Real anguish, tears in the eyes — but that mouth just didn’t fit. It was the mouth of a woman who had been around. All the way around.
Next I gave “Stop thief!” some attention. “Who’re you?” I asked.
He stopped wiping his face and jumped. Then he said, “The jewelry store — comer of Eighty-third — Brody’s the name. They come in, the three of them come in and say, ‘Let’s see some bracelets.’ No — he and she come in, the other one was already—”
This could go on forever. I said, “Let’s have your card, Mr. Brody... Okay. We’ll get in touch with you when we—”
“Yes! Yes! I better get right back, just my son is there and he don’t—”
A gentle shove to Mr. Brody and off he went. Not relieved, just went. Who knows if by the time he got back, maybe the store had really been robbed or maybe the son had taken off and gone to California to be a hippie or something.
“All right, officer, now let’s see who they are.” And now let’s see if his mind had started working again the way it should.
It had. He got their wallets and opened them and looked and then handed them to me. Not a word out of either; they were already calling their lawyers in their minds. The woman started leaning against me a little, but I gave her a gentle shove, too. Then I looked at the names on the cards. As you might expect, there were quite a few names and cards, credit and otherwise. And not just cards and credit, either.
I shrugged. “No one I know. Not that it matters. Okay, I’ll go phone for a wagon. What’s your name, officer?”
“Boberick, sir.”
Then I looked at the woman. “My day off. No cuffs with me. No bracelets for the lady? Okay, lady. Let’s go.” I took hold of her elbow. Then I turned back to the new cop.
“And don’t worry about this, Boberick. Everyone’s got to have a first time, right?”.
A little bit ashamed, a whole lot relieved, and a great big grin. “Right. Yes, sir. And thanks a lot.”
“Let’s go, lady,” I said again. And off we went.
I was right about her, too. She’d been around all right. All around. It was thanks to her that those two in the handcuffs had all those high-denomination bills in their wallets. All that I’d had in my wallet was that shield I’d picked up a while back. Lots of ideas, that woman. Lots of fun, too. After she and I finish with Sun Valley I think we’ll move on to Lake Tahoe.
Or maybe Acapulco. Plenty of suckers. All around.
The Forbidden Word
by R. L. Stevens{© 1972 by R. L. Stevens.}
Can it happen here? Even in the future?...
Gregory had not visited Los Angeles since the summer of 1978, and the changes he now found were a bit unnerving. True, the reconstruction was almost complete, the signs of disaster had nearly vanished; but there was about the city a certain strangeness which he could not at first pinpoint.
Driving in from the airport in his rented electric car, he was aware that the freeway traffic was thinner than he had remembered. At one stretch, just before turning onto Slauson Avenue, he counted only five cars ahead of him — at a time of day when he used to see hundreds.
He asked Browder about it at the office and the grayhaired regional sales manager merely shrugged. “Oh, they’re trying to keep it quiet, but we all know it’s happening. This building is only half occupied and nearly all the houses on my block have For Sale signs out. People are leaving by the thousands.”
“But why?” Gregory, a stolid midwesterner, found it difficult to understand.
“The last one was the worst, really bad. People just decided they’d had enough.”
“You mean the earthquake?”
Browder held up a hand. “We don’t talk about it in public. God, Gregory, it’s been bad out here! Haven’t you read about the California Enabling Act back east?”
“I might have seen something in the newspapers,” Gregory said.
“They’re trying everything to minimize the danger, to get people to stay.” Browder chuckled dryly. “I’m old enough to remember the depression days when I was a boy. Then they put up roadblocks to keep people out of the state. Now they try to keep ’em in!”
“Times change,” Gregory agreed. “But what about business? The home office sent me out because sales have fallen off so badly. What’s been happening?”
The grayhaired man shrugged again. “You need people to buy things.”
“Surely it’s not that bad!”
“What have I just been telling you? Wait till the census in 1990. They can fake a lot of things, but they can’t fake that. That’ll tell the story. Some say it’ll show a population drop of close to fifty percent.”
“But the states back east are booming — they haven’t room for all the people!”
“That’s back east. This is out here. They have their problems and we have ours.”
Gregory glanced down at the sheet of sales figures. “What should I tell the home office?”
“Just that. I can’t sell to people who aren’t here.”
They talked longer, of many things, but when Gregory left the office he was troubled and unhappy. Los Angeles had always been one of their best markets, and if it really was dying as Browder believed, the company was in trouble.
It was the lunch hour, but the downtown streets were pleasantly uncrowded. Gregory found himself able to walk along easily without being pushed off the sidewalk — so unlike the midtown pedestrian jams in New York and Chicago. He almost wondered if this might be a good, uncluttered place to live — but then he remembered the people who were leaving, and the reason they were leaving.
“Hello, there,” a girl’s voice said at his side. He turned and saw a pretty blonde who seemed vaguely familiar. When she noted his uncertainty she explained, “I’m Mr. Browder’s secretary. You probably didn’t notice me in the outer office.”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t. My name is Gregory.”
“I know. I’m Lola Miller. Are you going somewhere for lunch?”
“Do you know a good place?”
“The office girls usually eat at the Sunset Lounge. It’s only a block away.”
“Sounds good. Would you join me?”
“Glad to. I enjoy company while I eat.”
Lola Miller was in her midtwenties, with that sunny California beauty that recalled the movie queens of the 1950s. He liked her smile and the way she had of showing one dimple in her left cheek in a sort of lopsided grin.