“Some cops do.”
Tanner steered the Chevy Caprice onto Wilmington Avenue. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind. It’s not important.”
“The hell it isn’t.” Tanner was getting ticked off now. He pulled up to a curb, parking the patrol car, and pivoted in his seat to face Chang. “What are you trying to tell me anyhow?”
Chang found a stick of gum in his pocket and took his time about unwrapping it and putting it into his mouth. Finally he answered, speaking around a wad of Bubblicious. “She came out of Harbor Division, didn’t she?”
“So what?”
The radio crackled with a priority call, but it was nowhere near their location and another unit took it.
“Come on. Rick,” Chang said. “Don’t you remember what went down in Harbor two, three years ago? The warehouse thing?”
“Oh,” Tanner said slowly. “Yeah.”
“She might have been there. Might have seen it.”
“I never thought of that.”
“That’s why I’m the brains here. Now let’s cruise, okay?”
Tanner nodded and pulled away from the curb, thinking.
The warehouse thing was one of the worst failures in the history of LAPD Metro’s D Platoon-the SWAT team. Three bank robbers armed with automatic rifles had been pursued into an industrial district outside of Long Beach, at the western edge of Harbor Division. Trapped, they took refuge inside a warehouse. But they didn’t go in alone. En route from the bank they carjacked a station wagon after crashing their van into an embankment. The four people in the wagon-father, mother, two kids-became hostages. The family of four went into the warehouse too.
It was a standoff. Classic hostage-barricade situation. Negotiations failed. Shots were heard inside the warehouse. There was fear that the hostages were being killed. SWAT went in.
The robbers, still heavily armed, put up massive resistance. When the firefight ended, two SWAT officers lay wounded, and the three bad guys lay dead.
And the family…
Dead. All four.
They had died in the cross fire. Some nonlethal wounds had been inflicted by the robbers. But the fatal bullets had all been fired by D Platoon guns.
During the aftermath, almost every cop in Harbor Division had been at the scene. It was highly likely that C.J. Osborn saw the damage, up close and personal. She would have been new to the force back then, still a “boot”-a rookie. Her training officer would have explained to her that the robbers used the hostages as human shields, that it wasn’t the cops’ fault. But maybe she hadn’t bought it. And why should she?
Tanner had heard all the same excuses back then, and he hadn’t bought any of them either.
It was SWAT’s job to keep people alive. But who could believe it, after the fiasco at the warehouse? Only the same people who thought the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had done an A-1 job at Waco.
“You think that’s it?” Tanner asked quietly, sobered by the thought.
“Man, I don’t know.” Chang smacked the gum. “It’s a theory, that’s all. If you really care, ask her.”
“I just might.”
“Good for you. And if it all works out, I want to be best man at the ceremony.”
“Give me a break. I mean, I’m serious about her, but… not that serious.” Tanner frowned. “Am I?”
Chang settled back in his seat. “You’re pretty slow sometimes, you know that? You don’t even know what’s going on in your own mind.”
“But you do, I guess? You can read me?”
“Like an open book, partner.” Chang laced his fingers behind his head and grinned through the wad of gum. “Like an open book.”
10
Down the street from Newton Station was a coffee shop run by Philippine immigrants. It was a hangout for cops, though it did less business than the local bars. Cops saw a lot of things that encouraged drinking. C.J. herself avoided alcohol, but she sometimes wondered how long her resolve could hold out against the daily assault of drive-bys and arson fires and craziness.
She led Adam to the coffee shop, past a legless beggar on the curb rattling a tin cup, an image out of Calcutta.
The shop was small and close and crowded. The air conditioner made a great deal of noise but produced little change in temperature. There were biscuit crumbs and horseflies on the Formica surface of the nearest available table. C.J. shooed the flies and sat down.
“Nice place,” Adam said with a wince as he settled into a wobbly-legged chair. “Come here often?”
“Believe it or not, I do. Mr. and Mrs. Salazar are good people.” She saw his questioning glance and added, “They run the place.”
“Keep it nice and clean too.” Adam swept some of the crumbs away with his sleeve.
“They don’t have enough help. This is the busiest time of the day-right after shift change.” She caught Mrs. Salazar’s eye and held up two fingers. “Two lattes,” she explained to Adam. “That okay?”
“Sure.”
“It’s the best thing they serve. Stay away from the frappuccino.”
“I’ll remember that if I ever bring a client here.”
She indulged him with a laugh. “I guess it’s not the greatest place in town, but you know, I’m used to it.”
“How long has it been since you transferred to Newton?”
“A year. I moved over here just after-well, you know.”
“After you filed for divorce.”
“Right.”
“You can say the words, C.J. I’m a big boy.” He leaned back in his chair, which creaked ominously. “You know, I used to think you were nuts.”
“Did you?” She felt a spasm of irritation at him and hid it behind a smile. “How so?”
“Doing this job. When I hear gunshots, I run the other way. You go toward them. There’s a certain element of insanity in that behavior, don’t you think?”
“We can’t all be lawyers,” she said peevishly.
“I’m not being confrontational. I just mean, what you do is so foreign to me. Always has been.”
“Sometimes it feels foreign to me too. When I hear gunshots, I’d like to run the other way, just like you.”
“But you don’t. I admire that. I don’t profess to understand it, necessarily-but I admire it anyway.”
The compliment silenced her. She was not accustomed to kindness from him.
The caffe lattes arrived, carried by Mrs. Salazar. C.J. sipped the foam in silence and considered what Adam had said. Did he admire her? Had he ever? She suspected his actual feelings were closer to contempt-not for her alone, but for people in general, all those people who were not smart enough or flashy enough or suave enough to rise to the heights he was scaling. She might be wrong, though. She hoped so.
“C.J.?” Adam asked. “You still here?”
She looked up, remembering where she was. “Sorry. Guess you kind of startled me with that little testimonial.”
“I’ll take it all back if it makes you feel better.”
She smiled. “No, I liked hearing it. Except, you know, there are times when I think you might be right about the insanity part. I wonder if maybe there’s not a kind of death wish in what I do.” The words came out before she had time to consider them.
Adam leaned forward, frowning. “Crisis of confidence? That’s not like you.”
She wished she hadn’t said anything. But that was how it had always been with her and Adam-his simple presence seemed to bring out her innermost thoughts.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m not myself today, that’s all.”
“Why not?”
“Well, there was this situation-” She stopped herself, thinking, There I go again.
“Situation?”
“We don’t have to talk about this.”
“It’s okay,” Adam said.
She wondered if it really was okay-to open up to this man who had betrayed her. It felt wrong, and yet he was here, and she needed to talk to someone.
His blue eyes watched her, patient, waiting.
“It was a hostage situation,” she said slowly. “My partner had called for backup. We should’ve waited for SWAT.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”