Last Call
Baxter Clare
Chapter 1
Lieutenant L.A. Franco's message is short: "Noah, you lazy bastard, where are you? Give me a call."
She hangs up on Noah Jantzen's voice mail, wondering why her cop has missed the Monday morning six am briefing. That's not like him. He's usually early, not late. She wonders if one of the kids is sick. By eight o'clock Frank is worried enough to call his wife. The receptionist transfers the call to Tracey Jantzen's ward. A man named Eric answers.
"Eric, could I speak to Tracey Jantzen, please."
"Uh, she's not here."
"Will she be in later?"
"Uh, no. She came in but she had to leave."
Frank stops filling out a requisition form. She's spent a career listening to bullshit and she's hearing it now. She puts down her pen and says, "Eric. My name's Lieutenant Franco. Tracey's husband works for me. I'm trying to locate either him or Tracey. Do you know where I can get in touch with her?"
"Urn, I think her husband was in some kind of accident. She went flying out of here. She didn't say where she was going but I guess she's with him."
"All right," Frank says. Ice water replaces blood in her veins. She speaks with extreme deliberation, as if the man on the phone was a five-year-old. "Eric, it's critical I find her. She has a cell phone. I need you, or your supervisor, to find that number for me. Do you understand?"
"Yeah, sure. Hang on a sec."
The phone gets quiet in her ear and Frank yells, "Lewis!"
A large, ebony woman appears in Frank's office.
"Go through Noah's desk and find Tracey Jantzen's cell phone number."
Frank is sure Noah knew his wife's number by heart but hopes he's got it written down somewhere.
A woman says into Frank's ear, "This is Amanda Koening. How can I help you?"
Frank prays for Amanda Koening's sake that she doesn't want to play hardball.
"Ms. Koening," Frank starts.
Lewis comes in and hands Frank a scrap of paper. Frank hangs up. She dials the number Lewis gave her. It rings once, twice, three times. Four times. Five. Tracey answers on the sixth ring. Her voice is thin and Frank's guts get loose.
"Trace. It's Frank. Where are you?"
Frank is moving even as Tracey sobs. "Oh, Frank, I'm at LA County. Come quick. It's bad."
Chapter 2
Waiting for the doctor, Frank wonders, if karma is true, what the hell has she done in past lives that she has to watch so many people die in this one? Who was she? Hitler? Pol Pot?
She and Tracey try to reassure each other with valiant bravado. When the doctor comes out they stop pretending. The doctor is a woman, and maybe because of that she spares them a lot of the details, stating simply that when Noah was crushed against the steering column he suffered massive pulmonary trauma and they just couldn't stop the bleeding. His heart stopped and they couldn't get it going again. Of course she was very sorry.
As Tracey starts screaming Frank reaches for her, saying singsong in her head, All the king's horses, and all the king's men, couldn't put Noah together again.
She accompanies Tracey to the operating room, stopping at the door. Frank's played this scene before. Her mind and feet won't move her closer to the metal altar where her best friend lies broken under an obscenely white sheet. Frank stares at the litter of useless offerings—plastic tubing and torn wrappers, discarded gloves, footprints smeared in Noah's blood. She listens to Tracey's simultaneous vilifying and deifying, her outrage against this final and most unjust of decisions. Frank absorbs every detail, feeling herself detach from the trauma like a balloon cut from its tether.
When Tracey returns to Frank's arms she moans about how to tell the kids. Frank guides her from the building, letting Tracey cry and stumble against her. It takes them a while to find the car, then Frank drives Tracey home. When Tracey is calmed enough, Frank has her call her sister. Frank will stay with Tracey until the sister comes. She offers to pick the kids up but suggests Tracey let them finish their day in school. Their world will crumble soon enough. Let them have a few more hours of ignorant bliss. Tracey agrees and when the sister comes, Frank calls a cab.
In the taxi, she calls the station and talks to Diego. She tells him to bring in whoever's not in the squad room and to stay until she gets there. She hangs up and closes her eyes.
Maybe she's just having a really fucked-up dream.
Frank probes the edges of reality. Traffic sounds through the window and the taxi jolts to a stop. The driver has the AC on too high and the cab is sour from the sweat of thousands of bodies. When Frank opens her eyes, she is disappointed, but not surprised, to see that nothing has changed. She rolls the window down, preferring the hot sting of tar and diesel to the cab's fetid cold air.
The driver drops her off at the hospital and she sits in her car, buying time. When she finally starts the engine, she drives slowly to the Figueroa Station. Her station. Noah's station. The only division either of them has ever worked. They partnered on the street and later again in homicide. They never got arbitrarily transferred and never put in for a move. Newton, Figueroa, Rampart—those are the stations that rookies without connections get assigned to and bad cops get demoted to. Frank had been put there straight out of the academy and Noah had transferred in from Pacific when he got off probation. He complained about his choice from then on but never did anything to change it. Noah was a whiner. He didn't mean most of what he said, but it was how he dealt with life. Frank had learned to ignore him or tease him. Usually the latter. Humor was Noah's other coping tool, and he made Frank laugh, too.
Climbing the stairs to the homicide room, she wonders who'll make her laugh now.
Faces question her when she walks into the room. Bobby, Jill, Lewis, Diego, Johnnie, Darcy—their presence makes Noah's absence grossly conspicuous. For a horrifying instant Frank feels her heart ripping open. She stares at the floor, willing herself to do what she must. A tsunami of grief breaks over her, then washes back to the far horizon from which it came. Frank lifts her head.
"Noah was in an accident on the way to work. Three-car pileup. He suffered major internal damage. They couldn't stop the bleeding."
The phone rings. No one moves to pick it up. Jill finally has the courage to ask, "He's dead?"
"Yeah."
Then they break. Jill cries. Bobby and Diego turn to their desks. Johnnie swears and fires questions at Frank. She doesn't know the answer to one, doesn't see the relevance of the other, but answers anyway. Lewis stares at her big hands and Darcy fidgets with a Pepsi can.
Frank addresses diem. "You can take the rest of the day off if you want. It's up to you. I'll cover."
It's Bobby who follows her into her office, his dark face lit with concern. "What about Tracey?"
Frank explains.
"What about the funeral? Is there a date?"
A strange impulse to anger rises in Frank. Instead of yelling, "Jesus Christ! The bastard's barely four hours cold," she answers, "I'll let you know as soon as I find out."
When Bobby leaves, she does a rare thing and tells him to close the door. She has more calls to make.
The hardest is her old lieutenant. Noah's old lieutenant. There's never a good time to call Joe Girardi. The time zone puts them two hours apart and usually when Frank thinks to call him it's in the middle of his dinner or after he's in bed. In the morning he's out on the lake. In the afternoon he takes a nap. Evenings he's at one of his damn AA meetings. There will never be a good time for this call, but she can't put it off.
Ruth, Joe's third wife, answers. She sounds pleased to hear from Frank, a change that occurred only after her husband retired. She tells Frank to wait, Joe's outside. Frank blows loudly into the telephone, massaging the back of her neck. Joe comes on, chirping, "Hey, hey, girlie-girl. Give us the report from the trenches."