Well, almost everything. A couple of hibiscuses against the yellow-beige wall of the police station stood dead and leafless. The gardeners hadn’t bothered to cut them down yet. God only knew when—or if—they would. Hard frosts had done in the hibiscuses. It snowed here every winter now. A lot of plants that had felt at home in warmer days couldn’t take the revised weather.
A few, though, thrived where they hadn’t before. Apples and pears had grown in and around Los Angeles before the supervolcano blew. They’d grown, yes, but they hadn’t given fruit. They needed frost for that. They had it now, and they responded to it.
Colin remembered a story he’d seen in the Times a few days earlier. One of those newly fruiting apple trees had turned out to be a long-lost variety from New England. Horticulturalists were creaming their jeans over it, while local historians were trying to figure out how the tree had got here to begin with.
Also standing by the police-station wall was Gabe Sanchez. He couldn’t smoke indoors. When he needed his nicotine fix, he had to come out here. At least it wasn’t raining. Clouds scudded across the pale, bluish-green sky. While the sun wasn’t hiding behind one of them, it shone wanly.
“Hey, Colin,” Gabe said between puffs. “Can I kiss your ring now?”
“You can kiss my ass, is what you can kiss,” Colin answered. “I told you I wouldn’t take it.”
The sergeant shrugged. “People tell me all kinds of shit,” he said—he’d been a cop a long time. “Some of it, I believe. But I’ve heard too much bull. I wait and see most of the time.”
“Can’t hardly beef about that,” Colin allowed. “I didn’t take it, though. I’m not right for the job. I know that now, even if I didn’t when I tried to grab the brass ring. And…” His voice trailed away. He looked around to see if anyone besides his friend was in earshot.
“And?” Gabe prompted.
Not spotting anybody who might overhear, Colin answered with what he’d been about to say: “And there are still a good many cops who’re pissed at me on account of Pitcavage is dead. Yeah, there was stuff about him they didn’t know, but that was stuff I didn’t know, either. It’s not why I took down darling Darren. They figure I had no business going after the chief’s pride and joy. Running a department where half the people look at you sideways… That wouldn’t have been a whole lot of joy.”
“Not half the people,” Sanchez said judiciously. “Maybe a quarter—a third at most.”
“Okay, fine.” Colin accepted the correction. “Still wouldn’t have been much fun. And you know what else?”
“Tell me,” Gabe urged.
“I don’t get off on telling people what to do. Yeah, I know my kids’d laugh their asses off to hear me say that, but honest to God I don’t. And you’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to like doing it, if you’re gonna be chief.”
Gabe Sanchez aimed a shrewd look at him. “You don’t much get off on other people telling you what to do, either.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Colin said, deadpan. They both laughed because they both knew what bullshit that was.
Gabe smoked the cigarette all the way down to the filter before he ground it out under his shoe. He pulled the pack from his pocket, contemplating another. With a sigh, he put it back again. “Christ, I’d be rich if I didn’t get hooked on these fuckers. Especially with prices the way they are now—Jesus! Only thing that costs more than smokes is gasoline.”
“You got that right,” Colin said.
“So what is the mayor gonna do about the big office since you won’t sit there?” Gabe might not want—or be able to afford—another cigarette right now, but he didn’t feel like going inside and getting back to work, either.
“He can get somebody from outside or appoint a captain. I figure Miyoshi’s the best bet. Or he can appoint a captain and then get somebody from outside. That’s what I told him, anyhow. I didn’t tell him he could go pound sand, but I wouldn’t mind that, either.”
“Heh,” Sanchez said. “I got me a picture of Eugene Cervus pounding sand—and then turning over on his stomach and building a bunch of cruddy condos on top of it.”
“He’d make money if he did.” Colin had no doubts on that score. The mayor made money at everything he did. He had the knack. That didn’t make Colin like him or admire him or trust him.
When they did walk into the cop shop, no one there asked Colin whether he was going to be chief. Everybody seemed to know already. Colin’s cell was dead. He assumed other people’s were, too. But landlines often worked even when other power was out. Only one call would have needed to get through.
The venetian blinds were open. That didn’t make the big central office well lit, but it was lit. People could work here, at least from sunup to sundown. Some secretaries’ desks sported typewriters as well as computer monitors and keyboards: portable typewriters, 1950s office jobs, even a few angular uprights from the 1920s. Getting them had been an adventure. Keeping them in ribbons was another one.
One of the secretaries typing away was Josefina Linares, who worked for Colin. She raised a questioning eyebrow as he walked past her desk on the way to his own. “You didn’t, did you?” she said. It was as if she’d got the word but didn’t want to believe it.
“Nope,” he said.
She clucked in disapproval. “You should have. Whoever they end up getting instead of you is bound to be worse.”
A dubious compliment, but Colin would take what he could get. He sighed. “Josie, I told my wife I wouldn’t take it. I told you. I told Gabe. I even told the mayor. I told anybody who would listen. The mayor turned out to be one of the people who wouldn’t listen. So I had to tell him all over again just now. I don’t usually say stuff I don’t mean.”
“I know that. I ought to, after all these years.” Josie still sounded mad at him. “But you should have anyway. Our Lord said, ‘May this cup pass from me.’ When it didn’t, though, He went out and did what He had to do.” She crossed herself.
“I’m not Him,” Colin said, “and you can sing that in church.”
“Well, who is? Nobody, not even Saint Francis.” His secretary crossed herself again. “I still think the city needs you there.”
She’d never been shy about telling him what she thought. She treated him as an equal and a friend. He always tried to treat her the same way; her friendship was worth having. “The city needs me there for its own PR,” he said. “That’s the only reason. C’mon—you know I’m a crappy administrator. And besides, putting me in Mike’s office would just tear up the department worse than it is already.”
“You’d manage. And I would make sure the administrative stuff didn’t get too bad.” She meant it. There was a pretty decent chance she could do it, too.
He wagged a finger at her. “You want me to be chief so you get to be the boss secretary.”
“I’d like that.” Josie nodded. “But I’d want you to be chief even if somebody else took care of the other things for you.”
“Thanks.” Colin meant it. “The only thing is, I really and truly don’t want to do it. It’d drive me nuts.”
She grinned crookedly. “And who’d know the difference?” He laughed. He wouldn’t have kept laughing if she’d gone on with it. But she didn’t. She’d said her piece. He’d said his. Now it was over… as much as something like this could ever be over. He sat down at his desk, started going through the latest robbery and homicide reports, and did his best to pretend he was nothing but an ordinary police lieutenant on an ordinary kind of day.
His best, he feared, wasn’t close to good enough. He wondered if it ever would be.