“No, sir.”
“Varsity nut juggling...? No? What kind of scholarship was it, Detective?”
“Merit-based, sir.”
“Merit-based.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Merit-based... Hunh. I guess my cousin didn’t have as much merit as you.”
“I wouldn’t assume that, sir.”
“How come you got it, and he didn’t?”
“You’d have to ask the financial aid office, sir.”
“Merit-based. See, in my mind, that’s a lot worse than not getting a scholarship. In my mind, that’s the worst thing, when you have something and you piss it away. No excuse for that. Not even a lack of willpower.”
Jacob did not reply.
“Maybe you could finish up online. Like a GED. They got a GED for Harvard? You should look into that.”
“I will, sir. Thank you for the suggestion.”
“Till that day comes, though, you and I, our diplomas say the same thing. Cal State Northridge.”
“That’s true, sir.”
“No. It isn’t. Mine says master.” Mendoza kicked back in his chair. “So. Feeling burnt out, are we?”
Jacob stiffened. “I don’t know why you’d think that, sir.”
“I think it cause that’s what I heard.”
“Can I ask who you heard it from?”
“No, you may not. I also heard you’re thinking about putting in for some time off.”
Jacob did not reply.
“I’m giving you the opportunity to share your feelings,” Mendoza said.
“I’d rather not, sir.”
“Work’s got you down.”
Jacob shrugged. “It’s a stressful job.”
“Indeed it is, Detective. I got a whole bunch of cops out there who feel the same way. I don’t hear any of them asking for time off. It’s almost like you think you’re special.”
“I don’t think that, sir.”
“Sure you do.”
“Okay, sir.”
“See? That’s it. Right there. That’s exactly the kind of tone I’m talking about.”
“I’m not sure I understand, sir.”
“And again. ‘Not sure I gah gah gah gah gah.’ How old are you, Lev?”
“Thirty-one, sir.”
“You know what you sound like? You sound like my son. My son is sixteen. You know what a sixteen-year-old boy is? Basically, he’s an asshole. An arrogant, entitled, snotty little asshole.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
Mendoza reached for his phone. “You want time off, you got it. You’re being transferred.”
“Transferred where?”
“I haven’t decided. Someplace with cubicles. Fight it if you want.”
He didn’t fight. A cubicle sounded fine to him.
Strictly speaking, burnout wasn’t the correct term. The correct term was major depression. He’d lost weight. He prowled his apartment, exhausted but unable to sleep. His attention drifted, words dribbling from his mouth, syrupy and foreign.
These were the outward signs. He knew them well, and he knew how to hide them. He drew up a curtain of aloofness. He spoke to no one, because he couldn’t be sure how short his fuse was on any given day. He ceased to nourish his few friendships. And in the process he made himself out to be exactly what Mendoza thought he was: a snob.
Not as obvious, and harder to conceal, was the dull sorrow that shook him awake before dawn; that sat beside him at lunch, turning his ramen into an inedible repugnant wormy mass; that chuckled as it tucked him in at night: Good luck with that. It revealed the raw injustice of the world and made a mockery of policework. How could he hope to correct a worldly imbalance when he could not get his own mind right? His sadness made him loathsome to himself and to others. It was a sick badge of honor, a family inheritance to be taken out every few years, dusted off, and worn in private, a tattered black ribbon, the needle stuck through naked flesh.
Up ahead, in the Crown Vic, he could see the outlines of the two men.
Apes. Heavies, in case things got heavy.
It was all he could do not to wheel right around and go home. Special Projects had to be a euphemism for fates best avoided.
It sounded like what you got when you thought you were special.
Maybe he hadn’t vetted them thoroughly enough.
He could send a text, let someone know where he was going. Just in case.
Who?
Renee?
Stacy?
A jittery message to the ex-wives would make their respective days.
Mr. Sunshine.
Renee’s title for him, imbued with nuclear scorn. Stacy had adopted it, too, after he’d made the mistake of telling Wife Number Two about Wife Number One’s nagging and Wife Two came to empathize with “the crap you put her through.”
Everything turned to shit in the end.
So he was bound for someplace unpleasant. What else was new.
Determined beyond all reason to enjoy the ride, he eased back in his seat, nudged his mind toward Mai. He put her in street clothes, then removed them, piece by piece. That body, injection-molded, freakishly proportional. He was about to rip the tallis off when the Crown Vic made a sharp turn and Jacob swerved after it, hitting a pothole.
The sign said ODYSSEY AVE, an ambitious name for a grimy, two-block afterthought. Wholesale toy dealers, import-exports with Chinese signage, a shuttered “Dance Studio” that looked as if no feet, agile or otherwise, had crossed its threshold in ages.
The Crown Vic pulled over outside a set of rolling steel doors. A smaller glass door was inscribed 3636. A man in the dress of LAPD brass stood on the sidewalk, shading his eyes. Like Subach and Schott, he cut an imposing figure — towering, gaunt, pallid, with two frothy white tufts over his ears, suggestive of wings. He wore ash-gray pants, a luminous white shirt, a service firearm in a lightweight mesh holster. As he approached the Honda and bent to open Jacob’s door, the gold badge around his neck swung forward, clicking against the window, COMMANDER in blue enamel.
“Detective Lev,” the man said. “Mike Mallick.”
Jacob got out and shook his hand, feeling like a different species. He was six feet tall, but Mallick was six-six, easy.
Maybe Special Projects was where they put the freak shows.
In which case, he’d fit right in.
The Crown Vic honked once and drove off.
“Come on in, out of the sun,” Mallick said, and he glided into number 3636.
Chapter four
Mike Mallick said, “Lev, would you say times are good or bad?”
“I’d say that depends, sir.”
“On what?”
“Individual experience.”
“Come on, now. You know better than that. For us, the creatures that we are, times are always bad.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s life in Valley Traffic?”
“Can’t complain.”
“Sure you can. Basic human right.”
The room was, or had once been, a storage garage. Concrete walls breathed acrid, nose-pinching mold. It was icy, cavelike, windowless save the glass door, free of furniture but for a crooked halogen lamp turned a quarter of the way up, its cord snaking off unseen.
“What’re you working on?” Mallick asked.
“Fifty-year citywide data analysis,” Jacob said. “Car versus pedestrian accidents.”
“Sounds stimulating.”
“Without a doubt, sir. It’s a regular diamond mine.”
“My understanding is you needed a break from Homicide.”
This again? “As I told Captain Mendoza, I was speaking out of frustration. Sir.”
“What’s his beef with you? You steal his lunch or something?”
“I like to think of Captain Mendoza’s style as a form of tough love, sir.”