Vin beat her with, all sugary: "You be careful working that desk."
He was a most nondescript kind of guy. A little too tall to be short. Somewhere between fat and thin. His hair wasn't quite blond, not really brown either. Nothing about him stood out. A glass of warm water. Eggshell wallpaper. He was like that. You could stare right at the guy without even noticing him. Except Soledad couldn't help but notice him as he worked his way through the drawers of her desk.
Soledad stood, stared at him.
The guy kept up his search oblivious to, or unconcerned with, Soledad.
"Help you?" she asked in a tone that wasn't really asking much of anything, but more like saying: What are you doing?
The guy, the eggshell guy, remained oblivious. Or unconcerned.
Soledad cut straight to the subtext."What are you doing?"
No longer oblivious but still unconcerned, the guy held up identification.
"IA," Soledad muttered."So it's like that."
"It is like that." The guy closed a drawer and opened another. Had himself a look around. Finished, he raised his head. His eyes weren't blue, or green or hazel. They were some other dull color."Let's you and I talk."
Interrogation room. Morbid gray. Two-way mirror. A table bolted to the floor and a couple of chairs. Same room Soledad had used how many times, early days in SPU, to sweat perps who sat across the table, to wear confessions out of them? She sat, this time, on the other side of the table. The get— sweated side. The get-worn-away side.
The eggshell guy, his name was Tashjian—only distinct thing about him—sat where Soledad would have in times past and made a show taking a casual stroll through a jacket, her jacket. But all he was doing was looking at it, not reading it. No doubt he'd dug through Soledad's records like they were a boneyard long before he ever pulled up a chair with her. The performance was for Soledad so she could watch him fake-read, and he could watch her watching him to see how she took it.
She took it no different than if he was looking through an L. L. Bean catalog. She didn't care.
When Tashjian got through with his one-man show, he said: "O'Roark."
"What?"
"Nothing, I was just reading. Your name; I was just reading it here. Soledad O'Roark. Odd."
"My name?"
"Yes. Odd."
He couldn't get past her name without throwing darts? This was going to be fun."My name is odd?"
"Not the name. God, no. Who am I to talk about… The spelling. Don't normally spell 'O'Roark' like that. Guess it doesn't matter. Not like you're Irish."
That. Soledad knew what he was getting at: her being black but having an Irish surname. Like that was as unusual as having a third eye. It was only more games. An IA rat trying to light a fire to see what would bubble up. Soledad just took it. Like a slap to the face, she just took it.
Tashjian: "So you shot a mutie."
"You know I did."
"I know. But pretend I don't. Pretend I'm ignorant. Pretend I don't have a file on you thick as a phone book."
"Yes," Soledad roboted."I shot a freak."
"With that gun of yours. Hell of a gun, that gun of yours."
Like everything else about Tashjian, his voice was just there. Not squeaky, not monotone, not angry or accusatory or hey, buddy-friendly. You could read nothing from the way he talked at you. Just then, Soledad couldn't tell if the crack about the gun was a poor attempt at compliment or some kind of bait, so she let it pass.
"Where'd you learn to put together something like that?"
"It's in my jacket. My jacket you've already read."
Like he didn't even hear: "Where'd you learn to—"
"Northwestern. I majored in emerging technologies."
"Well, that's handy. You studying emerging technologies, learning how to make special weapons, then going on to join an MTac. Oh, hold a second…" Tashjian made a show of just then recalling something. Shuffling through Soledad's file for a paper he knew the precise location of: "Says here you did your grad work in metanor-mal psychology. Is that right? Did you do that?"
"Why are you playing these—"
"Did you?"
More of the robot voice: "I did my grad work in metanormal psychology."
"Well." That's all Tashjian said for a minute. Just that word, then nothing, as if he was taking a second to process this overwhelming flood of information he already knew. Then, again: "Well." And:
"Seems to me like you had it in your mind for a long time you wanted to be a freak hunter."
"That so unusual?"
"Some kids grow up wanting to be firemen. Some wanting to be chemical engineers. Some kids grow up wanting to go after freaks. Now, I think it's as unusual as hell to want to be a chemical engineer. But as far as going after superhumans to earn your pay… Let's find out if that's unusual."
Sarcastic: "And how do we do that?"
"Here's how: Why?"
"Because I ha—"
Tashjian's eyebrows gave a slight spike.
"Metanormals are a clear danger to our society and I've made the decision to dedicate myself to upholding the Executive Order enacted regarding—"
"You were going to say hate."
Nothing from Soledad.
"You were going to say you hate them."
Nothing from Soledad.
"Look, you hate them, you hate them. I hate them too."
"You're not being investigated by IA. You don't have to worry about somebody twisting up everything you say."
"Not much to twist up. Fourteen years since May Day, good luck finding anybody who doesn't want to see every freak put down. Yeah, the bleeding hearts, but some people don't eat meat either. Go figure."
Nothing from Soledad.
Tashjian closed up the file, flipped down his pen."Honestly, Officer, on the record, I'm happy for your piece. Happier if it went to work on every freak left in the city, then started working its way toward New York. Christ, not like we didn't give these things a chance. Thirty days to get out of the country, they can still turn themselves in anytime for deportation. And then they get paid on top of that." A little spark, finally, to Tashjian's voice."They get paid, what?"
"Fifty thousand dollars."
"Fifty thousand dollars in reparations on top of whatever they make selling the hard assets they can't transport. And with all that, you still got the lousy LA Times writing a piece about the freaks' civil rights every other week. They want rights, get out of the country. Go to France and get some rights."
"The Times is an also-run," Soledad tossed in."They've got to be contrary so somebody'll read them. Nobody's reading them anyway."
"However it is, ground zero, May Day, was just north of here. Could've been here. So you see where I'm coming from, Officer? And you can see I'm just asking: Why?"
"Why what?" Soledad had lost the question.
"Why dedicate yourself to hunting freaks?"
"I guess… I was very affected by what happened in San Francisco."
"You weren't born there."
"No, I wasn't."
"Have family there?"
"No."
"Friends?"
Soledad just sat for that one, not even bothering with an answer.
"Cold?"
"What?"
"You cold? Turtleneck, day like today, I figured maybe…"
"Why are you doing this?"
"Asking questions, that's all."
"I've done the drill enough times. Cops don't ask questions for the sake of asking."
"I'm not here to do bad things, Officer. I don't have to be. I'm just here to collect information. Maybe I'm even here to help."
"Yeah. You're my new best friend who was digging through my desk while my back was turned." Fingers became fists. Soledad's hands, living a life of their own, acted like they wanted to take a swing at Tashjian.
"I am trying to help, trying to see things your way. You make it hard when you sit there behaving like some poor, pathetic vic."
"You know what…"