"I appreciate the trying."
"What's to appreciate? I put her back out, she screws up so much as once, there's nothing any of us can do for her. Not a thing."
Even so, Bo thanked Rysher again, then left his office. Left, not really feeling better about Soledad's situation. Feeling, although he'd tried to do something, he'd accomplished nothing. Or at best, nothing good.
Patrol?" Soledad spat out the word like she was allergic to it. She'd spat it three or four times now."Patrol?" Five.
Bo said: "How many times you gonna say that?"
"What else am I supposed to… Patrol?"
"Want to be back on a desk?"
"All of LAPD, every other slot I've been in, and they're putting me on—"
"Patrol. Yeah."
"You ever ridden a beat?" Soledad paced the steps outside Parker Center. She walked them down, then back up to Bo like she was working out. Working things out, working out frustration, was what she was doing."A full shift of just riding around, riding around, getting the finger from passing cars, breaking up drunks fighting in alleys. Quicksand's a better way to go."
"A thank-you'd be nice."
"Who they've got me partnered with?"
"Dang it, Soledad."
"Thank you, Bo."
Bo gave up a smile. Unintentionally Soledad could be funny. In the time he'd known her, it was the only way Bo knew Soledad to be funny.
"I don't just mean for getting me off a desk. For watching out for me." She wasn't trying to be funny at all. She was working at being sincere."I didn't turn out to be much of a probee. I appreciate you not giving up on—"
"Hell, Soledad. First I can't get a kind word out of you, then you want to sing hymns. One or the other, but either way, do us both a favor and let's avoid a moment."
Soledad matched smiles with Bo, asked again: "Who've they got me partnered with?"
"Willie Lesker."
"Don't know him. He good cop?"
Bo took a second to color his phrasing."He's… old school."
"How old school?"
"Old old school."
"You know what? I think I want to take my thank-you back."
"Oh, hell no. I'm keeping it. Can't wait to tell everybody else on the job I got a kind word out of Soledad O'Roark."
"Everybody? My rep go that far?" Bo was kidding around and Soledad kidded with him, but mostly she kidded because she wanted to keep the conversation going. She wanted to know Bo's opinion: "Nobody thinks I've ever got anything good to say?"
"You're a tough one."
"And all these years I was thinking that was a good thing for a cop to be."
"Far as I care there's no—"
Bo's cell rang, he answered it. His wife. He held up a finger to Soledad, mouthed" Give me a sec," then moved a couple of steps away. Not that she was trying to, but Soledad caught Bo's half of the conversation. One of his kids had gotten into some kind of trouble at school. The wife was upset. Bo didn't seem to be. Calm, Bo talked his wife through the situation. One of the few pluses of being an MTac: makes the rest of life comparatively easy to deal with.
Bo talked, and Soledad stared out at the traffic beyond Parker Center, watched it crawl along the 10. End of day. Most of LA done with work. Traffic'd be crawling along the 405 too. And the 101, the 134, the 170. There was no good way home, no quick way. Even so, people tried to force traffic. Soledad could hear car horns screaming at each other. Couldn't hear, but was sure inside their GM and Ford and DaimlerChrysler cocoons drivers were screaming at each other too, flipping each other off. When summer finally hit, when it got to be a few more degrees warmer, one of them—at least one— might pull a gun and really show people what road rage was all about just 'cause they were in a rush to get the hell home and catch a rerun of Friends.
And Soledad had to laugh. Soledad didn't have to worry about rushing from one spot to another. The thing about not having a life: You were never in a hurry to get back to it.
At the bottom of the steps: a couple of cops. Uniformed. They looked up at Bo and Soledad. Stared at Soledad. One of them said something.
Soledad's eyes tightened. Looked like, she wasn't sure, but it looked like he'd just mumbled at her: "Lucky fucking bit—"
"Sorry about that." Bo crossing back over.
"… That's okay…" Soledad looked after the uniformed cops as they headed into Parker Center.
"So you just get back out on the street, keep your head down… all this'll go away. Sometimes… that's just it; sometimes it takes time."
After that, for a second, Bo and Soledad didn't say anything.
And then Soledad, one more time, for the record: "Patrol."
Hello?"
"Uh…" the voice on the other end of the phone mumbled, and mumbled—if there were degrees of mumbling—weakly.
"Hello?" Soledad asked again.
"This is…" More mumbling.
"What?"
"Is this Soledad?"
"Who's this?"
Uneasy breathing, then: "Ian…"
Soledad thought, tried to collate names with faces. She came up with nothing. The voice on the phone clarified things for her.
"You don't know me. I mean, you do… We… I was the guy you hit. You hit my car."
Jaguar Guy, Soledad thought."Jaguar Guy," she said.
"Yeah." Not mumbling. Relaxing some.
"My insurance company should've already—"
"They did."
"Then I don't think we have anything—"
"I'm not calling about that; about the accident."
"There's something else you wanted to—"
"I wanted to…" Back to the mumbling.
"Can't hear you."
"I wanted to see you."
"See me?" Soledad noncomprehended."See me for what?"
"For… because…" His voice sounded like a lot of effort was going into looking for the right thing to say, the right way to say it.
Couldn't find it. All he could come up with was what he'd said before: "I wanted to see you."
"You mean a date?" Soledad asked.
"A date," Ian confirmed. Barely.
Now it was Soledad who had trouble with the language."That's… uh…"
The conversation was devolving into sounds and non sequiturs.
"I don't know if you have a guy. I know you're not married. No ring, and I checked your insurance record…"
"Jesus, you stalking me?"
"No! No, I just wondered if… I wanted to…"
"See me," completed Soledad. A date. A date with some guy she'd run into, literally, who'd seen her once for a couple of minutes or so standing in an intersection, and wanted to see her again.
And real quick she felt, Soledad felt… flattered?
Soledad worked at remembering what Jaguar Guy—Ian—looked like. She knew she wasn't repulsed by him, so that was something. Maybe he was six or six-one. Good height. Not fat. It came to her that he was in shape enough that he probably worked out regular. Soledad liked guys who weren't body-obsessed but cared enough about themselves to at least know where a gym was located.
"Well…" Soledad hesitated. She'd been on the phone, what, three, four minutes with this guy, and not more than twelve words exchanged between them."Maybe not a date date."
"Okay. Okay. Then… what?"
"I don't know. Just not a date date."
"A date date?"
"Not a real date. We can do… something, but not like—"
"A date date. No, that's cool."
"You have a phone number?"
Ian did, of course, and gave it to Soledad. Gladly. Soledad took it down, checked it as he repeated it, promised to call. Soon. They good-byed each other and hung up.
The phone cradled, in an instant, a dozen variations of a hundred dates and the endless variety of relationships they'd be potential birth parents to visited Soledad. A prophetic flash that caused her to sit and smile, and to stop smiling when she realized she was. He was just some guy. Some guy she'd had a crack-up with who'd gotten the hots for her, Soledad propagandized herself. That's all he was. Maybe he was a nice guy. Maybe he was a fun guy. Maybe he was just a guy hardly different one way or the other from most of the rest of the guys in the world. So drop the excitement, the anticipation, she ordered herself. Just because he was the one guy who— for whatever reason in however long—decided to throw a little attention her way, that was no reason for her to feel… good?