"Did you know they like to be called 'extra-otherly-abled'?"
"Why?"
"Remember the Northridge earthquake, the section of the 10 that went down?"
Soledad remembered but didn't respond.
"Tavor, the Expandable Man saved my brother-in-law and about fifteen other people."
The sound Soledad made was like something had caught in her throat."You have any idea how queer those names even sound? What kind of person calls himself the Expandable Man?"
"I'll have my brother-in-law ask. He sends Tavor a Christmas card in Belgium every year."
"And you're telling me I've got problems? You're soft for freaks—"
"I told you, they like to be called—"
"Metanormals, M-norms. Muties. Whatever. You're soft for them, but you're trying to put a gun back in my hand. Meanwhile, the IA cop who's trying to bury me thinks I did right."
Gayle smiled."World's an odd place." Another potsticker got harpooned."Thing is, handling your… problem gives a young, hardworking girl like myself a lot of credibility. Freaks, as you say, used to be heroes. Maybe they could've done without the funny outfits and snappy names, but they were heroes; they saved lives, put their own at risk. Nobody told them to, nobody told them to look out for us normal people, but they did.
"Now they're killed—"
"Lawfully arrested."
"Sure. Just like Japanese Americans were lawfully rounded up and herded off to internment camps during the Second World War."
"Yeah, there's a good comparison. Normal humans to freaks."
"The comparison is racial profiling to genetic profiling: taking away someone's rights not because of what they've done, but because of who they are, what they are. It's like shooting a bird just because it flies. But then, they do that, don't they?"
"They're treated same as every other suspected perp."
"And what's cop talk for serving a warrant on a metanormal? Hunting? You hunt them?"
Soledad gave a hard shake of her head."You ACLU bunch, everything works as a concept to you. Tell you what, you try holding up the Constitution when a fire freak's throwing thousand-degree flames your way. See how much it protects you then."
"So you shoot metanormals because the law says you can?"
"When they resist arrest, yeah."
"You just enforce the law?"
"That's all we do."
"Well, I'm just trying to change the law. Then you can enforce it my way."
The sounds of cars circling the structure; over that, at close range, Gayle could hear Soledad's teeth grind.
Gayle: "A lot of stuff got shoved past us after San Francisco; a lot of politicians wrapping their careers in the flag and reactionary politics in memorial statements. Doesn't mean everything that got done was done right. When it comes time to make the change, I think a lawyer who's proven her impartiality could come in very handy."
"And I've got no say in any of this? I'm supposed to let you use me to help yourself?"
"You don't want me, you don't want me." Gayle made a show of digging in her bag, looking for her car keys."But I don't see anybody else running to your side. Cops talk big about all bleeding blue, but when it comes to facing IA charges, nobody wants to bleed with you. You've got no PPL lawyer, no legal aid. Just me." Keys in hand."So go on, tell me to fuck off one more time."
Soledad didn't say a thing.
"I'm using you, yes. But like you said: the guy who sees things your way is working against you. So if me using you gets your neck out of a noose, take it. Take what I'm offering."
A beat. No words exchanged. Armistice.
Gayle, putting back her keys, picking up her pen, getting back to things: "So tell me what's going on. The IA cop: What'd he ask you?"
"Not much of anything. I think he was just, you know… trying to get a rise out of me; get me to say something stupid. Went through my history, how I moved up through the department, why I wanted to be MTac…"
"Why did you?"
"Metanormals are a known and real threat to us, our society, and—"
"You sound like Mussolini's parrot. Forget the cop school propaganda. You: Why did you put in for MTac?"
Soledad didn't answer.
"That's got to tell you something, doesn't it, if for whatever reason you can't say why?"
Nothing… then from Soledad: "I always liked San Francisco. Can't say why, just thought it was a cool city. Maybe 'cause the 49ers didn't know how to lose a Super Bowl when I was a kid. Anyway, always wanted to go visit. Never got a chance. Now I never will."
"And that's why you're an MTac: because the metanormals blew up your football team."
"My family was going to take a trip there. I'd talked them… I'd bugged them into it. Would've been my first time going. I got sick, we didn't make it. The day we were supposed to go; first day of May. Fourteen years ago."
"May Day." And Gayle got it. Gayle understood.
For a moment Soledad's eyes went slick."I should have been there. I should have been in San Francisco." For a moment her edge faded."By some fluke I'm sitting here, when I should be…"
"… If you had been there," Gayle, voice soft,"you realize you were just a kid. You couldn't have done anything except gotten killed with a couple hundred thousand other people."
"Probably. But I didn't. So I decided to do something with being alive. I decided I wasn't going to let something like San Francisco happen again. Not if there was anything I could do about it. Anything at all."
"Like work on a new kind of gun. One especially made for dispatching metanormals."
"Yeah."
"So now you're… you're driven by a failure that wasn't your fault, that you couldn't have prevented if you'd wanted to. Or worse, you're motivated by guilt because catching the flu means you're alive instead of dead."
"I never… I don't think of things that way."
"That's called denial. I could understand if you lost family there, but this… Look, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not saying your thinking's psychotic, but somebody could spin it that way."
"Somebody like the IA."
Gayle nodded.
"So… what do we do?"
"You saying you want my help?"
"I'm asking what do we do?"
"For starters, from here on, anybody wants to question you about anything, do yourself a favor: don't say a word."
You gotta get yourself some glasses. A good dark pair. Keep all the shit out of your eyes."
Lesker was talking.
Soledad wasn't paying attention. Was trying not to. She was looking out the window of their squad. Nothing to see. They were patrolling LAPD's Central Division. Downtown LA. Streets that used to be full with foot traffic were now just full of traffic. Decades ago GM had conspired with the city to rip out all the light rail so it could fill the streets with buses and cars. Now there was nothing but buses and cars. No more people to walk and window-shop. So no more upper-end stores. No more chain businesses. Bodegas and street vendors and flea markets and the low-end customers and high crimes that went with them. Better, for Soledad, to look at all that nothing than to have to look the other way, catch a glimpse of her new partner. Patrolman Willie Lesker.
"Ride around like this for the next twenty years without glasses and you'll go blind. Jesus, look at this bunch on the corner."
A few Hispanic-looking guys standing around hoping to catch some work.
Lesker yelled at the Hispanic guys: "Hey, Ese! Como estd?" To Soledad: "Look at 'em. Grinnin' like a bunch of donkeys." To the Hispanic guys: "Arriba to you too, Poncho." To Soledad: "Christ, nobody's got jobs anymore?"
"Maybe they're taking a business lunch. Open air, you know."
Only three shifts. Soledad couldn't stand looking at her partner anymore. Listening to him wasn't much better.
"Check that one over there. Swear I rousted him not two weeks ago."
"Which one?"
"Take your pick. These people stand around yapping on a corner, then always seem to come up with enough scratch to make bail. Explain that? Don't earn that kind of money selling oranges by an off-ramp." Talking about Soledad's face: "Let me see."