He continued to illuminate her."Just don't make good sense to me why anybody would get it in their head they want to be an MTac cop."
"We've talked about this, Lesker. Talked about this yesterday, day before…"
"Just don't understand—"
"Month and a week, how many shifts? You don't get it, you're not going to get it. I can live with that, so why don't you?"
"Just saying—"
"The shit's crazy. Somebody's got to do it."
Bad as Lesker was, for Soledad it was good to be in uniform, to bear the appearance of being a cop and a stepchild to an MTac officer. Even with the midday heat, the traffic she suffered through cruising with Lesker, it was good—she reminded herself—to be wearing a gun, small and useless as her service revolver felt in her holster.
Except for all that, it was good. Pretty good. Would've been better without Lesker.
"All I'm saying, running after them muties, ought to be glad you're done with it."
"I'm not done with it." Soledad was both being defiant and expressing a personal truth."You go after a freak once, you see what they can do… you're never done with it."
"Good goddamn way to get yourself killed."
"Being a cop is a good way to get yourself killed."
"Shit, had my share of trouble with crackheads and gang bangers, but I've never had one start flying around shooting heat beams from its eyes."
"Freaks only have one ability, not multiple. It couldn't fly and—"
"Never once." Not even hearing Soledad, or hearing and not caring.
"You learn to deal."
"Yeah, bet you do. You learning to deal with that shit on your neck? A freak give you that as a going-away present?"
The blues she wore left the burns on Soledad's neck exposed. She wished for one of her turtlenecks. She wished she was Yarborough and didn't care how many scars she'd collected.
Lesker leaned to the window and spat. The wind grabbed up the saliva, splatted it yellow-green against the back window of the squad.
Soledad was starting to think maybe this was the reason the brass had yessed Rysher's request to get her back in uniform. Maybe Lesker was enough to annoy her off the force and save the department the expense of a disciplinary hearing. Maybe that was his sole remaining purpose for being a cop. Officer Lesker: Police Irritant.
"You're on the job," Soledad said,"you've got a good chance of getting dead, so what's it matter how?"
"It matters. You're staring at death, it matters if you're going the easy way or the hard one."
She wondered: How would he know? If Lesker'd ever even glanced in death's direction, it was by pure, complete accident. Soledad was fairly sure Lesker'd never code-3-responded in his life. If he'd ever drawn his gun, it was to use it as a paperweight.
Outside her window, normalcy. The appearance of it. The traffic, drivers cocooned in cars, in their own worlds. Pedestrians slogged through hot, static air made visible by the smog. A copy shop filled with people running off resumes, poorly written screenplays. The low-end menial business of show business. Soledad speculated:
Which of them—of all those people in the cars, on the street, going about their jobs—which of them was secretly a mutie? A freak?
Lesker asked: "Know what I shoulda done?"
Soledad grunted vague interest.
"Moved to Seattle. Got on the Seattle PD. Rains in Seattle."
"Heard that."
"It rains a lot."
"Heard."
"Nobody goes out in the rain. Not regular folk, not perps."
"It's safe."
"Yeah. Safe."
A beat.
"Alaska." Soledad looked at the dash, out the window. Anywhere but at Lesker. In their time together Soledad had gotten no closer to mastering the trick of looking at him while conversing. They talked, but it was more like she was talking to herself.
"What about it?"
"Snow. Snows a lot in Alaska. It's safe."
"Yeah. Bet it's safe."
"Know where else is safe, Lesker?"
"Where?"
"Dark side of the moon. Why don't you see if you can't get yourself to the dark side of the moon?"
Lesker had no problem giving Soledad a look that told his partner, in graphic and exacting detail, just what she could do to herself.
Soledad wasn't going to be back in uniform much longer. Officer Lesker: Police Irritant was on the job.
Outside the car, across the street: voices loud and threatening. Soledad looked, couldn't make out the situation except that there was a gun involved.
To Lesker: "Roll on that."
"Aw, shit." Crime had managed to mess up Lesker's quiet day. He tapped the siren, yanked a hard U in the middle of the street. Pulling to the curb, both cops got a better look at the things. Just outside a corner market a Korean woman was having it out with a black guy. The black guy was holding a thing of orange juice. The Korean woman was gripping a gun.
Up out of the squad Lesker and Soledad eased for the scene. Lesker easing a bit more than Soledad, letting her take point. She kind of shook her head in disgust at him, but mostly kept her eyes on the Korean woman, on the gun she held. Soledad put her hand on her piece, her teeny-tiny-feeling service revolver that would be more than enough to kill the Korean woman if things worked out that way. But Soledad didn't draw it. That was one of the tons of reasons women made better cops than men: Female officers tended to navigate potentially dangerous situations with intelligence instead of force. Male cops liked to kick in doors and spit lead.
Lesker was something different altogether. Lesker just floated around in the background.
Calm, firm, like she was talking down an angry dog, Soledad said to the Korean woman: "Ma'am, put the gun down."
The only response was a wild babble of Korean.
"Put down the gun!"
"What da fuck is dis bullshit?" The black guy got all angry-brother indignant with Soledad's measured response.
Eyes on the woman, Soledad turned her command toward the brother."Stay where you are; do not move!" Back at the woman, stronger: "Ma'am, I'm asking you for the last time to put down the gun!"
"Sheeeit. Brotha had a gun, you'da blowt his head off by now. Why you havin' dialogue wit ching-chong?"
Too much going on."Shut up," Soledad yelled at the brother."You want to just stand there and shut up? Lesker!"
Lesker moved in the direction of the brother, but just slightly.
"Ma'am…" Grip tightening on her piece. Maybe it was coming to that.
A new voice: "No, no! She doesn't speak English." From out of the market: a boy, seventeen, also Korean.
Soledad confirming: "You speak English?"
"Yeah, I do." Not even the hint of accent.
"She your mother?"
The boy nodded.
"Tell her to put the weapon down and step away from it."
Quick, the woman got the instructions in Korean. There was a little back-and-forth between her and her son, but even with the language barrier Soledad could tell the boy made it desperately clear to her what she needed to do. The woman laid the gun on the sidewalk. The woman took three steps away from it.
"Ain't dat a bitch? Brotha woulda been long laid out by now."
"Hey, brother man" — danger past, Lesker got into things—"didn't you hear the girl?"
… The girl…?
Let it go.
Soledad picked up the gun, popped the clip, cleaned it working the slide twice. Nothing. No shell chambered. In another situation, if things had gotten real hectic, all the Korean woman would have been able to do with the weapon is get herself good and dead.
Soledad, to the boy: "She have a permit for this?"
"We have it in the store. I can go—"
"Later. Tell me what's going on."
Brother Man answered: "Wha's goin' on? Whatcha think goin' on? Da bitch tryinta kill me."
"I wasn't talking to you."
"Why you axin' ching-chong an' them shit?"
Soledad stepped to Brother Man, stepping past Lesker in the process. She hadn't bothered to look at Brother Man before. Now that she had, she saw fashion was a sense he didn't own. Polyester shirt. Matching shorts. Knee-high silk socks. Gator skin loafers. Along with that he trimmed himself with cheap gold, plenty of it, like he did all his shopping at Huggy Bear's garage sale.