Locking eyes with Brother Man: "I'm going to get what I need from you in a second. Right now, I'm dealing with the lady. Okay?"
"Damn, girl, whyya gotta git attitude? Black gotta do right by black, ya know?"
Soledad was already back to the boy."What happened?"
"My mother says he stole that carton of orange juice, walked out of the store with it and didn't pay. She tried to stop him, and he pushed her."
"Aw, sheeee—"
"That's when Mom got her gun."
"Dat's bullshit."
"Is that bullshit? Is it? How much bullshit would it be if I hauled your ass in? How many warrants going to get kicked back on you?" Getting the feeling Brother Man was mostly talk, Lesker was getting bold with himself. He was about to give a real live OJ-stealing street thug a hard time. He was about to get himself some stories to tell the other cops in Seattle, or Alaska, or wherever he finally ended up.
Dark side of the moon.
"I didn't steal no juice. I paid for it."
"Yeah, you did," Lesker editorialized.
"A brother cain't have ends? I got more in my pocket than you do, blue."
"You sure don't waste any of it on wardrobe, slick."
"Lesker!" Soledad's head was starting to hurt."Let's keep it civil."
"How about let's do this: How about we remember who's senior here? How about that, O'Roark?"
The Korean woman added something to all that, but she added it in her native tongue and got nothing but ignored for her trouble.
Soledad brought things back around to the boy, who seemed to be the only one present she had anything like a rapport going with.
She asked: "Did you see him take the orange juice?"
"My mother said he did."
"But did you see him take it?"
"My mother's not lying. He obviously stole it."
An eyebrow from Soledad."Obviously?"
"All those people do is steal."
More eyebrow."Excuse me?"
Lesker: "You got that."
"Muthafuckin' choon."
Something from the Korean woman.
Soledad to the boy: "I'm one of those people, all right?"
"Yeah, but you're, you know…" The boy, formerly articulate, suddenly found the spoken language a struggle."You're different." He took a moment to figure how."You're… a cop."
"All I need from you is the story straight and simple. I don't need any help with anthropology."
"Sheeeit, goddamn sellout what she is."
Soledad felt like a mill was being rolled, slow, over her. Forget the heat and Lesker and having to deal with the high crime of fruit juice theft. The alleged high crime of fruit juice theft. Here was a smart young kid taking good advantage of everything America had to offer. Except part of the package deal was all the racism he could carry. Black vs. Asian, Soledad caught square in the middle, and the representative from her side doing very little representing.
She prayed, quietly, to herself, for something to transport her from the situation.
The thing about prayers: Occasionally they get answered.
Quick, violent, the ground shook. Shook so much the assembled group had to spread their arms, sway to maintain balance. Could have been an earthquake, but it was too severe and over too fast. It was more like an explosion. The screams that followed the thunderclap of noise would make you think so.
Typical LA: People ran toward the panic, not away from it. There'd be death and mangled bodies to see, but only if you were in the front row.
Soledad ran too, but with a different purpose: to save lives if she could. To help. To do… something. Lesker was behind her, but all he got was farther behind.
Olive Street.
Pushing through the crowd, the gawkers, Soledad saw: not an explosion. In the middle of the boulevard the ground had split open, collapsed. A sinkhole that swirled thick, dark and dirty. A collision of earth and water. On each side of the hole—it was a chasm stretching sidewalk-to-sidewalk, probably as deep below the churning water—LA traffic stopped dead, a parting like the Red Sea between cars. That meant down there in the pit…
Chaos. Confusion. People trying to get away. People trying to get close. Screams and the ever-present heat. A wall of faces, each registering its own response to the disaster.
To the crowd: "Get back! Everybody move back! Lesker!"
Lesker, just hitting the scene. The short run had turned his uniform a sweaty dark blue. If he said anything back to Soledad, it was lost under the hard huffs of his overworked lungs.
"Get these people away from here! Get on a radio, we need EMS and Rescue to go down for survivors!"
Survivors?
Soledad looked into the hole. A main had broken. That was obvious. It'd turned the ground above it to near liquid that raged in a soil river through the Red Line tunnels below the boulevard.
Survivors?
There were only the dead, and they were probably washed halfway to Santa Monica by now.
"Officer!"
"Come on, move back. You've got to clear—"
"Hey, Officer!"
Pushing through the crowd, a guy in a worker's uniform. The patch sewn to his shirt: MTA.
Soledad grabbed him, pulled him close."You work this site? Were you down there?"
"Yeah, I—"
"How many men down there?"
"Nobody. We were on break and—"
"Is there an access tunnel? Any way to get to the cars?"
"There are no cars. That's what I'm saying: There's nobody down there."
The constant throb of adrenaline that made reacting easy made thinking hard. Soledad forced herself to understand."The traffic…"
The MTA man carefully, clearly painted the picture."I'm standing there on the corner, we're on break like I said. Just come up out of the tunnel, me and my crew. We're standing there, and all of a sudden the traffic it… it splits up, you know? Those cars back there stopped." He pointed to the vehicles that rimmed the sinkhole."Every one of them stopped where they were."
"Stopped why?"
"Just did. They stopped, and the ones in front kept moving. I'm standing there looking at it thinking, ain't that queer: the cars stopping. I'm thinking just that, then the ground opens up."
Soledad looked at the hole. No workmen down there. She looked at the cars lined up to one side or the other of the sinkhole, but none—not one—where the ground had split.
She repeated the engineer's words to herself: Ain't that queer?
"It's like…" The engineer thought of something new to add to the obvious."It's like a—"
"A miracle," Soledad finished for him. A miracle. Like that gas explosion on the news that had injured no one. Like that little girl who survived getting hit by the car.
Miracles.
Miracles don't just happen.
Her eyes to the faces, the limitless faces in the crowd. Her hand to her gun. Looking. Looking. Endless expressions: horror, fear, shock, alarm, excitement. Expressions, expressions, expressions… then nothing. No expression. One face that was blank. One face that was placid. One face that was perfectly calm because it knew no one was hurt. It knew of miracles.
Soledad pushed through the crowd toward the face: a woman wrapped in a heavy overcoat. Too heavy for the ninety-plus-degree LA day.
The woman saw Soledad coming, surging for her. The woman smiled some, turned away and walked.
"Hold it!" Soledad swam, fought through the crowd.
The woman didn't have to fight or shove. She seemed to just float away.
"Stop, police!" Hand on her gun, too many people to pull it out.
The woman, in the open, gaining distance. She walked, but somehow moved faster than a leisured pace. Quicker than her casual steps would seem to carry her.