Thwap, thwap thwap! Whump! Whump!
There wasn't much going on in the gym at Parker Center. No other cops around and Soledad was just fine with that. No noise, no chatter.
No… looks. Seemed like she'd been getting more and more… looks.
No sounds except her hands and feet doing work on a heavy bag.
Whump! Whump! Thwap whump!
Maybe there was something else she could do, she thought. Some other way to earn her keep. It was—felt like it was—coming to that. Obviously the cop thing was going nowhere. Maybe if she got out of all this halfway clean, if IA didn't bury her too deep, let her quit instead of getting discharged, she could… she could what? Work security at Century City Mall? Join Edison or ADT, drive around Beverly Hills scaring away the blacks and Mexicans every time Mr. and Mrs. Stuffy McNervouspants put in a call they'd seen one of those people in the neighborhood.
Yeah. Like she could keep sane living that way.
But what do you do when you've spent most of your life gearing up to take on ultra-empowered, supernormal genetic mutants and in the first six months it doesn't work out and doesn't work out as much as something can?
Thump, thump thwap. Whap!
Soledad liked the feel of fist and foot against the leather of a bag. Beyond that, she wasn't much of a fighter, having previously been in only one brawl in her entire life. Sixth grade. Maggie Pearson had stolen Soledad's Miami Vice poster from her locker. Nobody touched Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas and got away with it. Nobody.
Years later Soledad had studied—had taken—some kung fu classes, or classes the guy who taught them called kung fu because kung fu sounded cooler than self-defense, which is what he was really peddling. During one of the classes some guy, another student who thought he was the next Jet Li, connected a foot to Soledad's head. Soledad connected a fist to the center of his face. Okay, so maybe twice in her life she'd been in a fight. Sort of twice. One punch and the guy went down like a two-dollar whore.
Whump, whump whump! Thwap…
Soledad wound up for a spin kick. Anger, rage, frustration; she was going to let it all out. She was going to let somebody have it even if it was just a dumb punching bag that was good for nothing but being strung up and getting the stuffing knocked out of it.
She related.
Halfway into the spin, a voice: "Knee in."
The voice, unexpected, threw Soledad. Her foot struck late, missed the bag. Momentum kept carrying her around, would've taken her to the floor if she hadn't somehow steadied herself. The speed with which she recovered her balance was a bit surprising. Pleasantly.
Soledad looked to the voice.
The voice had come from Detective Tashjian, Internal Affairs Division.
Tashjian said again: "Knee in. You have to keep your knee in, thrust out, strike at the last second. You can't telegraph your blows."
He was giving tips? Tashjian, looking like a" before" shot from a Gainers Fuel ad?" And you're the fight authority."
Tashjian threw a couple of tight punches in the air and wasn't at all clumsy about it. He threw them like maybe he wasn't just a bland-as-bland-gets geek. He threw them like maybe at some point in the past pugilism was Tashjian's stock-in-trade. Probably. That was Tashjian: a guy who looks like nothing, but who's nothing but trouble.
"You have to hide your blows," Tashjian directed."Hide them, deliver them fast and plentiful at the last possible second so your opponent doesn't know which way to turn. All they can do… well, all they can do is be beaten. Take the beating that's coming to them."
"That your creepy metaphor for the day?"
"I'm talking about the martial arts. What are you talking about, O'Roark?"
At the moment Soledad wasn't talking about anything. She was pulling off her gloves, unwrapping her wrists.
"Keep trying to tell you I'm not a bad sort, O'Roark. Not like you think I am." Tashjian crossed to the heavy bag, tapped it with a finger as if to check its constitution, then pocketed his hands."Only doing my job."
"So am I. Difference is I get strung up for it."
"There are just questions that need to be asked. You can understand that, can't you? Most cops go their entire careers without drawing their side arms, without being in an officer-involved shooting. Now in the past few months you've been involved in two."
"I was on MTac. We're supposed to shoot freaks."
"A probee, by herself, with some kind of homegrown weapon takes out a pyrokinetic."
"He was about to—"
"An officer, by herself," Tashjian continued, uncaring for anything Soledad had to say,"shoots a… well, whatever it was."
"This last shooting was righteous. You know that. For crying out loud, I used a service revolver. The department wouldn't even let me carry a nine."
"Question is: Should you have taken the shot at all? Procedure would have been for a uniformed officer to make the call to MTac."
"It was flying away. Flying! By the time I'd put in a call, by the time MTac responded, the thing would've been setting up shop in Idaho. Lucky I got one shot off."
"You made it count."
"And good for it. The thing just opened up a hole in the middle of Olive."
Rocking on his heels: "Not so sure about that. Times says—"
"Christ. The Times."
"You're telling me."
"Then why you always talking about the Times?"
"Usually one laying around Starbucks. For free, what does it hurt to hear what the liberals are saying? They're saying the freak might've saved people from being trapped in the hole."
"And Fox News says the gov ought to federalize the MTacs."
"Handing MTac to the bureaucrats." From Tashjian, a shake of the head."God help us all if they do."
"In the meantime I do my job; I see a freak, I stop a freak."
"There are any number of reasons for pulling a trigger. Stop a crime, commit a crime. Grab a few headlines."
"I'm trying to make a name for myself, that what you're saying?"
Tashjian's head dipped slightly, signifying agreement.
"That's a guy thing: buying fame with a gun," Soledad said."It doesn't come from women."
"What about Solanas?"
"Who?"
"Valerie Solanas."
Soledad blank-faced him.
"The woman who shot Andy Warhol."
"Who?"
Tashjian's head lolled."How old are you?"
"Twenty-seven. Just turned."
"And you don't know… You're serious." Tashjian's hands came out of his pocket, rubbed his forehead.
Soledad thought she was giving him a headache. Soledad smiled.
Tashjian: "Warhol was an artist. Painted soup cans."
Soledad went back to giving blank face.
"Trust me, he was big. Big for an artist anyway. So Solanas shoots him, trying to carve out her own little piece of history."
"She should've shot somebody more famous."
"Fifteen minutes."
"What's that?"
"In the future everyone will be famous, but for only fifteen minutes."
"I believe that."
"Warhol said it."
Soledad thought for a moment, considered, then quite plainly: "Looks like he was right."
Tashjian cut loose with a broad and appreciative grin."I like you, O'Roark."
"Like a snake likes a mouse."
"Like a mongoose likes a snake." He fed himself a stick of Big Red. Even over the stink of sweat, Soledad could catch the scent of its spice."Maybe you've got to go down, but you don't go down easy."
"Or maybe I won't go down at all."
"Nope. Not one bit easy." Tashjian flicked the heavy bag, not hard, but he made it move. Very little, but it did move."And I like that."
"By the way," Tashjian said as he walked toward the gym door,"I've met your lawyer, that Senna woman. Tough gal. And I mean that as a compliment."