"You okay, Heth?" Gina asked as they headed for the four-story parking garage attached to the hospital.
"Yeah."
"I mean really."
"I'll make it."
At the end of a corridor they went through a green metal door into the parking garage. It was bare gray concrete, chilly, with low ceilings.
A third of the fluorescent lights were broken in spite of the wire cages that protected them, and the shadows among the cars offered countless places of concealment.
Gina fished a small aerosol can from her purse, holding it with her index finger on the trigger, and Heather said,"What's that?"
"Red-pepper Mace. You don't carry?"
"No."
"Where you think you're living, girl — Disneyland?"
As they walked up a concrete ramp with cars parked on both sides, Heather said, "Maybe I should buy some."
"Can't. The bastard politicians made it illegal. Wouldn't want to give some poor misguided rapist a skin rash, would you? Ask Jack or one of the guys-they can still get it for you."
Gina was driving an inexpensive blue Ford compact, but it had an alarm system, which she disengaged from a distance with a remote-control device on her key ring. The headlights flashed, the alarm beeped once, and the doors unlocked.
Looking around at the shadows, they got in and immediately locked up.again.
After starting the car, Gina hesitated before putting it in gear. "You know, Heth, you want to cry on my shoulder, my clothes are all drip-dry."
"I'm all right. I really am."
"Sure you're not into denial?"
"He's alive, Gina. I can handle anything else."
"Forty years, Jack in a wheelchair?"
"Doesn't matter if it comes to that, as long as I have him to talk to, hold him at night."
Gina stared hard at her for long seconds. Then: "You mean it. You know what it's gonna be like, but you still mean it. Good. I always figured you for one, but it's good to know I was right."
"One what?"
Popping the hand brake and shifting the Ford into reverse, Gina said,
"One tough damned bitch."
Heather laughed. "I guess that's a compliment."
"Fuckin' A, it's a compliment."
When Gina paid the parking fee at the exit booth and pulled out of the garage, a glorious gold-and-orange sunset gilded the patchy clouds to the west.
However, as they crossed the metropolis through lengthening shadows and a twilight that gradually filled with blood red light, the familiar streets and buildings were as alien as any on a distant planet. She had lived her entire adult life in Los Angeles, but Heather Mcgarvey felt like a stranger in a strange land.
The Brysons' two-story Spanish house was in the Valley, on the edge of Burbank, lucky number 777 on a street lined with sycamores. The leafless limbs of the big trees made spiky arachnid patterns against the muddy yellow-black night sky, which was filled with too much ambient light from the urban sprawl ever to be perfectly inky. Cars were clustered in the driveway and street in front of 777, including one black-and-white.
The house was filled with relatives and friends of the Brysons. A few of the former and most of the latter were cops in uniforms or civilian clothes.
Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians had come together in companionship and mutual support in a way they seldom seemed capable of associating in the larger community — any more.
Heather felt at home the moment she crossed the threshold, so much.safer than she had felt in the world outside. As she made her way through the living room and dining room, seeking Alma, she paused to speak briefly with old friends-and discovered that word of Jack's improved condition was already on the grapevine.
More acutely than ever, she was aware of how completely she had come to think of herself as part of the police family rather than as an Angeleno or a Californian. It hadn't always been that way. But it was difficult to maintain a spiritual allegiance to a city swimming in drugs and pornography, shattered by gang violence, steeped in Hollywood-style cynicism, and controlled by politicians as venal and demagogic as they were incompetent. Destructive social forces were fracturing the city-and the country-into clans, and even as she took comfort in her police family, she recognized the danger of descending into an us-against-them view of life.
Alma was in the kitchen with her sister, Faye, and two other women, all of whom were busy at culinary tasks. Chopping vegetables, peeling fruit, grating cheese. Alma was rolling out pie dough on a marble slab, working at it vigorously. The kitchen was filled with the delicious aromas of cakes baking.
When Heather touched Alma's shoulder, the woman looked up from the pie dough, and her eyes were as blank as those of a mannequin. Then she blinked and wiped her flour-coated hands on her apron. "Heather, you didn't have to come-you should've stayed with Jack."
They embraced, and Heather said, "I wish there was something I could do, Alma."
"So do I, girl. So do I."
As they leaned back from each other, Heather said, "What's all this cooking?"
"We're going to have the funeral tomorrow afternoon. No delay. Get the hard part over with. A lot of family and friends will be by tomorrow after the services. Got to feed them."
"Others will do this for you."
"I'd rather help," Alma said. "What else am I going to do? Sit and think? I sure don't want to think. If I don't stay busy, keep my mind occupied, then I'm just going to go stark raving crazy. You know what I mean?"
Heather nodded. "Yes. I know."
"The word is," Alma said, "Jack's going to be in the hospital, then rehab, for maybe months, and you and Toby are going to be alone. Are you ready for that?"
"We'll see him every day. We're in this together."
"That's not what I mean."
"Well, I know it's going to be lonely but-"."That's not what I mean, either. Come on, I want to show you something."
Heather followed Alma into the master bedroom, and Alma closed the door.
"Luther always worried about me being alone if anything happened to him, so he made sure I knew how to take care of myself."
Sitting on the vanity bench, Heather watched with amazement as Alma retrieved a variety of weapons from concealment.
She got a pistol-grip shotgun from under the bed., "This is the best home-defense weapon you can get. Twelve-gauge.
Powerful enough to knock down some creep high on PCP, thinks he's Superman. You don't? have to be able to aim perfectly, just point it and pull the trigger, and the spread will get him." She placed the shotgun on the beige chenille bedspread.
From the back of a closet Alma fetched a heavy, wicked-looking rifle with a vented barrel, a scope, and a large magazine. "Heckler and Koch HK91 assault rifle," she said. "You can't buy these in California so easy any more." She put it on the bed beside the shotgun.
She opened a nightstand drawer and plucked out a formidable handgun.
"Browning nine-millimeter semi automatic. There's one like it in the other nightstand."
Heather said, "My God, you've got an arsenal here.". "Just different guns for different uses."
Alma Bryson was five feet eight but by no means an Amazon. She was attractive, willowy, with delicate features, a swanlike neck, and wrists almost as thin and fragile as those of a ten-year-old girl.
Her slender, graceful hands appeared incapable of controlling some — of the heavy weaponry she possessed, but she was evidently proficient with all of it.
Getting up from the vanity bench, Heather said, "I can see having a handgun for protection, maybe even that shotgun. But an assault rifle?"