by Don Winslow
“So you have no policy?”
Chris is fucked, and he knows it.
Then he hears a voice say, “Well, the King Kong regulation—which mandates air support—only covers giant apes. And as you can see, this is a pretty standard-size ape, so . . .”
The cameraman swings around to the person who’s talking and Chris sees that it’s Lou Lubesnick. Lieutenant Lubesnick, the legendary detective of the Robbery Unit and a major hero of Chris’s, is apparently one of those people who have nothing better to do at night than prowl Balboa Park, and he’s wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt over baggy khakis, and are those . . . ? Yes, they are.
Lieutenant Lubesnick is wearing Crocs.
Orange Crocs.
With white socks.
He says, “Come on, give this kid a break, Bob.”
“Can I get a statement from you, Lou?”
“Sure.” Lubesnick looks into the camera and says, “Bob, department policy is to always handle every situation with the least amount of force necessary, consistent with the safety of the San Diego public and the visitors who flock to America’s Finest City.”
“Do you have any idea how the chimpanzee got the gun?”
“That is the subject of an ongoing investigation,” Lubesnick says, “so I’m not really free to comment. Suffice it to say that everything that can be done is being done, and I have every confidence that we will have those answers in a reasonable time.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“You got it.”
Chambers and his cameraman step away to get a better angle on Champion, who is still screaming imprecations from the side of the building.
Lubesnick steps over to Shea. “The key to talking to the media is bullshit, then some more bullshit, then conclude by sprinkling some bullshit on the bullshit. What’s your name?”
“Shea, sir.”
“Shea, in the future? Let your sergeant handle media relations.”
The crowd shouts as Champion launches himself from the building and lands in a palm tree.
Without dropping the gun.
Chris is impressed.
“If you’ll excuse me . . .” He walks to the base of the tree and looks up, assessing it for routes. He spends every Saturday morning on the faux-rock wall in a climbing gym, so he likes his chances.
More than on the building anyway, so things are looking better.
Then things look worse.
SWAT arrives.
They pile out of an armored car, and the officer in charge—clad in black with a Kevlar vest and a combat helmet—starts deploying his men to nearby buildings to take up sniper positions.
What has been a farce now has all the potential for tragicomedy.
The SWAT commander is in earnest conversation with Villa, who doesn’t look earnest.
He just looks disgusted.
More uniforms have come in, and they start moving the crowd farther back, behind barricades. Which is great, Chris thinks, because a shocked and horrified populace will be a little farther from the sight of Champion getting blown to bits with automatic-weapons fire and high-powered sniper rounds.
With film at eleven.
“We want to warn our viewers that the following footage is considered graphic. If you’re shitty parents with young children still up at this hour, you might want to move them away from the television set while the SWAT team blows up Curious George.”
Chris walks over to Villa. “I can climb that tree.”
“It’s a little late for that,” the SWAT commander says.
Chris talks to Villa. “Sarge, do you really want these guys to shoot that animal in front of all these people and the media?”
“Don’t fall,” Villa says.
Carolyn picks the perfect moment to get back with the dart gun—actually a “VetGun Delivery System” that looks a lot like a MAC-10 machine pistol. Chris is relieved to see that he can fire it with one hand.
Some of her staff start setting up the net at the bottom of the tree.
“He might interfere with a shooting angle,” the SWAT commander says.
Pretty much the idea, Chris thinks, although he’s too smart and career-minded to say it. He wants to get out of uniform patrol and catch on with the Robbery Unit, where maybe he can make detective.
Chris loves being a cop, even in a radio unit, because he really likes helping people. It’s physical, it’s active, and it’s something different every night.
Usually not this different, but still.
“If he gets in the way of a shot and the animal kills him,” the SWAT commander says, “it’s not on me.”
“I should go,” Carolyn says. “It’s my responsibility.”
“I got this.” Chris slings the VetGun Delivery System across his back, walks back over to the base of the tree and starts to shimmy up.
The crowd applauds.
Wrapping his legs around the trunk, Chris pulls himself up with his hands. The trunk is virtually vertical, and Chris’s grip is at best tenuous. But it’s too late to back down now. The crowd is chanting, “Go, cop!” and the television cameras are rolling, and Chris knows he’s faced with a binary choice of hero or zero.
He looks up to see Champion staring down intently at him with an expression Chris chooses to interpret as concern.
It might be contempt, but Chris prefers concern.
Climbing to what he judges as VetGun Delivery System range, Chris pulls the gun off his shoulder, takes a deep breath and aims at Champion’s left shoulder, at which point it becomes apparent that the chimp has had access to television, because he does what a thousand perps have done on a thousand cop shows.
He drops the gun.
Ten feet down.
Right on Chris’s face.
Chris loses his grip and falls.
Into the net.
The crowd boos.
Then cheers again as Champion jumps down after him, onto the net, with—as witnesses other than Chris, who is barely conscious, would aver—his hands up.
Villa stares down at Chris.
Scowling.
“Which word in the two-word phrase did you not understand?” Villa asks. “‘Don’t’ or ‘fall’?”
The E-Room nurse is simultaneously skeptical and amused. “A chimpanzee dropped a pistol on your face.”
“Yes.”
“While you were climbing a tree.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s real YouTube stuff.”
I hope not, Chris thinks.
He hopes in vain—two dozen versions have already gone viral, some of them set to music like “Welcome to the Jungle.”
“Is my nose broken?” Chris asks.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Do I have a concussion?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“Is my nose broken?”
“And you have a concussion,” she says. “Do you have anyone who can drive you home?”
“How did I get here?”
“In an ambulance.”
“Can’t they take me home?”
“Sure,” the nurse says. “We’ll get you one of those Uber ambulances. Who’s the chick in the safari suit standing over there looking concerned?”
“I don’t remember her name.”
“You don’t remember your name,” the nurse says. She looks over at Carolyn. “Can you drive him home?”
“It’s the least I can do.”
“Yeah, well don’t even think about doing the most you can do,” the nurse says. “He needs to stay sort of quiet.”
“Shouldn’t you check him for, like, brain damage?” Carolyn asks.
“He’s a cop,” the nurse says. “He already has, like, brain damage. If he passes out, starts projectile vomiting or thinks he’s Jay-Z or something, call 911. Otherwise give him some Tylenol and an ice pack and let him get some rest. Then, if you’re smarter than you look, you’ll make your escape.”
“That’s kind of mean,” Carolyn says.
>
“Yeah?” the nurse asks. “I take it you’re some kind of zookeeper?”
“I work at the primate house.”
“Good experience for dating a cop,” the nurse says. “Most of them are about a one-half evolutionary step up. I’ve dated several of them, including my ex-husband. It’s a bad idea.”
“Is my nose broken?” Chris asks.
Chris has a one-bedroom apartment in a group of bungalows off Kansas Street above University Avenue in North Park. He feels lucky to have it, what with rents in San Diego going up like they’re on Viagra and the neighborhood, once a funky semi-ghetto, becoming trendy and gentrified.
A lot of SDPD can’t afford to live in San Diego at all but have a ninety-minute-each-way commute from Escondido, Temecula or even Riverside.
As a general rule, cops don’t like living near where they patrol, but Chris enjoys living in North Park. It has coffee places, fun restaurants where he goes for brunch with his group of friends, cool bars when he wants a beer, and it still feels like a neighborhood instead of a tourist destination, although more and more people are renting out their places with Airbnb.
Most people in his immediate neighborhood, and certainly in his building, know that Chris is a cop, and most of them like it, even if they won’t admit it. Chris thinks that they like the security of having a policeman in the vicinity and indeed have called him at home when there’s been a domestic disturbance or a break-in.
They basically know Chris as a good guy.
Which he is.
Which Carolyn starts to learn as she gets Chris through his front door and onto the sofa in his tiny living room.
She already liked him, of course, because he saved Champ from execution, but as she settles him on the couch and goes into the kitchen, more of a narrow galley, to make an ice pack, she likes him even more.
First, there are the framed pictures on his walls.
Chris with his mom and dad.
Chris with what has to be a sister and two little girls who must be Chris’s nieces and who are looking up at him adoringly.
Chris, a big smile on his face, bending over an elderly lady in a wheelchair who Carolyn guesses is his grandmother.
So Chris is a family guy.
Then there’s the certificate of appreciation for Chris officiating at the Special Olympics, a photo of Chris in a wheelchair at an Over The Line tournament, Chris arm in arm with a bunch of friends (who all look like happy, normal, disgustingly healthy people who just came out of a CrossFit session) at an outdoor table somewhere, and the woman next to Chris is incredibly attractive, Carolyn observes with what she is embarrassed to admit is a twinge of jealousy.
Pump the brakes, she tells herself.
Chris Shea is too good to be true.
There has to be something seriously wrong with him.
Either he’s a major player (he’s good-looking enough to qualify), or he’s divorced with a couple of kids, he’s a closeted gay guy, or he’s hopelessly in love with a coke-addicted stripper.
The kitchen is neat.
No dirty dishes in the sink or the drainer, no dirty pots or pans left on the stovetop.
Although she doesn’t need to open the refrigerator to get ice, she does anyway, but the fridge holds no clues. A carton of milk, a six-pack of Modelo, a plastic container full of what looks like leftover (she opens it), yup, spaghetti bolognese.
So he cooks, too?
The freezer is likewise barren of any revelations about Chris Shea’s actual dark, brooding, secretive soul. (What did you expect, Carolyn asks herself, body parts?) A couple of Stouffer’s dinners, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, some more plastic containers of—oh, my God, they’re labeled with masking tape—“Tuna Cass” “Marinara Sauce” and “Chili.”
So either Chris’s mother makes him meals and brings them over—a definite red flag—or he makes dinners and freezes them. And labels them—the writing on the tape looks like a man’s handwriting.
Carolyn thinks a little shamefully about her own freezer, which has in it . . .
Ice.
Speaking of which, she finds a dish towel, holds it under the ice maker and wraps it into a pack that should fit over his nose. She goes back into the living room, sits down next to him and gently lays the ice pack on his face.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any Tylenol?” she asks.
“I don’t think so,” Chris says. “I don’t get a lot of headaches.”
Of course not, Voight thinks, starting to get a little annoyed with this perfect specimen. “Do you mind if I look in your bathroom?”
“Go for it.”
She goes for it.
The bathroom has no incriminating evidence.
For one thing, it’s clean (the bathrooms of Carolyn’s previous relationships have been . . . well, not), the one piece of art is not a poster of some Victoria’s Secret babe but of a classic Mustang, and there’s one of those toilet-brush containers by the stool.
Now she’s pretty sure he is gay.
The medicine cabinet, behind the mirror over the sink, is innocuous. No Vicodin or Oxy, no antibiotic prescription that might betray a recent STD (or sinus infection, girl; Jesus, settle down), no stack of condoms.
No Tylenol, though, either.
Not as much as an aspirin.
A tube of toothpaste (Optic White), some deodorant, and some bottles of vitamins, which she opens to see if there are really vitamins in them.
There are.
Carolyn goes back out into the living room.
“No luck on the Tylenol,” she says. “Oh, wait, I might have some in my bag.”
She digs around and finds one buried in a crease at the bottom under some tissue and what had at one time been a cracker of some kind. She wipes it on her sleeve and hands it to him. “Take this. I don’t think you’ll get addicted.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“Actually, I am,” Carolyn says. “I mean, I’m not a medical doctor, I have a Ph.D. in zoology.”
He swallows the pill and closes his eyes.
“You want to watch TV or something?” Carolyn asks.
“I don’t watch a lot of TV,” Chris says.
Of course you don’t, Carolyn thinks as she finds the remote.
She watches a lot of TV.
A lot of bad reality TV.
Carolyn watches, among other things, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelors in Paradise (anything Bachelor), Married at First Sight, 90 Day Fiancé and a geographical smattering of Real Housewives. She watches these shows because, as she is very aware, she has no life outside her work and because voyeuring other people’s love lives is less painful than brooding about her own.
Or lack thereof.
She hasn’t dated since the breakup with Jon.
Who cheated on her.
Who wasn’t there, as they say, for the right reasons.
The pretentious, bicycle-pedaling, soy-milk-latte-drinking, small-plate-consuming, spelling-his-name-without-the-h slimy butthole. A tenure-track professor of comparative literature at UCSD and the perfect guy for her, right? Educated, intellectual, knew his way around a wine list, saw a future for them together but saw a present comparing more than literature with a grad student, which he defended by pompously declaring that at least she wasn’t an undergraduate.
That would have been, you know, unethical.
Anyway, he broke Carolyn’s heart, a fact that she’s embarrassed about because he wasn’t (isn’t) worth the heartbreak.
So maybe an academic, pretentious wannabe hipster doofus isn’t the perfect guy for me, she thinks as she scrolls through the DirecTV guide. Maybe—the ER nurse notwithstanding—it’s a whole-milk-drinking, rock-wall-climbing, neat-freak cop who loves his grandmother.
And what a “meet-cute” story to tell our grandchildren.
Whoa, girl, she thinks, slow your roll.
You hardly know this boy.
She finds an episode of Cops.
Chris wakes up in his bed.
His face hurts when he gets up. He shuffles into the bathroom and looks into the mirror. Both eyes are black and swollen, and his nose bone looks a little flattened.
He steps into the shower and lets the hot water pound him. He dries off, puts on a sweatshirt and jeans and goes into the kitchen. A note is propped against his French-press coffeepot:
I put you to bed. Hope you feel better. Thanks for saving Champion.
Best,
Carolyn Voight
PS—Can I take you to lunch to thank you? 619-555-1212.
Huh.
He makes coffee and gets on his laptop.
Sort of a mistake.
He’s made the headlines of the San Diego Union-Tribune: POLICE OFFICER INJURED APPREHENDING GUN-WIELDING CHIMP.
With a photo of him falling out of the tree.
Great, Chris thinks.
He goes on Twitter and finds out that he basically is Twitter, that he and Champion are blowing up the internet.
Taking his coffee into the living room, Chris turns on the local news to see a pretty reporter standing in front of the Museum of Man describing what happened last night. Then it cuts to a clip of Champion brandishing the pistol at the crowd below, then SWAT arriving, then Chris shimmying up the tree. . . .
Then falling.
He shuts the TV off as he hears her say, “YouTube sensation.”
Calling into the station house, he gets the news that he’s on mandatory seventy-two-hour health leave. So it would give him time to take Voight up on her offer.
Does she really just want to thank me (which is unnecessary, he thinks, because I didn’t really do anything except fall out of the tree while Champ pretty much turned himself in), or is she sort of asking me out?
And do I want to do it either way?
She’s really nice and really pretty. And obviously really smart (did she tell me that she has a Ph.D.?), but maybe too smart to be interested in a cop with a B.A. in criminal justice.
I mean, what would a zookeeper and a cop have in common?
A lot, actually, he decides when he thinks about it.
He decides he’ll call her when he looks a little less like a raccoon that just got a nose job.
In the meantime he’s more or less obsessed with the overriding question:
