Nica of Los Angeles

by Sue Perry

I zigged and zagged and zigged. I found myself facing a detective, a detective who spotted me, saluted with sarcasm, and smiled to bare a row of teeth jagged enough to strip bark. It was Mathead, sitting at a desk with the placard Detective Fitzpatrick. Mathead was a robbery-homicide detective and she wasn't surprised to see me there. I froze, stunned, then filled with molten lead. My interrogator approached her desk with his back to me and set down a folder. From the folder slipped the photo of Anwyl.

  I wish I could say the pieces fell into place at that moment but I enjoyed no clarity of connection. Why was my interrogator working with Mathead? No answer came to me.

  Mathead gave an infinitesimal nod, at which my cop turned to face me and blocked my way. "You need to stop please, Ms. Static, and head back that way. No civilians are permitted in this area. Is your lawyer on the way?"

  "No, I'm going home."

  "I understand why you feel that way but I'm glad you haven’t left yet. Got some late-breaking news and I was just coming to find you."

  OCD stood beside him now and the two of them blocked my view of Mathead. "Veronica Sheridan Taggart Ambrose Taggart Ickovic you are under arrest for the kidnapping and murder of the woman known as Anya."

  "You are fucking kidding me."

  It all happened so fast. Their smug turned to shocked when I shoved between them. I wasn't attacking them, I wanted to talk to Mathead. But her chair was empty and then they had me on the floor.

  It's hard to get back on your feet when your hands are handcuffed behind your back.

  18. Denying Black Doesn't Make It White

  Things only got worse from there. Getting charged with crimes lowered my status and, from that point on, they dragged me from one holding room to another and interrupted whenever I tried to speak.

  Better treatment resumed when my new lawyer showed up. Kathleen Kick-Ass Kimball. That was how I instantly came to think of her. She was half the size of anybody else in the room but nobody dared look down on her. Her make-up was thick - and beneath the professional suit jacket her sequined top promoted cleavage - but nobody dared come on to her. Her nails were professionally-honed talons, the color of fresh blood, the kind of nails that don't lift a dime or type a sentence. She was the youngest person in the room but nobody questioned her credentials. She radiated cum laude and her card said she was a partner in Beauregard, Collins, and Ishikawa, a firm even I had heard of.

  Four eighteen in the ayem she arrived. She wore a complex fragrance of perfumes, plural, and maybe aftershave and maybe vodka. I guessed she had been clubbing and threw on a suit when she got the call to get me the hell outta there. As we exited the police station, I said, "I didn't know lawyers worked crazy hours but I'm glad you do. I almost went to law school. Got as far as the LSAT before I lost interest. Better then than later, huh?"

  "Yes."

  "So how do you know Ben Taggart?"

  "That is not a name I recognize." As I geared up to explain the connection, she cut me off. "I charge by the minute. Does your defense require me to know Taggart?"

  "Not that I can see. So what happens now?" I jumped to the fast and easy conclusion that to get me a lawyer, Ben had called in a favor that called in a favor. During the jumping, I missed her next question. "Cha-ching. Could you repeat that?"

  She considered the feasibility of a smile. "It's very late. Come to my office at 135 p.m. tomorrow to discuss next steps. Get some sleep before then." Her Mercedes matched her nail color and was compatible with the shade of red along the curb where she had parked. She didn't wave when she u-turned through my crosswalk and sped away.

  If she had offered a ride, would I have accepted the ride? So many things are not ours to know.

  The Henrietta was only a few blocks, an easy walk if I didn't think about how completely empty the streets felt. My walk sign began a countdown. Fourteen thirteen twelve seconds to get my ass across the intersection before the light changed. The signals were timed and orange numbers flashed offset countdowns at the next block and the next and the next. When I had three seconds, the next block had twenty-three. Allow 1000 feet in the block, twenty seconds to travel, it was simple algebra to calculate the speed a body must move to hit nothing but green lights. Let me know what you come up with. I always hated word problems.

  It was still borderline hot, which meant today was going to be a bitches' barbecue. I shed my blouse and the air felt cool against the shoulder the Cobra injured. The strap of my tanktop chafed skin that felt damaged, yet showed no sign of injury. My head throbbed, or it was the bass from that car stereo - hey, was that Tupac hey! Benny's van!

  Hernandez was stacking zzz's, head turned, cheek on hands that clutched the wheel. I whistled for Fang, the beagle of my childhood. Hernandez opened one eye then the other, much like Fang used to do. By the time we got back to the Henrietta, I had filled him in on my police station adventures. He had once encountered Mathead at the Henrietta, so was also stunned to learn she is a detective. We agreed she must be a detective and a tweaker, not an undercover cop masquerading as a tweaker.

  We parked in the Henrietta's basement, in the reserved spot next to the elevator. I insisted he stop there. As exhausted as we were and as empty as the garage was, Hernandez intended to drive down a level to the unreserved spots.

  "Stop the van here. It's fine. Watch." I found a used envelope in the glove box, ripped a neat rectangle from it, printed on the un-used side Watkins and S.T.A.T.Ic., inserted the rectangle in the placard holder under the Reserved sign. There. Now this was my parking space.

  "Okay if I return Ben's keys when I start my shift?"

  "Of course. Thanks again for waiting for me. I'll let you know what happens at the lawyer's tomorrow I mean later today."

  I assumed he intended to borrow the van to go home and I was in the elevator before I realized he hadn't driven away. I exited one floor up - the lobby - and took the stairs back down to the basement. Inside the van, he was already asleep, again with his cheek resting on hands that clutched the steering wheel.

  "I thought you wanted to drive home?"

  He kept his eyes shut as he replied, “Thirty-minute drive each way. I'd rather get the extra sleep sitting up."

  "Then come upstairs. We can rig something more comfortable for sleeping than you've got here."

  He opened his eyes. "No, I don't want to interfere with your -"

  I was tired enough to interrupt his gentlemanly refusal with the kind of truth one usually keeps to oneself. "Don't worry, I'm way too tired to molest you tonight."

  On the way up in the elevator, we pondered the implication of what I might opt to do when I was rested. He kept squinting at the elevator doors like he was replaying the comment, looking for alternate interpretations. Every once in a while a smile flickered, which set me flickering in return. I don't fraternize with co-workers but this guy just might require an exception.

  Now that I had opened the door to the steam room, I couldn't get the temperature down again, even though the only thing either of us wanted to do was sleep. Without talking, we worked together to open the futon in my office, then worked together in the waiting room, pushing chair seat against chair seat to makeshift a bed for him. Our arms brushed once and my skin remembered his touch when we were lying separately in the dark.

  I glimpsed his profile when he raised his phone for a final text to his daughters, who were staying with Edith. After the phone light clicked off, I could still see the blunted edges of his nose and chin. "Good night, Nica," He lay facing my office door.

  "Sometimes I snore. 'Dreams," I murmured and turned to the skylight. Looking away made no difference. I could feel him all around me; deep inside, that glorious ache began - and shut itself down, having expended the last of my energy. The edges of the skylight glittered with city lights, the center glowed with a dawn coming all too soon.

  The light was gray when I slid on top of him where he slept with legs tangled in the chair arms. I straddled him, found the spot, eased him inside me with a delicious
squelch. He grew as he awoke, grabbed my hair with both hands, pulled me in for a first kiss.

  The light was pearly when he joined me on the futon. We had barely begun anew when he stopped. "Are you okay with this?" he asked.

  "Best mistake I've made in ages. Better stress reduction than a vacation and way cheaper!" But the mood was changed and I shifted to a cuddle.

  He cuddled back but remained the voice of damn reason. "There are many kinds of costs."

  We sighed. He was right, and anyway, Anwyl needed us undistracted. We lay together, watching dawn change the skylight from pearl to gold. I pressed against him everywhere I could, savoring that soft smooth skin over those dense solid muscles. "Here's what I propose. Come morning, we will never speak of this again. That will make us uncertain whether it happened, but we won't bring it up because 'Didn't you and I fuck recently?' is not a conversation anyone wants to start. We'll treat this like a dream and for all practical purposes it will thus become a dream. It makes such a nice dream."

  "That can't work. Can it?"

  "It's all about how much you can keep yourself in the present. When we wake up, this will be past. The past only exists if we allow it to."

  "That is how I talked myself through every night in Baghdad. When the sun came up, the night had never happened."

  "And people talk about denial like it's a bad thing." This crack earned my second time getting to hear him laugh. "Your laugh sounds like ball bearings on concrete."

  "Lo siento. That sounds painful to hear."

  "No, it's awesome. But you make a good point. We can't really hear our own laughs, can we?"

  "Your laugh is like wind in a convertible."

  "Really? Hey. I like that."

  "So do I." By now we were both just about asleep. We snuggled closer and went the rest of the way.

  We never talked about what happened that night. If something happened. If it was a dream, I couldn't get it to recur, despite much encouragement.

  Quacks bleats obnoxious won't stop blurting hateful must stop. My phone. Incoming call.

  Hernandez was gone and there were piranhas in my bloodstream that ripped at my arm torso shoulder. Whatever the Cobra had done to me, it was much worse today.

  "Nica, it's Patti Henson. Did I wake you?"

  I dropped the phone as I fumbled it to see the time. It was 923. “You did, and thanks! I need to get up!" I yelled toward the phone, which had slid under the futon. I wrestled it back up to my ear. How do phones always land somewhere importune?

  "I got your message. I made a few calls this morning and all I can tell you is what you already know. You stepped in a deep pile last night."

  "Did I step or was I pushed?"

  "What are your thoughts on that?"

  I told her as much as I could about what I knew. We agreed that my best hope to clear myself of charges was to produce a live and healthy Anya. I didn't know when that could happen and thus saw it as important to find out what evidence the cops thought they had.

  "I wouldn't recommend that kind of snooping, it could cause you more harm than good," my new voice of reason advised.

  I noted the advice then ignored it. "Did your source mention an eyewitness? How can we find out who that is?"

  "I assume you don't think that we includes me."

  "Only if you want it to." When she chuckled, I joined in. "Is that tweaker Fitzpatrick working my case? It is important for me to know that."

  "That wasn't a name they gave me. One last note. I don't recommend making accusations of drug use against detectives, especially without evidence."

  "Only among my closest friends," I assured her. "She's a dirty cop. I can't prove it but I know it. You heard it here first."

  "If you say so."

  "There's gotta be proof somewhere."

  "Would you rather focus on getting that proof or clearing yourself?"

  "Point taken. But I bet she's the next Dave Klein."

  "Who? I don't know many of the names at Parker."

  "It doesn't matter."

  "I did hear something you should know. They volunteered this, so it's not confidential. They know that your bank account received two big deposits from overseas, the first around the time of the custodian's disappearance and the second around the time of Anya's disappearance. That fact is circumstantial but it doesn't make you look good."

  "Except those deposits didn't happen."

  "Denying black doesn't make it white."

  The new tone in her voice made me sad. Maybe we weren't gonna be bf's for f after all.

  "Weird they would make a claim so easily shown as totally fucking bogus," I said as I headed for my laptop.

  "Exactly," she agreed.

  "I'm logging on right now, I'll send you a snapshot of my account activity and you'll see. I have my whole bank life automated, same incoming outgoing every month no changes no sur- but that's impossible. But how. What the." Amidst the clockwork predictable automatic deposits and scheduled debits, there they were. Deposit for $10,000. Another deposit for $10,000.

  "Patti. Somebody is. Framing me. In at least one Frame."

  "What's that?"

  "Somebody is framing me."

  "I might believe you. You'll need twelve more."

  As if on cue, I heard a shuffling step that stopped outside my hall door, but no one knocked or tried the knob. An envelope slid under the door. Big handprinted letters. TO TENANT V. S.T.A.T.Ic. Inside was legalese about how I'd disregarded section 8.2 of my lease, which voided it. Because I'd been living in my office, I now had 30 days to vacate it.

  On Henson's third or fourth round of "Nica? What is happening? Why are you making those noises?" I read the notice to her. If the notice was a hallucination it was a clever one. It used words I don't know.

  19. And Raspberries

  My visit to my new advocate confirmed it. All I needed was a crown and I'd be royally screwed. Even Kick-Ass the lawyer went a titch pale when she looked at the deposits in my bank records, and every time I said I didn't know how or from where the money came, she said some variation of "I can only represent you if you are completely honest with me." When I insisted she investigate the money source, I could tell she thought I was wasting her firm's resources and my fee to find an answer I already knew.

  Pain management consumed my afternoon. My body showed no outward sign of injury, but whatever the Cobra had shot through my hand arm torso shoulder to loosen Hernandez' grip, it felt like it was still in there trying to eat its way out. Except, with teeth like that, it should have been out by now. I tried heat. I tried ice. I tried stretching. I got a street corner massage. I'd be okay for a while then - blammo. The pain came and went, surged in great nauseating waves. I thought I had a high pain threshold from all my years of playing through injuries on soccer teams. But this was a growing struggle to ignore and function with.

  The only thing that helped was Anya's lanyard. I hurt much less where the belt touched me. With the lanyard's infinite elasticity, I was able to drape it bandolero-style to cover more of the injury, yet contour it snug against my body. Pain still flowed, muted, outside the edges of the lanyard.

  When Hernandez first arrived, we coulda had a moment, the way he first smiled at me - until I grabbed his arm as my knees buckled. It was the worst wave of pain yet. Either the lanyard was losing effect or the pain was growing.

  "Nica! What's wrong?"

  I swiped at my body where the pain was and he understood it was the Cobra's injury. He made me sit down and insisted on investigating. Last night, I had the energy to stop him. Today, he cut me off with "I was a medic," and pushed and tapped and rotated joints until he ran out of things to try. I could tell he was baffled by the lack of evidence of injury versus the contortions my face made in response to the discomfort.

  Just as suddenly and inexplicably, the pain was gone. By now, the absence of pain was also debilitating because I didn't know when it would return. I stayed on guard for it, braced for it, anxious and tense.

&
nbsp; Hernandez followed me in his truck and our first stop was to return Ben's van. We were nearly there when we had to waste a half hour making arbitrary turns. The damned Garcias were following us! At a stoplight I texted Hernandez about them, but he had already figured out why I made wandering progress. The Garcias must have hoped we would lead them to Edith. They were harder to lose this time, but not by much; I don't think they ever realized that we had spotted them. That they could be so vile yet clueless especially pissed me off.

  I was eager to confront Ben and pounded on his door. Today, I would force him to tell me why Mathead was in his life. Despite the minor detail of no evidence, I was convinced she was a dirty cop. Nonetheless, Mathead was a cop and Ben didn't hang with cops. Hernandez let me pound Ben's door for a while, then he slipped the van keys through the mail slot and led me away, making soothing noises. The day was wearing on me.

  The Little Room is not a full tilt bar, it is only open an hour before and after each Largo show. We were too early to go in, so we grabbed a starter drink at the vampire bar down the block, a room with no windows, black walls, and the lowest electricity bill in the county. I was glad Hernandez was driving tonight. I needed a second drink before I had finished telling him what went wrong before noon.

  I was so bummed that I had missed Anwyl's visit, which coincided with my meeting with my lawyer. I'm sure Hernandez did a perfectly fine job relaying the previous night's events to Anwyl, but he didn't ask the questions I would have asked. Not that Anwyl would have answered them. One of the scariest nights of my life distilled as follows: Anwyl wasn't surprised to hear about the Cobra - but we don't know what he thought about our seeing an Anya-like Traveler. Anwyl was displeased that I had meddled in the Cobra's business - but we don't know if he disapproved my instinct to protect the Traveler. Anwyl dismissed the gravity of the police charges against me - but we couldn't say whether that was because he didn't understand this legal system, or wouldn't care if I had to do time. Anwyl thought we would be safe enough at the Largo tonight, provided we stayed more than 10 feet from the Connectors. Somehow safe enough wasn't enough.