by Hazel Parker
“Ma’am, I don’t mean to cause any trouble, but we were not engaged in anything reckless,” Trace said. “We simply made the mistake of being excited about getting to Las Vegas tonight and got a little quick. We’ll pay whatever needs to be paid—”
“You do recognize that arguing with an officer is also going to get you in more trouble, right?”
I was grateful it was nighttime because if I had to pull this off during the day, I wasn’t sure that I would’ve been able to hide my bluff as I was now.
“I am feeling nice tonight because it’s near the end of my shift, so here’s the deal. You boys are in Nevada territory and have committed a crime. I understand you are here for business, but you’re not going to be able to complete your business. You don’t want to stay on this side of the border if you want to avoid trouble. Do you understand?”
God, this is so unethical. This is so dubious. There’s no way these guys are going to believe this.
“Of course, I understand,” Trace said. “We’ll take some time to consider our actions, and we will return. Thank you for your understanding, officer.”
I nodded, giving him his license and registration back. He motioned for all of the bikes to turn around, and one by one, in perfect unison, like a hive, they all did a U-turn, headed back for the border, and disappeared over the mountains. It wasn’t until they had disappeared from view that I slumped back against the patrol car, in utter disbelief that that had worked.
But only temporarily.
Dom jumped out of the car and ran to me. I put my hand up.
“Leave me alone, Dom,” I said. “You guys can keep the cop cars here for some time. But I’m going home. I’m done with this.”
Dom shouted my name, but I ignored him, even as tears started to well in my eyes. I sped along the highway, refusing to look in my rearview mirror. I knew that if I did, and I saw Dom pursuing me, I’d probably pull over and give him a chance to talk to me.
I drove until the lights of Las Vegas came into view. Because of its position in a valley, seeing Vegas was very different than seeing any other city come into view; one still had probably about forty-five minutes of driving just to get to the Mandalay Bay, the southernmost point of the Strip. But this was the spot where I finally allowed myself to look behind me in my mirror.
And of course, of course, Dom was following me.
I liked to joke with my friends that if they ever saw a police cruiser in their rearview mirror, they shouldn’t panic, because it would be me and I’d go easy on them. But here, I didn’t find it so funny. Seeing Dom in the cruiser gave me a very different kind of feeling, and it wasn’t one that felt good at all.
He just had to leave me alone. Tonight was only exacerbating the issues that Chief Gutierrez had brought up, and I was smarter than to let myself get dragged into this. I couldn’t do this moderation bullshit where I allowed myself to see him but not be with him. It led me to do things like give a bunch of MCers a bunch of squad cars. I mean, how the fuck did that even happen?
When I had those thoughts about just what had happened, it left me laughing out loud. I mean, seriously, when the fuck did I ever let myself get to the point where I allowed the fucking Savage Saints to steal some fucking squad cars? Shit, I did need a suspension. If this was what I was allowing to happen, then the thing I needed was some time away from everything.
I suppose that Dom would have eventually needed to come back to the police station if only to drop off the squad car before everyone else wondered why the hell their cars were missing. But did he have to do it at the same time I did?
I did my best to ignore him as I hurried to my own car. But Dom, ever the persistent charmer, refused to take such a thing lying down.
“Come on, Jenna, I know you’re going through hell, but I know how to help you,” he said, throwing on a smile that reeked of desperation. “Just come over, it’ll be private, and—”
“No, no, no,” I said, refusing to look at him. “My career is at risk because of us hanging out. I am not going to let that affect me and my future. Sorry, I…”
I almost said I liked him. But that just felt like giving crumbs to a hungry hyena, not something that would benefit me.
“I am not going to sacrifice my future for something that feels good at the moment.”
I stopped when I noticed Dom had stopped following me. The last time I saw him look so wounded, he was at the funeral of Danica. He looked worse then than he did now, for sure, but he’d worn the mask of player every day since.
Now that it was off, it hurt to see how poorly the wounds had healed.
“You’re more than the moment, Dom,” I said, taking care not to spend too much time in this part of the emotions. “But you’re someone I can’t handle right now. And I mean that as a compliment, I promise.”
Dom still didn’t move. If I stayed any longer, I was risking everything.
“Bye, Dom,” I said, turning around, wondering if I’d not only lost my job, but I’d lost someone that could have potentially been special.
* * *
I don’t know how I finally fell asleep that night.
But when I woke up, I spent the first ten minutes of my morning going about like I was going to go into the police station. I brushed my teeth, put my hair in a ponytail, and checked the morning beat.
It was only when I got to my email and saw that I couldn’t access it that I remembered, oh, right, I was suspended and could not access anything related to work until I got reinstated.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was on paid leave, so at least there was that, but it wasn’t exactly an exciting feeling to know that I was going to get paid part of my middle-class check when I had no chance of moving up and getting paid anything more because of some stupid decisions.
I went to Netflix and started watching Stranger Things, but honestly, that was just background filler. I didn’t have an interest in it. And while I tried to pay attention at the start, mostly, I just kept ruminating on last night.
That, for sure, was going to come up eventually. I was going to be fucking busted and blacklisted for the rest of my life. There was no coming back from that one. Maybe I could have argued that Dom was a friend from before, someone that I knew before I joined the police, but I’d learned my lesson and wouldn’t be falling into that trap again.
Stealing a bunch of squad cars, though?
Thank God Chief Gutierrez was on my side. If he were even an ounce less protective and interested in my well-being than he was, I would be in jail right now.
It was still inevitable, though. Poor decisions led to poor outcomes, and I’d made some piss poor ones right now.
The hours ticked by. I was so bored and so drained. There was nothing of interest going on. I cooked breakfast and found some solace in being able to make an actual omelet with bacon and bell peppers instead of driving through the nearest bagel shop, but such solace lasted, oh, maybe two minutes before the depression and paranoia kicked right back in.
It wasn’t until about one when things finally changed, and my phone rang.
I fumbled for it, even though there weren’t many numbers that could have called that would have made me feel good. If it were Dom, it would have given me a brief surge of excitement before a reminder of how much he had hurt me; if it were anyone else, I wouldn’t have felt the energy to have a call of any normalcy.
But it was the one person whom I wanted to call.
“Chief Gutierrez,” I said as soon as I picked up. “What’s going on?”
“Well, Saunders, I have some good news and some bad news.”
His voice sounded weary and exhausted, but in almost a relaxed sense. He didn’t have much fight to his voice.
“Sir?”
“The good news is that you can come back Monday. I was able to effectively demonstrate that, from the case of Danica Robinson, you and Dom had known each other from before the previous nights, and that your relationship with him was not something driven
by an ignorance of a conflict of interest.”
Oh, thank God. Oh, thank every god there ever was and would be. I still had my career. I was still alive. I didn’t know what this meant for Dom, but I did know there was no chance I was going to do anything so stupid as to go back to him, let alone let him and the Saints borrow some squad cars again.
Maybe we could be friends, passing by. I always, though, always had to be wearing my officer’s uniform and act in a dignified manner. If we met, there could be no touching beyond a handshake, no action other than the kind that two men who were strangers would share.
But what was the bad news?
“Thank you, sir. I assume…”
“The bad news isn’t on you, Saunders. But it’ll affect your workplace.”
He let out a long sigh.
“Saunders, I resigned, effective end of today.”
“What?”
No. My actions cost the chief his position. No… no!
“It’s quite alright, Saunders. I’ve made no secret about my desire to retire soon, this just speeds up the process. I’m an old fart who can’t keep track of everything going on in his department, in any case.”
He sounded so relaxed and at peace, but I could not have felt more unsettled. I cost the man his job! His wife, his kids… what would they do?
“I’m so sorry, Chief Gutierrez, I—”
“Saunders, Saunders. First, call me Mario. I’m not your chief anymore. Second, I promise I will be OK. I would not have made mention of retiring soon if it wasn’t something I wasn’t prepared to follow through on. I knew that because of the connections I had and the behavior of those connections that I was potentially putting myself at risk. And that risk has come through, and I accept the consequences of that.”
I don’t.
“Is there anything we can do? Anything I can say?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Besides, I was the one who offered to fall on the sword.”
I had no response. I couldn’t muster any words. Gutierrez… sacrificed himself?
“You’re not the only one who was facing inquisitions, Saunders; you were just the most visible and, I hate to say it, the easiest target as a young woman,” Chief Gutierrez said, annoyance obvious in his voice. “Maybe you would have slid through safely, perhaps serving probation of some kind. But then others would not have. Lopez, Anderson, Smith, Keyes—they all would have faced inquiries and punishment.”
They’re all working with the Saints too? That explains how we’ve gotten away with so much.
“I knew even if I got off the hook, I wouldn’t stay any more than, say, five years. Really, three, but maybe a crisis would have struck. No more than five. But you all are young and have futures ahead of you. I promise, Saunders, this is the best choice.”
It may have been the best choice in the relative sense of the word, but I’m not sure there was anything that was “best” about this. “Best,” to me, was a situation where I could have stayed with Dom and kept my job and kept Chief Gutierrez at his post. “Best” was a pretty awful word to describe this moment.
“Just whatever you do, be careful,” he said. “Above all else, recognize the difference between enforcing a law and enforcing the spirit of it. Your friends serve the greater good. Do they serve the letter of the law? You know the answer to that. And you know to what extent you need to enforce it.”
The chief gave some other parting advice, and though I knew this wasn’t going to be our last phone call—our relationship was professional, but it was also friendly—it felt like I was hearing the final words of a dying man. In one sense, that wasn’t wrong; his career was dying, or just outright dead. It was a death that, while not as bad as the literal death of Danica Robinson, I was still once again somewhat responsible for.
But this time, I wasn’t going to screw it up again. I wasn’t going to waste it on anyone or anything else again. My service came first.
For Dom? Well…
I guess this was it.
Even if I didn’t really, truly want it to be.
Chapter 17: Dom
At first, for most of the morning and early Friday afternoon, I didn’t reach out to Jenna.
I told myself I was a better man than that. I didn’t need to be the needy boy who begged for his girl back. I didn’t need to text like a teenager, insisting on her coming back to me or begging to change.
But by the time the night show rolled around, I was texting her, hoping she would respond. Yeah, I missed her. But more importantly, everyone in the club was frazzled and exhausted.
Our work to push the California Saints back had worked, but all that we heard the next morning was, “We ran into some issues, but we’ll come down soon to negotiate in person.” They hadn’t chosen the word “soon” by accident, of course. They knew that if they made it ambiguous, we’d all just burn ourselves out trying to worry about it.
And that’s exactly what happened. The mood in the club, as the show went on, was distracted, snappy, and aggressive. Richard stayed the most poised, but Barber looked like he was just searching for an excuse to snap at someone. Mama went home early. Pork didn’t tell any jokes. I kept checking my phone every two minutes—probably every thirty seconds—interested in seeing if Jenna said anything.
But of course, she didn’t.
And neither was anyone else in the LVPD. It was a fucking ghost town over there.
That was, until about three, when Richard came over to me, showed me the text from a private number, and shook his head.
“This is Mario. Resigned from the LVPD. Lay low if you can. Other sources still got your back.”
My head dropped.
This was all falling apart.
And the worst of it was, we had no idea when the floor would just completely give out.
* * *
A week went by, and the more that we anticipated something happening, the more things remained stalled out.
Jenna did not respond to my messages.
The California Saints did not come down to negotiate in person.
And I did not hook up with anyone else.
I was officially in the longest dry spell since my early twenties at this point, now extending to, what, nine days? Yes, I was aware that most people would just laugh at that statement, but it was something that was of serious concern to me. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t getting my dick wet as it was the psychological mindfuck behind everything.
Maybe the meeting that we were all walking into, bags under our eyes, our heads down, and our spines hunched over, would give me some clarity. Maybe it would help me figure things out and allow me to move forward.
But I seriously fucking doubted it.
“Hi, everyone,” Richard said.
We all either had a drink or cigarettes in our hand. No one was able to survive the uncertainty and the disruption with ease. Barber was probably the most well-off because he had a kid at home to distract him; ironically, him being even more sleep-deprived than the rest of us made it so that he was too tired to care too much about this.
“Let’s just go over the facts so far,” he said. “The California Saints have made no communication since last Friday when they said they ran into some snafus. Thanks to Dom and his connections with the LVPD for preventing the first encounter, but we have to anticipate they’ll come back. And when they do, so long as they’re out on the streets, they’re going to follow every goddamn rule in the law book the second they cross the border.”
“And even if they didn’t, we don’t have the same connection to the LVPD that we did before.”
“Right,” Richard said, smacking the table in frustration. “That, by the way. You all know that Mario resigned as chief of police over there. Has anyone had any luck speaking to anyone in that department?”
No one said a word. I shook my head. I should never have tapped that. I should have gotten the case files, let her leave like a professional, and left it at that.
But no, I let hormones an
d arousal get in the way. It was fine when it was a stripper or dancer, but the minute I touched someone of actual importance in this city…
“So we’re on our own,” Richard said. “Disappointing, but not surprising. We have to assume that no one from the LVPD is coming to our aide. At best—”
His phone rang. We all leaned forward to get a look.
“It’s Trace,” he said with a sigh.
We know what that means.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi, Richard, how are you?”
I’d say the voice was fake, but it wasn’t. Trace genuinely didn’t have anything to stress about because of his advantages.
“Doing fine, Trace; what’s going on?”
Now there’s someone faking energy and enthusiasm.
“Well, as you know, our two-week negotiation window has come to a close. Have you come up with any proposals?”
Richard put his head in his hands, muttered something under his breath, and took a deep breath.
“I’m afraid we have not, Trace; if you can give us—”
“I’m afraid two weeks was plenty of time, but no worries,” he said. “We will go ahead and head over there so we can discuss something that’s fair for both sides.”
Both sides meaning both sides of the California Saints? Because no one thinks you’re going to treat us fairly.
“We’ll see you later tonight, Richard.”
“Sounds great. I can’t wait.”
No, really, he cannot wait. Because if we have to wait, the stress is going to kill us.
Trace hung up without another word.
“Fuck!” Richard shouted, slamming both palms on the table. “Fuck it all! God fucking damnit!”
The rest of us would have thrown our glasses and our cigarettes if we weren’t just so damn exhausted. At this point, just because of sheer fatigue, we were ready to surrender.
“I am out of ideas,” Richard said. “We did one thing that worked for one night. And instead of helping us, it just delayed the inevitable, which in turn produced a hell of a lot of stress on us.”
