Toni shook her head. “Nah. I’ve had enough of county ambience for one day. Why don’t we get out of here and hit Church and State? We should celebrate the hell out of this one.”
Church and State was a fun new restaurant in the old Meatpacking District, part of the ongoing effort to gentrify downtown L.A. Though how a restaurant that catered to a hip, moneyed crowd was going to make it with Skid Row just two blocks away was a looming question. I looked over at the stack of cases piled on the table where I kept my mini-fridge. I wanted to party, and with that gnarly no-body murder behind me, I could probably afford to. But the trial had taken me away from my other cases, and I always got a little—okay, a lot—panicky when I hadn’t looked in on a case for more than a few days. If I went out with Toni tonight, I’d just be stressing and wishing I were working. I owed it to her to spare her that drag.
“Sorry, Tone, I—”
“Don’t even bother—I know.” Toni shook her head as she plunked her mug down on my desk and stood to go. “You can’t even take time off for one little victory lap? It’s sick, is what it is.”
But it wasn’t news, as evidenced by the lack of surprise in Toni’s voice.
“How about tomorrow night? We’ll do Church and State, whatever you want,” I promised with more hope than conviction. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to wade through the pile of cases and finish all the catch-up work by then. But I hated to disappoint Toni, so I privately vowed to push myself hard and make it happen.
Toni looked at me and sighed. “Sure, we’ll talk tomorrow.” She slung her laptop bag over one shoulder and her purse over the other. “I’m heading out. Try not to stay too late. If even your OCD partner-in-crime took a powder,” she said, tilting her head toward Jake’s office, “you can spare a night off too.”
“I know.” I looked toward his office. “What’s up with that?” I laughed.
“Maybe his alien leaders told him to get a friggin’ life,” Toni said as she moved to the doorway. “And I’ve already got one, so I am now officially exiting the OCD Zone.” She smiled and headed down the hall.
“Have fun!”
“You too,” she called back. In a loud stage whisper, she muttered, “Ya freak.”
“I heard that!” I yelled out.
“Don’t care!”
I leaned back to rest my head against the cold leather of the majestic judge’s chair. It was a tight fit at my little county-issue prosecutor’s desk, but I didn’t mind. The chair had mysteriously appeared late one night, abandoned in the hallway a few doors from my office. I’d looked up and down the hall to make sure the coast was clear, then whisked it into my office and pushed my own sorry little chair out to a hallway distant enough that it wouldn’t be traced back. As I’d returned to my office, scanning the hallway for witnesses, I wondered whether someone had “liberated” the chair straight out of a judge’s chambers. The possibility made my score even more triumphant.
I turned to the stack of case files and pulled the first one off the top, but within fifteen minutes I felt my eyelids drooping. I’d thought I’d had enough energy to plow through at least a few cases, but as usual I’d underestimated how tired I was. And the Glenlivet hadn’t helped.
I listened to the last stragglers chatter their way out of the office. As the door snicked closed behind them, silence filled the air. I was tired, but I wasn’t ready to go home. This was my favorite part of the day, when I had the whole DA’s office to myself. No phones, no friends, no cops to distract me. I exhaled and looked out the window at the view that never got old. The streetlights had blinked on, and the jagged outline of the downtown L.A. office buildings glowed against the encroaching darkness. From my perch on the eighteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building, I could see all the way from the main cop shop, the Police Administration Building, to the theaters at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and all the streets and sidewalks in between. The irony of being in the middle of those two extremes still made me smile. Just having an office with a window was a coup—let alone one with a spectacular view. But the fact that it had come with my transfer into Special Trials—the unit I’d worked my ass off to get into for seven years—made it a delicious victory.
Not that I’d minded working the routine felonies during my stints in the smaller Van Nuys and Compton branch courts. Seeing the same defendants come back to the fold with a new case every couple of years gave the job a kind of homey, family feeling. Sure, it was a weird, dysfunctional, and largely criminal family, but still. So it wasn’t as though I was miserable when I worked the outlying courts. It just wasn’t for me. From the moment I’d heard of the Special Trials Unit, based in the hub of the DA’s office downtown, I’d known it was where I wanted to be. I’d been warned by the senior prosecutors in the branch courts about the long hours, the marathon-length trials, the public scrutiny, and the endless pressure I’d face in the unit. I didn’t tell them that, for me, that was the allure. And being in the unit was even better than I’d imagined. On almost every case, I got to work with great cops and the best lawyers—for both the prosecution and the defense—I’d ever seen. Far from a detraction, the intensity of the job was exhilarating. Too often in life a long-desired goal, once achieved, turns out to be much less than expected—as they say, “Be careful what you wish for.” Not this time. Getting into Special Trials was all I’d hoped for and then some, and I savored that fact at least once a day.
I tried to drag my mind back down to the supplemental reports—updates on the investigation—that had been added to the case file during the last month, but the words were blurring on the page. I leaned back in my chair, hoping to catch a second wind, and watched the cars crawl down Main Street. The sky had darkened, and clouds were moving in.
I could tell my second wind wasn’t going to arrive anytime soon. I decided to admit defeat and pack it in for the night. I got up, stretched, walked over to the table next to the window where I’d dropped my briefcase, and brought it over to my desk. I threw in five of the files—wishful thinking, I knew—picked up my purse, and grabbed my coat off the hook on the back of the door. I swung into my jacket and slung the strap of my briefcase over my shoulder, then reached into my coat pocket and flipped off the safety on my palm-size .22 Beretta. Then I kicked out the doorstop and headed down the hall toward the bank of elevators as my office door clicked shut behind me.
At this time of day I didn’t have long to wait. Within seconds, the bell rang and I stepped into a blissfully empty car. The elevator hurtled down all eighteen floors and came to a shuddering stop on the first floor. It was a head-spinning ride that happened only at quiet times like this. I enjoyed the rush as long as I ignored what it meant about the quality of the machinery and my possible life expectancy.
As I walked through the darkened lobby toward the back doors, I stretched my eyes for better peripheral vision. I’d been walking to work ever since I’d moved into the nearby Biltmore Hotel a year ago. It seemed stupid to drive the six blocks to the courthouse, and I enjoyed the walk—it gave me a chance to think. Plus it saved me a bundle in gas and car maintenance. The only time I had second thoughts about it was after dark. Downtown L.A. empties out after 5:00 p.m., leaving a population that lives mainly outdoors. It wasn’t the homeless who worried me as much as the bottom-feeders who preyed on them.
Being a prosecutor gave me an inside line on the danger in any area, but the truth was, I’d grown up with the knowledge that mortal peril lurked around every corner. So although I didn’t have a permit to carry, I never left either home or office without a gun. The lack of a permit occasionally worried me, but as my father used to say, “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.” I’d never applied for a permit because I didn’t want to get turned down. There’d been a crackdown on gun permits ever since a certain sheriff’s brother-in-law had fired “warning shots” at some neighborhood kids for blasting rap music from their car. And, to be honest, permit or no, I was going to carry anyway. Besides, I was no novice when it came to guns. Being my father’s daughter, I’d started learning how to shoot the moment I could manage a shaky two-handed grip. If I had to shoot, I wouldn’t miss. I stood at the wall of glass that faced out toward the Times Building and scanned the parking lot and sidewalk, as always, looking for signs of trouble. Seeing nothing, I pushed open the heavy glass door and stepped out into the night.