“Don’t you fuckin’ touch me.” She jerked her arm back, dragging the bag with it.
“What’s in the bag, Qween?” Officer Nabor asked. “Please tell me you don’t have a rat in there. You can’t bring that in here. Rats carry disease.”
“No shit, you dumbass cracker.”
The younger cop pulled the pepper spray loose, anxious to try it out.
By now, the confrontation had attracted a crowd. Behind Officer Nabor and his young partner, Qween could see more cops coming out of the elevator, no doubt sent by whoever was keeping an eye on the cameras. They were never going to listen. She hadn’t really believed that she would have gotten in to see the mayor, but she had hoped that someone would have at least written her complaint down.
Well, if they weren’t going to listen, then she was going to have to get their attention another way. She pulled the cord free in one smooth motion, and dumped the rat on the floor.
The young cop didn’t hesitate. He brought up the pepper spray, and blasted Qween in the face. She stumbled back, and the cop stayed with her, arm extended, spray canister still inches from her face.
At her feet, the rat was still alive. It blinked and shuddered, confused in the sudden light. Officer Nabor jumped back, exhaling harshly. “Whoa, whoa there.” The rat took off, scurrying into the shadows under the benches that lined the walls. Everyone screamed and scattered.
The young guard took his eyes off Qween for a half second to watch the rat get away, and Qween whipped her left arm over the cop’s, trapping it in the long cloak. She drew back her right fist, fingers tight over the shopping-cart wheels, and clocked him square on the jaw. He tried to pull away, but she still had her cloak wrapped around his extended arm. She hit him again. His knees buckled.
Officer Nabor turned from the rat and tried to separate the old woman from his partner. By now, the rest of the cops had reached them, and together, they pulled Qween off the young cop.
Three men wrestled her to the floor. As she lay panting under their weight, she turned her head, feeling the cool marble against her cheek, and saw the rat, down at the far end of the hall, scuttle down the escalator and vanish.
CHAPTER 21
2:19 PM
August 11
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Commander Arturo Mendoza slumped back in his chair and clasped his hands across his chest. “Please tell me you aren’t this goddamn stupid.”
Sam shrugged and sat down across the desk. “We’re not this goddamn stupid.”
Ed took the other chair.
Commander Mendoza didn’t appreciate the attempt to keep the meeting easy and quick. The bags under his eyes made it look he was peering out at them with a mixture of pity and resignation behind a mask that allowed no mercy. The rest of his face was frozen in permanent sour taste, as if he’d bitten into a rib and found that the bone had gone soft with rot. Only his narrow eyes showed any emotion.
The few photos and plaques on the wall in Mendoza’s office felt obligatory. Mendoza, in varying ages, with three different mayors. There were no family photographs. Only Mendoza getting awards, and frames around grim images of nature, the ghostly line of birch trees in fog, water dripping from a bright red leaf, the knuckled bones of roots that crept across the dirt in arteries and veins that split off like the circulatory system of a mammal.
In the twenty-six years that Sam had been a friend of the Mendoza family, he’d never seen any personal photographs in the office. He’d gotten drunk at every family barbecue, every first communion, every quinceañera, and most birthdays that seemed to come along in an endless stream. Mendoza had six children whom he loved dearly. With the exception of a few friends, Commander Mendoza preferred to keep a wide chasm between his working life and his family.
“I have been telling you for years,” Commander Mendoza said. “You need to listen to office politics. You need to know who’s who. It’s part of the job. Especially the way you two tend to irritate people. If you intend to relieve an officer of his suspect, who is already cuffed and in the backseat, I might add, you need to know who this officer’s pal is upstairs. This officer, Officer Falwell, he’s our deputy chief’s second cousin’s nephew or whatever. You needed to know this. But as usual, you couldn’t give a flying fuck, and you had to go and humiliate the man.”
“The man’s a pompous asshole in a uniform.” Sam couldn’t help himself. “Everybody—included our esteemed Officer Falwell—knows he was taking the suspect into rival gang territory and kicking him out. That’s not police work. That’s just cold-blooded. He deserved a little humiliation.”
“It was kinda funny,” Ed said.
“Officer Falwell failed to see the joke. Guess he took it personally.”
“It wasn’t so long ago we didn’t worry about some whining closet case,” Sam said. “Motherfucker wants to shove his real feelings back down deep inside and then take it out on folks, fuck him. You know I’m right. Be a man, and come out and admit it. He’d feel better.”
“Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what makes him an asshole. You pushed his buttons and he made you his number-one priority. Once he found out your name, he went straight to Wilson. And believe me, he’s got his head so far up Wilson’s ass, the deputy chief should go ahead and charge him rent. Yesterday, I had a short yet extremely loud conversation with Deputy Chief Wilson. He’s coming after you with both barrels this time. This is why you have suddenly found yourselves with clean desks and a workload that’s wide open.”
Ed and Sam said, “Aww, come on. Really?”
“Really. Everything has been dumped on Jackson and Ruiz. They were thrilled when I told them you two will be buying beers until those cases are closed.” Mendoza sat up and put his forearms on the desk. “I honestly don’t know this time. In the meantime, the union forbids me to park you at a desk somewhere and alphabetize parking tickets. So I will be sending you on official business missions. First off, you are going to escort a drunk homeless woman who caused a disturbance at City Hall this afternoon down to Twenty-sixth and California. On your way back, you are going to stop in Erickson’s Butcher and get me and the wife a couple of nice New York strips. And make sure you tell Jens it’s for me, not you two.”
Dr. Reischtal was sitting in one of the empty patient rooms, back to the window, facing a blue wall broken only by the bland image of stylized sailboats scattered across a bright sea, when he got the call. He had been listening to the faint sounds of equipment being dismantled and hauled out of the floor below. Air purifiers, medical supplies, and computers carried out. All those massive rolls of plastic, a one-millimeter membrane of protection against the god of chaos and unreason beyond his faith, were being loaded into white vans with an obscure health industry uniform company on the side.
His team had been monitoring the police radios, as well as a few reporters’ phones they had cloned. He was too busy trying not to focus on the systematic destruction of his wall of protection and he forgot about the phone. The sharp burst of noise made him flinch.
He snatched it. “Yes.”
“Sir, this is Audio Specialist Castle. Sir, we’re hearing some chatter about a rat loose in City Hall.”
“And?”
“Sir, that’s all we’re hearing right now. No other details right now. If the police are talking, they’re doing it with an unknown broadcast device.”
“Check Streets and Sanitation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep me posted, Audio Specialist Castle.”