“I’ll live. Like I told my father-in-law the dentist, I’ve had worse,” Colin answered. Williams chuckled sympathetically. Colin went on, “Afraid I’ll flunk a drug test for the next little while.”
“Hey, I hear that,” Williams said. “I had an implant done a couple of years ago—you know, where they stick a screw in your jaw and then mount a replacement tooth on top. The thing works great now, but you bet I was glad for the dope then.”
“That’s what the shit is for,” the desk sergeant said. “The trouble is the people who get off on it.”
“I’m a little buzzed right now,” Colin said, “but I like scotch better.”
“There you go,” the sergeant agreed. “Something with some taste to it, not just a lousy pill.”
“Uh-huh.” Colin nodded, then glanced toward Malik Williams. “You need me for anything right now, boss?”
“No, no.” The chief understood the question behind the question. “Go on to your desk, man. I bet you aren’t real bouncy on your pins.”
“Now that you mention it, no.” Colin sketched a salute and headed towards a place where he could sit down. Between the root canal and the pain pill, the world felt less steady than it should have.
No sooner had he plopped his behind into his swivel chair than Gabe Sanchez came over to see how he was doing. Gabe smelled of cigarette smoke. Smokers always did, and hardly ever knew it. If you didn’t light up, you knew they were around even before you saw them.
“So what’s it like having your father-in-law drilling holes in your head?” Gabe asked.
“Just as much fun as it is with anybody else,” Colin answered.
“You wouldn’t want to go to him if you were giving Kelly grief,” Gabe said.
“I didn’t want to go to him today, but that stupid tooth wouldn’t quit hurting,” Colin said. “I’m just glad we’ve still got a decent dental plan. Otherwise, my bank account would’ve taken one in the teeth, too.”
“Probably get wiped out the next time we have to talk contract with the city,” Gabe said gloomily. He had too good a chance of being right. Every contract kept less than the one before. San Atanasio had been scuffling for money even in the good old days. Since the eruption, each year’s budget turned into a dance with bankruptcy.
“Joys of being a civil servant,” Colin said. “And if you believe that, I’ll tell you another one.”
“Save your breath,” Gabe said. “I already know just how much fun this job is.” He sighed. “’Course, collecting unemployment’s even more fun.”
“You got that right.” Colin shuffled through the papers on his desk. After they found out who the South Bay Strangler was—and after that almost tore the department to pieces—everything else felt like an anticlimax.
Well, almost everything. He noticed a familiar name on a manila folder. Opening it, he read a carbon of a badly typed report a patrolman had submitted—one more place where old technology had more life to it than anyone would have dreamt before the eruption.
“How about that?” he said.
“How about what?” Gabe asked.
Colin tapped the folder with the nail of his right index finger. “Our old buddy, Victor Jennings, is back in business again.”
“Oh, yeah?” Gabe sounded disgusted. The DA’s office hadn’t thought a jury would convict Jennings of armed robbery or assault with a deadly weapon, not when most of what he stole was food. So they’d told him Go, and sin no more. And go he did, but quit sinning he didn’t.
“Yeah.” Colin tapped the report again. “This time, he knocked over a check-cashing place on Hesperus. Probably would’ve made his getaway, too, if Jodie Boyer hadn’t been coming by on her bike right then. She’s the one who made the bust.”
“Jodie’s always had a pretty good bust,” Gabe opined. Colin was inclined to agree with him… in a purely theoretical way, of course. He wouldn’t have said so out loud, though. Gabe sailed closer to the breeze than he did. A crack like that could make Internal Affairs want to talk with you, and never mind whether you wanted to talk with them.
When he went out to lunch with Gabe, he ate soba noodles. Squishy was good right after you’d had a root canal. He hadn’t been back to the office long when the root-canaled tooth loudly reminded him that, though the offending nerve was gone, it wasn’t yet forgotten. His first Vicodin and the last of the novocaine chose the same time to wear off. He hurried to the water fountain to gulp another pain pill.
What would they do with Victor Jennings this time? Jennings had evidently decided that, if he couldn’t work, he might as well steal. He’d have to get charged and tried and serve some kind of term this time… wouldn’t he? Colin hoped so, but he wouldn’t have bet anything that cost more than a McDonald’s Happy Meal on it.
Nick Gorczany’s chief accountant was a no-nonsense, short-haired woman named Mary Ann Flores. She was a dyke, and made no bones about it—the photos on her desk were all of her much more feminine partner. Vanessa Ferguson didn’t care about that one way or the other. She did care that Mary Ann was the one who doled out the salary checks twice a month.
The head accountant set one on Vanessa’s desk now. “Here you go,” she said gruffly. It had nothing to do with her machismo. She gave Vanessa dubious looks because Vanessa wasn’t corporate enough to suit her.
“Thanks.” Vanessa let it go right there. Mary Ann was way too corporate to suit her. Mary Ann was also too gay to suit her, though she never would have admitted as much. She didn’t care what people did in the bedroom. When they acted as if they wanted a medal for it, too… That got old fast.
No matter who brought it, the check was highly welcome. If not for the check, she wouldn’t have had anything to do with this miserable, stupid place. Maybe that also showed enough to make Mary Ann Flores suspicious of her.
She waited eagerly for the (battery-powered) clock on the wall to announce that it was quitting time. Banks stayed open later than usual Friday nights, but she’d still have to hope the bus ran on schedule. If it was late, she’d have to go in on Saturday morning, which would be a pain.
She hustled out as soon as she could, or even a couple of minutes sooner. If Mr. Gorczany and Ms. Flores didn’t like it, too damn bad. She was still standing at the bus stop waiting when Gorczany drove by. She ground her teeth. After his recent adventures at the dentist’s, her father would have told her that was a bad plan. She did it anyway.
The bus came five minutes late. Normally, no biggie. When she was trying to get to the bank on time… “Nice of you to join us,” she snarled as she fed money into the slot. The driver just looked at her. He didn’t get it. When you insulted somebody and it flew right over his head, weren’t you wasting your time?
She hustled into the B of A on Reynoso Drive just before the security guard would have kept her out. She filled out the deposit form and went to the end of the line. Before the eruption, she’d hardly ever set foot in the bank. She’d done as much as she could on the computer. But with both power and the banks’ servers erratic these days, dealing with genuine human beings worked better.
Better, but slower. The line was long, and crawled forward. Somebody at one of the tellers’ stations had trouble with something, which bogged things down even more. I might as well be at the post office, she thought sourly, going nowhere fast.
She finally reached the front of the line, made her deposit, stuck some cash in her purse, and got the hell out of there. Then she had to wait for the bus that would take her not quite close enough to her apartment building. It ran late, too. Of course it did. It ran later than the other one had, as a matter of fact. And rain started coming down while she was walking from the stop to her building. So she was not a happy camper when she turned the key in the lobby mailbox.