Page 4 of Shield
“It’s been ten minutes. Ten. Minutes.”
“Whatever.”
“Just an FYI, they don’t wear off an hour after you—where the hell are you going?! Don’t get out of the car. You’ll stand out like a bull pecker, to quote my dear departed ma.”
I flung the door open, unfolded my legs, and exited. I’d been Cormack Graham’s partner for over two years, and in all that time, I’d never ceased to be amazed at the litany of inventive ways the Scots could describe things. His mother must have been a pistol.
“I need to get more coffee. I’m just going to the corner store right there,” I explained before I closed the door on his protest. As if my getting out of the car was going to draw attention to us when a red-haired, pale-as-cottage-cheese goofball talking at full volume about his damn hemorrhoids hadn’t already pulled the eyeballs of every damn soul on the street. We were on this busy street in Watts, sitting in a sunflower-yellow Honda Civic with Barbie bumper stickers that his lovely new bride had insisted be applied. And since Mack could deny Elena nothing… yeah. But it was me who would scare off Twiggy the rat.
I crossed the street at the light, stepped into the corner store, blinked at the change of bright to dark, then headed for the coffee pots sitting beside the slices of pizza in a case. The patrons and owner eyeballed me as I filled my Minnie Mouse thermos, then ambled to the cash register. I waited behind an elderly woman buying lottery tickets and began picking at the patch on my biceps as I held the thermos to my chest with my left arm.
“You want anything else?” the middle-aged man behind the register asked.
“Yeah, pack of Newports,” I replied and pulled down my sleeve.
The guy stared up at me. “You know you ain’t supposed to smoke while wearing a patch, right?”
“Your point?”
“Whatever.” He tossed a pack of smokes at me, rang me up, and watched me leave. The sun was bright and hot as I made my way back to the totally inconspicuous banana-yellow Honda with the Barbie stickers. Mack waved at me as I neared, his freckled face tight with worry. I hurried to hide the cigarette pack in my pocket.
“I thought you were getting coffee.” I raised my full thermos. “And what the hell is that cigarette pack-shaped bulge in your front pocket?”
“That’s a sign of how much I fucking love you,” I countered, pulling the passenger door open, then with a sigh of misery, cramming myself back into the passenger seat.
“Leo will be so disappointed.”
“Him and all my exes.”
“Call came from dispatch. There’s been a mugging at the clinic over in Highland.”
“And this concerns us how? Patrol will deal with it.”
“Seems the victim has been having trouble with some of the local gangs in the neighborhood. Dispatch tagged us on it when the name Ivan Baladin was mentioned.”
That made me look up from removing the patch. Ivan Baladin was a mid-level racketeering goon we’d been trying to nail for well over a year. He was just smart enough to ensure that those under him always took the fall for his crimes, but not quite smart enough to keep his pushed-in face completely off the radar—like his bosses and their bosses did.
“Okay, let’s go talk to the doctor and see what he can tell us. Inform patrol that we’ll be taking over the scene. Lock it down until we get there. Any suspects apprehended?”
“Nope, but there was a witness who saw the offender up close and personal.” He cranked the engine over, and Penelope rolled to life.
“Have them hold on to the witness, then do a neighborhood sweep. We’ll want to question him. How’s the victim? Can we get to him today?”
“On his way to the ER.”
“Shit, okay. We’ll get to him later.”
I juggled my coffee while trying to open a pack of cigarettes, as we rolled through Watts at a goodly clip. We both had smaller portable radios on our person, but since I was fully occupied, Mack relayed that we were on our way to the scene, then added my directions. While Mack was the senior officer in our pairing—by two years—he tended to allow me to lead quite often. We were both pretty green in comparison to some of the homicide detectives in our precinct. Hell, we were babes compared to Mason and Berke, the elder goats in Organized Crimes. Our department wasextremelyshort-staffed. Homicide used to have more teams but despite lots of murders happened in the City of Angels, now we had only ten cops to investigate all those cases landing in our district.
Of course, compared to Mason and Berke, anyone under the age of fifty was an infant, as they were both ready to retire within a year. Which would boost me and Mack to the top of the ladder in our department. Getting new blood into law enforcement was a hard sell nowadays. Lots of people couldn’t hack it. Being a cop was not all glamour and witty repartee as it was on TV, which some cadets quickly learned, then dropped out. Lots of people just didnotbelong in a position of power that having a badge provided, and they were weeded out as well. Sadly, some slipped through the cracks.
So yeah, lots of reasons to cite as to why it was harder than a bull pecker, to quote Mother Graham, to get young people interested in being cops. It was easy to say we should defund the police, but when that resulted in budget cuts that decimated the ranks of those who were serving and protecting, the sheep stomach was boiled, also to quote Ma Graham. Mm, haggis. My gut growled. I should have grabbed a slice or two of the pizza to go with my coffee.
But hey, it was all good. Working a dozen cases at once was grand. Not as though me or my fellow officers needed a private life. Downtime was overrated. And sleep. Pfft.
Sleep was for sissies.
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