loud and he chuckled with her.
Her right knee was already turning blue. The gash stopped bleeding. Her palms still stung.
The guard could feel her unease and tried to help: “I hear they’re expecting six hundred people tonight. Best ever!”
“I know. We should raise a lot of money. Lord knows the library needs it.”
They chatted a couple minutes. Joya stood up and tried out her legs, testing if she could make it home on her own.
“I could get someone to drive you home in a little while—I can’t leave, I’m the only one here, but someone else is scheduled to work in about a half hour.”
“I don’t live far. I’m going to be okay. See, I can walk just fine. You’ve been so helpful. I thank you so much.”
She walked as straight as she could while she knew he was still watching, then limped the rest of the way home—wiping away angry tears at her overreaction, her idiocy, and the realization that she was more scared than she knew.
She wouldn’t mention any of this to Rob—or anyone else. This wasn’t what “be careful” meant.
Normally after her walk she’d shower, mix up a banana-orange smoothie, drink a pot of French-pressed coffee, do the Saturday Sudoku puzzle in the Republic and then grab her African shopping basket for the Phoenix Farmer’s Market downtown. Today she skipped the market to rest her legs, and steadied her nerves with a shot of Patron tequila. Cactus liquor was medicinal and she needed it today.
In her recliner, she pushed the remote control to bring up her taped shows: The Young and the Restless , Sex and the City , The Sopranos . Today she’d skip The Sopranos . But if she’d been quizzed on the shows before her eyes, she couldn’t have recited a single plot line. She was busy thinking about Sammy, and Rob’s revelations, and her need to get under control. She felt both thrilled and disturbed.
Here she was on the verge of a mega story. But to get to it, she had to trust a cop. Personal feelings or not, it was still tough to overcome her natural aversion to trusting a cop.
For most of America, the police were always the good guys. It was bred as respect for authority, twined with the belief that being on the side of the law was the only place to be. Of course, a steady diet of cop shows on TV showed they were always right, always catching bad guys and always forgiven any transgression because they were the good guys.
Joya knew there were lots of good cops—Rob was one of them—but she also knew the other side of that story, and it wasn’t pretty.
Deceit, disrespect for the law, the ends justifying any means, protecting their own no matter what, destroying evidence, choking prisoners, inventing evidence, lying on the stand—these were not the sins most saw when they looked at a cop, but Joya could cite chapter and verse to prove that they were also part of some cops’ DNA.
Sheriff Arpaio’s publicity stunt over the fake bomb was just the latest evidence. She’d known for a long time that you couldn’t always trust a cop—since she studied what really happened inside the Phoenix Police Department when the Republic crack investigative reporter Don Bolles was assassinated at noon on June 2, 1976.
Joya was still in high school when he was murdered, but when she moved to Arizona, she attended journalism workshops on his techniques and reporting tips. He’d loved taking new reporters under his wing, and telling his war stories about covering the Mafia and public corruption. He’d once written a series of articles detailing how the mob was moving into Arizona, taking over legitimate businesses, laundering money, killing people who got in their way. He was particularly distrustful of Emprise, the company that ran the dog tracks in Arizona.
He knew his investigations were dangerous, but that never stopped him. Couldn’t have stopped him. He seemed to revel in the peril—it was the mark of a fearless reporter. But he also felt confident that the unwritten code
Her right knee was already turning blue. The gash stopped bleeding. Her palms still stung.
The guard could feel her unease and tried to help: “I hear they’re expecting six hundred people tonight. Best ever!”
“I know. We should raise a lot of money. Lord knows the library needs it.”
They chatted a couple minutes. Joya stood up and tried out her legs, testing if she could make it home on her own.
“I could get someone to drive you home in a little while—I can’t leave, I’m the only one here, but someone else is scheduled to work in about a half hour.”
“I don’t live far. I’m going to be okay. See, I can walk just fine. You’ve been so helpful. I thank you so much.”
She walked as straight as she could while she knew he was still watching, then limped the rest of the way home—wiping away angry tears at her overreaction, her idiocy, and the realization that she was more scared than she knew.
She wouldn’t mention any of this to Rob—or anyone else. This wasn’t what “be careful” meant.
Normally after her walk she’d shower, mix up a banana-orange smoothie, drink a pot of French-pressed coffee, do the Saturday Sudoku puzzle in the Republic and then grab her African shopping basket for the Phoenix Farmer’s Market downtown. Today she skipped the market to rest her legs, and steadied her nerves with a shot of Patron tequila. Cactus liquor was medicinal and she needed it today.
In her recliner, she pushed the remote control to bring up her taped shows: The Young and the Restless , Sex and the City , The Sopranos . Today she’d skip The Sopranos . But if she’d been quizzed on the shows before her eyes, she couldn’t have recited a single plot line. She was busy thinking about Sammy, and Rob’s revelations, and her need to get under control. She felt both thrilled and disturbed.
Here she was on the verge of a mega story. But to get to it, she had to trust a cop. Personal feelings or not, it was still tough to overcome her natural aversion to trusting a cop.
For most of America, the police were always the good guys. It was bred as respect for authority, twined with the belief that being on the side of the law was the only place to be. Of course, a steady diet of cop shows on TV showed they were always right, always catching bad guys and always forgiven any transgression because they were the good guys.
Joya knew there were lots of good cops—Rob was one of them—but she also knew the other side of that story, and it wasn’t pretty.
Deceit, disrespect for the law, the ends justifying any means, protecting their own no matter what, destroying evidence, choking prisoners, inventing evidence, lying on the stand—these were not the sins most saw when they looked at a cop, but Joya could cite chapter and verse to prove that they were also part of some cops’ DNA.
Sheriff Arpaio’s publicity stunt over the fake bomb was just the latest evidence. She’d known for a long time that you couldn’t always trust a cop—since she studied what really happened inside the Phoenix Police Department when the Republic crack investigative reporter Don Bolles was assassinated at noon on June 2, 1976.
Joya was still in high school when he was murdered, but when she moved to Arizona, she attended journalism workshops on his techniques and reporting tips. He’d loved taking new reporters under his wing, and telling his war stories about covering the Mafia and public corruption. He’d once written a series of articles detailing how the mob was moving into Arizona, taking over legitimate businesses, laundering money, killing people who got in their way. He was particularly distrustful of Emprise, the company that ran the dog tracks in Arizona.
He knew his investigations were dangerous, but that never stopped him. Couldn’t have stopped him. He seemed to revel in the peril—it was the mark of a fearless reporter. But he also felt confident that the unwritten code
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