a big time slob killuh.”
The man in the holding cell was Frank’s peer, but bad food, worse liquor, and a lifetime of combining drugs made him look twenty years older. No doubt he’d been brought in on a D ‘n D but he was subdued now, remorseful.
“Yeah, he’ll be alright,” Frank agreed. “Got his Gramp-C reppin’ him.”
” ‘Da’s right. Somebody gots to hep the lil’ ones comin’ up.”
“Don’t reckon there’s anyone knows as much about these streets as you do.”
She slapped his cell bars and he clucked, ” ‘At ain’t no lie, Franco. ‘At ain’t no lie.”
Slipping out the back, she was on the Harbor Freeway in two minutes, headed north to Pasadena. The drive usually only took fifteen, twenty minutes but the crush of Saturday evening traffic slowed her down.
Squeaky brakes and idling engines competed with talk radio shows and the powerful boom-boom-boom of car stereos. Frank sat with her arm out the window, aware of each sound, but knowing they didn’t demand her attention. The same went for the pastel dusk folding softly around the downtown skyline. Seventeen years with one of the largest police forces in the world had exquisitely honed Frank’s senses. She hadn’t been in uniform for over a decade but she still needed to hear the heartbeat of the streets. That was why she listened to the hip-hop stations and could recite N.W.A. and Da Brat lyrics.
Frank had spent her entire career in the corner of the western world infamous for the Watts riots, and then thirty years later, the Rodney King riots. She’d missed Watts, but the second series of riots had been a succession of nights straight out of Dante. Frank had been “riot-baptised” with bricks and bottles, bullets and fire.
Clay had asked during one of her earlier sessions what it was like to work in such hostile environs, especially as a female, and a white one at that. Frank hadn’t thought much of it. Born and raised in New York City’s lower east side, there was nothing she hadn’t seen by the time she entered the LAPD Academy; landing at the Figueroa Station had merely rounded out her education. The hard streets afforded Frank an excellent outlet for her natural wariness and aggression and as a younger cop she’d looked forward to the physical confrontations of the job. The demands of her rough exterior world commanded Frank’s constant attention, offering diversion from her own complicated interior. Like the kids growing up in Compton and Inglewood, Frank had survived by refusing to show fear or pain. Softness was equated with weakness, and weakness meant death. She’d lived by that street credo for forty years. Ironically, it had almost killed her.
Frank absently tracked a jet gleaming silver in the dying sun. Despite the terror of suicides and homicides witnessed, of bullets and knives passing through her flesh and that of loved ones, none of it had scared Frank more than one desolate night with Kennedy, the night she was sure her brain had cracked and that whatever she touched was dripping in blood; her blood, Kennedy’s blood, her father’s blood, Maggie’s blood, all the blood she’d seen puddled and sprayed on sidewalks and cars, walls and carpets, cribs and school chairs. Everywhere she looked, blood.
Exiting slowly onto Colorado Boulevard, Frank was guardedly optimistic that she could handle the memory of that night so easily. She figured the Wednesday afternoons with Clay must be paying off. Turning down her street, she noted the dusky gloom of the big oaks over the road, the neighbors windows glowing yellow. Frank realized that she was finally enjoying coming home again. Just as she pulled into her driveway, her pager thrummed against her hip. She left the car running on the vague superstition that if she stopped it, she’d have to start it again. She called the front desk on her cell phone.
Sergeant Romanowski ceremoniously informed her, “Lieutenant, your presence is requested by Detectives
The man in the holding cell was Frank’s peer, but bad food, worse liquor, and a lifetime of combining drugs made him look twenty years older. No doubt he’d been brought in on a D ‘n D but he was subdued now, remorseful.
“Yeah, he’ll be alright,” Frank agreed. “Got his Gramp-C reppin’ him.”
” ‘Da’s right. Somebody gots to hep the lil’ ones comin’ up.”
“Don’t reckon there’s anyone knows as much about these streets as you do.”
She slapped his cell bars and he clucked, ” ‘At ain’t no lie, Franco. ‘At ain’t no lie.”
Slipping out the back, she was on the Harbor Freeway in two minutes, headed north to Pasadena. The drive usually only took fifteen, twenty minutes but the crush of Saturday evening traffic slowed her down.
Squeaky brakes and idling engines competed with talk radio shows and the powerful boom-boom-boom of car stereos. Frank sat with her arm out the window, aware of each sound, but knowing they didn’t demand her attention. The same went for the pastel dusk folding softly around the downtown skyline. Seventeen years with one of the largest police forces in the world had exquisitely honed Frank’s senses. She hadn’t been in uniform for over a decade but she still needed to hear the heartbeat of the streets. That was why she listened to the hip-hop stations and could recite N.W.A. and Da Brat lyrics.
Frank had spent her entire career in the corner of the western world infamous for the Watts riots, and then thirty years later, the Rodney King riots. She’d missed Watts, but the second series of riots had been a succession of nights straight out of Dante. Frank had been “riot-baptised” with bricks and bottles, bullets and fire.
Clay had asked during one of her earlier sessions what it was like to work in such hostile environs, especially as a female, and a white one at that. Frank hadn’t thought much of it. Born and raised in New York City’s lower east side, there was nothing she hadn’t seen by the time she entered the LAPD Academy; landing at the Figueroa Station had merely rounded out her education. The hard streets afforded Frank an excellent outlet for her natural wariness and aggression and as a younger cop she’d looked forward to the physical confrontations of the job. The demands of her rough exterior world commanded Frank’s constant attention, offering diversion from her own complicated interior. Like the kids growing up in Compton and Inglewood, Frank had survived by refusing to show fear or pain. Softness was equated with weakness, and weakness meant death. She’d lived by that street credo for forty years. Ironically, it had almost killed her.
Frank absently tracked a jet gleaming silver in the dying sun. Despite the terror of suicides and homicides witnessed, of bullets and knives passing through her flesh and that of loved ones, none of it had scared Frank more than one desolate night with Kennedy, the night she was sure her brain had cracked and that whatever she touched was dripping in blood; her blood, Kennedy’s blood, her father’s blood, Maggie’s blood, all the blood she’d seen puddled and sprayed on sidewalks and cars, walls and carpets, cribs and school chairs. Everywhere she looked, blood.
Exiting slowly onto Colorado Boulevard, Frank was guardedly optimistic that she could handle the memory of that night so easily. She figured the Wednesday afternoons with Clay must be paying off. Turning down her street, she noted the dusky gloom of the big oaks over the road, the neighbors windows glowing yellow. Frank realized that she was finally enjoying coming home again. Just as she pulled into her driveway, her pager thrummed against her hip. She left the car running on the vague superstition that if she stopped it, she’d have to start it again. She called the front desk on her cell phone.
Sergeant Romanowski ceremoniously informed her, “Lieutenant, your presence is requested by Detectives
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