getting back on the force. The way to stop my dreams, I thought, was by getting back to who I was before the fire.
Jen had been the photographer in the family, and she’d turned the video camera on me a number of times during our five-year marriage. I used those tapes as reference material, reliving birthday parties and Christmas gatherings, and even watching home improvement videos of me building a deck and painting our new house. The guy I studied was confident, even with paint on his face. He had a one-liner for everything. He was a man who spoke his mind, usually managing to do it with a wisecrack. The person on the tapes came across as a tough guy, but he softened whenever he was around his wife or dog. It hurt a little-you could even say it burned-reviewing these tapes, but I did it to try to remember who I was and how I should act. In looking back at the tapes, I realized that I had been an innocent, unprepared for life without my wife and the firestorm that was coming at me.
I learned from the tapes and did my best to play the former me. My imitation was good enough to fool almost everyone, but it didn’t stop my fire walking. I burned, and I burned again and again. Because of the frequency of my fiery dreams, I kept expecting that over time I would build up a tolerance to them, but that still hadn’t happened. My night terrors continued to plague me. Maybe there are some things you can’t, or shouldn’t, get used to.
Still, there was one strange benefit from my burning dreams that I thought of as the “moment after.” When I realized my flesh wasn’t really afire, my heart would stop its thundering and relief would rush over me. It was then that I had my moment of clarity; or sometimes, like this latest episode, it was more like a moment of ambiguity.
Maybe the sudden reprieve my body experienced after my fire dream made it relax in such a way that a kind of window opened. Maybe I had to pay a high price for gaining insight of any kind. It’s not like the moment after was a gift from the gods, or that it made me Confucius or anything, but it often gave me a perspective that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. Earlier in the week I had gotten this image of the Iron Maiden reacting to one of my pranks. The Iron Maiden is big on Norman Vincent Peale-type messages and loves posting rah-rah words up on the walls. Her pearls of wisdom for the week had been “Hard work pays off in the future,” and “The early bird gets the worm!” When no one was around, I had used a Sharpie to add my own editorials below hers: “Laziness pays off now,” and “The second mouse gets the cheese!” At the time I was pleased with my handiwork; everyone laughed when they saw what I wrote, including the Iron Maiden. But in my moment-after insight I could hear the false notes in her laughter and see the disguised hurt on her face. The Iron Maiden’s cheerleading routine might not have been sophisticated but it was heartfelt, and in my moment of clarity I could see that I had pissed on her efforts. Sometimes what you see in the mirror isn’t always pretty.
It was easy to imagine how and why the Iron Maiden had come to mind. My subconscious-probably tired from working overtime on my own pyre-had cued me into my inappropriate behavior. But my latest middle-of-the-night vision of Chief Ehrlich wasn’t as easy to interpret.
In some ways my conjuring up the chief shouldn’t have come as any surprise to me. The doctors had finally approved my going back to work, and today was the day I planned on cashing in his marker. I wanted Robbery- Homicide Division, what LAPD cops called Homicide Special. That was what I was going to ask him to deliver. I had thought I was sure about that, but my moment after was making me have second thoughts about my game plan.
In my postdream awakening I had this sense that the chief was offering me a job in Robbery-Homicide. That’s what I was expecting from him. What I didn’t expect was my coming to the job interview naked. What was worse was that my unclothed body revealed the extent of my burns. My vision had distorted the picture of my body, making my skin grafts red and raw and all my flesh rigid. Somehow, my year of healing and all my gains looked to have been reversed. My body showed all the ravages of the fire and more. Instead of going forward, I had this sense that I was going backward.
It wasn’t exactly Marley’s ghost rattling his chains and talking to me, but the image of my body degenerating spoke to my doubts. Could it be possible that Homicide Special wasn’t right for me? My subconscious, or whatever it was, seemed to be telling me that. It must be nerves, I tried to tell myself. Homicide Special was what any LA cop wanted. It was the top of the detective food chain. Besides, lots of people had dreams where they were naked, and even though my moment after wasn’t quite a dream, it was close enough.
I tried to tell myself that there might have been some other reason I was naked in my vision, but the more I tried to convince myself of that, the more strongly I began to feel that taking the position in Homicide Special wouldn’t be good for me. Doubting Thomas had seen his own wounds and they weren’t pretty. Still, it was too late to be reconsidering the job. I had made my appointment with the chief to press him for this placement. That’s why Sirius and I were now waiting in the antechamber of the chief’s office. There was no fallback position I had in mind, no other job in the department that interested me. When you are prepared to ask for a boon, you better know what it is you want.
I ran my hand along my partner’s head and neck. He was no longer part of the equation. Sirius’s injuries precluded him from returning to K-9 work. That added to the emptiness I felt, but I hadn’t brought him along just to feel nostalgic. Sirius was there as a reminder to the chief of what we had both given and what we were both owed. Besides, it was likely the chief remembered my partner more than he did me. The two of them had made the cover of
Sirius and I sat waiting outside of the tenth floor suites at the Office of the Chief of Police (OCP). Two large desks manned by officers barred entry into that space. This wasn’t my first time in LA’s Police Administration Building (PAB), but I’d never been to the OCP. The new ten-floor limestone building had cost the citizens of LA almost half a billion dollars. The architectural firm designing the building had tried to construct it in such a way as to allow a sense of openness between PAB and the city hall building. Spatially at least, that seemed to have been achieved. PAB was part of the new LA skyline; city hall was to the south, the
After a twenty-minute wait a smiling administrative assistant, definitely a civilian, came out from the inner sanctum.
“Good morning,
“Don’t blow it,” I whispered to Sirius, but I was really talking to myself. My dog doesn’t need a muzzle; my tongue does.
As we walked behind her, I reminded myself to be the old Michael Gideon, the one I’d studied on videotapes. I had practiced for this role; in another lifetime I’d even lived it.
The LAPD is the fifth largest law enforcement agency in the country. To put that in perspective, the FBI is the fourth largest. There are almost ten thousand officers serving the city of Los Angeles, not to mention three thousand civilians, including Gwen. You don’t just walk in off the street to see the chief. Most LA cops retire never having had a personal audience with the chief.
Gwen motioned us into an office, and Chief Ehrlich came out from behind his desk to greet us. “Officer Gideon,” he said, shaking my hand. “And my four-legged friend Sirius,” he added, bending down and offering his hand. This time Sirius only sniffed at it, and a bit suspiciously at that. It was probably the “four-legged friend” comment.
“Please sit,” Ehrlich said.
The chair I planted myself in would have been acceptable to royalty. Ehrlich took a seat behind his desk, crossed his hands and smiled for us. He was good about making eye contact and didn’t seem distracted by the scarring on my face.
“I am glad to see you are both doing so well,” he said.
“Thank you, sir.”
He knew why I was there, but was still going to make me ask. No one doubted the chief’s smarts, but he was only eighteen months into his job and the rank and file hadn’t yet made up their minds about him. Ehrlich had come from outside the ranks of the LAPD. Because he had a number of eclectic interests and degrees in subjects other than law enforcement, the media liked to refer to him as a Renaissance man. His nickname was “the Professor.” His proponents said the nickname referred to his time teaching at Columbia University; his critics said it reflected Ehrlich’s tendency to lecture and be pedantic.
