Your job is to train her.”
“It matters if that’s not the reason she’s here,” Parker said. “What are you, Ruiz? A Robbery-Homicide mole? An Internal Affairs rat? Take your pick of rodents.”
Once again no one answered him. Ruiz and Fuentes exchanged looks that said they clearly knew something Parker didn’t. He watched them, marveling at the fact that he could still expect something from someone, from Fuentes at least. He should have learned that lesson long ago. He thought he had. Maybe he had simply resigned himself, and now that he finally had a case where he could prove himself, the numbness was wearing off.
“Fuck this,” he said, and turned to the door.
“Parker, where do you think you’re going?”
“I’ve got a job to do.”
“You’re off Lowell,” Fuentes said. “You have to hand everything over to Robbery-Homicide before they get really pissed off and decide to charge you with obstruction.”
“They can do whatever they want,” Parker said. “I don’t know what their reasons are for taking this, but I’m starting to put the pieces together and I don’t like the picture I’m coming up with. I’m not just going to hand them the reins and walk off into the sunset.”
“You could lose your career over this, Kev,” Fuentes said. “Stay out of their way.”
“I don’t care,” Parker said, resting his hand on the doorknob. “Fire me if you want to, if you don’t want to take the heat. You can take my job, but this case is mine, and I’m seeing it through, even if I have to do it as a private citizen.”
“Kev—”
“You know, here’s what you should do,” Parker said. “Tell the brass I’ve finally flipped my lid. I’ll spend the next six months getting my head examined by one of the department shrinks. You can shrug it off. There’s no impact on you if I’m just bat-shit crazy.”
Fuentes looked at him and sighed. “I’m not your enemy, Kev,” he said at last. “You have to know when to walk away from something.”
Parker turned to Ruiz. “Don’t you have some wiseass remark? Aren’t you going to tell me this will go on my permanent record? Whoever you’re working for is going to be grossly disappointed in you.”
She had nothing to say to that, which was easily the most telling moment he had ever spent with her.
“Good act, by the way,” Parker said. “You turned me completely around. I never would have pegged you for a rat.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ruiz said impatiently.
“On the contrary,” Parker said. “I’m the authority on the subject of how to fuck over Kev Parker. I have years of experience.
“I’m leaving,” he told them. “If there’s no job for me when I come back,
“What
“Is that what this is about?” Parker asked. He laughed, though it held no humor. “How does Parker afford a Jag? How does Parker buy a loft in Chinatown? How can Parker wear designer suits?”
“How do you?” she asked, blunt and unapologetic. “How do you afford your lifestyle on a detective’s salary?”
“I don’t,” he said. “And the rest of that answer is no one’s damn business.”
“It is if you’re getting that money—”
“You people are fucking amazing.” He stared at her, incredulous, shaking his head. “I’ve never been anything less than a damn fine cop for more than half my life. I come here every day, work my cases a hundred and ten percent, train little pissant shits like you to work your way up to where I should have been for the last half a decade. And you have the gall to investigate me because I don’t buy my suits at JC Penney?”
“I’m not apologizing to you for doing my job,” Ruiz said, getting in his face. “In the last three years you’ve paid off two mortgages—yours and your parents’; you’ve purchased a loft in a luxury building in Chinatown; you’ve started wearing designer labels; you drive a Jaguar on your days off.
“You’re not doing these things on what the LAPD pays you,” she said. “How could you not think Internal Affairs would be interested in you?”
Parker felt his face getting hotter and hotter. “Do you have one complaint against me? Do you have anything on file against me?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “We have you screwing up a murder trial where a wealthy defendant walked away without so much as a slap on the wrist. Your income seems to have increased every year since. Do you need a pencil to connect those dots, Parker?”
“This is un-fucking-believable,” Parker muttered. “IA has been watching me with their hairy eyeball all this time. Giradello couldn’t get rid of me outright, couldn’t make me quit, so you people are slithering in the back door for him?
“I’d ask you why you didn’t just call me in and grill me,” he said, “but I know how IA works. Persecute first, ask questions later.”
“Would you have been any more cooperative than you’re being now?” Fuentes asked.
“No. I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t done anything illegal. And what I do with my personal time is my personal business. I spent too many years with nothing but this job, and what did it get me? Ground down, and left flat.”
“If you hated it so much, why didn’t you just quit?” Ruiz asked.
Parker shook his head, then clutched it in his hands like a coconut, thinking it might just crack open from the sheer frustration of dealing with such narrow-minded stupidity.
“Did you even think about that before it came out of your mouth?” he asked, astonished that people could be so obtuse. “I don’t hate the job.
Ruiz just stared at him, trying to look smug and superior, and pulling off neither.
“If you haven’t figured out why I’m still with LAPD, knowing what you know about me, knowing what you were briefed on by whoever sent you here,” Parker said, “you’ll never get it.”
In the old days he would have answered very differently. Back when it was all about him and his image and how many cases he could clear in a month. When all the flash had been stripped away from him, and he’d been forced to take a hard look at himself, it had gradually dawned on him that his career was really about something else, something deeper and more meaningful, more satisfying on a different level.
“What do you do it for, Ruiz?” he asked quietly. “The power? The control? The rush of climbing the ladder? I’ll tell you right now, that’s not enough. If the only goal is the big brass ring, what do you suppose happens to you after you catch it? What does it mean to you? What do you look back on? What do you have?”
“I have a career,” she said.
“You have nothing,” Parker said. “Look inside yourself. You have nothing. I know.”
He looked at Fuentes, who couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Just doing his job, Parker thought bitterly. The panacea for all people who couldn’t otherwise justify their actions.
“I’m taking the rest of the day.”
No one tried to stop him as he walked out the door.
38
The house where Eddie Davis lived in the Hollywood hills looked like something a pornographer might rent to shoot X-rated movies. Seventies hip, a little run-down, an angled flat roof, trapezoidal windows, and teal-green vertical blinds. There was a solid gate leading to the backyard, where Parker knew he would find a kidney-shaped pool, a big hot tub, and a tiki bar. The Eddie Davis Swinging Bachelor Pad.
It wasn’t a high-end neighborhood. No mansions, no big celebs in the immediate area, but probably some mid-range screenwriters, an episodic television director or two. Still, it was probably by far the swankiest place Davis had ever lived in in his entire miserable life. All he needed was the porn actresses naked in his tacky hot tub, and Eddie would be in hog heaven. Good to see he was investing his blackmail money wisely.
