someone who can deal with the unusual, the peculiar, the curious, and perhaps even the enigmatic.”
“So you’re talking about me working Elvis sightings and crop circles?”
“I doubt those would even raise eyebrows in Los Angeles. What I was broaching was the possibility of you working special cases.”
“Where I would be your devil’s advocate?”
“That position no longer exists in the Catholic church,” he said. “I believe the church erred when they discontinued that post. Saints need exacting scrutiny.”
“Sinners need it even more.”
“Does such a position interest you?”
“What would I tell people? That I work in the Defense against the Dark Arts Division?”
“I have another name in mind: Special Cases Unit.”
“And would you be the one deciding what a special case is and what’s not?”
“That would be my prerogative, but I’d also expect you to be keeping an ear to the ground and working up cases on your own. With your injuries you could have retired on disability. It’s clear that you’re here because you want to be.”
“There are some cases that fall between the cracks,” I said. “They’re low-priority and they shouldn’t be.”
“You would have carte blanche to work such cases, as long as they didn’t interfere with your special cases.”
“What’s your definition of a special case?”
“Justice Potter Stewart said he couldn’t necessarily define pornography, but said, ‘I know it when I see it.’ We’ll know it when we see it.”
“Would I be reporting to you?”
“You would.”
“I am not the person you’re looking for if what you want is a departmental snitch or a personal lapdog.”
“Those are not positions I had in mind for you.”
“You already have an Internal Affairs Division. I am not going to be playing your devil’s advocate to other cops, am I?”
He shook his head and said, “Only if the case is deemed special.”
“When do you want my decision?”
“How long do you need?”
“By week’s end.”
“That works for me.”
I stood up and we shook hands. Sirius bounced up, but we weren’t able to make our escape without the chief offering some more parting words.
“You should know,” Ehrlich said, “that this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment offer on my part. I have been mulling over the idea of a Special Cases Unit for some months now, and when you arranged for this meeting, I started considering you for the position.
“I expected that you would come in asking for placement in Robbery-Homicide, and I hoped to be able to convince you to give the other position a chance. To that end, I was willing to sweeten the deal.”
From what he was saying, he still was. “Sugar works for me.”
“Upon your acceptance,” he said, “you would be getting your detective’s shield and with it almost total autonomy.”
I wasn’t overwhelmed and my face showed it.
“From day one of the job,” Ehrlich said, “I’d have you on the transfer list to RHD. That way, if things don’t work out, you can ultimately make your move to happier hunting grounds. You might have to wait a year or two to get placed, but by going that route there wouldn’t be nearly as much acrimony.”
That would be a better way of doing it, I knew, but it certainly wasn’t a deal maker.
“And finally,” Ehrlich said, “there is the designation of Special Cases Unit. The word ‘unit’ suggests more than one individual, and that means you would need a partner in special cases. Because you already have a partner, I see no need in breaking up that team.”
Sirius’s ears perked up, almost like he knew what the chief was saying. It was likely he was responding to his tone of voice. This was the sugar.
“Sirius will have office privileges with me?”
“He’ll even have his own desk if he wants one.”
“Where do we sign up?”
CHAPTER 3:
Rather than work out of the Police Administration Building, Sirius and I had set up shop at the Central Community Police Station. For almost a year Central had been our home. We were less than a mile from the PAB; close enough that its shadows could almost touch us.
As we approached Central I took notice of the looming presence of the PAB. “If it weren’t for you, we’d be at the new headquarters,” I said. “The chief must have heard stories about your fleas.”
The truth of the matter was that I had opted out of an office at PAB. The high-rise wasn’t a good fit for Sirius and me. I was well served by not being near all the big suits, and I hadn’t wanted to have to take a long ride in an elevator every time Sirius needed to water.
One of the best things about my job is that I rarely have to report in to a supervisor. Central’s captain might not be of like mind. Because we aren’t directly under her command, Captain Becker probably wishes the chief had found a different home for us, even though she has never come out and said that.
“We’ll be lucky if Captain Becker doesn’t evict us,” I said. “She’s a cat person.”
Sirius wagged his tail and waited for me to open the door. Cat person or not, the captain was a lot more affectionate with my partner than with me. She is the only one in the station that calls me “Detective.” Everyone else has nicknames for me, all dog related. I am Hound Dog, Horn Dog, Junkyard Dog, Watchdog, Underdog, Bowser, Barker, and Fido. Dog food names and flea medicines are also popular. If the paw fits, you wear it.
As I walked in the door, the watch commander flagged me down. Sergeant Perez has a line of service stripes on his left sleeve, what other cops call hash marks. The hash marks bespeak his years on the job; his wrinkles do the same. “Hey, Alpo,” he said, “I got one that’s right up your alley.”
The watch commander tends to forget that I’m not officially assigned to Central. He knows I work Special Cases Unit-what he calls “Strange Cases Unit”-and that I report to “the brass,” but he likes to treat me as his extra uniform, or in his non-PC terminology, “my spare bitch.”
“It’s another abandoned newborn,” he said, handing me the call sheet, “but this one’s no Moses.”
Moses had been one of my first special cases. His mother had set the newborn adrift in a basket in the LA Aqueduct. Unlike baby Moses on the Nile, the LA Moses didn’t survive his journey. At the onset of the case, there had been the suspicion that the death of Moses was ritualistic in nature because of strange writing on the newborn’s clothes and his basket. As it turned out, though, Moses’s mother was mentally ill and had interpreted a one-day downpour as the start of the next great flood. She had thought she could save her son by putting him in an ark.
“If you don’t want it, Sherlock Bones,” Perez said, “just pass the case to Juvie and let ACU take over the investigation.”
“You can count on me and my Hound of the Baskervilles,” I said.
Perez passed over what information he had. Throwaway babies don’t qualify as high-priority cases, because unfortunately they occur all too often. The baby had been abandoned on South Hill Street, which was nearby.
Sirius and I did an about-face and returned to the sedan. The traffic over to Hill Street was stop and go. It was that time of day when commuters were arriving to roost in their office buildings that make up the skyscraper
