Chapter 4
The heavy rain had let up by the time I got home, lessening to a gentle ocean mist.
I sat on the back porch with Franco, our adopted marmalade cat, on my lap. Franco was a midnight prowler and could definitely pick up a victim s vibe. He sat there feeling mine, keeping me company even though the gentle mist was beginning to soak us both.
I knew the best way to deal with my loneliness and sense of loss was to keep moving forward, not to look back or self-examine. I had to stay on this treacherous path I had for some reason chosen. Nonetheless, missing Alexa and not being able to confide in my son, Chooch, was unbearable. He was away at college on a football ride. I knew it was best to just walk the walk. Tomorrow I would begin my job search. I would start the hopeless task of applying to other incorporated cities around L. A., looking for work as a police officer, which was the only job I enjoyed or understood how to do.
Td known this was all coming, so I'd already looked on the Internet and had found a few departments in the area that were currently hiring-places like Pasadena, Long Beach and Santa Monica. But I knew that the real reason for my dismissal would be immediately posted on a secure Internet site called POLITE, which is an acronym that stands for Police Officers Legal Incident Termination Evaluation. When accessed with a password, POLITE would notify sister departments of the circumstances surrounding any police officer's firing. The official word was I'd been fired for misdemeanor obstructing justice, but I knew the felony case tampering charge and affair with the Hollywood actress I was supposed to be investigating would be on that Web site in all its prurient glory, blocking any further legitimate police employment. I had to try nonetheless. I needed to go through the steps.
When all else failed, my last stop would be the City of Haven Park because everybody in law enforcement knew that the Haven Park PD would hire anybody.
I carried Franco into the house and dried him off with a bathroom towel. He looked up at me with concern in his savvy yellow eyes. They say cats have no expression, but Franco could definitely communicate. We both knew I was in deep shit.
I finally flopped down on the bed and Franco stuck close, lying in the hollow beside me. I'd found him starving in Carol White's apartment after she'd been murdered and had rescued him. Now it seemed, instead of going out and prowling for lady cats, he had my back, or at least my side. Then he nuzzled me and licked my hand. Cat affection. You know you're down to last straws when your only emotional support comes from a cat.
The next morning, I dressed in a suit, then collected my city-issued gear, took my uniforms out of the closet, folded them and stuffed everything into a bag with my Maglite, cuffs, reg book, and shoulder rovers.
I packed a second personal bag with my shaving gear and a few clothes, grabbed some job-hunting duds, a blazer and a pair of slacks, and put them in the trunk of my car. Then I took one last walk around the canal house. I'd bought this place before I ever met Alexa, but now had to find a lonely hotel someplace.
Just as I was about to leave, I heard the front door open. I went into the entry and found Chooch standing there with his backpack over his shoulder. He seemed shocked to see me.
'You… whatta you… I came to pick up some laundry Mom did for me.'
'Son, I need to talk to you.'
'Leave me alone,' he said and pushed past me.
He headed toward his room, which was a space we'd remodeled for him, turning our two-car garage into a third bedroom after his girlfriend Delfina's family died and she'd moved in with us. Now Del was living in a freshman dorm at USC and Chooch was in his second year there. He was currently playing third-string quarterback for the Trojans, but was moving up the depth chart. Needless to say, he was a big guy. Six-four and a half, two thirty. But more than being big physically, he was big emotionally. He and Alexa were the reason I'd survived my dark, dangerous period. I had invested a lot of myself in Chooch, but more than that, he had invested in me. Now I could tell that, because of what had just happened, and because of what Alexa had obviously told him, everything had changed.
'Chooch, I need to talk to you about this,' I persisted.
'I talked to Mom. I know what happened,' he said. He was pulling folded laundry out of a basket, shoving it angrily into a canvas bag.
'You don't know my side of it,' I said. Of course, when you got right down to it, I really didn't have a side.
'Okay.' He turned to face me. 'Is it wrong what they're saying? Did you take money and have… and do things with…' He stopped, his face contorted in pain.
'Son, there's more to it. You'll understand it all one day.'
'Just tell me you didn't do any of that,' he challenged.
'I can't, Son. I wish I could, but I can't.'
'Then get out of here, Dad. Leave me alone. Everything you ever told me, all that advice on how to live my life and be a man, was bullshit. It was all a lie. I don't ever want to see you again.' He slammed the bedroom door in my face.
I stood there for several moments, unsure what to do. I wanted to go in and tell him he was wrong, but I couldn't. There was nothing I could say. Finally, I just walked out and got into my Acura MDX. I took a long moment to collect my thoughts. Then I heaved a deep sigh to try to settle myself down. I put the car in gear and pulled out. I was so upset I could barely breathe as I drove on still-damp streets under a cloudless blue sky heading back downtown toward Parker Center.
The meeting in the chiefs office and the deal I'd made was supposed to be a closely guarded secret. The idea was that my resignation over a misdemeanor was a situation that wouldn't provide any recriminations or public scandal. But I wasn't three steps out of my car in the Glass House garage before an old friend of mine from Robbery-Homicide walked past me without even saying hello. His vibe was toxic. He knew.
More of the same followed as I entered the elevator and took the short ride up to five. Eyes were averted. My hellos went unanswered. This is not the way you treat a colleague who made a mistake and lost some evidence.
The secret we had all sworn to in the chiefs office was out. Everybody in the building knew I'd been accused of sleeping with Tiffany Roberts and had taken money to boot her solicitation-of-murder case. The entire ugly mess had leaked in less than ten hours. Who was it that said if three people are trying to keep a secret, two of them had better be dead?
When I walked through Homicide Special I was greeted by an awkward silence. Even people on phone calls hung up and looked angrily over at me. I found my way to the cubicle that Sally and I shared. She was sitting there looking like my crime had somehow also been hers. Eyes down, humiliated, frosted reddish blond hair catching and reflecting the fluorescent overhead lights. When she turned her freckled face up to me, her normally sunny expression was gone. She looked different. Hard to explain. Her demeanor was so altered I was seeing her as a different person.
'Hi,' I said.
'Right,' she responded. 'I've been through your murder books Cal left for me. I think I got most everything I need.'
I put the bag full of my city police possessions on my chair. 'You want to go over any of the cold cases?' I asked.
'Not this morning. If I need anything, Fve got your cell number.'
'Listen, Sally-'
'Don't, Shane, okay? I don't want to hear it.' She was talking loudly enough that Jim Diamond and Don Stonehouse in the next cubicle were able to hear it all. She was talking loud on purpose. She needed everybody to know she wasn't part of my corruption. She had her own career to worry about.
'See ya,' she said. 'You can leave your stuff there. Til give it to the captain. He's at the chiefs weekly COMSTAT meeting.' 'Right.'
I got up and walked out of the cubicle.
I wanted to keep moving forward, wanted to get my job apps started, so I left Parker Center and took the 110 Freeway to the Pasadena Police Department, which was twenty minutes east from the interchange downtown and was located behind a beautiful domed turn-of-the-century city hall.
