across the street.
“Black puts the victim with a young white male,” said Andrew, who seemed the only one at ease in the room. He held a small investigator’s notebook, to which he did not need to refer, and spoke with an authority that held the respect of a bunch of disbelieving, overtired cops.
“We know Juliana went there to buy marijuana. I make the suspect as a dealer. He has a camera, which he uses as a cover. Black says the guy is from Arizona, so I want to use narcotics investigators on the local level to identify this individual. We should reach out immediately to law enforcement in Arizona.” Nobody spoke. Margaret Forrester — peacekeeper and liaison — was mouthing the water bottle, big eyes gone bland, as if she had nothing to do with any of this. My heart was jackhammering; I was hoping Rick would not force me to make the call.
“Sounds like a poor use of resources,” he said. “Mr. Black is obviously a questionable source.”
“That’s your judgment.”
“Of course it’s his judgment,” I said nicely. “This is an FBI investigation.”
Andrew shut me down with a cold-blooded look—“Now you’re telling me who’s in charge?”—and my overbeating heart clutched at the shock of his anger.
His lieutenant intervened: “We’ll employ our own resources to follow up on Detective Berringer’s recommendation.”
“Thank you, Barry,” said Rick.
The pager went off again.
“This is whack,” I cursed under my breath, quickly shouldering handbag and canvas briefcase.
Rick had given up on the handcuffs, which lay splayed upon the table. The mood was suddenly wilted and depressed. There was no more oxygen left in the room, and what did we have? No new ransom demands. A half- assed boyfriend and a schizophrenic.
“Keep me informed,” said my boss. “And watch your back.”
I went out through the kitchen exit to avoid passing close to Andrew.
Seven
The fog was a surprise, but along the coast it often comes up quickly. When I left the police station, sometime after six, everything smelled of water. The air wasn’t air but cold humidity that had congealed. From inside the car, the windshield was impenetrable. I let the defroster blow. According to the dashboard readout, the temperature had fallen to thirty-seven degrees.
Someone was rubbing a clear circle in the driver’s side glass. Fingernails scratched and a round face peered close, spooking me. When I lowered the window I saw that it was Margaret Forrester. With hair frizzed out by the mist and some kind of seashells on a thong around her neck, she looked like a creature hauled out of the sea, a siren, regarding me with dark eyes that seemed to shine with strange compassion. Steam curled and vanished from her small-sculpted nostrils as she considered what to say.
Finally it was just, “Drive carefully.”
“I will. You, too.”
She smiled sympathetically and reached in and patted my hand on the wheel. I grinned like a cat until she had withdrawn and the window rose again and sealed off the vaporous outside.
What was her concern? Was it for Juliana, disappeared into the dark psychic stink of America? The fog was blanking out the street lamps, making the night unnaturally dim, a guttural gray through which they shone just faintly. But sometimes the fog would be a lens, diffusing a pair of headlamps passing behind a tree so its outline would spring out, monumentally visible, each twig and leaf in flashing silhouette as if etched by a laser.
I wished for that same shocking clarity in our search for Juliana, even as I fought a growing instinct it would not occur. There was uncertainty beneath the frenzy of the briefing, a stain of helplessness that seemed to be numbing Rick. We were all giving in to the fear that we had failed. Look at us, Andrew and me, fighting in public like dogs over territory.
I dialed his pager:
It was ten long minutes of creeping through fog until he called back.
“Still in the briefing?”
“That’s been over.”
“I’m sorry for what happened back there.”
When he didn’t gush,
“We never talked about going with Willie John Black.” My voice was hard.
“This is not working,” Andrew decided abruptly. “Let’s forget it.”
“It’s a little late, don’t you think?” I listened to his impatient snort into the mouthpiece. “This is what I told you would happen on the beach.”
“I work independently. I don’t report to the lieutenant every time I take a crap.”
“Now you’re accusing me of pulling rank.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“But you’ve
“When? When did I say that?”
“This morning, at breakfast.”
Now there was silence. I knew what he was thinking: just like a woman to start whining about personal shit.
“Andrew? We’re still together on this, am I right?”
“Sure, baby,” he said with penetrating indifference. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Kiss up to your boss, that’s cool. Just stay out of my business.” He hung up.
Sometimes the temperature drops and you are blinded. All that I could see in front of me was swirling white and not the labyrinth beyond — the sudden drop-offs, veering alley walls and bottomless puddles into which whole cars could up-end and disappear — creeping inch by inch all the way to Westwood, and the police scanner was jammed with accidents, hit dogs, frightened seniors lost at indistinguishable intersections, reports of a fire.
A bus had rammed a car in front of the Federal Building. Traffic was stalled and lights were blinking idiotic green. When I finally pulled into the parking lot, I was surprised to find it still half full. People must be waiting it out. You could see the red throat of the stuck freeway from the upper stories of the tower.
The stark brightness of the institutional lobby gave little relief from the mayhem outside, only serving as a reminder that steely measures were required to keep things in order; there was no room for soft upholstery of any kind. We were the Department of Justice, not the Department of Comfort. The elevators were sterile, and the turnstile where you swiped your card a floor-to-ceiling cage of bars that rotated loyalty and discipline in, individuality out.
We all used to work together in an open bull pen. The supervisors had window offices around the rim, the grunts labored at traditional oak desks pushed together in the center of the room, like the detectives at the Santa Monica Police Department. There were no walls or encumbrances, you could see at a glance where everybody was and who they were gossiping with, and you could feel fine about important work being done by decent people, even though most of them were middle-aged men in white shirts who kept their shoulder holsters on.
You damn well knew where you were.
Then the elders started to retire in waves, and the rest of us watched with apprehension as a generation of experience and chops walked out the door, while the technology to replace them walked in. Some android in the
