Bleeding Out

baby. She condescendingly pointed out that her mother had produced five fat and healthy babies while puffing Salems, sipping martinis, and swilling coffee. She doubted that nursing one or two beers a week would turn her kid into a dribbling turnip.

As the talk shifted from work to bullshit, Fire Truck said goodnight. Before her marriage to an emergency room doctor, the redheaded detective had been fast in bedding partners, hence her nickname. Now as she lumbered wearily toward the door, Johnnie commented, 'Goddamn, that don't look like fun.'

Bobby nodded, adding, 'She's tired a lot.'

'Hey, Frank, when are you gonna have a baby?' Johnnie teased.

'Hell, I've got all of you. What do I need another one for?'

The badinage continued around the table, through another succession of beers and old stories. At one point, after Johnnie and Bobby headed for the can, Frank stretched her long legs under the table. She whipped the sunglasses off her head and Noah watched as she ran her fingers through her hair. It was dark blonde, streaked with rich colors that could never come from a bottle. She wore it slightly layered on the sides, longer in back, and between haircuts it was kept out of her face by the Ray Bans propped on her head. It was getting long and starting to curl up where it met her shoulders.

'Hey,' Noah warned, leaning on one elbow and grinning tipsily, 'you better get a haircut before kids start mistaking you for Butch Barbie.'

Mellowed by the beers, Frank was caught off guard and chuckled out loud.

During a game three weeks into his third Pop Warner season, the boy stood on the thirty-yard line, waiting for the ball. They were a touchdown behind with only a few minutes left to play. The quarterback tossed the ball toward him. It floated down perfectly into his hands and he heard his father scream, 'You got it, son! You got it!' Then he felt the ball slip through his fingers and bounce off his knee. A boy from the other team landed on it. He heard groans on his side of the field, cheers on the other. The boy who'd recovered the ball ran happily to his coach.

He was afraid to look at the sidelines. He couldn't move. The coach trotted out and walked him off the field, saying, 'Good try. You almost had it. You'll get it next time.'

The coach left the boy, and he could feel his father's presence behind him, felt the hot stare burning into the back of his brain. His little heart was tripping all over itself; he had to go to the bathroom. He watched the last couple of plays but didn't see them. When the game ended, his father put a light hand on his son's shoulder and steered him toward the car.

That evening there were no hits in the belly or fists to the arms. There was something new. His father threw the ball at him four times and four times the boy caught it. He smiled slightly, hopefully. His father smiled back and threw the ball. Hard. The boy couldn't hang on to it. Sadly, the father shook his head and retrieved the ball. He put it in his son's hands then moved toward the closed door.

Standing in the center of his roomy bedroom, uncoiling from the blow he'd expected, the boy couldn't believe they were done.

His father said patiently, turning at the door, 'You've got to learn how to hold on to the ball.' Then he launched himself across the room and tackled the boy. One hundred ninety pounds met sixty-six against the wooden floor. The boy's vision grayed. When he could focus, he saw his father's face only inches away. His lips were parted, and he was staring at his son in a new way. The boy closed his eyes and lay quietly under his father. In a life already filled with more than its share of fear, the new look on his father's face was more terrifying than anything the boy had ever seen.

4

Frank and her detectives were back at the rec area at nine o'clock the next morning. Her first interview was with a surly punk just out of high school. He worked the entrance gate part-time and saw a lot of the park's users. Frank knew right off that this skinny, wannabe surf Kahuna had probably never surfed anything harder than his own dick. That he was too lazy and too cowardly to mastermind an abduction, no less carry out a premeditated murder. Still, she questioned him patiently and thoroughly. She showed him six-packs—six photos in a plastic holder of known offenders in the Baldwin Hills/Culver City area. The punk said he didn't recognize anyone in particular, but his eyes lingered on a few. Frank noted which ones.

'Besides,' he sniggered, 'I don't spend much time looking at men.' He eyed her contemptuously up and down, then challenged, 'I'm a man. I'm supposed to like chicks.'

Frank ignored the insult, producing a business card.

'If you happen to see something unusual call this number.'

She deftly tucked the card into his shirt pocket and turned away, catching something churlish about 'dykes and the LAPD.' It was far from the first or last time. Cop-bashing was popular recreation in the 'hood. Being female and not acting the part only exacerbated the censure, but Frank had learned even as a recruit not to hear it. Or at least not care about it.

By noon she was ready to leave the rec area and check out employees who'd been off for the last two days or on leave. Frank gravely thanked the rec area manager for her cooperation and apologized for taking her away from her work for two days.

The woman laughed and tossed the hair off her freckled face. 'Are you kidding? It was a relief to get out of that office! I just wish it could have been for a more pleasant reason.'

Driving out of the rec area Johnnie observed, 'Nice dame.'

'Dame?' Noah glanced in the rearview mirror. Johnnie's arms were stretched against the back seat and an unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth.

'What are you, Humphrey Bogart?'

'Did either of you get hits on the pictures?'

Johnnie pulled a list from his pocket.

'Yeah, we got a couple.'

Frank compared his list to hers. One of the pictures showed up on both their lists.

'Daniel Nathan Sproul,' she said. 'Let's check him out.'

Turned out that Daniel Nathan Sproul had three priors, two drug-related, one for lewd behavior. The computer spit out an address for him and at six o'clock that evening Frank and Noah were on his doorstep. He lived in an apartment in Baldwin Hills and he came to their knock sleepily, as if they'd woken him.

Frank held her badge up to him, asking if he was Daniel Nathan Sproul.

'What if I am?'

'If you are we have some questions for you.'

'This isn't a good time,' he answered dreamily. 'Why don't you come back later?' He slumped against the doorframe, his eyes on the detectives but looking through them.

'What are you on?' Noah asked politely.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean what are you trippin' on?'

He smiled. 'Ain't trippin'.'

'Internal possession's a felony, Sproul. But to be honest, we're not narcs. We're homicide cops. I don't care if you're shootin'. I just want to ask you some questions.'

Sproul smiled, as if a long lost buddy was waving at him from behind the homicide cops.

'Do you know what today is?' Frank asked.

'First day of the rest of my life?' Sproul guessed.

'The date,' Frank said patiently. 'What is today's date?'

Sproul giggled. 'I don't know. You're cops. You should know stuff like that.'

Noah reached behind for his cuffs.

'Take him in?'

'May as well put him in the cooler and see what we can get out of him in the morning.'

Noah hooked him despite a feeble protest, checking out the track marks on his arms. They drove him downtown, right through the bright lights and glamour that people called L.A.

Sproul didn't look very good when he came out of the chilled holding cell almost a day later. He was only twenty-two but could have easily passed for being in his late thirties. His skin was tinted yellow and he needed a