could help people. I had once believed the same thing.
Both Max and the junk-mail hucksters had seen a wedding in my future, but I was certain none of them had seen anything even remotely resembling the wedding I was going to.
I parked in a public lot downtown, near Parker Center, and hiked to the lobby, where I was issued the standard crack-and-peel badge, the kind that leaves stickum on your lapel. Since I could wash my face more easily than I could wash my lapel, I stuck the badge on my forehead. I thought it made me look festive.
“You must be for the wedding,” said the weary-looking female cop at the desk.
“I’m the best man,” I said proudly.
“Yeah?” she asked. “In what group?” She made a note and waved me past. “Elevator to your left, down three stories, get off at P.”
A pistol range was an odd place for a pair of cops to get married, but Al Hammond and Sonia de Anza were an odd pair of cops, and the LAPD pistol range was where they’d met. He was the cop I’d picked for a friend when I decided to ignore my various postgraduate degrees and become a private detective, and she was a distractingly beautiful Hispanic whom Al had discovered while his divorce from wife number one, Hazel, was cranking its way slowly through the courts, a marital version of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. Hazel had taken everything, including their child, Al, Jr., but Al had gotten Sonia. I’d met Al, Jr., the kind of child anti-abortion activists never mention, and I thought Hammond had gotten the better deal.
The elevator doors opened onto a wave of noise and a sea of LAPD blue. Across the room was a tight huddle of Latinos in civilian clothes, whom I recognized as the bride’s family. They looked as abandoned as the Last Platoon, surrounded by Saracens. The sea parted before my brown suit as though the color might be contagious, and I saw the groom sweating aggressively in my direction.
“Get over here,” he bellowed, waving a Gold’s Gym arm.
I did as I was told, proud of not breaking into a laugh. Hammond, now a lieutenant of detectives, hadn’t been in uniform for years, and he obviously didn’t have a tailor. The blues fit him like a sausage skin, just before it splits in the frying pan. Hammond was big in a way that turned defendants’ best friends into prosecution witnesses in moments, but I’d never realized that he had love handles. Now I saw that he had love handles so pronounced that they formed blue parentheses around his middle.
He followed my gaze down to his midsection and turned even redder. “Uniform shrunk.”
“Congratulations, Al,” I said, hugging him in the approved New Age fashion. He backed away from the hug, an Old Age cop, and I resisted the urge to kiss him on both cheeks. “Where’s the bride?”
His red face creased into a topography of previously unsuspected fault lines. “In hiding, like some federal fugitive. You know, I’m not supposed to see what she’s-”
“Al,” I said, “we both know what an LAPD uniform looks like.”
The faults crinkled and threatened to collapse inward. “Do I know anything about women?”
“This is a swell time to ask.”
“You’re not doing so great, either. I think you guys have met.”
He stepped aside to reveal my ex-girlfriend, Eleanor Chan, migraine-inducingly beautiful in cream-white silk and an antique necklace of garnets that I’d given her back when we were still giving things to one another. “Hike,” I blurted, something suddenly closing my throat. I cleared it and said, “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself,” she said coolly. Eleanor was getting a lot of practice speaking coolly these days. “Nice to see the stripe in your tie again.”
The hope that had momentarily taken flight at the sight of the garnets made a bumpy landing. “How’s Horace?” I asked. Horace was her brother and the father of the three-year-old twins she worshipped.
“Who cares?” she said shortly. “How are you?”
“I’m fike. Fine, I mean. You look, you look…”
“I should,” she said. “It took long enough. How’s whatshername?”
“Who?” I asked hopelessly. I actually couldn’t think of her name.
“If you don’t know, why should I? And you’ve got something on your forehead.”
“Take that fucking thing off,” Hammond contributed. “You look like a Chinese ghost.”
“Lord, Al, how do you know about Chinese ghosts?” Eleanor asked as I peeled the badge away from my skin. It took a handful of hair with it.
“Hong Kong movies,” he said. “Orlando loves them.” Orlando was the bride’s significantly precocious younger brother, winding up a four-year career at UCLA at the irritating age of eighteen.
“Her name is Wayde,” I said, “and she’s nothing to worry about. I told you she’s just-”
“Wayde?” Hammond demanded. “My best man’s turned faggot?”
“Wayde is a girl,” Eleanor said, “and a very young girl, at that.”
“Oh, well,” Hammond said relievedly, waving off statutory rape.
“She’s seventeen,” I said to Eleanor, “and she just likes to use my deck to sunbathe.”
“Geez,” Hammond said, one man to another, “can’t you think of anything better than-”
“He’ll have to think of something that explains her being stark naked in his living room.” She turned to Al. “I’d really thought I was over being upset by things like this,” she said as though I weren’t present. “God knows I’ve had enough practice.”
“I wasn’t even there,” I said.
“Better and better,” Eleanor snapped, the garnets around her neck throwing off mad red glints. “You let this nude child into your house, and you’re not even there.”
Max Grover came to mind. Christy’s phrase had been living like a fool. “I’ve known her since she was eight,” I said defensively. “She’s got time-retarded sixties parents who tell her it’s okay to walk around naked. Her real name is Freedom, for Christ’s sake.”
“Freedom,” Eleanor said, rolling her eyes. “ ‘License’ would be more like it.”
An invisible orchestra struck up the wedding march from Lohengrin.
“Mother of God,” Hammond muttered, soaking wet. “Have you got the ring?”
“The ring?” I asked, looking blank.
He reached out a hand and grabbed my newly clean tie. “The ring,” he said feverishly.
“Got it,” I croaked.
“And you two,” he barked, releasing me as the cops divided into two groups to create an aisle, his cops and her cops. “No bullshit. I’m getting married here.”
“So’s she,” Eleanor said, gesturing toward a double door at the far end of the pistol range. Hammond turned to look, and his mouth fell open.
Here came the bride. Sonia de Anza was in uniform, but the sharply pressed blues were topped with a bridal veil of gossamer or tulle or something flimsy and ethereal that fell almost to her waist. Walking with her, in the position of the man who gives the bride away, was her brother, Orlando. Orlando had always been a good-looking kid, but in a tuxedo he was resplendent.
“He’s beautiful,” Eleanor whispered.
I couldn’t see Sonia’s face beneath the veil, but I could see Orlando’s. He didn’t look left or right as they marched forward: His eyes were fixed proudly on his sister.
“Here’s the deal,” Hammond said hurriedly. “We walk toward the targets.” Twelve paper men with black circles drawn around their pulpy vitals dangled at one end of the room. “When I stop, you stop.”
“Then what?”
“Then you just stand there until Sergeant God calls for the ring.”
A police chaplain in full uniform, plus collar, had emerged from between the targets. He stood there a bit nervously, as though awaiting a hail of bullets from the agnostics in the crowd.
I scratched my head, looking puzzled. “And then?”
“And then you give me the ring, asshole.” Hammond was redder than the bulb of a thermometer.
“Al,” Eleanor said, “relax. If there’s anything Simeon knows about, it’s other people’s weddings.”
“Yeah,” Al said, not listening. “Isn’t she gorgeous?” He couldn’t see her face through the veil any better than I could. Then he drew a long, profoundly shaky breath. “Let’s get it over with.”
We followed Sonia and Orlando down the improvised aisle toward the targets. I suddenly realized I was nervous. Lohengrin was bouncing back and forth between the walls of the pistol range, and someone, probably Sonia’s mother, was weeping copiously-possibly over the choice of venue-while cops looked embarrassed. Cops see
