Sensing a trap, I waited.
“So I’m impressed,” she went on. “That’s the good news.”
I knew my line like I’d seen it written in a script. “And the bad news, ma’am?”
“You’re a cowboy, Detective Parnell.” She uncrossed her ankles and leaned in to rest a hand on my desk. Her breath smelled strongly of coffee, as if she’d just downed a gallon of the stuff. “Calling your own shots. Ricocheting solo around the city like an out-of-control pinball. Maybe that was fine with the higher-ups at Denver Pacific. But we can’t afford that. I can’t afford that. Do you want to know why?”
My mama didn’t raise no fool. Not on most days, anyway.
I nodded.
“Because right now, every eye in the city is on this department. Civilians. Our fellow cops. And city officials, right on up to the mayor. A lot of those people want me to fail simply because I’m a woman. They are looking for something to go wrong on my watch. Something they can point to and say, ‘Our bad, promoting females. Won’t make that mistake again.’”
If it’s so tough for women, I wanted to say, shouldn’t we be on the same side?
Lobowitz straightened and tapped her palm against my desk. Her wedding band ticked against the metal trim. “If you learn anything at all during your probation period, make it this. You aren’t a one-man show anymore. No heroics. No knight-in-shining-armor bullshit. There’s a lot of talk about women empowerment. But the Denver PD is not the place where you decide you can scrap the rules. Better to think of yourself as being back in the Marines, when you couldn’t blow your nose without some officer’s say-so.”
“Initiative—”
She held up a hand. “Is good when you have enough experience. Not now. You’re to be on Bandoni’s ass like wet toilet paper. Unless he specifically tasks you with something, you don’t do it. You especially don’t do it if it’s your idea and he hasn’t okayed it.”
I resisted saluting. Or bolting for the door.
“Are we clear on that, Parnell?”
Clear as the business end of an assault rifle. “Perfectly, ma’am.”
“I don’t have your back. I am not your friend. And if I catch even a whiff of any more cowboying, I will make sure your detective days are gone forever.”
Lobowitz pushed herself off the desk, rubbed her neck. “Bandoni told you to finish the reports tonight?”
Underneath the desk, I crossed my fingers. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you finished?”
“I am.”
“Then go home.” For a moment, her face softened. “Work-life balance, Parnell. Keep that fixed in your headlights. This job will eat you alive if you let it.”
I nodded.
“How’s Bandoni?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said, because I knew that was what Bandoni would want me to say. The gray skin. The exhaustion. Whatever he was sitting on, if it was anything at all, it was his secret for now.
“Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She threaded her way through the desks but stopped at the door.
“Good job this morning,” she said. “But don’t ever do it again.”
The drive home was a good opportunity to begin the separation of work and the rest of my life. As night settled over Denver, I found U2 on the radio, and Clyde and I rocked along with Bono as we made our way through rush-hour traffic on the interstate. Or I rocked, and Clyde managed to look like he was enjoying himself.
We exited at US 285 and headed west. A few minutes later, I turned into the entrance to Cherry Hills—the location of Cohen’s home and one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in all of Denver. Not to mention the United States. I pulled up to the guard’s gate and rolled down my window.
Bill Major stepped out of his shack and propped his arms on the Tahoe’s door. “Ms. Parnell. And my pal Clyde. How are you two this cold evening?”
“Happy to be home, Bill. How’s your day been?”
“No complaints. ’Cause who’d listen, anyway?” He grinned and stepped back, smacking the roof of the Tahoe with his open palm. The gate swung grandly open. “Enjoy your evening, Detective.”
“You, too, Bill,” I said, vaguely astonished, as always, that I wasn’t turned away at the gate.
I checked my rearview as I drove through the gateway—a habit left from my days driving on and off the forward operating base in Iraq. Eyes in the back of your head.
Outside the entrance and across the street, a dark-colored cargo van pulled to a stop beneath a streetlight. In the light’s yellow glow, it was impossible to tell if the vehicle was blue or black.
A memory surfaced—a van like this one had driven past in the parking garage right after I’d finished stuffing a naked Barbie doll into a paper bag along with broken glass.
I pulled over inside the gate and parked. I don’t know what I was thinking—that I’d approach the driver and ask if he’d tied a doll to the Tahoe’s chassis? But as I opened the driver’s door and stepped out, the van pulled into traffic and vanished into a stream of headlights.
I slid back into the Tahoe and looked at Clyde. He was half-out of his seat, ready to tackle whatever had caught my attention.
“Let’s go home, boy,” I said. “It was just a case of paranoia.”
Thirty minutes later, I sat across from Cohen at the kitchen table. Thelonious Monk played softly on the speakers, and two fingers of Macallan glowed like topaz in the cut-crystal glasses he’d set in front of us. Clyde sprawled at my feet, chewing rawhide.
“How was the rest of your day?” Cohen asked. He was freshly showered after a run, and his damp hair clung to his forehead. In his long-sleeve T-shirt and sweats, his bare feet propped on the chair next to his, he looked like a model for an ad in a men’s magazine—the sexiness of casual wear.
“It was fine,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”
Work-life balance, I reminded myself. Then I thought, fuck it.
“Would you look at something?” I asked.
The other
