“It was mine.”
“Can you honestly say that it was one hundred percent your fault? That no other factors were involved?”
After a moment I said, “There were other factors involved.”
“Can you tell me about those factors?”
I sighed wearily. “I’d just like to get back to work and forget about it.”
“But you haven’t been able to forget about it.”
I shook my head.
“Then it’ll probably help to talk about it.”
“Maybe some other time. But for now let me ask you something. Let’s say I’ve got to deal with another witness. What if I keep thinking of what happened to my last wit? What if I melt down and start to lose it?”
“Take a break. Go the bathroom. Breathe deeply. Remind yourself that it wasn’t your fault, that you did all you could, despite the way you’re beating yourself up over it.”
“I’ll give it a try,” I said without much conviction.
“So after you got suspended, you quit.”
“The next week.”
“It seems that quitting was a pretty dramatic response.”
“I didn’t get into this business to kill people.”
Blau looked at me for a moment. “I think you know that you didn’t kill anybody.”
“Well, she ended up dead.”
“That’s a very different thing.”
I could feel my head pound. When had I taken my last Tylenol?
“You felt the suspension was unfair?” Blau asked.
I massaged my temples. “I needed the support of Duffy, my lieutenant. I was going through a lot of shit. But instead of him backing me up, he told me to take a hike for a few weeks. Then he slipped a letter of reprimand into my file.”
“As I recall, he was your mentor.”
“ Was. I felt betrayed. I was getting hammered in the papers. I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I knew her family was filing a civil suit against the department. I was dreading the hostile depositions and the media circus trial. Fortunately, I was spared that when the family settled with the city out of court, after I’d left the department. But at the time, I thought it would be easier away from the job.”
“Was it?”
I chewed on my thumbnail. “Probably not.”
“How did your family handle this?”
“Well, my marriage was circling the drain. But you know all about that. We talked about it last year. This finished it off. And you know about my brother Marty. He was too fucking wasted to care. For my mother, it was just confirmation that I shouldn’t have become a cop in the first place.”
“How did that case finish off your marriage?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Take all the time you need.”
“Fact is, it’s over. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to move on.”
Blau studied me for a moment and said, “How does your mother feel about you returning to the LAPD?”
“Not happy. And I know it sounds sick, but I was glad my dad wasn’t alive to see all those bullshit articles about me.”
“Isn’t he a survivor?”
“Yeah. He died a few years ago.”
“You seem too young to be the child of a survivor.”
“He was only fourteen when he was sent to Treblinka. And he was in his forties when I was born.”
“I have a lot of admiration for people like him.”
“So do I,” I said. “It’s a miracle he survived. It’s a miracle I’m here.” I rocked for a moment, lost in thought. “He was big for his age, strong and athletic. The Nazis figured they could make use of him and some of the other young men and work them to death, instead of just murdering them right off. They were spared the showers, but not many of them survived. My dad was starved, beaten, God knows what else. I think he was eighty-five pounds when the camp was liberated. He rarely talked about it, so I don’t really know everything he went through.”
“Is your mom a survivor, too?” Blau asked.
“Her parents were refugees. From Lithuania. They got out, but her grandparents and a lot of other relatives were murdered.” I reached inside my suit coat, tapped my Beretta, and said, “I’ve shot a Glock and I like it better than what I’m carrying. Smoother trigger-pull. Action is a little quicker. Lighter. No exposed hammer. Overall, a better made weapon. But I won’t pack a Glock because it’s Austrian. And I won’t pack the Heckler amp; Koch because it’s German. That’s crazy, I know. After all these years.”
“Israel does a lot of business with Germany today. And you know the Beretta is Italian. And they were aligned with Germany.”
“I’m not making a political statement. I just can’t carry a German gun.”
“Or an Austrian gun?” Blau asked.
“My dad always told me that since the war, Austria’s been trying to convince the world that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German. He thought the Austrians were almost as bad as the Germans. He told me that half of all the concentration camp guards were from Austria. I guess I got that mentality from him. But that might be the only thing I got from him. He was kind of a remote guy. Always working overtime. Always tired and grumpy. He spent all day in a hot downtown dress factory, cutting patterns. My mom told me after he died that when he was a kid he dreamed of going to art school. He wanted to be a commercial artist. But when he arrived in the U.S., he didn’t speak English and he needed work. His uncle got him a job in the shmatte business and he never left. He wanted a better life for me. He was angry when I dropped out of college, even more incensed when I joined the army. But when I became a cop, he really got pissed. He wouldn’t even come to my academy graduation. When he first saw me in my uniform, he looked me up and down, and walked out of the room.”
I reached inside my suit coat and adjusted my leather shoulder holster strap. “But I’m not here to talk about my father.”
“You can, if you you’d like.”
“Some other time.”
“That’s fine,” Blau said. “I want to get back to something, Ash. Are you angry with the LAPD?”
“Sometimes. But I’m most angry at myself. Because my actions led to her death.”
“How, exactly, did your actions lead to her death?”
I stared into my empty water cup.
After a minute of silence, he said, “It might be helpful to tell me about it.”
“Might be. But right now I just want to get your seal of approval so I can return to work and get back to the Relovich murder.”
“I don’t want to push you, but I really think we should talk some more about this.”
“I’m not ready for that.”
“When things settle down for you, make sure to give me a call. I’ll be glad to see you any time.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You told me that Duffy asked you to come back,” he said. “Why did you?”
I stared out the window and watched the light glisten on a varnished palm frond. “The only thing I know anything about is killing-how to do it; how to investigate it.” I smoothed the end of my tie. “And I feel it’s important. The most important thing I can do. The investigating part.”
“That year away from the LAPD must have been hard for you.”
“It was.”
Blau, his face a blank mask, sat there, without moving, lithic. He had an uncanny ability to intuit when I wanted to say more, to just wait silently for me to continue.
“These last few months, a lot of stuff has been bothering me, stuff that I’ve managed to put out of my mind for a long, long time. For decades.”
“For example?”
