CHIMERAS (Track Presius) Read Free Page A

been partners since I’d joined RHD, the Robbery Homicide Division of the LAPD, five years earlier. The first day on the job together we stood six hours under the sun plucking fibers off a stiff a wino had found sprawled across his cardboard home at the back of a Walmart. The wino wanted his home back, the Field Unit wanted a pay raise, the removal crew wanted a whole body and this one only came in half, and the lieutenant wanted to know who the hell the stiff was. Bodies don’t come with tags, and this one looked particularly lonely and forlorn. At the end of the long day, Satish shook his head sideways and said, “I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and after a day like this all I wanna do is sit down and eat. What do you think of Angus steak and a glass of Merlot?”
    “I thought you said you didn’t drink.”
    He rocked on his heels and smiled. “Did I? Well, then, I must’ve meant water.”
    Over the five years we’d been together, I’d never seen him boss around, patronize, or raise his voice—save the half a dozen “assholes” he’d spit out from time to time, but a cop who never says asshole is like a Bloody Mary without vodka.
    We saluted the officers on duty at the front desk and walked past the metal detector to the elevators at the back.
    “Such a waste,” Satish complained. He looked down at his feet. “Had to buy a new pair of shoes. The other ones got soaked in blood.”
    I clicked my tongue. “Should’ve used blood-repellant shoe polish.”
    The elevator chimed, the doors slid open. Satish stepped inside, then turned to hold the doors for me. I stared at the crammed elevator car and didn’t move. 
    Right behind Satish, a lady pulled the straps of her purse up her shoulder and glared. A uniformed officer crossed his arms, the radio hanging by his belt barking a four-fifteen code. His partner sneered. All there, waiting for me. The idea didn’t excite me, yet I had no choice but step inside and pitch in my own contribution of morning breath washed down with coffee and body perspiration concealed with dissonant brands of deodorant. To my nose, it was the equivalent of listening to Mahler played by strings out of tune.
    The doors closed and the elevator chimed its way up.
    Once on the third floor, the elevator gave a jolt, and the light flicked. The doors let out a tired groan and opened. We all filed out without taking notice. Completed fifty years earlier, Parker Center, or the Glass House, as we called it, would’ve never passed a safety inspection. The LAPD police administration building was old and outdated; the walls stunk, the floors whined, the elevators creaked. It had the familiar smell of things too old to forget. In the five years spent at the homicide table, I’d gotten used to the decay—the cracks in the walls, the battered look of the desks and cabinets, the stains on the peeling linoleum floors. It had become one of our favorite jokes, to die under a pile of rubble from one of the last non-seismic-compliant buildings in the city, after all the years spent risking our lives in the streets.
    The squad room hadn’t changed much during my six-week leave. Dusty Venetian blinds teetered against the same chafed window trims, and the same stale draft seeped inside, lulled by the droning of the Santa Ana freeway. The musty tang of the walls mingled with the usual smells of aftershave, sweat, mildew from old plumbing leaks, burnt coffee grounds, a hurried breakfast wolfed down in front of a terminal.
    “What are you up to today?” Satish asked.
    My eyes strayed to the lieutenant’s office. “Gotta say hi to the boss and tell him I’m back. You?” I glanced over the reports strewn across his workspace. “Still tied up to the desk?”
    He slumped in his chair and shrugged a shoulder. “You mean handcuffed. Doc’s supposed to clear me next week. Until then, I’m running background checks for the homicide table.” That was just about what “light duty” meant in cop jargon.