Burning Man (6 page)

“You got that one right.”

“There’s no name for the position I’d like to offer you, but what I need is much the equivalent of a devil’s advocate.”

I looked to see if the chief was smiling. He wasn’t. I spoke to my doubts, and maybe my vision: “Are vestments optional?”

“In the Catholic church the official title of the devil’s advocate was Promoter of the Faith. It was the job of the
advocatus diaboli
to present any and all facts unfavorable to the candidate proposed for beatification or canonization.”

“I don’t know how to break this to you, Chief, but I don’t think you have to worry about anyone in the LAPD being nominated for sainthood.”

“I think I’m aware of that, Officer Gideon,” Ehrlich said. “What I’m trying to tell you is that every organization needs its professional skeptic.”

I remembered my moment after, and how I’d had to confront my own festering wounds. I had even attributed a name to how I was feeling, a name I used again. “You’re looking for a Doubting Thomas?”

“I am looking for a point man that can both think and work outside the box. Los Angeles is like no other police department in the world. Our citizenry call this place La La Land, and Hollyweird. We have a unique caseload, and periodically our department is forced to confront situations that are anything but run-of-the-mill. I am looking for someone who can deal with the unusual, the peculiar, the curious, and perhaps even the enigmatic.”

“So you’re talking about me working Elvis sightings and crop circles?”

“I doubt those would even raise eyebrows in Los Angeles. What I was broaching was the possibility of you working special cases.”

“Where I would be your devil’s advocate?”

“That position no longer exists in the Catholic church,” he said. “I believe the church erred when they discontinued that post. Saints need exacting scrutiny.”

“Sinners need it even more.”

“Does such a position interest you?”

“What would I tell people? That I work in the Defense against the Dark Arts Division?”

“I have another name in mind: Special Cases Unit.”

“And would you be the one deciding what a special case is and what’s not?”

“That would be my prerogative, but I’d also expect you to be keeping an ear to the ground and working up cases on your own. With your injuries you could have retired on disability. It’s clear that you’re here because you want to be.”

“There are some cases that fall between the cracks,” I said. “They’re low-priority and they shouldn’t be.”

“You would have carte blanche to work such cases, as long as they didn’t interfere with your special cases.”

“What’s your definition of a special case?”

“Justice Potter Stewart said he couldn’t necessarily define pornography, but said, ‘I know it when I see it.’ We’ll know it when we see it.”

“Would I be reporting to you?”

“You would.”

“I am not the person you’re looking for if what you want is a departmental snitch or a personal lapdog.”

“Those are not positions I had in mind for you.”

“You already have an Internal Affairs Division. I am not going to be playing your devil’s advocate to other cops, am I?”

He shook his head and said, “Only if the case is deemed special.”

“When do you want my decision?”

“How long do you need?”

“By week’s end.”

“That works for me.”

I stood up and we shook hands. Sirius bounced up, but we weren’t able to make our escape without the chief offering some more parting words.

“You should know,” Ehrlich said, “that this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment offer on my part. I have been mulling over the idea of a Special Cases Unit for some months now, and when you arranged for this meeting, I started considering you for the position.

“I expected that you would come in asking for placement in Robbery-Homicide, and I hoped to be able to convince you to give the other position a chance. To that end, I was willing to sweeten the deal.”

From what he was saying, he still was. “Sugar works for me.”

“Upon your acceptance,” he said, “you would be getting your detective’s shield and with it almost total autonomy.”

I wasn’t overwhelmed and my face showed it.

“From day one of the job,” Ehrlich said, “I’d have you on the transfer list to RHD. That way, if things don’t work out, you can ultimately make your move to happier hunting grounds. You might have to wait a year or two to get placed, but by going that route there wouldn’t be nearly as much acrimony.”

That would be a better way of doing it, I knew, but it certainly wasn’t a deal maker.

“And finally,” Ehrlich said, “there is the designation of Special Cases Unit. The word ‘unit’ suggests more than one individual, and that means you would need a partner in special cases. Because you already have a partner, I see no need in breaking up that team.”

Sirius’s ears perked up, almost like he knew what the chief was saying. It was likely he was responding to his tone of voice. This was the sugar.

“Sirius will have office privileges with me?”

“He’ll even have his own desk if he wants one.”

“Where do we sign up?”

CHAPTER 3:
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Rather than work out of the Police Administration Building, Sirius and I had set up shop at the Central Community Police Station. For almost a year Central had been our home. We were less than a mile from the PAB; close enough that its shadows could almost touch us.

As we approached Central I took notice of the looming presence of the PAB. “If it weren’t for you, we’d be at the new headquarters,” I said. “The chief must have heard stories about your fleas.”

The truth of the matter was that I had opted out of an office at PAB. The high-rise wasn’t a good fit for Sirius and me. I was well served by not being near all the big suits, and I hadn’t wanted to have to take a long ride in an elevator every time Sirius needed to water.

One of the best things about my job is that I rarely have to report in to a supervisor. Central’s captain might not be of like mind. Because we aren’t directly under her command, Captain Becker probably wishes the chief had found a different home for us, even though she has never come out and said that.

“We’ll be lucky if Captain Becker doesn’t evict us,” I said. “She’s a cat person.”

Sirius wagged his tail and waited for me to open the door. Cat person or not, the captain was a lot more affectionate with my partner than with me. She is the only one in the station that calls me “Detective.” Everyone else has nicknames for me, all dog related. I am Hound Dog, Horn Dog, Junkyard Dog, Watchdog, Underdog, Bowser, Barker, and Fido. Dog food names and flea medicines are also popular. If the paw fits, you wear it.

As I walked in the door, the watch commander flagged me down. Sergeant Perez has a line of service stripes on his left sleeve, what other cops call hash marks. The hash marks bespeak his years on the job; his wrinkles do the same. “Hey, Alpo,” he said, “I got one that’s right up your alley.”

The watch commander tends to forget that I’m not officially assigned to Central. He knows I work Special Cases Unit—what he calls “Strange Cases Unit”—and that I report to “the brass,” but he likes to treat me as his extra uniform, or in his non-PC terminology, “my spare bitch.”

“It’s another abandoned newborn,” he said, handing me the call sheet, “but this one’s no Moses.”

Moses had been one of my first special cases. His mother had set the newborn adrift in a basket in the LA Aqueduct. Unlike baby Moses on the Nile, the LA Moses didn’t survive his journey. At the onset of the case, there had been the suspicion that the death of Moses was ritualistic in nature because of strange writing on the newborn’s clothes and his basket. As it turned out, though, Moses’s mother was mentally ill and had interpreted a one-day downpour as the start of the next great flood. She had thought she could save her son by putting him in an ark.

“If you don’t want it, Sherlock Bones,” Perez said, “just pass the case to Juvie and let ACU take over the investigation.”

“You can count on me and my Hound of the Baskervilles,” I said.

Perez passed over what information he had. Throwaway babies don’t qualify as high-priority cases, because unfortunately they occur all too often. The baby had been abandoned on South Hill Street, which was nearby.

Sirius and I did an about-face and returned to the sedan. The traffic over to Hill Street was stop and go. It was that time of day when commuters were arriving to roost in their office buildings that make up the skyscraper skyline of downtown LA. Over the last quarter of a century, the downtown area has become trendy and expensive, home to concert halls, museums, and water gardens. Expensive lofts and upscale security condominiums have sprung up everywhere. I am not sure which has undergone more cosmetic surgery in LA—its residents or its residences.

As we drew near to the crime scene, Sirius started nervously pacing the backseat. Police dogs and fire dogs never really retire. “Relax,” I told him. “You know how tech people get cranky about dogs shedding at crime scenes. But I’ll make sure you have a seat on the fifty-yard line, all right?”

Sirius stopped his pacing. I flashed my badge to a uniform standing near the curb, pointed to where I wanted to park, and he lifted up some crime scene tape for me to get by. The forensic field unit was already at the scene, and Sirius and I watched a photographer leaning over a railing, clicking away. I opened all the windows halfway, and Sirius stuck his nose out the window and took a few sniffs. My guess was with those sniffs Sirius probably knew more about what had occurred than anyone working the scene for hours. Sometimes I don’t envy his sense of smell.

When the sergeant gave me the call information, he hadn’t mentioned that the baby had been abandoned at the foot of Angels Flight. I wondered if the baby had been dumped there on purpose, or if the station’s name had inspired someone to leave her there. Angels Flight has long been touted as the shortest railway in the world. The cable railway connects Third and Fourth Streets. It was built at the turn of the twentieth century, serving the well-to-do in
their large Victorian houses. Even when the neighborhood went south and flophouses replaced the Victorians, the railway managed to endure for more than half a century. Downtown redevelopment had brought back Angels Flight a half block from its original location, but a fatal accident in 2001 had shut it down for six years. The railway was finally running again, but it wouldn’t be running today.

I offered greetings and nods but didn’t engage those at work. Before doing anything else, I always take a long, last look at the dead. I bent over like a catcher, getting close to the ground, and tried to filter out my emotions and personal feelings; I was supposed to be the dispassionate cop. This time that didn’t work.

At least, I thought, the baby hadn’t been left in a Dumpster. She had been put in a cardboard box and placed behind a railing at the bottom of the stairway that connected the two streets. Pigeons flocked the area looking for their morning handouts, but the usual habitués that used the concrete embankment as a bench weren’t being allowed in to feed the scavengers.

Looking up, I saw the face of what many called the new downtown. Imposing glass edifices filled the skyline, leaving the old downtown in its shadows. Angels Flight was supposed to be the bridge to those two worlds. Maybe there was no bridge to those two worlds.

It appeared some thought had been given as to where to abandon the baby. The cardboard box had been left in a protected spot above street level. During the day there was a steady stream of pedestrians that passed by the spot. Whoever had abandoned the baby had wanted it to be found. I continued to hunch down, thinking my cop thoughts. The area was fairly well lit at night, but it would have been easy to stay in the shadows and anonymously drop off a baby. It was unlikely that anyone would have trekked down the stairway from above; I had walked the steps a few times and knew the incline was both steep and long. No, someone would
have pulled up to the curb and quickly dropped off the baby and box behind the railing.

I stared up at the empty tracks of Angels Flight. When it was in operation, one railway car went up while the other came down. The cars were named after famous biblical mountains, the one Sinai and the other Olivet. In Catholic school I had been told that Mount Sinai was where God spoke to Moses and where he waited to receive the Ten Commandments. Mount Olivet’s history was no less storied—it was where Jesus retreated on the night he was betrayed, and where he said his farewell to the Apostles. I tilted my head back and scanned Bunker Hill. As far as I knew, no miracles had ever happened there.

Rising, I drew nearer to the cardboard box. Because of the incline, the box was tilted at an angle. I looked inside, and if I hadn’t known better I would have thought some girl had abandoned her doll. The body was impossibly small. She was facedown in the box and draped in a blanket. Her face was planted deep into a small pillow.

The baby had olive-colored skin, but I couldn’t really determine her race. The skin pigment of newborns often changes dramatically over the course of a few days. There were no visible signs of any trauma, but the blanket swaddled most of the body.

I swore under my breath, unable to hide my anger at the senseless death. In 2001, California passed the Safely Surrendered Baby Law, which allows a mother to anonymously surrender her newborn within three days of birth at any emergency hospital and most fire stations. The law was designed to prevent unsafe newborn abandonment. Nowadays, mothers no longer need fear arrest or prosecution for giving up their babies. Mothers that have somehow managed to keep their pregnancy secret for nine months can keep their secret forever and not be punished. It is a good and needed law, but another expectant mother had apparently not heard about it.

The uniformed officer posted just beyond the crime scene tape took my obvious anger as an invitation to comment. “You ask me, people should have to get a license to have children.”