27

 

 

After a quick shower and a change of clothes, I threw on my leather jacket and headed over to Jenny’s Café. Despite getting there ten minutes early, I was still the second to arrive. Officer Lee was already ensconced in a corner booth, her back to the wall.

I sat down opposite her. “Hey,” I said, and cringed. Brilliant conversationalist.

The waitress seemed to appear at the table out of thin air, rescuing me from further banality.

“Coffee,” I told her.

I noticed Officer Lee—

Anna. Her name is Anna.

—already had a cup in front of her.

When the waitress departed, I met Anna’s gaze and smiled. “Coffee at eight-thirty at night?”

She shrugged. “I work graveyard. It’s morning for me.”

“I remember those days,” I said. Back when I was a cop, too, I thought, but didn’t add. Still, the inference was there, and a slightly awkward silence followed.

“I’m glad you called me back,” I finally ventured.

Her face remained impassive. “You sounded surprised.”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“You almost arrested me, for one.”

The waitress returned with a coffee pot, filling my cup and topping off Anna’s. We maintained radio silence while she was there. As she walked away, I continued. “You didn’t exactly see me at my best.”

“That’s the job,” Anna said. “Especially on graveyard. You see the worst people. Or good people at their worst.”

“Which one was I?”

A hint of amusement played in her expression. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I? What does that tell you?”

I took a sip of my coffee and thought about it. “I’ll be honest. I’m not sure.”

“Then maybe you’re not as smart as you seem.”

I laughed at that. “Smart? I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow. “So you’re stupid, then?”

“No. I’m probably somewhere in between. The ‘S’ word that describes me best is probably stubborn.”

She considered that, nodding slowly. “It fits. But stubborn can be a vice as much as a virtue.”

“It does seem to work out as one or the other, depending.”

“Such things do. Well, then, what about me? Which ‘S’ word describes me best?”

I thought about it. A couple of words occurred to me, but none that completely fit. Finally, I shrugged. “I think your word is an ‘M’ word.”

She took a sip and motioned for me to continue.

“Mysterious,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, drawing out the sound. “The mysterious Asian woman. Quite the cliché.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You could have stayed with ‘S’, though. As in ‘shadowy.’ Or ‘secretive.’”

“I considered both. They don’t fit.”

“But ‘mysterious’ does? How?”

I took a deep breath. Then a thought struck me, and I smiled again.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just seems like an awful philosophical start to a first date, is all.”

“This isn’t a date,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s coffee.”

I nodded. “Good enough.”

I took another drink of the coffee, and savored the robust flavor. Then I spread out my hands in front of me. “Cards on the table, okay?”

She watched me, saying nothing. But I saw an almost imperceptible nod, so I continued.

“I called you because I liked you,” I said. “Simple as that. I like the way you handle yourself, and I like your no bullshit approach to things. And I think you’re pretty. I don’t know what I expected when I called, but I hoped we’d at least have coffee so I could get to know you better.” I paused, then added, “And that’s as straight as I can tell it.”

She started to answer but I held up my hand to stop her. She gave me a curious look, but held her silence.

“The reason I said you were mysterious doesn’t have anything to do with your ethnicity. You’re mysterious because even though I’ve known a lot of cops, I’ve never met one like you. You’re mysterious because you’re here having coffee with me even though there’s no way you don’t know that I was on the job once. And that means you know what happened.” I hesitated, then amended, “What I did. And why I’m not a cop anymore.”

She waited, watching me.

I took a deep breath and pushed on. “If you know all of that, it only follows that you know what’s happened since I left the job. My run-ins with the department, and how those events probably looked to most people.”

I leaned forward a little, locking her gaze with my own. “So if you know all of those things, you have to admit it’s a little mysterious that you’re still sitting here, drinking coffee with me, don’t you think?”

She sat for a few moments, staring back at me with flat eyes. I tried to read something in those eyes, but they were inscrutable, betraying nothing.

The silence went on long enough for the waitress to come back around and top off our cups, again. Neither of us acknowledged her. A large part of me fully expected Anna to tell me I was right, and stand up and leave.

Finally, she moved her hands in the same open hand gesture I made earlier. “Cards on the table?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

She took a sip of her fresh coffee, and put down the cup. “Let’s be clear. I know who you are. I know about Amy Dugger. Everyone does.”

I cringed slightly, but she took no notice.

“But I didn’t know you were the officer involved until after we met, and I did some checking. So yes, I know about your misdemeanor conviction. I read the report on that case, and the one Detective Browning investigated involving the suicide on the South Hill. I Googled your name, too. I’m thorough, and I did my research.”

“But you’re sitting here.”

She nodded.

I spread open my hands. “Mysterious, see?”

“Not really, if you knew me.”

“I’m trying to.”

“Then here’s the horsepower,” she said.

I smiled slightly at her use of cop slang.

“I’m half Chinese,” she told me. “My father’s side. My mother was half Japanese and half black.”

I peered more closely at her, examining her features. I tried to find the different ethnicities there, but what I saw most was an attractive blend.

“Try to fit in with that mix,” she said. “The Chinese and Japanese have hated each other for centuries, and both of them look down on anything African as sub-human. I grew up in San Francisco, which is supposed to a bastion of peace, love, and understanding. It didn’t work out that way for me. If I was around Chinese, they saw my mother’s side. Same with Japanese, same with African Americans. Everybody saw what was different.”

She paused to take another sip of coffee, then continued.

“When we moved up here, it was no better. Almost everyone up here is white, and I gave them three different options to be prejudiced against.”

I felt a pang of shame, but I knew she was right. In some quarters, River City could just as easily be called Racist City.

“If you go through all of that as a kid, a couple of things happen. You get pretty good at not taking crap off of anyone, and you get pretty comfortable being alone. Both of those talents stuck with me into adulthood, and onto the job.” She cocked her eyebrow at me again. “Does that take away some of the mystery?”

“Some,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t explain why you’re sitting here.”

“Maybe I like you.”

“I hope you do. But it doesn’t explain—”

She interrupted. “Everything doesn’t have to be explained on a first date, does it?”

I stopped. “No, I guess not.”

“Good.”

“But this is just coffee. Isn’t it?”

She smiled, just a little, for the first time. It lit up her eyes in a way that made me smile involuntarily in response. “Cards on the table?”

“Yes,” I said.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s keep that part mysterious for now.”

I was okay with that.