chapter three

Thirty minutes later, I’d parked the car on the street a little way down from the Code Seven VR-Bar. Perched on the border between Hollywood and NOHO, the cop bar was an easy half-block walk down Cahuenga Boulevard.

As we strolled toward the entrance, Shin undid the top two buttons of his turquoise and ebony shirt.

“So, how’re you gonna pop the question to Jo?” Shin said. “Drone ring drop, stadium marquee, or your basic grovel on the knees at an overpriced restaurant?”

He pulled his shirttail free, letting it hang loose over the belt of his 501 jeans. The weave of his shirt’s solar-block fabric tightened in the heat of the sun’s rays, making the palm trees on the Hawaiian shirt seem to sway in a breeze.

“Jo’s not into big public displays.” I pulled the ring box out of my suit pocket and held it open for him to see. “Will she like it, you think?”

Shin squinched his face against the glare and glanced appreciatively at the two carat emerald-cut diamond. “Set you back ten grand?”

“More.”

Shin’s low whistle was appreciative.

The ring did more than sparkle in that light. Sun, so hot it shimmered off the pavement, pooled in the air. Everything looked solarized—colors the bleached tones of Navaho blankets left too long in the sun.

“Jo’d say yes to zirconium,” Shin said. “But even Ahn would approve of that.”

Ahn, Shin’s wife of twenty-six years, was almost as devoted to the finer things in life as she was to him. My partner pulled a Hanshin Tigers baseball cap out of his back pocket and jammed it on his shaved head without breaking stride.

I eyeballed his outfit and smiled. Shin habitually morphed to a casual-Friday look as soon as his shift was over, but I liked the gray suit and fedora of the RHD. A personal rebellion against the casual everyday world our fathers left us. Today the streets were a sea of hats. What started as another hipster fad had taken hold as necessary protection from the sun five years back.

“I gotta see that,” Shin yelled, pointing up at the digital billboards for “Batman vs. Dracula 3.” Digital bats chased each other up and around the sides of adjacent skyscrapers.

The billboards made my eyes burn. “You already have,” I yelled back over the noise of the ads. “They just made it faster.”

“Give in to the dark side of the Force,” Shin intoned in a mock-serious voice. “Everybody else has.”

Advertainment was everywhere. An eighty-ish woman with a parasol flashing a promo for Sun Salute solar panels passed us by. Faded sleeve tattoos blanketed her withered arms. I couldn’t make out the design. Any red or green had long ago bled back into the body, leaving only the blue-black smudge. At least the deceased Britney Devonshire’s rice paper skin was spared that degradation.

Once inside the Code Seven, the bar’s sensors muffled the street racket. With its dark wood and crimson leather booths, the Code Seven was a high tech replicant of a 1940s cop bar. There were virtual reality booths along the wall where the occasional tourist could role play a crime scene with Bogart’s Sam Spade, minus the half-open milky white eyes and stink of real death.

Cops just came for the whisky and beer.

Shin accepted a frosty mug of Moon Harvest Kirin 2040 from the bartender.

I signaled him to put Shin’s beer on my tab and ordered a double shot of twelve-year-old Hakushu single malt for myself. There was a heavy satisfying weight to the glass tumbler in my hand. I took off my hat and set it on the bar next to a vintage bowl of fresh peanuts.

Shin tapped my glass with his frosty mug and gulped down a mouthful of beer.

The whisky burned my throat and left a warm happy glow.

“Piedmont, you drinkin’ whisky?” a familiar voice boomed from the entrance to the bar. “I thought you only sucked down wheatgrass lattes so you can keep that girlish figure camera-ready.” The voice belonged to Detective Timberman from NOHO Homicide.

Timberman was a study in beige. His light brown hair, eyes, trucker tan, beige shirt, polyester jacket and Dockers all blended into a mash-up of bland on bland.

I shot a glance at his gut, spilling over his belt. “Looks like you could use a couple wheatgrass lattes.” I signaled to the bartender, who set a glass of Johnny Walker Red on the polished oak for Timbo.

He smiled. Timberman had unusually small teeth of grayish yellow. “So, ladies,” he continued as he ambled over to us and lowered his bulk onto the barstool like an elephant settling in at a watering hole.“What brings you to sit with us peasants in the 8-1-8?” He tossed back the whisky.

“Your lieutenant called us in to cover your ass.” I grinned and filled him in on the dead stripper case.

“And here I thought RHD finally kicked out the Boy Wonder.” Timbo belched.

Boy Wonder. Three years ago, I’d brought down a serial killer who’d terrorized the city. The department had promoted me and plastered my face all over L.A. in order to take advantage of the rare good publicity. So, at the age of twenty-six I’d moved from NOHO to Homicide Special, one of the youngest D-2’s ever to make the unit. Timberman wasn’t the only cop who had never stopped giving me grief.

“Have some peanuts, Timberman.” Shin slid the bowl towards him. “They’ll take away that taste of sour grapes.”

Timbo smirked.

“You working the Zeta war?” I said.

North Hollywood was ground zero for the ongoing turf battle between the Zetas and AzteKas, two rival gangs tied to Mexican drug cartels. With profits from the marijuana market down since pot went legal, they’d flooded the city with Green Ice and other illicit drugs. As they fought for territory, the gangs were tearing big bloody chunks out of each other and leaving the chum for the police to mop up. Three of those bodies left behind were corpses the Medical Examiner had to finish before the Britney Devonshire autopsy.

An old song floated over the soft light of the dingy bar. Cigar smoke circled heavily around the guys’ heads like a spectral cat, mocking the “no smoking” signs.

More cops migrated into the Code Seven, celebrating a birthday. Timberman joined them. Shin and I stayed at the bar for another round, chatting about his daughter Yasuko’s second year at UCLA and the hit his bank account was taking. The small talk got smaller, and we stood to go.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Eddie.” Jack the bartender handed me a Redbull for Shin and a ChillWater for myself before picking up glasses and wiping down the polished oak.

I nodded and held out my wrist—exposing the standard identification barcode tattooed there. Flashing his diamond studded teeth in an answering grin, Jack waved the sensor over the chip embedded under the skin of the tattoo, recording my purchase. I handed Shin the Redbull as we headed out the door.

Cacophony sounded the second I crossed the threshold back onto the street. The news was on the megathons racing up the sides of buildings on the boulevard.

“Six hundred fifty thousand more Americans underwent nano-cosmetic surgery this year, marking a sharp increase in profits from Magic Makeovers,” trumpeted the blonde spokesmodel on the Fox WSJ Market channel.

NBC’s Tomorrow Today Show interrupted with a promo for their special report on Alzheimer’s X. “Early onset-dementia has claimed record numbers of victims under thirty this quarter,” said a different blond commentator, a Latina. Images of blank-eyed teens, warehoused in special wards which had sprung up since the plague hit, flashed by on the screens.

“We should check for that Monday.” Shin pointed at the newsfeed. “If a doctor told me I had early-onset dementia, I’d think about putting a spike in my vein.”

“If you had it,” I said, “it wouldn’t be early onset.”

“You hear that whoosing sound behind you, eight-pack?” Shin leaned in so close I could feel his hot beer-breath on my skin. “That’s the sound of middle-age coming for you.”

Shin reached out and grabbed a handful of air, stumbling a little. I grabbed his elbow and righted his stance.

“Breaking news today on a stunning reversal,” said the Latina on CNN’s Crimecast. “Convicted murderer Alfonso Nieto’s sentence has been overturned due to irregularities in his trial.”

I froze.

“Irregularities in his trial.” Shin said. A Japanese native, he tripped a little over the r’s when he drank. “They make it sound like a laxative ad.”

I just shook my head. “The tiger,” I said, flipping my wrist.

“Rolled over.” Shin nodded. Years ago, he’d told me the ancient Japanese used to think the earth rested on the skin of a tiger. Whenever there was an earthquake or an event that rattled their world, they’d said the tiger rolled over.

“Two and a half years ago Alfonso Nieto,” continued the Crimecast anchor, “a high-ranking enforcer in the AzteKa cartel, was convicted of the murder of Manuel Ortega, a rival in the Zetas. A minor dispute escalated into tragedy that left more than two families devastated and Alfonso Nieto in prison for life.”

“Minor dispute,” Shin scoffed.

“He disputed Nieto’s right to blow his brains out,” I said.

A photo appeared as the newscaster blathered on. With his affable smile and salt and pepper hair, Alfonso Nieto looked more like everybody’s favorite brother than a stone-cold murderer.

“Nieto appealed the verdict when a supplemental police report from the first officer on the scene, Miguel F. Obrador, came to light after the verdict had been given.” The newscast blathered on. Apparently, that supplemental report gave Nieto the hammer he needed to win on appeal.

“And they let him off.” Staring at that smug face blown up to a hundred times its actual size, an angry red tide washed through me. It wasn’t my case, but like every cop, I knew the basic facts. I wasn’t all broken up about the death of another Zeta. But Nieto had set off a bomb that had taken out a detective and and more than a few innocent civilians. That was why every cop cheered when he was sent down for Ortega’s murder. I remember that celebration well. That was the year I joined Robbery-Homicide.

As I stood gawking on the sidewalk, my hand curled into a tight fist. The urge to hurl something through Nieto’s pixilated visage was strong.

Shin put his hand on my pitching arm. “Don’t lose sleep over it, Eddie. Today’s suspect, tomorrow’s victim.” Shin intoned the departmental mantra. “Karma gets them in the end.”

I swallowed, trying to get rid of the sudden bitter taste in my mouth. “Problem is karma’s a slow draw.”