chapter five

The storm hit the next day. Captain Tatum wanted to see me right away.

The story as spun: white cop shoots fourteen-year-old Latino honor student, had made the late-night news and gone viral on the web in a heartbeat. Paco’s smiling middle school photo with his big Bambi eyes played non-stop on the news cycle. Pictures of him shooting the .9 mm at that black and white, and us, didn’t.

I hadn’t slept a wink. Now as I wended my way towards Nokia P.D., an angry throng of people crowded the steps of the new police headquarters, calling for blood, my blood.

Nokia P.D. is a ten-story edifice of steel, metal glass and stone planted on the Second Street site of the former police headquarters, which in turn had replaced the crumbling Parker Center in 2010.

After the work of a suicide bomber had turned the new headquarters into a coffin for a hundred cops in 2029, the wireless company stepped in with the cash. The re-christend building looked like the architectural love child of the Getty Museum and a high-security fort.

“Once again police brutality is out of control in L.A.!” shouted a lean middle-aged man on the steps. He had razor cut hair and eyes that leaked bitterness into the waiting camera of reporters from Crimecast and the news blogs covering the story.

It was Ira Natterman spouting his usual diatribe. Natterman was a civil rights attorney whose entire career centered on suing the police for alleged violations. The joke among cops was that the most dangerous beat in L.A. was between Natterman and a microphone. And here he was, moist red lips hovering over the mike, a ravenous junk yard dog about to grab that bone.

Community policing, body-cams, huge increases in diversity hires, sensitivity training, none of it ever changed Natterman’s spiel. Whatever else ailed society: fatherlessness, mental health issues, drug addiction, poverty—to Natterman police were always the problem. Well, we were his meal ticket after all.

“We demand justice for this child’s death, and his mother’s pain.” Natterman pointed to the red-eyed woman at his side.

Keeping my eyes on the ground, I moved ahead. That was low, using the mother’s grief like that. Still, Natterman’s spiel was old news to me. But halfway up the steps the lawyer’s next line made me pause.

“We demand jail time for the reckless cop who put an end to the life of this fourteen-year-old honor student,” he continued, grabbing the mike of the Crimecast reporter for emphasis. “Past reforms have not worked. Let’s make an example and end racist police brutality this time!”

The crowd behind the reporters roared approval. Would these people screaming for my blood even have registered a complaint if events had gone the other way, and Shin or I were the ones lying in that steel drawer of the morgue today? I didn’t feel very confident about the answer.

But I slipped through the crowd unnoticed and made my way inside Nokia.

RHD took up most of the third floor. Comprised of approximately one-hundred and ten sworn and civilian personnel under the command of Captain III Cheryl Tatum, RHD housed five sections: Robbery, Homicide, Special Assault, Cold Case and Special Investigation. As I passed RSS, my footsteps echoed on reinforced concrete. Digital frames hung on the corridor walls under energy-efficient fluorescents. The images changed every few seconds, displaying black and white wanted posters of suspects at large. Entering the Homicide Special Section, I glanced at the large digital “on-call” board, which dominated the front wall of the squad room. The board listed detective teams available for dispatch to new homicides. My name wasn’t on it.

An aisle split the large room into two halves—Homicide I and Homicide II. The squads alternate by the week, with two-person teams often working independently. Walking past the two rows of twelve metal desks flanking the aisle felt like walking a gauntlet. I nodded to Shin, sitting next to my empty desk in Homicide I. He flashed me a wan smile and a thumbs up. Making my way past the silent detectives planted behind those gray metal desks, and the doors to the offices of the two lieutenants who oversee each squad, I’d slid my barcode over the security scanner outside the captain’s office. The door opened and I went in. LCD crystals on the privacy screen darkened the windows and muffled the sound almost before I’d closed the door. It didn’t matter. Every detective in RHD knew what was going down.

Tatum didn’t get up. She sat behind her desk, glaring at me. Captain Tatum had over twenty-seven years with the LAPD, and every year showed. She was a fifty-year old African-American with a body gone soft around the middle. Her eyes, however, were liquid steel.

“You wanted to see me, Captain?” I took off my hat, smoothed my hair and sat in the chair fronting her desk. I could see my face floating in the air before her. The open file on her computer was my jacket and ten card.

“Carmen Ramirez, mother of the deceased, has filed a complaint against you, citing wrongful death.”

“I saved two lives.”

“But you shot and killed her fourteen-year-old son.”

“He shot first.” I clenched the brim of my fedora hard enough to turn my knuckles white but kept my voice steady.

She nodded with narrowed eyes. “You’re one of my best detectives and most decorated officers. So why is it you keep drawing fire?”

“Captain, that kid was a tweaked-out baby-banger. He fired shots and drove a three-ton stolen vehicle straight at my partner and a civilian. What was I supposed to do?”

“Let someone who didn’t have a blood alcohol reading just under the legal limit take the call,” Tatum snapped. “Thank God the uniform who tested your BAC had enough sense to wait.”

I sat back in my chair. .08 is the legal blood alcohol limit. The officer, who had administered the breathalyzer, had done so an hour or more after the crash, giving my system time to wash some of the alcohol out. Legally, I hadn’t been drunk, but I had been drinking.

“Our shift was over. I was off duty.” I was careful to edit out all mention of Shin.

“You responded to the call. In a police vehicle.”

“Because the suspect slammed into the black and white already in pursuit. Right in front of us. Ramirez disabled them, then shot at us.”

“Piedmont, we’re RHD. We investigate officer-involved shootings. We’re not supposed to be the subject of the investigation. Maybe we promoted you too fast.” She leaned back in her chair, peering at me.

A chill crept along my spine.   

“Then there’s the racial element,” she continued, leaning forward again, placing her elbows on top of the desk and folding her hands together.

“Racist? The driver wasn’t even visible.” I explained that even if it hadn’t been dark, the Excaliber SUV had sported illegally tinted windows.

“Racial, not racist, detective. Take it from a Black woman in a White world, there’s always a racial element.”

“The cameras should back me up,” I said. “I was within policy.”

The Captain put both her hands flat on her desk and pressed down as if she was either about to hoist herself up or keep the desk from levitating. “Civilians don’t read police policy. They see the video of a dead child. You know the spotlight the department’s under. Ambulance chasers are just looking for an excuse to tie our hands. Here you hand them another viral video.”

“This was a righteous shoot.”

“Your second in five years.” Tatum jabbed her index finger at my floating file. The black hair and faded denim eyes rippled into pixels, then coalesced into my face once more. “I have cops who’ve never pulled their guns their entire twenty on the force.”

They must work Pacific Palisades. We both knew those cops waved and drove by trouble so they wouldn’t have to have this conversation.

“You want cops,” I said, “or politicians out there?”

“Policing is political.” Tatum exhaled a long, exasperated sigh. “Why didn’t Miyaguchi drive?”

An eighteen-wheeler sat on my tongue.

Those steely eyes bored into mine for a few seconds before they softened a micro-millimeter. “Still not good enough,” Captain Tatum said. “Not for RHD. Go home. You’re on modified-administrative duty pending O.I.S. investigation. But Piedmont, if O.I.S. rules against you, you’re out. We’re not baseball. You don’t get a third strike. Now get out of here.”

The privacy screen lifted; I stood and jammed my hat back on my head. Eight pairs of eyes met me on the way out. As I walked through that gauntlet, nobody said a word. Shin’s arched eyebrows framed his unspoken question as he mimed a hammer pounding a nail into his desk. I nodded and went home.