Grave on Grand Avenue (22 page)

“Retribution, perhaps. Maybe he wants in on the action. No luck in finding him?”

I shake my head. “Maybe we should have let him hang
on to the Skylark. At least then we would have known what he was driving.”

“True,” Aunt Cheryl says. “Who would have known that old beater would be worth something?”

Her diss of the Skylark stings for a second, but I let it slide. The more important thing I need to focus on is what she’s telling me about Fernandes. And it’s not anything a granddaughter wants to hear.

TWELVE

So, Puddy Fernandes is a liar. Why should I be surprised? Dad certainly didn’t pick up that gene, but could be it skipped a generation and now maybe has touched Noah. How about me? Although I’m known to be a terrible liar, maybe that’s not my true self. Maybe I’m the biggest liar of all, because I can’t even see the lies I tell myself.

I look down at Shippo, who sits at my feet beside the couch. “You know me, right, Shippo? I can’t fake anything with you.”

He tilts his head at me, and I know he’s probably thinking,
Is it time to eat?

*   *   *

At work the next day, Johnny and I are assigned to Chinatown. There’s a funeral for a prominent Chinese leader at the Baptist church not far from the 110 freeway. Apparently some of the
elders were present during a shooting at a church funeral back in the eighties, and they don’t want to tempt fate by not having some armed officers at the sanctuary. Bike cops will be less intrusive than officers in black-and-whites.

I stand at the back door, while Johnny is at the front. He’s started to attend neighborhood meetings with a Chinese-speaking officer, so he’s been able to cultivate some good relationships with both merchants and residents. Johnny’s clean-shaven (he couldn’t grow a beard even if he wanted to) and nonintimidating. People think that he listens well since he doesn’t say much, though that’s mostly because of his speech impediment.

The funeral goes long and I’m dying of boredom. Most of it is in Chinese, and it seems the so-called mourners are bored, too, because they’re all talking to one another during the pastor’s eulogy. It’s like a weird black comedy with the family members weeping in front but the others all chatting about whatever in the back. Once it’s over, sans any kind of violence, I go around to the front of the sanctuary.

“Gotta run. I got a lunch thing at Philippe’s. I’m late,” Johnny tells me before riding off.

What the—?
I think.
Did he just ditch me?
We usually eat lunch together, so now I’m feeling dissed and at loose ends. Where am I going to eat? Nearby is Eat Chego’s, a brick-and-mortar branch of the Kogi Korean-Mexican taco truck enterprise, but the line is at least eight feet long.

I backtrack on Hill Street past a small hospital. While I wait at the intersection, I see a man dressed in scrubs hasten to lock up his bike on a rack. He does it all wrong, at least according to the Cycling Task Force’s flyer, threading his lock through only the front tire. He runs inside the hospital before I can stop him.

The bike is pink, with a big metal basket on the back—not that there’s anything wrong with a guy riding a pink bike; you just don’t see it that often. It’s kind of weird how there’s a whole color guys aren’t supposed to like. When Noah was in grade school, he always wanted to be the pink Power Ranger. My parents didn’t care, but it bothered the headmaster of his private school when he declared pink to be his favorite color during an assembly.

Anyway, Johnny’s mention of Philippe’s has got me hungering for one of their French dip sandwiches. The restaurant claims to have invented the French dip (slices of beef, lamb, turkey or ham on a crunchy French roll with au jus
to dip it in on the side in a little container. Yes, a vegetarian’s nightmare). It’s a simple place—coffee for forty-five cents, believe it or not—with plain, polished long tables and wood shavings on the floor. It’s my family’s go-to place to eat before Dodger games. (Of course, we also eat Dodger dogs at the stadium, too.)

Anyway, it’s a free country, right? If I feel like eating at Philippe’s, with or without a formal invitation from Officer Johnny Mayhew, I can. I could even choose to sit with him and his date at one of the eatery’s communal tables. I lock up my bike next to his on the rack outside and saunter in, expecting to see him in a cozy spot with a female. As it turns out, he is not only with a woman—the Bunker Hill Divorcée herself, Chale Robertson—but he’s also sitting with Cortez Williams, and next to Cortez is a woman I don’t know. What is Cortez doing with Johnny, and more important, what is he doing with this woman?

She looks to be a little older than me, which makes her a little younger than Cortez, and she’s got a great tan, but not the old-lady skin-cancer kind. She’s naturally bronze, no need for artificial bronzer, damn her. Her light brown
hair has plenty of blond highlights and brushes against sun-kissed shoulders. I know that her shoulders are sun-kissed, because I can plainly see them exposed in her tank top.

Johnny’s right cheek is full of food. He waves me down with a napkin. “Hey, Ellie, over here!”

My annoyance ratchets down. Based on his enthusiasm, he obviously didn’t have a grand plan to leave me high and dry at the Chinese funeral; he just had people to meet.

Cortez shifts his weight on the bench as I approach. “Hello, Ellie,” he says.

“Hi.” I wait for an introduction to the woman beside him, and surprisingly, it’s Chale who offers it. “This is Misty. She’s with the Venice police bicycle unit,” she says, gesturing with a hand whose nails are even bejeweled.

“And this is Officer Ellie Rush. She’s with the downtown BCU,” Cortez says.

“We work together,” Johnny manages with his mouth full.

“Wow, we should get together sometime.” Misty says
wow
with great enthusiasm and earnestness. “We girls have to support each other.”

Yeah, we girls. Wow.

“Hey, maybe Ellie can be part of this, too,” she says to the others, as if an idea has suddenly crossed her mind.

A part of what?

Chale explains that the Venice and Central bicycle units are going to be featured on an episode of
Divorcées of Bunker Hill
.

I don’t get it, and I guess my lack of understanding is plain on my face.

“Okay, my purse is going to get stolen in Bunker Hill and
then Misty is going to find it on a street entertainer on the boardwalk in Venice,” Chale says. “I’m going to rush over there”—she smiles slyly—“in my designer bikini, of course—and it’s hooray, LAPD!”

So much for the
reality
in reality TV.

Johnny just nods, devouring the other half of his French dip.

“Ellie, would you like something? I can order for you,” Cortez says.

“Oh, yes, Cortez, get Ellie a sandwich.” Misty gently nudges Cortez, like they’re an old married couple.

“Come on, sit down,” Chale insists.

“I’m okay,” I say, even though my stomach is growling. The purse-theft episode sounds totally lame. “Are you sure that the captain . . . ?”

“He thinks it’s great. So does Officer Haines with Media Relations,” Cortez tells me.

Haines would,
I think.

“Cortez will have a role, too,” Misty says. “He’ll be the one giving the public service announcement at the end.”

What public service announcement? “Beware of reality stars in bikinis with large designer handbags”?
“I’m surprised that you have time for this, Cortez,” I finally say. “With the Old Lady Bandit investigation and everything.”

Cortez immediately registers my sarcasm; I’m not sure about Johnny, who’s in both French dip and Chale heaven.

“I didn’t know you were assigned to that case,” Misty says to Cortez.

Uh-oh, do I detect a lack of communication here?

“Well, I have to go. I have to get back to
work
.” I’m good at piling on guilt. I’ve learned from the best: my mother.

I turn to the exit, and hear some quick good-byes behind me. I go back to the rack to retrieve my bicycle and start riding north on Alameda to burn off some steam. I know I’m being ridiculous. Cortez owes me nothing. No explanations. We are not dating. We are not girlfriend and boyfriend. Yet I felt a sharp pang of jealousy when I saw him sitting there with that woman. Another bike cop. A prettier and nicer bike cop than me.

I curse myself. I hate when I feel and act this way. When we were dating, Benjamin always told me I got so crazy insecure over nothing. I want to stop feeling inferior. I mean, hey, I graduated from college in three years. Got through the Police Academy. I’m working as a cop. I should be proud of myself. Stand tall. But it’s hard for me to change. I can’t just wave a magic wand and make myself feel better.

I pass a low-budget hotel that some of my friends from San Francisco have stayed at. The hotel itself is fine, but the rest of the area here is pretty industrial. I pedal past the Chinatown Gold Line train station, painted in bright red, green, orange and yellow, and adorned with—what else?—dragons. Across the way is Homegirl Café, a “second-chance” eatery that trains former convicts and gang members. I’m tempted to stop by to at least pick up a shortbread cookie, but I’m not in a mood to stand in line.

Before I know it, I’m practically out of Chinatown. I’m next to an old factory that maybe once manufactured noodles or embroidery thread. There’s a beat-up van parked at the curb, its side door open. I see a man wearing a torn T-shirt guide a bicycle from the van into the back of the building. It’s not just any kind of bicycle: it’s a pink one with a big metal basket on the back, now missing a front tire. It’s the
same exact one that I saw in front of the hospital earlier. The roll-up door is then quickly lowered by another man from the outside. He spots me and acts weird, slamming the van’s side door shut and running to the driver’s-side door. Before I can stop him, he gets in and drives away.

I radio in that I may have located a piece of stolen property. The bicycle didn’t look like it was worth that much, so it’s not going to fall into grand theft or anything like that. There’s a regular metal door next to the roll-up. I bang on the door’s surface with the back of my club. In spite of the noise, no one lets me in.

I ride to the front of the building. It’s a storefront selling big, plush stuffed animals, the kind offered as prizes at carnivals. The woman behind the counter is talking on a cell phone and makes a face when I enter on my bike. Walking toward me from the back storeroom is the same Asian guy in the torn T-shirt. He didn’t go far. The woman barks out something, maybe a warning, I think, because he dashes out the same way he entered.

“Stop! Police!” I call out. I jump off my bike, pushing away a gigantic stuffed panda to follow him through a hallway into a darkened storage area. The back door opens, a rectangle of light filling the room for a moment, enough for me to run after it. I reach the door before it closes completely. I wrench it open and my eyes adjust to the blinding sun outside.

Boyd and Azusa must have been close, because they’re already here in a patrol car; it’s parked in the middle of the narrow street. They stand in the street, their hands on their guns. The suspect clearly knows the drill. He immediately raises his arms and falls down on his knees.

As Azusa cuffs him, Boyd checks with me.

“Yeah, that was the guy,” I confirm. Torn T-shirt is actually much older close up. He gives me a side eye of hate.

“So where’s the bike?”

“I think he placed it here.” I go back through the metal door in the storefront storage area and turn on the light. It takes me a few seconds before I fully absorb what’s in front of me: at least a hundred bicycles stacked on top of one another, some missing front tires, some with sawed-off frames. Newish-looking tires are piled in the middle of the room, next to large tubs of paint. There’s a faint smell of chemicals in the air.

Boyd, probably wondering what was taking me so long, joins me inside. “Wow, Rush,” he says, as he props up his sunglasses on top of his head. “You’ve hit the mother lode.”

*   *   *

Officer Jorge Mendez, our official LAPD liaison with the bicycling community, is beside himself. He keeps walking from one side of the warehouse to the other and swearing, not in anger but in amazement. I’m working as hard as I can to tag all the bicycles with a case number, date and time, location, and the name of the officer who found the property (me!). Other officers are taking photographs, and evidence clerks have come in vans to take the tagged items to police storage.

“Ruuuuuush,” Jorge says my name like a sports cheer. And then goes back to more swearing.

I’ve tagged at least fifty bicycles. At least fifty more to go.

“Biggest bike theft ring in maybe the history of downtown LA—put down by the Central’s Bicycle Coordination
Unit,” Jorge says to no one in particular. “Take a break,” he says to me. “Stand up.”

“Why?” I murmur. I want to finish before my shift ends.

“I want to take your photo for my Twitter feed.” He aims his iPhone toward me and I scowl in response.

“Your Twitter feed? I thought that we stopped all that.”

“Not the bicycle units. All the bike groups are active on social media. They’ll Retweet this for sure.”

Before I can grab his phone, Captain Randle enters the warehouse. “Mother of God,” he mutters as he stares at the stacks of bikes.

“Media Relations is already working on this,” Jorge says to Captain Randle. “There will be a press conference on Monday. Haines will be calling you.”

Captain Randle nods.

“And you!” Jorge turns to me. “I
have
to take you out for at least one beer.”

The captain smiles his approval. “You deserve it, Rush. If I didn’t have this dinner to go to with my wife, I’d even join you.”

“How about it, Rush?” Jorge extends his arms. If it’s good enough for Captain Randle, I guess it should be good enough for me.

“I have to finish tagging,” I tell him. It would be nice if someone else were helping me.

“Of course,” says Jorge. “And you have your police report, too. In the meantime, I have a ton of Tweets that I have to catch up on.”