Grave on Grand Avenue (26 page)

It’s my mother. “Congratulations on your arrest of the bicycle thieves. Your boss must be very happy.”

Even though it’s late, almost eleven, I call my mom back. Ever since she went through chemo, her sleeping patterns are all messed up. She now barely sleeps, making her both a night owl and an early-morning person.

“Hi, Mom, sorry to call so late.”

“I’m up. Reading for my book club.”

“Book club? Since when did you start doing that?”

“Janice got me into it. They read the most depressing books. It’s almost like the more suffering, the better.”

“Oh.” I give it another month before Mom picks up a different activity. “Anyway, you called?”

“Yes, I read the post on
Bicycle News
.”

“Since when do you read the
Bicycle News
?”

“I have you on Google Alerts.”

“Why would you have me on Google Alerts?”

“Well, you don’t tell me anything. How else can I find out things about you?”

Even more reason not to be on social media.

“Anyway, congratulations on solving the case.” Mom makes me sound like Nancy Drew. Ellie Rush and the Missing Pink Bicycle.

“Thanks, Mom. It was actually kind of an accident—”

“No, no, don’t do that. Don’t sell yourself short,” Mom says. “You did something of note in your field, and you need to be proud of it. I am.”

When my mother says things like this, it always throws me for a loop. Lately she’s been giving me more compliments and I don’t know what to do with it. So I change the subject. “By the way,” I say. “I have some bad news. Benjamin’s mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.”

“Ovarian cancer. Oh, that’s not good. Hard to detect.”

“She had a hysterectomy. The surgeon found some cancer cells in her lymph nodes, but they think they got all of it.”

“She’s about my age?” Mom has met Mrs. Choi only a couple of times.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I’m so sorry, Ellie. Tell Benjamin that I’ll be cheering her on. She’ll get through it. And if she ever wants to talk to someone . . .”

My mother’s nurturing mood gets me to further open up. “By the way, has Aunt Cheryl mentioned if she was dating anyone?”

“What?” Mom is scandalized. “Who is she dating?”

“I’m not sure, or even if she is. I was just wondering if she’d said anything to you or Grandma.”

“Well,” Mom says, “I have your aunt on Google Alerts, too, and so far I haven’t seen anything new.”

See, NSA, if you have a need for a middle-aged Japanese American woman, I have the perfect candidate for
you.

FIFTEEN

I’m at Grand Central Market on Monday morning, sitting at the counter of a popular breakfast place that specializes in organic coddled eggs. It’s early, a little after eight a.m., and I’m in my full uniform. After playing telephone tag with Cortez, we’ve finally made a time to meet up. It’s for less than an hour before work, but with the LAPD’s joint investigation of the Old Lady Bandit robberies, I’ll have to take what I can get.

I check my phone. Cortez is a few minutes late; it’s not like him, but no message, so he must be on his way.

And then, magically, he appears in the empty seat next to me.

“Sorry,” he says, “accident on the 10.” He does a double take. “Hey, you look nice.”

Yes, I’ve actually pinned my long horse hair into a bun (took me two packages of bobby pins), rubbed some tinted moisturizer on my face, and even applied a couple of wands of mascara. I’m going to receive a commendation at City
Council chambers today, so I might as well look respectable, even if I’ll be receiving that commendation from a man I don’t have any respect for.

“Thanks,” I say. “You’ve been busy.”

“Worked all through the weekend.”

We both order coffee and our expensive breakfasts.

“I know that you can’t say much about the investigation, but you haven’t mentioned anything, have you? About Puddy Fernandes being related to me?”
Or, more important, to Aunt Cheryl?

Cortez frowns. “No, no. That would never—I keep my word, Ellie. Is that why you wanted to see me?”

“Ah, well, I’ve been thinking . . .” I say. Actually, I have been thinking nonstop for the past three days, both during work and on my day off on Sunday. I trace a finger on a glass saltshaker on the counter. “I just want to say that I’m sorry if I seemed weird that day at Philippe’s. I should have been nicer to your friends.”

“Not really my friends. Just Misty. She’s my best friend’s wife.”

“Yeah, I heard,” I say. I am such a doofus.

“Anyway, I don’t think Misty noticed.”

“But you did.”

Cortez smiles. “I did.”

Our expensive but beautiful breakfasts arrive. “By the way,” I announce, “this is my treat.”

“Oh really?”

“This is my ‘I admit that I’ve been slightly crazy’ apology.”

“Well, okay. I’ll take it.”

For the next half hour, it’s like when we first met earlier this year. We tease, laugh and share silly stories. It’s light.
Comfortable. I want it to keep going. Then Cortez has to go and ruin it by saying, “So what is this we’re doing, Ellie?”

“What do you mean?”

“I like you, Ellie. I want to spend more time with you. Alone. I don’t want you to get upset at me when I don’t even know what I’ve done.”

It would be so easy for me to say back,
I like you, too, Cortez
. But saying those words scare me. I don’t know whether it means going through a door I’m not ready for.

Cortez glances at his watch. “I need to go. You don’t need to say anything to me right now. Just think about it, okay?”

*   *   *

As I enter the City Council chamber, the Media Relations guy, Officer Marc Haines, greets me at the door. He’s all happy, practically panting like Shippo does when I open up some new treats. It’s pretty pathetic.

I’ve been inside this room a few times before; the first time was probably when I was in grade school and Aunt Cheryl was receiving a commendation of her own. With its steepled ceilings, hanging lights and tile mosaics, it made me feel like I’d stepped back in time to some foreign place in Europe with kings and knights. Indeed, even today, the chamber feels like a slightly religious place—at least, until the proceedings start. Then you feel like you’ve walked into some Shakespearean play with one too many fools, most of them politicians.

Jorge looks miserable when he sees me, and so does Mac. A morning of awkwardness. Fantastic.

Each of us sits in a different pew, but Haines gathers us together like a high school sports team. I’m just waiting for him to pull out a whistle and make us huddle and cheer, “Go LAPD!”

Mac is up first. I have no idea why he’s going to be commended. The council agenda gives no clue.

Mac stands next to a councilman for the San Fernando Valley. All fifteen members of the council sit at a curved wooden desk and face us in the wooden pews in the public gallery.

I’m confused. I know Mac lives in the Valley, but we in the Central Division service downtown LA. The councilman is older and has been in his seat for a number of years. I recognize his name. I think there’s a middle school named after him.

The councilman tells all of us to wait one minute and then a young man in a suit—maybe one of his aides—hands him a small package. At first I think it may be a gift of some kind, but no, it’s alive. It’s a Yorkshire terrier about a third of Shippo’s size.

The crowd coos. The terrier is adorable. But I’m still scratching my head. What does this have to do with Mac?

Then the councilman tells his story. “I was going for my morning walk with Lemon Drop here; we call her LD for short. We were in the local city park in the neighborhood.” LD then licks his owner’s face. The crowd
ooh
s and
ahh
s again. “And then these three dastardly, wicked—”

I’m waiting for gangsters, or maybe teenagers, but no, it’s . . .

“—
squirrels
began to attack LD. A totally unprovoked attack! I had never seen anything like this before.” I glance at Jorge next to me. He can’t believe this, either.

“I was struggling to save LD and then this man, this fine representative of our city’s LAPD bicycle unit, comes riding in with a water bottle to save the day. Scares those scoundrels with squirts of smartwater. LD needed ten stitches. The squirrels, of course, escaped.”

Jorge presses his mouth closed so he doesn’t bust out in laughter. I bare-knuckle the bottom of the seat in our pew. Haines frowns at us. We are being impertinent. Rude.

“This is proof that we need to ban the feeding of all wildlife in parks and nature areas. We cannot let these aggressive animals terrorize our citizens.”

During the councilman’s whole tirade, Mac has been wearing the biggest fake smile ever. All his top teeth, aside from his molars, are visible. The ends of his mouth are starting to tremble.

He is presented with his commendation, and bombarded with flash from camera phones and even legitimate cameras.

When it’s all over, Mac passes me by, murmuring, “You tell anyone about this, you die.”

No worries. I see Haines has been taking plenty of digital photos. This is going to end up on Twitter for sure.

Councilman Beachum then steps from his desk, calling Jorge and me up forward. I secure my cap on my head; I’m totally official now. I have to say, Jorge is also looking pretty darn respectable.

As we turn toward the public gallery, I note a familiar blue Windbreaker in the third pew. It can’t be, but it is. My father, taking time off from his Metro job? Next to him is my mother, aiming her iPhone camera right at me. And believe it or not, next to her is Grandma Toma, her hair again freshly dyed. She always seems to break out the box of L’Oréal when one of her family members does good.

Beachum can talk, that’s for sure. He goes on and on about how he’s committed to biking and bike lanes. And how thefts of bikes cannot be tolerated. He gives the BCU and specifically me props and then some.

The longer he goes on, the more I feel like a fake. I can’t stand Beachum, and at the moment I don’t think Jorge can stand me.

“Officer Rush showed alertness in following up on a possible stolen bicycle. That alertness led to her discovery of the largest bike theft ring in the city.

“Through the work of Rush and the BCU unit, individuals can be reunited with their primary form of transportation, including Kenyon Low, an orderly at the hospital in Chinatown. He needs that bicycle to get to work each day.”

The man I’d seen locking up the pink bicycle rises from the front pew. He’s wearing his hospital scrubs, and for a moment, I’m seriously taken aback. He shakes Jorge’s hand quickly but grips mine extra hard. “Thank you, Officer,” he says to me. “I’m raising my daughter on my own. That bike is the only way I can easily get to the hospital.”

I blink away some tears and all of us pose for more photos, including some for the Rush family’s personal collection.

When the council moves on to the next agenda item, we begin to file out. My family follows me into the hallway.

“I didn’t know you guys were coming,” I tell them. “How did you find out about this?”

“Your mother saw it on her Google Alerts,” Dad says. He seems perfectly fine, back to normal.

Who’s worried about the NSA? It’s Google Alerts that we should be afraid of,
I think.

“That Councilman Beachum is a tall man,” Mom says, admiring his height.

“You’ve seen him before,” I say.

“I just never noticed how tall he was.”

“He’s tall,” Grandma Toma agrees.

“Can we stop talking about Councilman Beachum?”

Just then Mac walks out of the chambers, followed by a couple of older women who want to pose for a photo with him and LD.

“Say cheese, Lemon Drop,” they coo to the dog.

I inadvertently lock eyes with Mac, but just for a second.
Smile,
I say to him silently.
Smile for the camera
.

*   *   *

The rest of day is delete-able. That’s actually Nay’s word for any time spent on anything mundane. Delete. Cannot get back. Delete. Like old e-mails crowding your in-box, old texts eating up your phone’s memory, delete-able moments just suck up our time. In my case, however, they are also providing me with a paycheck.

Although I acted annoyed when I saw my family at City Council chambers, it actually means a lot to me. It may have been the first time—other than my graduation from the Police Academy—when my mom seemed proud of me for being myself. Not the way she wants to see me, but the way I see myself and hope to be in the future.

When I drive home later, the grayness of the day seems to have really taken hold. LA is strange around this time, late May and June. There is a gloom to it, almost an indecision on whether the world should be warm with possibilities or damp with dread.

The light in the house next to the corner church is on. I park the Green Mile and press the intercom. After a couple of minutes, the door opens.

“Sorry to interrupt you, Father Kwame,” I say. A few aphids circle the lightbulb at the top of the alcove.

“Ellie, you look so official.”

I smile. From anyone else, I’d take that comment as a dis.
From Father Kwame, however, it’s what it is. An honest observation.

We go inside and Father Kwame takes his regular seat in the corner. There’s a Bible on the table. It’s doesn’t look like it’s in English. “Was just doing some reading,” he says. “Related to Mr. Fuentes’s church. The gardener,” he adds, as if I wouldn’t remember. “I’ve actually been in touch with the minister. He was telling me that he’s doing a series of sermons on the crucifixion of Jesus.”

“But Easter was, like, over a month ago.”

“I know. But I guess his congregation was mesmerized about the story of Barabbas, so he wants to devote some special sermons to it.”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“The crucifixion?”

“No, the guy’s name.”

“Barabbas.”

“What’s his story? This Barabbas guy?”

“Barabbas was in line to be executed. He and Jesus were imprisoned together. But the crowds started to call out for Barabbas, the guilty one, to be freed. So Barabbas was, and Jesus assumed his position.”