Alan Russell - Burning Man

“I expected that you would come in asking for placement in Robbery-Homicide, and I hoped to be able to convince you to give the other position a chance. To that end, I was willing to sweeten the deal.”

From what he was saying, he still was. “Sugar works for me.”

“Upon your acceptance,” he said, “you would be getting your detective’s shield and with it almost total autonomy.”

I wasn’t overwhelmed and my face showed it.

“From day one of the job,” Ehrlich said, “I’d have you on the transfer list to RHD. That way, if things don’t work out, you can ultimately make your move to happier hunting grounds. You might have to wait a year or two to get placed, but by going that route there wouldn’t be nearly as much acrimony.”

That would be a better way of doing it, I knew, but it certainly wasn’t a deal maker.

“And finally,” Ehrlich said, “there is the designation of Special Cases Unit. The word ‘unit’ suggests more than one individual, and that means you would need a partner in special cases. Because you already have a partner, I see no need in breaking up that team.”

Sirius’s ears perked up, almost like he knew what the chief was saying. It was likely he was responding to his tone of voice. This was the sugar.

“Sirius will have office privileges with me?”

“He’ll even have his own desk if he wants one.”

“Where do we sign up?”

Rather than work out of the Police Administration Building, Sirius and I had set up shop at the Central Community Police Station. For almost a year Central had been our home. We were less than a mile from the PAB; close enough that its shadows could almost touch us.

As we approached Central I took notice of the looming presence of the PAB. “If it weren’t for you, we’d be at the new headquarters,” I said. “The chief must have heard stories about your fleas.”

The truth of the matter was that I had opted out of an office at PAB. The high-rise wasn’t a good fit for Sirius and me. I was well served by not being near all the big suits, and I hadn’t wanted to have to take a long ride in an elevator every time Sirius needed to water.

One of the best things about my job is that I rarely have to report in to a supervisor. Central’s captain might not be of like mind. Because we aren’t directly under her command, Captain Becker probably wishes the chief had found a different home for us, even though she has never come out and said that.

“We’ll be lucky if Captain Becker doesn’t evict us,” I said. “She’s a cat person.”

Sirius wagged his tail and waited for me to open the door. Cat person or not, the captain was a lot more affectionate with my partner than with me. She is the only one in the station that calls me “Detective.” Everyone else has nicknames for me, all dog related. I am Hound Dog, Horn Dog, Junkyard Dog, Watchdog, Underdog, Bowser, Barker, and Fido. Dog food names and flea medicines are also popular. If the paw fits, you wear it.

As I walked in the door, the watch commander flagged me down. Sergeant Perez has a line of service stripes on his left sleeve, what other cops call hash marks. The hash marks bespeak his years on the job; his wrinkles do the same. “Hey, Alpo,” he said, “I got one that’s right up your alley.”

The watch commander tends to forget that I’m not officially assigned to Central. He knows I work Special Cases Unit-what he calls “Strange Cases Unit”-and that I report to “the brass,” but he likes to treat me as his extra uniform, or in his non-PC terminology, “my spare bitch.”

“It’s another abandoned newborn,” he said, handing me the call sheet, “but this one’s no Moses.”

Moses had been one of my first special cases. His mother had set the newborn adrift in a basket in the LA Aqueduct. Unlike baby Moses on the Nile, the LA Moses didn’t survive his journey. At the onset of the case, there had been the suspicion that the death of Moses was ritualistic in nature because of strange writing on the newborn’s clothes and his basket. As it turned out, though, Moses’s mother was mentally ill and had interpreted a one-day downpour as the start of the next great flood. She had thought she could save her son by putting him in an ark.

“If you don’t want it, Sherlock Bones,” Perez said, “just pass the case to Juvie and let ACU take over the investigation.”

“You can count on me and my Hound of the Baskervilles,” I said.

Perez passed over what information he had. Throwaway babies don’t qualify as high-priority cases, because unfortunately they occur all too often. The baby had been abandoned on South Hill Street, which was nearby.

Sirius and I did an about-face and returned to the sedan. The traffic over to Hill Street was stop and go. It was that time of day when commuters were arriving to roost in their office buildings that make up the skyscraper skyline of downtown LA. Over the last quarter of a century, the downtown area has become trendy and expensive, home to concert halls, museums, and water gardens. Expensive lofts and upscale security condominiums have sprung up everywhere. I am not sure which has undergone more cosmetic surgery in LA-its residents or its residences.

As we drew near to the crime scene, Sirius started nervously pacing the backseat. Police dogs and fire dogs never really retire. “Relax,” I told him. “You know how tech people get cranky about dogs shedding at crime scenes. But I’ll make sure you have a seat on the fifty-yard line, all right?”

Sirius stopped his pacing. I flashed my badge to a uniform standing near the curb, pointed to where I wanted to park, and he lifted up some crime scene tape for me to get by. The forensic field unit was already at the scene, and Sirius and I watched a photographer leaning over a railing, clicking away. I opened all the windows halfway, and Sirius stuck his nose out the window and took a few sniffs. My guess was with those sniffs Sirius probably knew more about what had occurred than anyone working the scene for hours. Sometimes I don’t envy his sense of smell.

When the sergeant gave me the call information, he hadn’t mentioned that the baby had been abandoned at the foot of Angels Flight. I wondered if the baby had been dumped there on purpose, or if the station’s name had inspired someone to leave her there. Angels Flight has long been touted as the shortest railway in the world. The cable railway connects Third and Fourth Streets. It was built at the turn of the twentieth century, serving the well-to-do in their large Victorian houses. Even when the neighborhood went south and flophouses replaced the Victorians, the railway managed to endure for more than half a century. Downtown redevelopment had brought back Angels Flight a half block from its original location, but a fatal accident in 2001 had shut it down for six years. The railway was finally running again, but it wouldn’t be running today.

I offered greetings and nods but didn’t engage those at work. Before doing anything else, I always take a long, last look at the dead. I bent over like a catcher, getting close to the ground, and tried to filter out my emotions and personal feelings; I was supposed to be the dispassionate cop. This time that didn’t work.

At least, I thought, the baby hadn’t been left in a Dumpster. She had been put in a cardboard box and placed behind a railing at the bottom of the stairway that connected the two streets. Pigeons flocked the area looking for their morning handouts, but the usual habitues that used the concrete embankment as a bench weren’t being allowed in to feed the scavengers.

Looking up, I saw the face of what many called the new downtown. Imposing glass edifices filled the skyline, leaving the old downtown in its shadows. Angels Flight was supposed to be the bridge to those two worlds. Maybe there was no bridge to those two worlds.