Stephen Cannell - Vertical Coffin

The dance was on.

Bar fights, like bad parties, are no fun and hard to remember afterwards.

I paired up with Billy Greenridge. He was a SWAT-trained commando about my same height, and had good moves. I tried my Brazilian jujitsu, but he was fast and I couldn't take him to the ground. We traded right hands. I caught the first few body shots on my elbows, then one slipped through and cracked a rib. This is not the way police officers are trained to behave, I whined to myself as I covered up. Then I saw his square jaw loom into view-a clean shot. I swung hard, but he spun and I missed, catching his shoulder and throwing myself badly off balance in the process. Out of the corner of my eye I saw people wheeling and trading punches. Darren and one of the SRT guys were doing some kind of Quo Vadis thing with pool cues. Christine Bell seemed hard pressed to find an opponent. The feds kept ignoring her, turning away and going for one of the guys, until she stepped up and kicked Grundy between the legs and brought him down like a bag of sand.

The worst part of this fight was that it was so stupid. Our side was also going to be shamefully easy to identify afterwards, all in our nice police dress uniforms, complete with name plates.

Two of the feds were now lying on the floor. As I turned to find a new opponent, I caught it from behind with a pool cue. The next thing I knew, I was on my hands and knees under the table trying to remember what continent I was on. That's when one of the feds put me out of my misery. I caught a shiny, black brogan with the right side of my head. I was done. Down for the count. Gone. Oh well.

What the hell happened to you?" Alexa asked. It was eight fifteen the next morning. As soon as I stepped out of the shower I put on a baseball cap to cover the six emergency-room stitches in the back of my head. But I guess the shower had opened the edge of the cut, and blood was running down the back of my neck.

"Take off that silly hat," she ordered.

"Oh, I don't think…"

She reached out and snatched the hat off. Then we did a little circle dance where she kept trying to get around behind me. "Shane, have you been fighting?" Sounding now like the horse-faced nun in those old Mickey Rooney movies.

Busted again.

Chooch had just hobbled out the door with Delfina, both of them on the way to school. He dropped her at Venice High each morning, then drove out to Harvard-Westlake in the Valley. We were alone, so I couldn't even use the kids for cover. I brought us both mugs of coffee and handed one to Alexa. She sat at the kitchen table and looked unhappy. I knew she couldn't stick around long, because she had a nine o'clock meeting with Tony Filosiani. They were reviewing some detective crime scene tactics in Vernon, where the department had a big public relations problem pending on a bad arrest.

"Who hit you?" she demanded again.

"What makes you think I got hit? This was a… I fell off a whatever-a thing." Great, Shane. "I was leaning back and tipped over in a chair, hit my head." Better.

"I can spot blunt force trauma. Don't forget who you're dealing with," she said.

She was right. It's pretty hard to BS a trained street detective. When it came to skirting the edges of the truth, this was not your normal marriage.

So I told her about the fight that took place the night before at the Pew and Cue. When I finished she was very quiet.

"Well, say something," I said. I hated it when she went quiet. That was always the worst.

"What do you want me to say, Shane? We've got major problems going down between sheriffs and SRT. Lawsuits are bound to get filed, so how do you help? You and a bunch of sheriffs go out after Emo's funeral, get plastered, then get into a fight with SRT. Let's see… What should I say? How about this: Was it fun?"

"Would it help if I told you I tried hard to break it up before it got started?"

"That might help."

"I tried really, really, really hard to break it up before it got started."

"Y'know, Shane, I love you, but you still have a lotta spots left that need smoothing off."

"And you're slowly sanding them. I want you to know I'm extremely grateful."

"Did the LAPD roll on it? Is this disaster gonna show up on a department green sheet downtown?"

"One of our black-and-whites was called, but Darren talked 'em out of doing anything."

"Darren. Not you."

"I was… in the toilet throwing up."

"Shit." Now she looked worried. "You got knocked out?"

"I don't think I was puking because of a concussion. I think it was bad chicken wings. I feel really good this morning. Tip-top. The E. R. docs didn't even want to hold me."

"Because you didn't tell them you were throwing up."

"A lot of it is kinda vague. I've got blank spots."

"Really." She leaned back, tipping in her chair, still watching me.

"Be careful," I said. "I wouldn't want you to go over and hit your head, like I did."

"Shut up, Shane."

But I'd turned the corner, I could already hear a smile in her voice.

"It was just bad luck. We didn't know they'd be in there."

She heaved a sigh. "Look at me. Right in the eye." She leaned forward and started checking my pupils. "You're okay, I guess."

She got up. I stood with her, but got a little dizzy when I did. To be honest, I might have picked up a mild concussion, but the less said here, the better.

She kissed me without passion; still angry, but she was late. "Be home for dinner?" she asked.

"I think so. I'm trying to wrap up the Paula Beck thing today. Once the D. A. files and Zack comes back from Miami, we can move on to something else. I'll be on the fourth floor. Lunch?"

"I don't break bread with lawless brawlers," she said.

"I was not brawling. I barely hit anybody."

"Noon at the Peking Duck," she snapped.

We left in separate cars. I drove my Acura, following her new blue Lexus until she sped up around the 10 Freeway and lost me in the heavy traffic.

I spent most of the morning on the fourth floor at Parker Center wrapping up the Beck investigation. I didn't think I had come up with enough on Paula for the D. A. to file the double-H. Even though the case was tragic, it really was just involuntary manslaughter. The D. A. could try and run his bluff, but if her public defender wasn't a complete moron he'd know it was a stretch. I finished the investigation report and handed it in to Cal, who glanced it over, then smiled at me.

"What happened at the Pew and Cue?" he said, his black, shiny, chrome-dome glinting purple in the overhead fluorescents.

"I wasn't there," I said.

"It's all over the department. Somebody said you got knocked cold." I kept my six-stitch lace-up turned from his view.

"Me?" I said. "Wasn't there. Bum rumor."

I had lunch with Alexa and we didn't say much. She picked at an avocado plate, which I could have told her was a bad menu choice at the Peking Duck. Stick to the Oriental dishes in that joint, the egg rolls and dim sum.

The rest of the day went slowly. I searched through our files on predicate felons, looking for a new target Zack and I could work when he got back. By six I was getting ready to pack it in, when my phone rang. It was Sergeant Ellen Campbell, who works as Alexa's administrative assistant.

"The skipper wants to see you," she said brightly. The skipper was Alexa.

"On my way."

I closed up my desk, logged off my computer, and rode the elevator up two flights to the sixth floor. I figured Alexa was going to suggest we make up over dinner. There was a Greek restaurant called Acropolis, in the Valley, she'd been wanting to try.

I walked down the thick, sea-foam green carpet that covered the corridors of the command floor, entered Alexa's outer office, and found Ellen, a perennially happy, freckled blonde sitting behind her desk. Most lieutenants aren't staff rank officers and don't have private secretaries, but Alexa was an acting division commander, and head of Detective Services Group. She reported directly to the Office of Operations, which was right below the Chief, so she was way up on the department flowchart.