David Jackson - Pariah

‘Point three,’ Doyle repeated, and then got cut off again when he heard voices at his side and saw that the valet had returned with a balding man in a pinstripe suit who was making threats to call the police if the car wasn’t moved.

Doyle dug into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and flashed his shield. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Call the cops. And then we’ll come by here and arrest you for possession of an illegal comb-over.’

As the pair retreated to consider their next move, Doyle tried again with Laura. ‘Point three is maybe we should think about calling it a day.’

It took a moment for this to penetrate. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I think tomorrow morning I’m going to speak to the boss about working with another partner.’

‘Are you serious? Why would you want to do that?’

‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve just said? You’ve gone too far, Laura. You’re getting too. . intense.’

‘Intense? Really? Because this is all on me, right? I mean, you would never throw me any signals of a less-than-professional nature, would you? You would never make any comments about my figure or my hair. Nobody would ever catch you asking what color panties I’m wearing today, would they?’

There was a silence while Doyle chewed on his answer. He had flirted with her, that was true; but then he’d flirted with every woman he’d ever met, even the ones who looked like Shrek. He couldn’t help it: it was in his blood.

‘Maybe I said some things I shouldn’t have. But you’ve taken it to another level, Laura. You’ve endangered my job and my marriage.’

‘You go to the boss for another partner, and you endanger my job.’

Doyle started moving back around to the driver’s side. ‘Get in the car, Laura. Let’s do some work.’

‘Fuck you, Doyle.’

This stopped him in his tracks. It wasn’t the words: she was a cop, and cops use expletives all the time. It was Laura’s tone: it had a disturbing, menacing quality to it that he’d never heard from her before.

He looked across the roof of the Crown Vic at her; she glared back at him.

‘You take this to the lieutenant,’ she said, ‘make me look bad like that, and I’ll really start to let everyone know what’s been going on between us. See what your precious Rachel thinks about them apples.’

‘What?’ Doyle said. ‘Is that a threat, Laura? Are you threatening me?’

She remained silent, and Doyle started to retrace his steps back to her side of the car.

‘Is that what I’m hearing, Laura? Are you trying to blackmail me?’

He kept walking until he was inches away from her, astonished that he’d never seen this side of her before. In a heartbeat she had switched from partner to perp. He could quite easily have spun her around, slapped on some cuffs, and dragged her ass to jail. A quick tune-up in some quiet alley was not out of the question either, the way he felt.

And then, in another beat, it was as if a second button was pressed in her head. She suddenly softened, and the burning died in her pupils.

‘What are we doing?’ she said. ‘Look at us! How crazy is this? Jesus Christ, Cal, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any of that shit. Really. You just got me so. . worked up, you know? Forget what I just said. Please. I was just lashing out. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

She slid onto the passenger seat, flashing him a smile that seemed to carry no warmth. Doyle watched her every move, feeling that he no longer knew this woman, no longer understood her, that he was no longer capable of anticipating her next move. It was one of the most uncomfortable sensations he’d ever had.

‘It’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘Come on, Cal. Relax. Everything’s just fine. Get back in the car. You want me to drive?’

Doyle was frozen to the spot. He had been ready for a fight, and now it had been taken away from him. He didn’t know how to react to an enemy who worked like that, who was that unpredictable.

For a few seconds, Laura had let her dark side out, and now she was trying to cover up, to pretend that it was uncharacteristic. But it had been there, unmistakably so. And it had been scary in its concentrated spitefulness.

Wondering whether he needed to call in an exorcist, Doyle returned once more to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. He looked at her long and hard, searched her face for answers. But all he got was a goofy smile.

‘Chill out, Callie,’ she said. ‘It’s hormones or something. No big thing. Let’s roll.’ She opened the glove compartment, pulled out a small bag. ‘Here, have some M amp;Ms.’

Feeling like he’d just teleported to a parallel world, Doyle put the car into gear and drove off. For now, he had nothing to say, nothing that would help to make any sense of this situation. But he guessed it wasn’t over.

‘We’ll talk about it later,’ he said. ‘Okay?’

She tossed candy into her mouth, nodded her head playfully. ‘Sure, Callie.’

As he drove, he tried to turn his mind to the job, to give it something rooted in the real world to work on. But his subconscious had other ideas. It kept showing him reminders of Laura’s face, her words, of a few minutes ago, and of how unbelievably vindictive she’d been. It kept tossing out imagined images of Rachel, crying and screaming at him, asking him why he would do such things. And it kept interrupting with questions like, So now that you know she’s a crazy-ass bunny-boiler, what are you going to do about it?

Later, he would wish he’d called the whole thing off. Just aborted the mission and headed straight back to the precinct station house. Set off again when his head was straight, and preferably with a different, more stable, partner.

But hindsight can be a merciless instrument of torture sometimes.

The reason they had originally hit the streets — before all this personal shit became an unwanted diversion — was to look for a lowlife named Anton Lomax. Lomax was a junkie who’d had a relationship with a girl named Bernice Thompson. What made Lomax worth seeking was that Bernice had been found in a Harlem flophouse naked from the waist down and with a bread knife sticking out of her chest. Word was that Lomax had recently been spotted scoring dope on 125th Street, which made it a sensible place to start.

As they headed uptown, Doyle told himself he needed to focus and to stay calm. He still had a mass of pent-up anger that Laura had somehow managed to prevent him from releasing. It nestled inside and gnawed at him like a stomach ulcer. He felt as though he had not really cleared the air with Laura; if anything, their discussion had served only to bring down an impenetrable fog.

He worried that the latest rumors started by Laura were going to get back to Rachel or Danny, or both. He worried more that Laura had every intention of making the situation worse. He didn’t know why she would do such a thing — he didn’t understand how her mind worked — but the way she had acted earlier told him that she was capable of making his life hell if she felt so inclined.

Distracted as he was, it was Laura who was the first to spot the four young black men huddled under a streetlamp.

‘It’s Lomax,’ she said. ‘Stop the car!’

Doyle took the car across onto the next block and pulled it into the first space he found. All of his personal concerns had suddenly run for cover. He and Laura got out of their car, both pairs of eyes fixed on the knot of men, both detectives automatically checking ease of access to their handguns. With practiced, wordless efficiency, they split up and attempted to approach the gang from opposite directions.

Lomax spied them as soon as they began to cross the street, and in a flash he cut away from the group and took off.