Lee Goldberg: King City

The only reason Billy made the cut was because the department was desperate for new manpower. Considering that the pay was awful, the benefits were pitiful, the risk of bodily harm was high, and nobody trusted or respected cops anymore, they couldn’t be too picky.

Wade studied Billy Hagen’s picture. The kid was blond haired and fresh faced and had a cocky, mischievous smile.

He’d probably get Wade killed if he didn’t get himself killed first. Still, a rookie was better than getting a drunk who’d been on the job for twenty years. Hagen was too inexperienced to have picked up any bad habits yet. The challenge for Wade would be keeping Hagen alive long enough to learn something.

The waitress dropped his plate of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast in front of him, freshened his coffee, and dragged her ass away.

Wade closed Hagen’s file and opened the next one, which he perused as he ate.

Charlotte Greene, twenty?four, African?American, top of her class at the academy. Another rookie. She grew up in a nice housing tract in New King City about a mile away from his house. Her father was a shrink and her mother was a lawyer. Professional liberals, Wade decided. She was a straight?A student in high school and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the state university.

Obviously, Charlotte Greene wanted to reform society and rescue the oppressed and was talked into thinking a badge was the way to do it.

Since African?Americans made up less than 3 percent of the King City population, and even fewer were high school graduates, it was clear to Wade that she’d been recruited as part of the halfhearted public relations effort to diversify the department with women and people of color and create some positive press in the wake of the corruption scandal.

But this was a reform that was doomed to failure. Chief Reardon was a conservative bigot who believed women were biologically incapable of police work and that having a skin color other than Caucasian was probable cause for arrest.

She was too smart, too liberal, and too black to be a King City cop. And she wasn’t going to be very happy when she discovered that for herself.

Wade knew she’d fight him on everything. Maybe that was a good thing too. Her anger and tenacity would help her survive.

He motioned to the waitress for his check, put the files in his briefcase, and closed it. He had one day to get settled in before his officers showed up for work.

Three experienced officers weren’t enough to man an outpost in a violent neighborhood like Darwin Gardens. But he was going in with two rookies.

The assignment was meant to be a death sentence for him. Maybe he deserved it, but Hagen and Greene certainly didn’t. He’d have to find a way to protect them.

The waitress approached the table.

“It’s on the house,” she said.

This was how the rot started, with little gratuities like that, until you thought you were entitled to them and much more.

“I appreciate the gesture,” Wade said. “But I’d prefer to pay.”

She shook her head. “We never charge the police. It’s our policy.”

“You charged me yesterday,” he said.

“I didn’t know you were a cop.”

“Pretend that you still don’t.”

“I haven’t got much of an imagination,” she said, turned her back to him, and went on to take another customer’s order.

He didn’t understand why she fought him. It would have taken far less effort to just accept his money. And she looked like someone who’d given up on making any effort years ago.

Wade left enough cash on the table to cover his bill, the tax, and a tip and walked out.

He drove west toward downtown in his five?year?old Mustang, one of the dark?green, special?edition fastbacks that Ford made to cash in on memories of the iconic car that Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt.

The car was a surprise thirty?sixth?birthday present to Wade from his wife, the breadwinner in the house. She worked in an advertising agency. Making deodorant seem sexy, glamorous, and exciting paid a lot more than arresting drug dealers.

He liked the 5?speed, manual transmission and the 315?horsepower, 4.6?liter, 24?valve V?8 engine that redlined at 6,500 rpm and could hit 150 miles per hour.

He hated everything else about it, particularly the gun?sight Bullitt logo embossed on the steering wheel, the metal sill plates, and the ridiculous fake gas cap glued on the back of the car.

Wade told Alison that he loved the car, of course. That was a husband’s duty. And Wade always did his duty.

But what he was really thinking was that if she thought he’d like the car from Bullitt, that’s what she should have bought him-a 1968 Mustang GT fastback-not a new Mustang adorned with a lot of useless plastic garbage.

This was a muscle car designed for middle?aged men who never had any muscles of their own, who thought Neil Diamond was edgy, and who were trying to gather the courage to ask their doctors for Viagra.

So he kept it in the garage as much as possible, never listened to Neil Diamond when he drove it, and used a police vehicle whenever possible.

Now that Alison had thrown him out of the house, Wade wanted to pry all that fake Hollywood crap off the car so he’d be left with just a green Mustang. He didn’t do it because he was afraid that his thirteen?year?old daughter, Brooke, would take it as an act of rage directed at her mother.

Maybe it would be.

He took the curving off?ramp to the King’s Crossing Bridge and unconsciously sat up to take in the postcard view of the suspension bridge, the river, and the downtown skyline set against the jagged West Hills.

The clump of office buildings that was downtown King City wasn’t that distinctive or memorable. It was the King’s Crossing and the five other bridges that spanned the Chewelah River that gave the city its character. And the very best view of them was from the King’s Crossing Bridge, the highest of the bunch.

At least once a week, traffic on the King’s Crossing would snarl to a standstill because some jerk slowed down to look at the view, crashed into another car, and caused a multicar pileup.

Wade had seen the bridges countless times but always took a glance north and south anyway. Each bridge was unique, a perfect example of a particular kind of engineering, and built from steel and iron mined from the West Hills.

The bridges seemed imbued with the ambition, the daring, and the tenacity that got them made. He found something comforting and invigorating about the sight.

But once he crossed into downtown, the magic was gone. The bridge spilled him right into One King Plaza, the government center, which was dominated by the stone castle that was the original city hall and a symbol of excess and ego.

King City grew quickly after it was founded, thriving on the abundant natural resources, the railroad, and commerce on the river.

By the turn of the century, the city stretched over both sides of the river. It had smoothly transitioned from a largely agricultural?based economy into an industrial center. Steel mills, lumberyards, breweries, and various manufacturing plants lined the shores, pumping smoke into the air day and night.

But by the turn of the next century, the city’s economy was in shambles. The mines were either depleted or too costly to keep in operation. The forests and farmland had all been subdivided and developed. The steel, lumber, and other major industries had moved overseas. The Chewelah River was no longer a primary means of moving goods, and its water was so toxic that even fish couldn’t live in it.

Now the docks, railroad yards, factories, and warehouses sat vacant and rotting under the sunbaked, brown haze, the decay spreading to the forgotten, crime?ridden neighborhoods around them that were once the city’s safest and most prosperous places to live.