Bob surveyed the area as he stamped his thin brown leather shoes against the pavement to get the blood circulating through his toes. Tried to understand why he was here. Not just here in Jordan, working for the city police, but here on this earth. Then he thought, fuck it. Fuck Alice, for whom he’d sacrificed a life of glorious polygamy just so he could live with her. Fuck the failed attempt to kill someone in this drug- and gang-infestedneighborhood with its murders he’d spent his entire professional career immunizing himself against. Because once you’ve had everything and then lost it all you just don’t give a shit. A gravestone with two dates on it, dates too close together—that was all he had left. So yeah, he just said fuck it all.
Bob heard a car stop behind him, turned and saw Kay Myers climb out of a Ford identical to the one he was driving himself. She had her police ID hanging around her neck, identifying her as a detective in the MPD Homicide Unit. Myers was in her late thirties, wore her hair in an afro, which Bob had gathered was back in fashion but which Myers had worn as long as he had known her. She was small and thin and had the best marathon time of anyone in the MPD, male or female. She claimed she never trained, that she must have a runner’s genes—she’d traced her roots back to Kenya. She was one of the at most two people in the Homicide Unit whose company Bob could endure. When that sober face of hers occasionally broke into a smile, Bob could see how some might describe her as attractive. But since Kay Myers didn’t act like she was interested in anything other than a professional relationship with her male colleagues, and didn’t dress that way either, that was how it worked out. It might also have been the case that her tough, self-assured and direct manner scared guys off, at least guys who liked at least a touch of female submissiveness. Which—Bob thought—went for most of them. She wasn’t the type to talk about herself much and Bob assumed her tough exterior had something to do with her being raised in Englewood, Chicago.
“Victim’s name is Marco Dante,” Kay Myers called out even before she’d shut the car door behind her. “Arrested three times for illegal sale of weapons but they couldn’t hang anything on him, big surprise.”
Bob waited until she came over to him.
“Gun trafficker?”
“Yep. Weapons with probably more lives on their conscience in Minneapolis than all the hunting rifles in this state put together so please excuse me for not shedding a tear. Did…?”
“Yeah, they just went in. Sixth floor—that open window up there.”
“We’ve got witnesses who say they saw that’s where the shot came from?”
“Yes, one. Unfortunately they wouldn’t give a name and address and bolted.”
“Really?”
Bob saw that Kay was looking aslant at him.
“So this isn’t just Bob Oz’s famous gut feeling?”
“Bob Oz’s gut feeling tells me that this witness was telling the truth.”
“You remember how much trouble there was last time we went in without a search warrant?”
“No,” said Bob, with a look that suggested honest astonishment. “I really don’t remember that.”
Kay Myers snorted dismissively. “Where were you this morning, Bob? Or let me put it like this, whose bed did you oversleep in?”
“Unclear. She’d already left.”
“You do realize I can’t keep covering for you much longer?”
“Longer? Have I ever asked you to cover for me at all?”
That was another thing he’d never worked out about Kay Myers, why she backed him the way she did. She was clearly not interested in him as a man; Bob wasn’t often tuned in to the rumors circulating at work but he had gathered that word around the unit was that she was gay. And she wasn’t interested in having him as a friend either, they had never even had a beer together. Some women like bastards, but Kay Myers didn’t seem to belong in that category either. That left only the worst alternative: that she felt sorry for him.
There was a flash between the black drapes in the open window, followed by a dull thud that echoed around the buildings. Stun grenade.
“As usual you’re not interested in the fireworks display?” said Kay.
Bob shook his head.
“You know word around the unit is that Bob Oz is chicken?”
“Because I won’t play cops and robbers?”
“Because you don’t carry a gun, so you always have an excuse not to be part of any life-threatening situations. I’ve tried telling them they’re wrong.”
“Oh, but they aren’t wrong, Kay. Iamchicken.” Bob nodded in the direction of the leader of the SWAT team as he emerged from the entrance, talking on his headset. “A smart and cowardly homicide detective with an estimated lifespan eight years longer than that overtrained adrenaline junkie there.”
O’Rourke approached, demonstratively ignoring Bob and addressed himself to Kay Myers. “It’s clear, but I’m afraid our bird has flown.”
“Thanks,” said Myers.
“It’s nothing. And if any more bad guys show up…” He turned his gaze on Bob and spat on the ground, just missing Bob’s brown leather shoes. “…just call Bonzo again.”
