Earth Angels (5 page)

He sat down at the card table and sorted through the mail: a newsletter from the Police Protective League, one of Nancy's art magazines, an official looking brown envelope bearing the printed inscription: "DATED PRIZE MATERIAL FOR JOSE STEPANOVICH" junk, he surmised - and a letter with a Brentwood address he recognized as Nancy's boyfriend's. Bruce was an interior decorator and marathon jogger who worked with Nancy at the California Design Center. He noted with his usual irritation that she used her maiden name.

The letter was in her clear, almost calligraphic hand:

Hello,

I've been trying to reach you by phone for weeks, but as usual you haven't been home. So what else is new?

The reason I was calling is that I'm not receiving all my catalogs and magazines. Though I know from first-hand experience how careless you are about such things, I would appreciate it if you would forward all mail addressed to me. Though the post office has had my change of address form for months, you know how truly screwed up they are. I of course have no way of proving it, but my guess is that you are throwing away everything arriving with my name on it. Or at least everything that doesn't seem important to you. Please do not ignore this letter. I want, and have a right to, all my mail whether it is junk mail or not. Though I'm fully prepared to never see any of the second class mail, I'm asking you to be at least halfway considerate about this.

I'm sure you're not interested in the least, but I've done a lot of thinking in the past months and I'm convinced that my moving out was best for both of us. We were living as strangers. Strangely enough, by being away I've come to have a better understanding of you as a person. As I see it, the problem is that you have no life away from your job. It was the same with your Uncle Nick. He preferred to drink all day at the VFW hall and retell tired police stories after he retired rather than play golf or take up any new activity. Though I'm sure you never realized it, when you and he were together all he ever talked about was police work: gangs, violence, and death. The fact that he died less than a year after retiring should have shown you what happens when you live that way.

Well, enough of that. I know you aren't listening.

Bruce and I just got back from a Club Med vacation in Puerto Vallarta. Entirely too much food and sun so I'll have to hit it extra hard in my aerobics class.

Please don't be a prick about forwarding my mail.

Nancy

He tossed all the mail, including the art magazine, into a plastic trashcan under the kitchen sink, and opened a window to let in some fresh air. Down the street he could see the streetlights of Brand Boulevard. Though it wasn't Greenwich Village or even San Francisco's Union Street, there was a movie theater and a couple of decent restaurants within walking distance, and a laundry and a post office that came in handy nowadays. Best of all, the apartment was affordable and he was outside the city limits of Los Angeles, a town he no longer considered habitable because of gangs and crime.

Actually, the apartment and location had been Nancy's choice. She had gone to Glendale High School and loved the town. When first married, the two of them had attended cocktail parties and barbecues at the homes of Nancy's married Glendale friends. Stepanovich had little in common with the other guests and felt alienated trying to make conversation. Like all policemen, he felt there was no way an outsider would understand his work. Even after long days at work, he found himself preferring to stop by the Rumor Control Bar and drink scotch with the other detectives rather than stand around at some suburban barbecue holding a plastic glass of lukewarm chablis and listen to yuppies clack about the price of property.

After attending such functions, he and Nancy always seemed to edge into arguments that ended with Nancy crying and accusing him of being hostile and non-communicative. Looking back, he probably had been. They'd once been desperately in love, but he'd eventually stopped looking at her as the long legged beauty he'd married and began seeing her as a carping roommate.

Now, he thought, when Nancy married Bruce, a wimp who wore button down shirts and flashed an instant shit eating grin, she'd always have a party companion.

He opened the refrigerator, took out a half empty carton of milk, and held it up to his nose: sour. He poured the curdled liquid down the drain. Promising himself to get to the store as soon as he had time, he took a glass from the dish drainer, flipped on the faucet, and filled the glass with water. He drank and set the glass on the sink. The taco at Manuel's had been the only thing he'd eaten all day and he was still hungry. He considered heating one of the TV dinners he had in the freezer, but decided against trying to sleep on a full stomach. In the morning, after signing in at Hollenbeck Station, he and Arredondo would stop at the Zacatecas Cafe on Evergreen Street for a combination plate with all the trimmings.

Stepanovich's bedroom was furnished with a bare mattress on the floor, one of Arredondo's card table chairs, and a portable radio. The clothing he'd kept in the dresser Nancy and Bruce had taken to Brentwood was now stacked on the floor of the closet next to his shoes. A tennis racket and some cardboard boxes he'd filled with police academy textbooks, and a few framed photographs of himself and Uncle Nick standing with his mother and father at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, were all he'd held on to.

Stepanovich removed his sports coat and slid his gun, bullet pouch, and handcuffs from his belt and set them on the chair. He stopped undressing and checked his watch. It was almost midnight. His mind made up, he quickly put his police equipment back on his belt and left the apartment.

It took him about ten minutes to get to the L.A. county hospital. He parked his car in the same spot he'd used earlier in the evening and entered the front door. Because of the hour, the pale green corridors were dimly lit.

He found Gloria Soliz at the nurses' station in the intensive care ward, writing on a metal clipboard. He stood in front of her until she finally looked up and saw him.

"Mr. Estrada is still too sick to be interviewed," she said when she recognized him.

"I'm not here about him. I had to pick up something from hospital records, so I thought I'd stop by and apologize for the misunderstanding earlier."

She stared at Stepanovich for a moment, but she didn't smile. "That's nice of you. But no apology is necessary."

"I guess I came on a little strong."

She came to her feet. "No problem. Is there something I can help you with?"

"When is the shift change for this ward?"

"In a few minutes."

"Would you like to go out to breakfast?"

She looked about to see if anyone was nearby. They were alone. "It's late and I "

"We could just grab a bite."

"Thanks, maybe some other time." The phone on her desk rang. She let it ring twice before picking up the receiver.

Stepanovich took a deep breath, let it out. Shuffling back down the hallway, he stopped at the elevator and looked back. Still holding the phone to her ear, she was standing in the hallway watching him. She darted back into the nurses' station.

Outside the employees' entrance to the hospital, Stepanovich sat in his car and watched as ambulances intermittently charged toward the emergency entrance. The image of the dead little girl lying on the church floor began to obsess him. But he recognized this as a normal response to the horrible events of the afternoon. Though it was no particular consolation, he knew the next violent death scene would, like a boxcar on a track, shove today's tragedy to the back of his mind. He just hoped like hell the next victim wasn't a child.

A few minutes later, off duty nurses and doctors began streaming out the door. He straightened to get a better look. As the flow of departing hospital employees began to dwindle, Gloria Soliz emerged. She didn't notice him. He started the engine. She walked across the parking lot to a late model Volkswagen. As she reached into her purse for her keys, he cruised across the parking lot and pulled up beside her.

"Sure you won't change your mind?"

She turned in surprise.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

She smiled broadly, shook her head. He climbed out of the car and opened the passenger door of his sedan. She stood there for a moment, then climbed in.

"How about Artie's coffee shop?" he said, steering down the descending driveway and onto the street.

"Where all the cops hang out."

"Some of them," he said, smiling, for the car was filled with the pleasant scent of her perfume.

"Cops love to do things in groups, don't they?" she said as he turned onto Mission Road, a thoroughfare lined with auto salvage yards and railroad sidings.

"I'm sure nurses socialize now and then."

"It's different."

Artie's, an open twenty-four hours establishment, was located next to a freeway at the edge of downtown. The place was deserted except for a group of motorcycle cops seated at a table in the corner.

Stepanovich and Gloria sat in a window booth overlooking the parking lot. The waitress, a tiny Filipino woman with thick eyeglasses, poured coffee, took their orders, and moved away.

Stepanovich sipped coffee and felt it warm his insides. "I hope you don't think I'm coming on too strong."

"I've found that cops always come on strong."

"Why don't you forget the cop stuff? Pretend I'm a rich doctor."

For a moment he thought she was going to take offense. Then the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. She smiled and shook her head. They both laughed and Stepanovich thought she seemed to relax.

"Where'd you go to school?" he asked.

"UCLA."

"I meant high school."

"Roosevelt. How about you?"

"Garfield."

"So you grew up in the barrio too."

Eating breakfast, they talked of growing up in East Los Angeles, and found they'd attended some of the same dances and even knew a few of the same people.

"Why nursing school?" he asked.

"I wanted to help people. I still do. And there's plenty of people to help when you're a nurse."

"Why didn't you move away from East L.A. when you got out of nursing school?"

"It's home to me. My family is here."

"So are the gangs."

She gazed out at the parking lot. "Gangs are a fact of life," she said resignedly.

"A fact of life I'd like to erase."

"A lot of them are just kids who don't know any better," she said. "Some have parents who were gang members. "

"My mother was Mexican, my father was Yugoslavian. Even though we weren't Catholic, they sent me to Catholic school to keep me away from the gangbangers. But it didn't help. The gang punks used to catch me on my way to school and beat the shit out of me anyway."

"So now you're getting back at them."

"I guess you could say that. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am."

"You're not going to change anything."

"The gangbangers I've put in San Quentin are reading comic books right now instead of on the streets shooting innocent people."

"A policeman's dream. All the criminals locked up in cages,"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"No, but on the other hand, I don't see the world as the unattractive place you do," she said demurely. Nothing was said for a while, and she avoided his eyes when he tried to make her share a smile that would ease the uncomfortable silence.

"Are you married?" he said.

She shook her head. "Never really had time, I guess. And you?"

"Just divorced. I haven't been out much recently."

"How long were you married?"

"Five years. The marriage counselor said we might have made it if I weren't a policeman. Nancy couldn't handle the long hours."

"Why didn't you quit the police department and get a job with shorter hours?"

"I waited in line to become a cop. I worked like hell to make it through the police academy. Why should I quit?"

"To save your marriage."

"I married the police department before I married my wife."

"Being a cop isn't just a job for you, is it? It's power and status machismo. It's a way of life." Gloria touched her lips with a napkin. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get personal."

"How do you know so much about cops?"

"I grew up in East L.A., remember?"

"Would you like to go out sometime?" Stepanovich heard himself saying.

She looked into his eyes for a brief moment, then finished her coffee. "I don't know."

They were both quiet for a moment. Then she pointed out that she'd just worked a double shift and felt like she was going to fall asleep at the table. Stepanovich paid the bill. They walked out of the restaurant, and he drove her back to the hospital parking lot. As he pulled into a space next to her car, he said, "I'd like to see you again."

"I’m afraid I have a very busy schedule and journal articles to catch up on. Besides, I'm not much of a social butterfly."