floors down was starting to see some foot traffic. During the week the people started earlier, hustling off to work. But weekends were different. The days would start slow and gradually. The street below would become more and more crowded as the urbanites and gentrifiers came out of their caves hunting for brunch.
The omelet was simple. Cheese and fresh tomatoes. She’d held back on the onions without even having to ask. After she put our plates down, she poured us each a cup of coffee from the French press. I wouldn’t admit it to her, but it put the Keurig machine in my kitchen to shame.
“You have to work today?” she asked.
“Not until later. Just going into the squad to review things.”
As if on cue, my phone rang, and before I even saw Lieutenant Ruiz’s name on the screen, I knew my plans were changing.
I answered and Ruiz said, “How soon can you be in my office?”
“Half an hour. Why? What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.” He ended the call.
“Shit,” I said.
“What’s going on?” Julia asked.
“I don’t know. But if the lieutenant is there on a Saturday morning, it’s got to be serious.”
When I got to Ruiz’s office, Patrick Glenn, another member of the homicide detail, was already inside, as was another detective who I didn’t recognize. I’d stopped downstairs for a coffee on my way in, but when I saw the seriousness on their faces, I looked down at the cup in my hand and regretted that I’d spent the time while they were waiting.
“Danny,” Ruiz said, his voice neutral.
There were only two chairs facing his desk, so Patrick got up and gave me his with a nod. He moved over and leaned against the edge of a dark-wood file cabinet that matched the desk.
I didn’t like that. Whenever we crowded into the office, the chairs were always first-come, first-served. We didn’t give up our seats unless we were deferring to someone of a superior rank. Or to someone who had bad news coming.
My coffee was finally cool enough to drink, so I took a big sip and swallowed.
“This is Neal Walsh,” Ruiz said. “He’s with LASD Bomb Squad.” Long Beach didn’t have its own, so when we needed to, we worked with the team from the Sheriff’s Department.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Walsh eyeballed me like I was a suspect. “Where’s your car?” His voice was hard and confrontational.
“It’s at the mechanic,” I said. “Why?”
“What mechanic? Where?”
He was grilling me. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t like it. I bit down my rising anger. “North Long Beach. Place on Cherry.”
“Where were you at ten o’clock last night?”
“Eating Thai food.”
“With who?”
“Your mother,” I said. “What’s your problem?”
“Danny.” That one word was all Ruiz needed to back me off.
I drank more coffee. It was too sweet.
“Your car,” the lieutenant said, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“Somebody blew it up,” Walsh added. “With a bomb.”
When I went back into the squad, Jen was at her desk.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
“Someone put a bomb in my car,” I said. “How come you’re here? I thought you had the barbecue today.” Every two or three weeks, Jen had her parents and brother over for a family meal. Unless there was an emergency, she never worked on those days, taking the morning for shopping and preparing.
“Patrick called me.”
I sat down at my desk and opened my e-mail. There were a lot of new messages. I looked at the senders and subject lines. None of them seemed to make any sense.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to get back to work.”
“Really?”
I clicked on a random e-mail. It was something from Admin about repairing the plumbing in the locker room.
“Stop it,” she said, her voice soft but weighted. “Look at me.”
I did.
“Tell me what happened.”
Not everything the lieutenant and Walsh said had really stuck. So I did the best I could relating what I knew to Jen. Someone had placed a bomb on the undercarriage of my car beneath the driver’s seat. Whoever had done it had known what they were doing. It was designed to send the blast upward and kill or seriously injure whoever was behind the wheel. It had been triggered remotely by a cell phone, and it looked like whoever had done it didn’t want to kill anyone but me. The working theory was that when the car unexpectedly wound up at the mechanic’s shop and the bomber figured the device would be discovered, he waited until the garage was