Chapter 62-63 – "Flying High" at the Station Entrance? Officer Sean Helps You Come Back Down to Earth
The paperwork, at least, was straightforward.
With Ella's calm and entirely convincing assistance, the young man in the scarlet hoodie had located his cooperative instincts and was now wearing handcuffs with the resigned acceptance of someone who has finished doing the math and doesn't like the answer.
He admitted, quietly and without elaboration, to smoking in front of the station.
Ella and Lamb walked him inside.
The timing, Sean reflected, was genuinely something.
Just this month — the second, specifically — Governor Schwarzenegger had signed SB 1449 into law. Possession of under an ounce of marijuana: downgraded from misdemeanor to infraction. A hundred-dollar fine. No arrest, no record, no court date.
The stated rationale, delivered with the complete absence of irony that California reserved for its most surreal policy moments, was that the courts didn't have the budget to prosecute minor drug cases.
Charlie Harper had once described California's legal philosophy as "whatever keeps the line moving." Sean was beginning to think he wasn't wrong.
The key word in SB 1449, however, was possession.
Smoking in public: still a misdemeanor. Six months. Five hundred dollars.
Smoking in public at the entrance to a police division: still technically the same charge, but with the kind of prosecutorial enthusiasm that money genuinely cannot buy. The DA's office was going to receive this case file like it was a gift basket. Sean could picture the expression. He'd seen it before — the specific look of a prosecutor who has just been handed something they don't have to work for.
Disturbing public order. Public drug use. Suspected gang affiliation. The file was going to be thorough.
A year, minimum. Probably more.
Kna looked like someone had handed her a winning lottery ticket.
She had her phone out before the handcuffs clicked, already talking fast and low into it, one hand gesturing at nothing in particular. When she hung up, she actually bounced — just slightly, just once, the involuntary physical expression of a journalist who has gotten considerably more than she came for.
She'd come for a documentary segment about a patrol shift.
She was leaving with tomorrow morning's lead story.
Man bites dog, Sean thought. The first rule of news. Perfectly illustrated.
"Officer Sean." Kna appeared at his elbow, notebook already open, pen ready, expression somewhere between professional and barely contained. "Could I get a quick statement? Just a few sentences — separate from the documentary footage. For the morning broadcast."
Sean had been calculating the distance to the taco truck on the corner of Exposition. He stopped calculating.
"I already gave a statement."
"That was for the documentary." Kna's hands came up, the universal gesture of someone heading off an objection. "This is for news. Different format, different context. Totally different thing."
He looked at the camera. Then at Kna, who had the expression of a golden retriever who has spotted a tennis ball and is trying very hard to appear calm about it.
He exhaled.
The whole point of this assignment is to cooperate.
Sean straightened his shirt, squared his shoulders, and switched registers — the specific vocal register of a law enforcement officer addressing the public, measured and institutional.
"The suspect's behavior today reflects the kind of impaired judgment that's unfortunately consistent with substance abuse," he said, looking directly into the lens. "Based on his conduct and his clothing, we also have reason to believe this may have been an intentional provocation directed at this division. We took appropriate action."
He looked at Kna. "Good?"
She nodded, already reviewing the footage on the camera's small screen.
Sean walked away before she looked up.
The taco truck on the corner of Exposition had a hand-lettered sign that said AUTHENTIC MEXICAN and was run by a man from Buenos Aires who had been in Los Angeles for eleven years and whose carnitas were, in Sean's operational assessment, the best within a two-mile radius of the division.
He got two burritos and a beef taco. Erin got one burrito and an agua fresca. They found a low concrete wall in the shade and sat with their food in the specific comfortable silence of two people who have worked together long enough that conversation is optional.
The afternoon was warm. The street was doing its normal thing. Somewhere behind them, Kna and Karl were still reviewing footage with the focused intensity of people who have forgotten they were supposed to eat lunch.
Sean finished the taco first. Then the first burrito. He was midway through the second when Erin said, "My dad mentioned you."
He looked over.
"During my time off. I told him about the job. About the team." She was looking at the street, not at him. "He seemed — I don't know. Pleased."
Sean considered this. On Two and a Half Men, Charlie had once received secondhand approval from a woman's father and treated it approximately the way other people treated a Grammy nomination — immediate, visible satisfaction, followed by an attempt to leverage it. Alan had said this was emotionally immature.
Charlie had said Alan was just jealous because nobody's father had ever been pleased on his behalf.
Sean did not say any of this.
"Why?" he asked instead.
Erin turned to look at him, and the afternoon light was doing something specific to the way she was almost smiling.
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