Lost Light

her.
    “RHD? RHD didn’t work out.”
    “What? What are you talking about?”
    I was genuinely surprised. Rider had been the most skilled and intuitive partner I had ever worked with. She was made for the mission. The department needed more like her. I had thought for sure that she would be able to adjust to life in the department’s highest-profile squad and do good work.
    “I transferred out at the beginning of the summer. I’m in the chief’s office now.”
    “You’re kidding. Oh, man…”
    I was stunned. She had obviously chosen a career path through the department. If she was working for the chief as an adjutant or on special projects, then she was being groomed for command staff administration. There was nothing wrong with that. I knew Rider was as ambitious as the next cop. But homicide was a calling, not a career. I had always thought she understood and accepted that. She had heard the call.
    “Kiz, I don’t know what to say. I wish…”
    “What, that I had talked to you about it? You split the gig, Harry. Remember? What were you going to tell me, to tough it out in RHD when you bailed out yourself?”
    “It was different for me, Kiz. I had built up too much resistance. I was pulling too much baggage. You were different. You were the star, Kiz.”
    “Well, stars burn out. It was too petty and political on the third floor. I changed directions. I just took the lieutenant’s exam. And the chief is a good man. He wants to do good things and I want to be right there with him. It’s funny, things are less political on the sixth floor. You’d think it would be the other way around.”
    It sounded as though she was trying to convince herself more than me. All I could do was nod as a sense of guilt and loss flooded me. If I had stayed and taken the RHD job, she would have stayed also. I went into the living room and dropped onto the couch. She followed me but remained standing.
    I reached over to turn down the music but not too much. I liked the song. I stared out through the sliding doors and across the deck to the vista of mountains across the Valley. It was no smoggier out there than most days. But the overcast somehow seemed to fit as Pepper took up the clarinet to accompany Lee Konitz on “The Shadow of Your Smile.” There was a sad wistfulness to it that I think even gave Rider pause. She stood silently listening.
    I had been given the discs by a friend named Quentin McKinzie, who was an old jazzman who knew Pepper and had played with him decades earlier at Shelly Manne’s and Donte’s and some of the other long-gone Hollywood jazz clubs spawned by the West Coast sound. McKinzie had told me to listen and study the discs. They were some of Pepper’s last recordings. After years spent in jails and prisons because of his addictions, the artist was making up for lost time. Even in his work as a sideman. That relentlessness. He never stopped it until his heart stopped. There was a kind of integrity in that and the music that my friend admired. He gave me the discs and told me never to stop making up for lost time.
    Soon the song ended and Kiz turned to me.
    “Who was that?”
    “Art Pepper, Lee Konitz.”
    “White guys?”
    I nodded.
    “Damn. That was good.”
    I nodded again.
    “So what’s under the tablecloth, Harry?”
    I shrugged.
    “First time you’ve come around in eight months, I suppose you know.”
    She nodded.
    “Yeah.”
    “Let me guess. Alexander Taylor’s tight with the chief or the mayor or both and he called to check me out.”
    She nodded. I had gotten it right.
    “And the chief knew you and I were close at one time, so…”
    At one time. She seemed to stumble while saying that part.
    “Anyhow, he sent me out to tell you that you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
    She sat down on the chair opposite the couch and looked out across the deck. I could tell she wasn’t interested in what was out there. She just didn’t want to look at me.
    “So this is what you gave up homicide for, to run errands for the chief.”
    She looked sharply at me and I saw the injury in her eyes. But I didn’t regret what I said. I was just as angry with her as she was with me.
    “It’s easy for you to say that, Harry. You’ve already been through the war.”
    “The war never ends, Kiz.”
    I almost smiled at the coincidence of the song that was now playing while Rider was delivering her message. The piece was “High Jingo,” with Pepper still accompanying Konitz. Pepper would be