PART ONE
one
Earthquakes scare the hell out of me. It's not so much the shaking. Or even the noise, which during significant quakes is like a steam engine bearing through every living room, breaking china, everywhere, all at once.
It's knowing that nothing, not even the ground you're standing on, is solid enough to keep from breaking apart at any moment. The revelation that there are greater forces at work every second of every day tearing down what you and every person who ever lived spent building up.
The funny thing is I never think about this while my world is shaking to bits, or even after it brings a whole damned city to its knees, making nervous wrecks out of even the most grounded among us. It only comes to me when I'm working a case, mired in the muck of some poor slob's personal trash heap, trying to make sense of why people who live such tenuous existences do such horrible things to each other.
And why knowing this doesn't make them try any harder to keep from falling between the cracks.
Some cases remind me of this more than others. Like this one. Here I was slumped low in the driver's seat of a nondescript rental car on the last legs of a September evening, mainlining Jamaica Mountain from a Thermos and listening to Albert King's blues, trying to remember what had led me here. I was on a stakeout, a stakeout for a fucking dog.
It all started with a favor. Come to think of it, everything bad in my life has started with a favor. Maybe it's the burden of being a private eye or maybe it's just because deep down I'm nothing like I pretend to be, a hard ass with gun.
Truth is when I let my guard down, I'm a sucker of mammoth proportions. It's a quality I hate even more than my eyes, two green-colored traitors, ready to betray my innermost feelings at the most inappropriate moment. Problem is I have no control over any of it.
I've always had jobs that trade on favors. When I was a sportswriter, it came in the form of swapping information and I find it's been good practice for my present profession. But there are all kinds of favors. Some carry more weight than others and require a greater investment of yourself. The kind you do because at the end of the day, you understand there is no choice. All you can do then is hope you survive it.
Two weeks ago, James Leroy Gray made such a request. The lesser part of me was still pissed I had said yes, and I didn't even know why.
ZEN AND THE CITY OF ANGELS. Copyright © 1999 by Elizabeth M. Cosin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
