Lia blasted back toward North Hollywood in Dexter’s sleek BMW at wildly excessive speeds, cutting in and out of traffic as she shot up Laurel Canyon Boulevard and accelerating through yellow lights at Ventura, at Moorpark, and then again at Riverside in the last nanoseconds before they changed over to red, eliciting honks and shouted curses from the disgruntled left-turners she darted past.
She’d never driven so fast in her life.
Eventually, perhaps inevitably, Lia blew past a motorcycle cop’s speedtrap while rocketing east on Sherman Way. Blue and red lights burst like a fireworks display in her rearview mirror and a siren chirped, making her jump in her seat and yelp in startled response. She pulled over into a Home Depot parking lot, feeling sick.
The officer who’d snagged her removed his helmet and left it on the seat of his hulking motorbike before hitching up his gun belt and approaching. He didn’t bother to take off his silver, aviator-style shades.
“License and registration please, ma’am,” the cop said, when Lia rolled down her window to speak with him.
“I… I don’t have them with me,” she said, only then realizing that she really didn’t. Her purse was down in her hobbit hole. She could see her own dismay reflected twice in the officer’s shiny lenses.
“I’m gonna ask you to step out of the vehicle then, ma’am, and turn around and put your hands on the side of it.”
Lia had little choice but to comply. The motorcycle cop (who was tall and young and under better circumstances might’ve been somewhat attractive) frisked her efficiently.
“I just forgot my purse this morning, officer, is all, I really don’t think-”
“Ma’am, this vehicle was reported stolen yesterday afternoon, so unless you can produce some ID and a good explanation, I’m gonna have to ask you to put your hands behind your back.”
Lia did as she was told, and the cuffs closed around her wrists with two decisive clicks. A few do-it-yourself shoppers watched the sorry drama from beside their parked SUVs, but all of the day laborers gathered around the hardware store had scattered when lapolicia arrived.
Shitballs, Lia thought.
She was fucked and she knew it.
The tall cop guided her to a seat on a concrete block at the front of a parking spot. She was cuffed tight. Black Tom could’ve let her loose in an eyeblink, but he wasn’t available right now.
The officer paused to jot down some notes. Lia noticed a small black tattoo in the shape of a dog on the back of his left hand when he flipped open his notebook.
She felt a small kindling of hope.
“Hey. Blackdog,” she said.
The cop slowly turned his head. “What did you say?”
“Your tattoo,” Lia said. “You’re a Blackdog.”
“And what would you know about that?”
“Before you call this in or whatever,” Lia begged, “will you do me one favor? Will you call Frank Chudabala for me? Captain Chudabala? Please?”
“And what would you want me to tell him?” the cop asked.
“Tell him Lia la brujachica needs the Blackdogs,” she said. “Tell him I’ve fallen down a well.”
The young patrolman didn’t stop frowning, but he did pull a personal cellphone out of his pocket and dialed it, never once taking his mirror-covered eyes off of Lia.