End Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

face.
    â€œShut up! Shut up! Just shut up!”
    Rachel started, tears leapt to her eyes, her face gone white and her hand went to her cheek.
    When the doorbell rang.
    Cheryl lurched from the lounge chair, finally stood, trying to mouth I’m so sorry. But Rachel was already marching through the house toward the front door, wiping her eyes on her suit sleeve.
    The front door stood open, a nosy young man in a cheap suit and tie and bad black JCPenney shoes peered into the house, smiling insincerely. He held a sheaf of papers, bound in a blue folder.
    â€œCheryl Gibson?”
    She came forward. “That’s me.” The blue folder with the papers came into her hand. “The family of Ricardo Montoya. Wrongful Death. You’ve been served.” So the family was going after her, and the bloody house and unspecified damages. Christ, she couldn’t even afford the bloody payments or the taxes, not on her yearly copper 40K. This was citizens’ revenge, pure and simple. If she’d been a single occupancy renter, the family might not have bothered at all. Sued the PD and left her alone. But 100K in pretty sand was too attractive to pass up.
    In a few short days things went from bad to worse. The Sweet Jane nightmare, the tequila bottle that seemed to slide off the shelf on its own. Cheryl just folded into herself, and Rachel’s sullen eyes stared at her from the bathroom mirror in the morning when she thought Cheryl wasn’t looking. But she was.
    â€œYou want a divorce? Will that fix it? I’ll go back to living on my salary, move down the hill. Financial separation, something.”
    Rachel finished her eye makeup. After a breath, “Don’t be an ass.” But that pause, that tiny second, crushed Cheryl’s heart. Her gal’d thought about it already. How to get out of this crap.
    Have a nice day.
    *   *   *
    Herman, her union lawyer, met her at Canter’s Deli so they could prep for the departmental hearing. The process had slid downward a couple of notches. Cleared by Internal Affairs with a personal reprimand that wouldn’t go on her record, assigned to temporary desk duty—but the mayor’s crony captain still wanted to show the people of Los Angeles his boss loved every stinking one of them. Even Chicano arm choppers. And Sweet Jane turned out to be nobody, a runaway, a Jane Doe. Not even a councilman’s daughter. Not even a studio head’s estranged trophy chick who put on shows for all his pals. So a departmental hearing open to the public would be held. A show trial. Star witness Officer Gibson and the Bang-Flag-Gun.
    Herman and Cheryl sat along the wall of the delicatessen, her on the long black leather couch, him in the brown leather chair. Herman, a once-upon-a-time New Yorker, haunted Canter’s like so many of his Manhattan and Brooklyn brothers transplanted to Gollywood. Too fat for pot roast anymore, he tried to satisfy himself with cottage cheese, a canned peach half, a maraschino cherry, and a pickle on the side. Good luck with that.
    Cheryl felt no such compunction, shamelessly ordering corned beef and chopped liver with a slice of tomato and a slice of Bermuda onion. Plain, no sauce. Back in New York, one deli called it a Joan Rivers. A real “Joan Alexandra Molinsky” of a sandwich. That schmear of chopped liver made it slide down the gullet right proper. A cholesterol coma on rye.
    Herman stared at it lovingly, smiling sadly. “Oh, those were the days.”
    Which made her laugh. But Herman sighed and went back to his cottage cheese plate in measured denial. Getting on with business.
    â€œLook, this is where we stand. Let’s start with the obvious. You’re African American, you’re a gal, you’re gay, you’re a friggin’ rainbow Rambo—they can’t touch you. You seen the news?” He slid a newspaper clipping across at her. A printout of the LA Times.
    â€œI