Tropical Depression Read Online Free PDF

the kind of thing you could change if it wasn’t working out. Everything I tried to tell her about how it really was just made her all the more convinced that it wasn’t working out, that the sooner she got me out of it and into something sane, like selling real estate, the better for all of us.
    And so now Jennifer’s Real World was getting ugly, too, and I had no place to hide from it except in my work, and of course that just made it all worse on both ends, until the whirlpool got so overpowering I didn’t know where I was anymore.
    Days like this one weren’t helping much. After two and a half hours of paperwork I had a court appearance. In court I learned that I was just this side of Adolf Hitler and only twelve years of demented Republican power-brokering and the consequent dismantling of the Bill of Rights kept me from a long-overdue prison sentence for my crimes. That took me through to lunch time.
    I started back to the station thinking I’d had a rough morning. I wasn’t even halfway to my car before it got a lot worse.
    I had just turned the corner on the top floor of the parking garage when my beeper started yipping at me. It was a long way down to the telephones, and almost as long to the far end of the garage where my car was parked. I sprinted for my car.
    My head was pounding from the smog by the time I got the door opened. I slid onto the front seat, snatched up the radio, and called in.
    Maybe you’ve never heard police radio traffic. There’s a very rigid structure to it. There’s an order, a rhythm, and a way things are done.
    Let’s put it this way: If there had been a nuclear attack on Universal Studios I would expect Central to tell me in a calm, unemotional voice using the correct call codes. If Long Beach Harbor were under attack by Japanese war planes, Central would tell me where to go and what to do in a flat tone, with clear dispatch numbers.
    So when the dispatcher stuttered at me and couldn’t seem to think of the right thing to say, that set off all the little alarms. I got a Code Three 10–19, which didn’t make too much sense: Emergency, return to station. When I asked for a repeat, I got a 10–23, stand by, and a hiss of dead air.
    A long moment later my radio crackled again and gave me a 911–B for a 10–35, followed by an address on Boyd Street: Contact the officer there for a confidential message.
    I didn’t get it at all. “Central, is this Code Three?” I asked.
    Nothing. Then, “Lincoln Tango Two-oh, Ten–Twenty-three,” again.
    More nothing. I was already rolling. Boyd Street was five minutes away. As I turned onto Los Angeles Street I tried again. “Central—”
    I was cut off by the dispatcher. “Lincoln Tango Two-oh, that is a Code Three. We have a Two-oh-seven in progress.”
    I hit the siren and stepped on the gas. Two-oh-seven is kidnapping, and like all cops, I hated it like poison. I didn’t know why they wanted me for it, but they’d have a reason.
    And they did. They did have a reason. Oh boy, did they have a reason. One of the all-time great reasons.
    Boyd Street is in a depressed downtown area. It’s full of flophouses, sweatshops, and Korean toy warehouses. The address I had took me to a flop near Sixth Street, only a few blocks from the Greyhound station on Fifth Street, known as the Nickel, the center of downtown L.A.’s Skid Row. It’s the kind of area that’s so scummy you want to burn your shoes after you step on the sidewalk.
    There was quite a party going by the time I got there. There were two paramedic trucks standing by, six patrol cars, another four unmarkeds, a fire truck, and the big truck I knew belonged to the bomb squad. It was all I could do to find a parking place. I finally pulled onto the sidewalk two doors down, in front of a rolling steel door. As I got out, a Korean man stuck his head out the door I was blocking, looked at me, and spat carefully about four and a half inches from the toe of my left shoe.
    On the rooftops