The Domino Effect

by Jeff Cates

It was a slow night on the Strip. Maybe I was slipping. It was almost midnight, and I’d only busted four johns. I hadn’t slept in two days, and my mind was drifting like a snowbank in gale-force winds. An ear-piercing scream was followed by a crash as the windows were blown out of the surveillance van.

I’m not sure which made more noise, the crunching of metal, the breaking glass, or Jose’s scream. Malcolm had both revolvers out and was spinning in circles like a whirling Dervish as he stared up at the stars.

“Jose?” I shouted.

There was a tinkling of glass and the screeching of metal as he forced the door open through the bent frame. Jose was shaking shards of the broken windows out of his hair, crossing himself with his left hand, and holding a stun gun upside down in his right. “Sister of Mercy! What hit the van, a plane?”

A body on the flattened roof was dressed in an Alphazetaman III suit. I placed my hand along the vic’s neck and felt no pulse. “It wasn’t a bird either, compadre; it was a man.”

He was still warm and missing one boot. Malcolm was on the radio calling for backup. All the buildings around us were single-story. There weren’t any flashing lights in the sky. I listened for the drone of a plane, but the sound of an approaching siren could have drowned out a two-hundred-pound opera singer.

Within minutes, half a dozen of Hollywood’s finest black and whites were parked along the block, and patrolmen were milling around the street like hungry pigeons at a park. We all searched for a missing boot, but we came up empty-handed.

When Coroner Takagi got there, he asked us three times what happened. After we all told him a body fell out of the sky, he looked at us like we’d been helping ourselves to the stash in the evidence room. He said it looked like the guy died from blunt force trauma. Based on the indentations in the roof of the van and the dead man’s head, I didn’t think Takagi was sticking his neck out any farther than a box turtle in a kids’ petting zoo.

Jose was still shaking like he had a bad case of palsy.

We had to go back to the station to file our reports. The three of us caught a ride with the coroner, well… four, if you count the corpse.

A warm Santa Ana wind began to blow, scattering trash across the boulevard like tumbleweeds in a western movie.

As we walked in, a shirtless, green man was being booked. Obviously, he lifted weights, but he didn’t look that incredible.

“Look, officer,” he said, “I didn’t climb that flagpole. I don’t even know how I got up there.”

“Blow into this,” a second cop said.

“And pee into that,” a third cop added.

We kept walking. Malcolm was cursing about his bad luck under his breath, and Jose followed quietly on my heels. Half the cops in the station seemed to be in the back room filling out arrest reports. Malcolm pointed out two of them who looked like their uniforms had gone through a paper shredder. “It could have been worse,” I mouthed.

Some guy in lockup was climbing the bars and howling like a wolf in a cage.

“Somebody shoot him with a silver bullet,” a working girl being frisked shouted.

I had a feeling this was one of those nights when the whole city was going to fall like a line of dominoes.

We passed a cluster of Japanese tourists huddled together like a rugby team. One of them was sporting a black eye, and another was wearing a ripped shirt. “Welcome to Hollywood,” Malcolm muttered under his breath.

We passed Captain Washington’s office as quietly as we could. Just when we thought we hadn’t been noticed, she stepped out of the bathroom door five feet in front of us. I practically ran into her.

“What happened this time?” she asked.

“Just the usual,” I said, “some guy fell out of the sky onto the van.”

“How’s the van?” she asked.

“Ask Jose.” Malcolm hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “He was in it.”

“I could have been killed. The van gave its life for me.”

“That bad?” Washington asked.

“Worse,” Malcolm answered. “We’ll need another one for tomorrow’s shift.”

Some psych consultant convinced the powers that be cops made fewer rash decisions if we spent at least half of our working hours when the sun was shining. Our new shift was a noon-to-midnight experiment that started three days ago. I was having trouble sleeping, and rash thoughts filled my head about confronting the P-guy who’d disrupted my beauty sleep.

“We don’t have much in the budget for that kind of a purchase,” our boss said.

“It’s not like we’re going to chase speeders in it,” Malcolm said.

“But we need something that will make it to and from the station,” I added.

“We’ll see if we can use a confiscated vehicle,” she said. “Talk to Johnson and see what he can dig up for you tomorrow.”

As we were heading out, there was a loud bang, and the howling coming from the jail cell ended abruptly.

One of the tourists was trying to attract our attention. Malcolm bowed, and we all kept walking.