"Maybe I enjoy a challenge."

"He's not a challenge. He's a brick wall."

"I'll take it under advisement. Thank you for your concern."

"Just trying to be helpful. You keep in mind what I said. Don't let them play you. They will, if they think they can."

He pantomimed a tip of his hat to her, an old-fashioned gesture made more quaint by the fact that he was, of course, hatless.

She watched Tomlinson walk away, while wondering what that had been about. Perhaps he really was trying to help. Perhaps something else was going on.

Whatever his reasons, she wasn't going to be deterred. She would find Brand and she would work with him, whether anyone wanted her to or not.

Roy Wolper was having a bad day.

He sat at his desk in his uniform, ramrod stiff, his black hair brushed back from his high forehead. As always he felt strong and vigorous and vital and not at all like a dinosaur, which was what he was.

A dinosaur in the new LAPD, anyway. He jogged four miles every day, ate only lean meat and fresh vegetables. There was no flab on him. He was steel hard, his body a carefully tended machine.

Cindy, his wifeex-wifehad thought he was a fitness fanatic. She hadn't complained about it in bed, as he recalled, but at other times she seemed almost embarrassed by his dedication to health and strength. But then she had been unhappy with everything about him by the end. When they divorced two years ago, there had been nothing to hold them togetherexcept Zach, of course.

At first there had been no more than the usual conflict between ex-spouses, the usual wrangling over weekend custody. Then this attention deficit thing had started. Some doctor had decided that Zach's Cs and C-minuses were the result of a learning disability that required therapy and special schooling, both of which required extra money, which Wolper didn't have. For the past six months Cindy had been on his case nightly, at first requesting and then demanding more child support. Now she was talking about taking legal action.

And the thing was, he wasn't holding out on her. He had never held out on her. He had been loyal to his son, giving him whatever he needed, fighting with Cindy to spend more time with him. Now she was treating him like the villain, insisting he cough up money he didn't have so she could treat a problem that might not even be a problem.

What did shrinks know, anyway? According to them, every kid who was restless in school needed Ritalin, and any kid who wasn't a straight A student had a learning disorder. The thing sounded like a scam, and Cindy had fallen for it, and now she was threatening to take him to court.

Wolper sighed. He hated and distrusted shrinks. He had never believed in any of that psychiatric voodoo. It was crap, an employment program for the unemployables churned out by this society in increasingly large numbers. He knew all about the unemployables, more and more of whom were showing up in blue uniforms as proud members of the new LAPD.

Not the LAPD he'd started out in. Not the LAPD of Daryl Gates, who had run the department in the 1980s and made it into a slick paramilitary force. He remembered the physical-fitness requirements when he joined upjump a wall, drag a 160-pound dummy, execute pull-ups, chin-ups, run a mile. Nothing like that for today's applicants. They were asked to balance on a teeter-totter, for Christ's sake. They had to pedal a stationary bike, skip between lines like kids on a playground.

Gates was gone, and so was his vision of the department. The new LAPD was all sensitivity training and community outreach and diversity. It was an equal opportunity employer that invited women into the ranks even though they couldn't meet the physical standards established for men. The solution was to lower the standards for everyone. So what if a cop lacked the upper body strength to scale a fence or subdue a suspect? Playing political games was what the department was all about. Bullshit had been elevated to a science. Wolper hated all of it.

Now political correctness was invading his personal life. Damn.

And yet amp; suppose the doctor was right. Suppose Zach really did need the meds, the counseling, the special ed. If so, then it didn't matter whether Wolper had the money or not. He would have to provide it. He could not let his son down.

Fourteen years in the patrol side of the LAPD, working the roughest divisions, had left Lt. Roy Wolper with few ideals, but loyalty to one's own flesh and blood was a credo he would not violate.

He took a sip of coffee and spat it back into the mug. Some idiot had percolated a pot of water through a batch of used coffee grounds. And since he had his own coffeemaker here in the office, and he was the only one who used it, he knew the identity of the idiot in questionnamely, himself. The stuff tested like bilgewater.

He took out the rubber ball he used to work off tension and started squeezing it in his left fist. God, what a crappy day. Lately all his days were like this. He'd taken to spending more time at the bar down the street at EOWend of watch, the close of his business day. He'd never been all that sociable with his fellow officers, but now he preferred to hoist a few with the boys if the alternative was to go home to a ringing telephone and another shakedown by his ex.

He knew he ought to chill out, but it was hard to stay calm where his livelihood was concerned. Money was a bitch. A marriage killer, a friendship killer. Often a literal killer. Most of the shit going down on the streets was about moneythe lack of it, the craving for it, the worship of it.

He squeezed the ball harder.

This morning, at five a.m., even before he'd left for the start of the day watch, Cindy had been on the phone to him, telling him that she would have to take Zach out of therapy if she didn't get enough cash to cover the last three sessions.

At two hundred bucks a pop, the sessions weren't cheap, and insurance paid almost none of it. Wolper had ended up telling her that Dr. Hackerthat was his actual name, Hackerwas a fraud and a con man, and she was being taken for a ride. He'd slammed down the phone and left his house before she could call back.

Best thing to do was not to think about itany of it. He would stay fit and keep a low profile. He knew he would rise no higher in this politicized bureaucracy. If Gates were still running the show, Wolper might have been a deputy chief by now. Instead the newest deputy chief was that pansy Hammondsame age as Wolper, but much less experienced on the street. Hammond wasn't even the worst of them. A lot of these other guysthe new recruits and the veterans who liked the new administration better than the oldwere pure politicos who'd never made a righteous bust in their lives, cowards who ran the other way when bullets flew.

When the whole department consisted of affirmative-action hires and civil-service bureaucrats and ass kissers, where would this city be? Wolper knew the answer to that one. Up shit creek, that's where. The public was too dumb to care, and the politicians encouraged the trend, seeing an advantage in a police department they could control. Everything was heading that way, and here was Lt. Roy Wolper, the last dinosaur mired in his own personal tar pit.

Well, he'd put in fourteen years. Another six, and he would cash out. Until then he would be a rock. Rock hard, rock solid, rock steady.

"Rock on," he said to himself, and smiled.

His assistant stuck her head into the office, interrupting his thoughts. "Lieutenant, there's a Dr. Cameron to see you."

Oh, hell. Another shrink. And one who, like Dr. Hacker, seemed committed to making his life a continuing pain in the ass. He took out his annoyance on the squeeze ball, crushing it flat.