“. . . Like I said to yer Malcolm over dere,” the player in the patched denim jacket says to me, jerking a blunt thumb toward Sherlock.

The patch—a Maltese cross covered with smoke—makes me want to break leather, but I don’t

cause I want to stay off the beach—even if it means staying in therapy. 

“So, why do you think they are always over breakfast?” the OIS therapist asks me.

I call her Legs. She calls my breakfast brawls “domestic differences.”

 And there have been plenty of them, let me tell you—nothing violent, just—I don’t know. . . .

“Maybe that’s why they are exes?” Legs suggests. Then, after a meditative pause, “And always at breakfast over—?”

She breaks with a slow smile, and I say sheepishly, “Scrambled eggs.”

“‘Scrambled eggs’,” she goes, brushing a cloud of auburn hair out of her humorously puckered eyes, and I wonder, What in hell does any of this have to do with an Officer Involved Shooting?

And now the same from my partner, chin between fingers, elbow on knee, as we approach Cinco Puntos, where it all went down, the OIS I mean. I’m not sure whether it’s that or the friggin’ roundabout itself, but sumthin’s got my heart beating like a triphammer.

“Never fried?— boiled?— poached?” Sherlock rat-a-tats.

Inquisitive my new partner is. A real sleuth hound. . . . An observing machine, but a sensitive instrument with grit and languid dreamy eyes. . . . ’S why I call her Sherlock—that and her name is Sherry. . . .

 “I always liked Sherlock Holmes,” I tell Legs.

“‘Scandal in Bohemia,’ ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ ‘The Red-Headed League,’ and of course, ‘The Hound.’ The whole nine yards—read ’em all. . . . My old man got me started. . . . He was a cop.” Then, “Funny, though, I can’t name the first one he gave me— only what he said.”

Here I halt, hugging my armpits. Then nothing,— a time of anxious waiting, y’cud say,— before from her quick, intelligent eyes, “Which was?”

 “‘Kid,’” I say with a sigh, voice clotting in throat, “‘this is the one to remember.’”

What he meant I don’t know. And, as if she already knows that, she asks in a sort of veiled voice, “Why do you think that’s so?”. . .

I sit mum, cause, frankly, I don’t get it— what Legs is getting at. The fact is I don’t even know how or why it all came up—I mean about the old man and Sherlock Holmes and all. . . .

So I ask her point blank, borrowing a favorite expression of his: “So, what does any of this have to do with the price of tea in China?”

A blush, a pause, a throat clearing, a crossing then uncrossing of those long, swordlike legs, before a frown from between suddenly impassive black eyes says, “You seem angry.”

I look away with a half-hearted shrug cause she is probably right, but mostly, honestly, cause I just want off the beach—y’know, get back on the street? . . . Even if it means a new partner and more therapy.

“ Never,” I say to Sherlock, of eggs, as the wheel, or my hands, one or the other, trembles into Cinco Puntos,— you know, where Lorena and Indiana cross Cesar Chavez? Tchah, friggin’ roundabouts. I hate ’em, even when festooned for the “season of forgiveness.” Gimme Hollywood and Highland any day— even with its scramble Barnes Dance. . . . Or Florence and Normandie, for that matter. . . .

“‘Never?” Sherlock says.

“Didn’t I just—scrambled! . . . Always scrambled.”

“Hmm,” she goes, observing to herself, “and you always make ’em.”

I can feel her dusky eyes looking hard at me. Then, with finger beats on the console, she sniffs, low and confidential like, “Lucky she wasn’t killed.”

Me, I’m just trying to stay focused on what looks like nested circles whirling around a giant Christmas tree.

Distantly I hear Sherlock, as if summing up, “So, your exes—they all bolt over scrambled eggs—one mid-traffic, no less— and always with with an ‘Argh!’or a‘Blah!’”

Squinting for greater clarity before breaking a sweat out of the friggin’ merry-go-round, I unload with blessed relief a riotous, “‘Yak!’or‘Gak!’,” and Sherlock says—with, I’m certain, that sly, confident smile of hers—, “You leaving shells in them?,” . . . and we split our sides laughing. . . .

She’s okay, my new partner is okay, I’m thinkin’, when,“10-65 at 221 Baker” crackles over the radio, and me and Sherlock straighten up and go all berries and cherries.

“What ya talkin' about, dude?” Denim continues.

Denim’s the manager of the Cannabis Connection. It’s been held up. . . . 

Short and wiry, with deep-set faded eyes, and a patch that makes me—oh, I said that already.

 I can’t blame him, though— for the outburst, I mean. . . . what with me going on full throttle—I don’t know why—what I’m always telling Sherlock and Legs about my exes just storming off over scrambled eggs.

“Mid-traffic, no less,” I say to Denim, of the second, I believe it was. Then, echoing Sherlock, “‘Lucky she wasn’t killed’.”

Denim scrunches up his bony face and says warily, “Be their shells uh in dem?” Then, with the face of a thousand calculations, “I can’t stand shells in mah scrambled eggs.”

I look directly into his eyes, which, though faded, are soft, not hard, not stony, when I go, “Since, you know,—”

 “Yo,Malcolm,” Denim breaks in nervously, “your foo here be all fuqd up!”

At this Sherlock moves in.

“—she was a large woman, y’see,” I go, unlimbering, “may still be. But that’s a whole other story. Not her size, her overwrought,—”

“Ha’ova’ what?” Denim weighs in, peering around Sherlock’s burly back at me.

“—‘You never asked how I was feeling’.”

“All good, Sarge?” Sherlock throws my way with a slightly tremulous voice over a stout broad shoulder, and, distracted as I am, I’m sure her eyes must be holding it cause I know them, even by now, Sherlock’s quick, shrewd eyes, when they’re holding it,— a look of troubled wonder, I mean. A cop knows that about his partner, early on.

After some pauses, from Denim, his voice shaking with excitement, head bobbing as if beating in tune with his heart, “Oh, ‘how ya be feelin’?’ Oh yeaaaaaa, I git dat all da time. ‘How ya be feelin’?’—oh yea, all da time.”

That backs Sherlock off, with a resigned, “Me too—I can relate.”

“So,” I say with a draft of relief, to all three, “you get what I’m saying then?”

“10-4,”  from Sherlock.

“Oh, yeaa,” from Denim, with a, “I git all dat shiz. I git what ya're sayin’,” tacked on.

And from Legs, with head critically bent, “Some people—well, they just hate you for not loving them.”

I give her a puzzled look.

“Mokokoma Mokhonoana,” she says, knocking the wrinkles out of her smoke-grey dress as she stands up from her black mesh executive swivel chair. Our fifty minute hour is up.

 “Moko-Moko?” I go.

 “Earth,” she says, an extending smooth long arm ushering me to the five panel door with clear glass, “Creation. . . . Resurrection.”

“And ‘scrambled’?,” I get off halfway out, cause, y’know, I wanna know what that—y’know, symbolizes?

“Jumbled,” she’s quick to reply through the doorway, then rapidly, as if late for a Christmas party, “muddled, disordered, confused,” before pulling up with, “perhaps transformation,” with a “rebirth” thrown in.  Then, with a trilling laugh from behind a shut door, I hear darkly, with sinking heart, “Possibly nothing. Who really knows?” And I feel water rising above my head.

“Oh, yeaa,” Denim commiserates, “I git all dat shiz. I git what ya're sayin’.”

“What-what?” I say, like a punch-drunk pugilist—y’know, a real palooka to a cutman during a break between punishing rounds? Like that. Cause that’s how I’m feeling—foggy and lumbering.

And Denim goes, with a turn of the neck, “‘What’?. . . What?”

“You said,” I say, coming to as if splashed by “Stitch” Duran, “‘I get what you’re saying.’” Then, to Sherlock, “Didn’t Denim here just say he gets what I’m saying, Officer?”

“Affirmative, Sarge,” Sherlock answers briskly, hitching up her Sam Browne, “that’s what Denim here just said.” Then, throwing him a caution, “Careful there, Denim.You could get whiplash the way you’re toggling between the Sergeant and me.”

I’m liking her more and more, my new partner, when Denim goes, “Sid what?,” before his lips form words unspoken.

“’S what I mean,” I say, “‘what?’”

After a marked pause, Sherlock, like a stage manager, whispers to Denim words she’s

heard before from me, “‘Her plump, dimpled hands’,” and a nonplussed Denim—cause he’s sly and cagey and streetwise—replies, “Oh yeaaaaaa, those plump, dimple hands,just—,” and then, with a popping neck snap turns to Sherlock for his next line.

Sherlock’s girlish unringed hand forms a cone before her mouth, and, working her pink lips in another breathy whisper, she says, “‘Flitting like little birds.’”

“—oh, yeaaaaaa, ‘flittin’ like little birds,’ dey r.”

“Exactly!” I say, and add, “Till coming to perch on—”

“‘Her ample’,” interrupting softly, Sherlock cuing Denim.

“‘Ha ample-ample,’” Denim stutters, eyes glued on Sherlock, before he coughs up, “oh, yeaaaaaa,‘ha ample loosely-hung hips!’”

“Bingo!” I say. . . . “And then?”

“Then?. . .  What yo' mean,‘then'?"

His testy tone draws Sherlock closer.

With feline swiftness Denim freezes her with a thin, long-fingered, threatening hand.

 “Don’t fuqn tell me!” he warns her off. Then, with a finger-snap, “‘Befo’dat bitch humphed n galumphed off!’” . . .

“So,” I say, “now that we understand one another—tell me, what went down here?”

“I’m behind da counter,” Denim begins, touching his lips timidly with the tip of his tongue, “doin’ my ting, den bingo-bango, der’sdis piece in my face.”

“A roscoe?” I go.

“‘Rosoce’?” Denim goes, his shoulders, his eyes, his general air, a study in confused thought.“Whosaid anythin’’bout a Roscoe?I don't even knowany Roscoe!”

Fiery, snappish, but who can blame him? 

“Roscoe.” Dated. But so am I. What can I say? I like Hammett. “Gat,” “heater,” “rod,” “roscoe”— I like ’em hard-boiled, even back in the bag and over the hill.

Denim’s jaw muscle twitches. Then, pinching his lip, he says, “Heater, man, heater. Boomstick, boomstick!”

 “‘Broomstic’,” I go, then to a scribbling Sherlock, “Y’got that, Officer?”

 “10-4, Sarge,” Sherlock says without even looking up.

“Boomstick, boomstick!” Denim lets go with a loose laugh, then with a bite,“Y’know, Evil Dude?— boomstick? Not broomstick. Jeeez!”

Now, I’m really pissed. But instead of dispatching Denim, cause, y’know, as I say, I want to stay off the beach, I ask Sherlock, weirdly, I admit, “Tell me, Officer, has a jot of alertness just come into my face?,” cause, y’see, in mind’s eye I’m seeing Legs.

Legs is looking at me in a searching sort of way with those sensitive lips of hers that, though soundlessly pasted, are stamping each word—“Face-it-Sergeant,”— like the die of a machine,— “You-cracked-up,” adding, after an uneasy silence and some pauses, without so much as a tremor in her voice, “You could no longer separate yourself from your objects of horror or compassion.”

My objects of —?

I don’t know what in hell that means. But I gotta stay off the beach, so I just nod, and imagine her and me dancing naked in the rain.

“Definitely, Sarge,” says Sherlock, “a jot and then some.” And from Denim to me, with a sideward jerk of his head, “No macneida, like I tol’ yer Malcomb—popper, I’m talkin’ popper.” Then with a probing stare, “Y’know, pistola?”

“Burner?” I say.

“Fo’sho’,” he goes with a dismissive shoulder shrug, “coulda been, but def a cuete.” Then, “Hey, bro, make no mistake, hear what I’m sayin’, a persuader, an’ aimin’ low, real low, he—”

“‘He’?” Sherlock breaks in.

“—fya catch my drift,” ignoring Sherlock and doing a Michael Jackson crotch grab when he adds, “real low.”

“‘He,’ you said,” Sherlock persists.

“So? What’s it to ya?” from Denim. Then, “Yeah,so‘he’—what?”

Sherlock reminds him of what he told us earlier about the perp wearing a mask.

“Yeah, one o’’em bala-bala—”

“Whatsa, whatsa ‘bala-bala’?’’ I go, swiveling my eyes between them.

“A balalaika!,” from Denim with the finger snap of a bold guess. Then, “Yeah, datz what dat shit was—a balalaika. Yeah, yo know, one o’’em masks, — like I said before.”

Then, lickety split, Sherlock is all over him.

“You got a shorty?” she starts grilling.

“Sho’,” he says, “I have a shorty, but what’s ’at gotta do widda price o’ kush?”

“‘Bush’?” I go, confused.

“Kush, kush,” Denim laughs,“not bush! No bush, bro, no butter, no basuco, no banano neida. . . . A lot o' kush dat dude took, let me tell yo’. Kush, bruh, not bush— a lot!”

“Reefer?” I say.

Denim laughs again. “‘Reefer,’ —what shah, how boo,” he goes, and once again I’m tempted to pop ’m.

“We’re talkin’lectric lettuce here, bruh. Hea what I’m sayin’?”

Then with quickened voice a fussilade of boastful words:

 “Strictly sticky icky, no bammer, no boof. An’ def no skittles. Nutin’ but loud fuego here at Da Cannabis Connection. Strictly legit.Capeesh? . . . Y’want woo-boo? Shoo-shoo. Okay? We good?”

Then, “Dances?,”Sherlock shoots from the hip.

“Yeah,” Denim goes,“my ridelocks ’n pops,—”

And, of a sudden, sumthin’ sets my nerves on a hair trigger.

“—so what’s ’at got to do wid da price o’ dank?”

“ Where?” Sherlock wants to know.

“Cheetahs mostly. . . . Candy Cat too.”

Now I’m the one scribbling— chicken scratching, really, cause my nerves feel like they used to when I drank—y’know how nerves get when strung with alcohol? Like that.

“Unmanned,” I tell Legs how I felt about playing second fiddle to Sherlock. Legs just looks at me fixedly, interrogation with a slight smile and meditative eyes, and, damndest thing, I then admit to her, though feeling unmanned, oddly strengthened, too.

“Exposed and Deja Vu?,” Sherlock presses on.

“Yuh, so dat bitch duz,” Denim admits. “She dances. ’S not a thing. She dances—wid a bala-bala, whaddya call ’em?”

“‘Balaclava?’” prompts Sherlock.

“Yeah, yeah, dat’s it! Wid a bala-bala—, real zaza! wid Uplight and Super Trouper, too.”

I make out, as if through a misty dream, that sly confident smile play across Sherlock’s face, just before she says, with what sounds to me like swift tones in her voice,“It’s a setup, Sarge.”

“Oy!” erupts from Denim, “She dances. Periodt!”

 “Her and him,” Sherlock says. Then, deadening her voice, “They’re in it together.”

Then, shooting me a sideward look, Denim says,“Yow, your bro-rida here—she goin’ extra!”. . .

I throw Sherlock a look of puzzled wonder, cause “bro-rider” has really rung my bell.

“Hey!Yo hea what I'm sayin’? Yo' bro-rida hea—”

Then, hey presto, damndest thing— Ryder springs to mind, and after what seems like a long period of time turning in a circle, I murmur to myself between my teeth, “‘The Blue Carbuncle’”—the first Holmes the old man gave me.

“Sarge!” Sherlock breaks into my thought.

“Ryder,” I say, like a man waking from a disordered dream, “the only thief Holmes ever let go.”

“Sarge!”

Sherlock’s voice rises, its tone hardens, when she then says in direct, choice language, “He don’t know balaclava from balalaika!”

It was some time thereafter, a time, y’cud say, of quiet and waiting it was, that I hear the familiar metallic rattle of cuffs, and from Sherlock, “Hookem?,” and from Denim, “Oy,hey, bro dis be too much!” and from Legs, “A-ha!”

At length, out of tightened lips, comes from me, with startling lucidity, “No!”

“No cuff ’n stuff?” Sherlock asks with a sort of snippish surprise.

Then, a laconic voice from beyond the fog that sounds like an uttered sob says, “This is the one to remember,” and I say, “Let ’m skate.”

Sherlock regards me for a time, then gives Denim a long, hard look, sad and serious.

Then, with a finger on the patch and another marking time on his temple, she says to him, in a voice that is cold, sharp, and final, “Lose that.”

Then we’re on our way, with, from Denim, “Ya guys be okay,” and the festive afterthought, “Merry fuqn Christmas!”

As I ease the trembling wheel into Cinco Puntos, I think, This beater needs bushings, and, the gaudy

 roundabout cleared, I ask Sherlock, “Whadja mean back there,— ‘I can relate’?”