On his way home, Wager had heard the dispatcher call patrol units to half a dozen outbreaks of civil disturbance. Most of them were in the northeast quadrant, but even as he finally flicked off the monitor and closed his burning eyes against the room’s darkness, he heard the locations shift toward the northwest sector—the predominantly Chicano neighborhoods of District One. This morning, the Headquarters Building still held remnants of the night’s action, a heavier-than-usual number of cars parked in the private vehicle lot, and a residue of official sedans and vans still at the curbs and in the no-parking zones. Even inside the building, the hallways, usually empty of administrators on Saturday and Sunday, showed an ebbing tide of baggy-eyed faces that were beginning to sag as they lost the adrenalin that had carried them through the night of extra duty. “Jesus, Gabe, what a tour.” Golding stretched as he finished a final page of a report. Beyond him, Max, slouching over his deskful of papers, lifted a weary hand at him and turned back to the sheets.
