The Art of Deception

The LaMoia

John LaMoia awoke from a two-hour afternoon nap (he was on night tour for all of March) wondering where his next OxyContin would come from. Then he remembered he’d quit.

The California King contained his feet despite the fact that he liked to sleep with his arm under the pillow and out toward the headboard. At an inch over six feet, he’d been hanging ten off the ends of mattresses for his entire adult life, so he thought of the California King as a “spoiler,” a luxury item that, once used, makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.

LaMoia could get around the bedroom blindfolded, as he’d built it himself, hammer and nail, two-by-four and Sheetrock, as the first element of Phase One of his refurbishing the cannery warehouse loft, a stone’s throw from Elliott Bay. He was currently in Phase Three-the last of a series of storage closets by the guest bedroom.

At nearly four thousand square feet, the loft gave him plenty of space to play with.

It remained a quirky space with a bachelor’s sense of independence, a cop’s sense of budget, and a man’s sense of decor.

There was no long line forming at the door to shoot it for a magazine spread. But for the view alone it was worth the price of admission.

He rolled over and petted his dog, his nagging dry throat reminding him of his former addiction. He wondered if it would ever fully go away.

The treatment that had begun following a broken jaw suffered in the line of duty had matured from medical necessity to medicinal abuse, an addiction of legendary proportions. LaMoia still couldn’t understand how he had allowed it to happen; and even now, three months into rehab, he found himself still in the unforgiving grasp of need.

LaMoia felt warm breath glance his neck, followed by the wet nose of an Australian sheepdog, formerly called “Blue,” but renamed “Rehab” when LaMoia found himself using the dog as a sounding board. LaMoia wasn’t entirely comfortable with the responsibility the dog’s existence perpetrated upon his bachelorhood. But then again, bachelorhood didn’t feel so right either; since recovery, his world had turned upside down.

LaMoia did not run his life as a democracy, but as a dicta-torship. He sat on the throne, he chaired the board, he dropped the gavel, he made the choices, and to hell with those who misunderstood him. It had always been so-or certainly since pu-berty and his discovery that women of every age, shape, size, and color could not do without him. This interest on their part had long since gone to his head. Sex was an addiction all its own. He had lost himself to the sport of winning women for the better part of his adult life. Only OxyContin and prescription drugs had finally lifted him into another realm, where indulging himself in new, untested flesh no longer mattered. In the end, only the pills mattered. Time-release pain medication. What kind of geniuses were these guys? When finally he could neither see nor have any desire to see the benefits of sobriety, he had stood his ground, defiant in his right to self-destruct.

During those long months, work had become a tolerated distraction, a necessary evil. That it was police work might have struck him as ironic had he been capable of conceiving of irony.

But such conceptions escaped him, especially objectivity. To the contrary, during this period he had been as self-absorbed as any other time in his thirty-odd years, and entirely blinded to it.

Beyond caring. A living illusion. And entirely without hope.

Six months ago, with his lieutenant, Boldt, on leave at the time to assist a capital murder investigation in Wenatchee, Washington, LaMoia had found himself in charge of the Seattle Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons Unit. It had been like putting a kid in the cockpit of a 747. He had floundered his way through insignificant homicide investigations that might have meant something to him had the OxyContin not dominated his every thought. A domestic here; a gang bang there. Could do them in his sleep. Morale at Homicide hit at an all-time low under his stewardship. When Boldt returned, he pasted things back together and identified LaMoia’s addiction. At that point, things had gone to hell in a handbasket.

LaMoia had wrecked the Camaro, totaling his only one true love, and requiring hospitalization and more painkillers. He took a leave of absence, and that proved his undoing-too much free time. One November night, Lou Boldt and Daphne Matthews had performed an intervention-confronting LaMoia with his drug problem and offering him a chance to save himself or to face the inevitable consequences. The intervention had worked.

By Christmas, LaMoia was prescription-free and enjoying turkey at Boldt’s house. By New Year’s Day, he’d been back on the job.

But a dark, cold March evening in rainy Seattle could own a bite, could drill an ache into formerly broken bones and make it hurt just to walk across the room to the toilet.

Heaven came in all shapes and sizes: whether a 34C, a hot Seattle’s Best, or a clear head. With sobriety, solid thinking had returned, but oddly enough, not the overriding need to have every woman who eyed him. LaMoia wanted something different now. More connection, less infatuation. He wasn’t sure what love was, but he thought that might be it. As a result, he stayed away from the “badgers” at the cop bars, the coworkers, the waitresses who came on to him, avoiding the urge to slip his hand between the jeans and the soft skin and light them up.

God, how he had lived for that power, the ability to reduce a grown woman to outright need. They still called, leaving casual messages on his answering machine, the implications and invitations subtle but not misunderstood. They wanted him. Only months ago, he had let that want of theirs run his life, dictate his arrogance, demand his attention. And now he had to live with that past, and he found it embarrassing.

When the phone rang, he peeked at the caller-ID, dreading to play that role-the flirtation that came packaged with expectation. But the phone number proved familiar to him: the fifth floor. A case. Something to get him outside himself. He answered the phone: It was a jumper, a drowning. As good a way to start a night tour as any.