"Four," said Stolte, with a sympathetic wince, as if four were a fever. "Now, I know every park is different. But we've got the new benches arriving Friday, they're finally off the truck, and the crews are going to start pulling the old ones Monday morning, and what I'd love — what the mayor's office would love — is to start fresh. Clean slate. And that means clearing up some of these chronic situations before the new furniture goes in." He turned and gestured, with an open palm, the way people do in architectural renderings, toward the copper beech on the Holloway side. "That, for instance."
Lavonne was awake now. She was sitting on her bench with her cart beside her and a paperback romance open on her knee, and she was watching the group at the fountain with the expression of a cat watching a dog that has not yet noticed it.
"That cart has been there every day for six weeks," said Stolte. "That's storage of personal property on public grounds. That's Rule Nine. And our overnight staff have her on that bench at five a.m. on at least three occasions this month. That's a closure violation."
"She's got a warning already," Lloyd said. "From September."
"Then she's in violation of it, isn't she?" Stolte smiled. "I'd think that's a pretty straightforward contact."
Kwiatek said nothing. She was looking at Lloyd.
Lloyd reached into the right cargo pocket of his pants and took out the pad of warnings. It was heavier than he remembered, a thick block of triplicate paper with a gray cardboard back and a rubber band around it. He held it in his hand and looked at it — white for the department, pink for the court, goldenrod for the subject — and he thought about how many of them he had written on this pad and the pads before it, and he thought about the eight paragraphs of gray print on the back of each goldenrod copy, and he thought about Lucia Mercado saying, Tell them about the back.
"No," he said.
Stolte's smile stayed exactly where it was. "I'm sorry?"
"I'm not going to write her up."
"Officer, with respect, she's in violation of an existing—"
"I know what she's in violation of. I wrote it." Lloyd's voice was quiet. He was a little surprised at how quiet. "She's sitting on a bench at twelve-thirty in the afternoon reading a book in a public park during posted hours. The cart's not unattended; she's sitting next to it. If you want to bring it to the City Attorney you can bring it to the City Attorney. But I'm not going to walk over there and hand her another piece of paper so you can count it."