The smell of the city reaches you up on the rooftop of Elsa's building. It's supposed to be a hopeful smell, the kind of scent associated with glorious Americana, the growth of a post-war paradise. Diners and cinemas and cars and suburbs under the swaying palms.

But you? You only see shadows. Under the facade you see the scum you'd hoped to rid L.A. of forever. There's a drug deal going on down the road. Near a neon theatre sign, a woman is murdered by a killer with no face. In the middle of a quiet neighborhood, a family burns alive in their home. Your fingers itch to shoot, itch to bring them justice. This is your city. You bought it the instant you became an officer, drove your first black-and-white. It will always be yours.

And yet, you have become the shadows. Fallen for the love of another, the station you so perfectly melded into scorns you as a traitor and a cheat. You wear your hat low, your suit dark, just so the camera flash will not reach your haunted eyes. In the end, it wasn't even the crime that got you. It was a partner you never agreed with, anyway. A partner starved with malice.

You toe the edge of the roof. It's a nice building, and downstairs Elsa waits for you with a solemn grin. You should have never left Marie, you tell yourself. You should have never betrayed them all. Bekowski. Galloway. Your daughters, your country. It's war all over again, except instead of foreign soil, it's tearing up your heart, your mind, your conscience. The blood of your own tattered ego bleeds into the night sky and sits silent up on the L.A. rooftops.

Jazz slithers jauntily from a nearby bar. The singer's voice is smooth and mysterious, and you wish then that you could start all over. You miss your badge and you miss the snarl of tires over California cement. The thrill of the chase. The clues. You want it all back.

Instead, you close your eyes. The wind batters you. Your suit (you've still got two, just in case) whips around you like some weak imitation of angel wings. It will not save you. It will not carry you.

The jazz is quiet now, the street below awash with the glow of midnight. There, a car that remind you of Roy Earle's red convertible speeds past. There, a cop in a dark suit surveys an alleyway. And here you are, hero of war, Cole Phelps on the edge of it all.

You take a deep breath, and let yourself fall.