“I don’t care what he said he wants or doesn’t want. Get back out there and give him a ride.”
“He said the smell of pig was making him sick, sir.”
“What?”
“He said that the smell of rotten pork was in the air.”
I heard myself say something like “That little asshole.” I grabbed the aluminum baton from the belt of the puzzled Campes and stormed through the duty room toward the front of the station. “The little prick, I’ll kill him,” I said. I went over to the soda machine, whacked it with the baton, and kicked it as well for good measure. A faulty strip light fizzed, crackling. My eyes scanned beneath the photographs of officers killed in the line of duty that looked down at me from the wall, fifteen guys, three of them friends. There was no sign of Ricky Lee.
A voice came from behind me, saying, “Detective McGrath?”
About thirty, with blond hair cropped shortish, she wore a black cashmere blazer, black silk blouse buttoned to the neck, and blue jeans. A raincoat that looked expensive and might have been a Burberry was folded behind her on the bench. Ward Jenssen wasn’t, with her slightly asymmetrical face, her lopsided cheekbones and too full mouth, a conventional beauty, but it was the eyes that got you. Their presumed honesty and gentleness had made her career. Not only was she holding a tape recorder, but now, as her companion stepped from the station entrance, where presumably he’d been filming the entire scene with the inconspicuous equipment he toted on his shoulder, I saw that she’d brought along a cameraman, a guy with a dripping combat jacket over an Aerosmith T-shirt and his name, ZED, stenciled on the outside of his chest pocket.
“Hello, Ward. I’d heard that you were working TV these days. Congratulations.” I turned to the cameraman. “You can’t film in here. You need a permit. As Miss Jenssen knows and I’m sure you do too.” I turned for support to the front desk, but it was empty. No duty sergeant. Great.
I’d met Ward years ago, down in South Los Angeles, when she was a beginning reporter for the Times’s Metro section, sent to cover a multiple homicide where one group of gangbangers had walked into a place and killed nine others. The inside of that room had looked like lasagne. It was inevitable that we’d run into each other again sooner or later. “How’s it going with you? Climbing toward the top of the mountain? What’s the view like?”
She said, “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
“No comment.”
“Come on, Billy. You don’t even know the questions.”
“No comment.”
“Is Ricky Lee Richards under arrest at this time?”
“No, he is not, and no further comment.”
“Was he under arrest earlier tonight?”
As she pushed the tape recorder closer toward my mouth, I had a sudden vision of my own machine, sitting where I’d left it, on the table in the interview room. The tape of my conversation with Ricky Lee was still inside; no need to panic, and I didn’t, but I needed that tape.
“Look, Ward, I’m not trying to snow you or put you off, but there’s something I’ve got to take care of.” I pointed beyond the deserted front desk into the heart of the precinct house. “If you tell Zed here to turn off the camera so we can talk like civilized people, I’ll come back in a few minutes and answer some of your questions.”
“As charming as I remember,” she said, smiling with her head a little on one side.
“You must be thinking of some other guy.”
At her signal Zed eased down the trim camera, and then she herself turned off her tape recorder, unzipped her leather bag, and stowed it inside. She zipped her bag up again. She said, “How’s it all gonna go in court tomorrow? Big day, huh?”
“You know me. No shortage of big days.”
“I’ll see you in a minute then.”
“You bet.”
I walked to the interview room, knocking shoulders as I went with a guy hurrying out from the squad room in the other direction. I didn’t see the face. His presence was dark and bullish, and he strode away, waving his hand in apology and farewell. I assumed he must be with drugs or vice. They came and went at all hours. Thinking nothing of it, I pocketed the forgotten tape, locked the Mae Richards murder book in the varnished cabinet, and chugged out into the precinct parking lot. Right at that moment, talking to Ward Jenssen again was the last thing I needed.
THERE WERE two cars I drove, the Department’s unmarked Chevy and my own, a six-year-old Porsche 911, which was a bright fiery orange, had an eccentric shift, and which I’d bought mostly because, back at the beginning of the sixties, when my parents were still together, my father had driven an original Speedster in just that color. I remember his making me drive it in circles around the empty parking lot at Dodger Stadium, terrifying at first, but then I began to scream and laugh as we bumped along and I peeked up through the arms of the steering wheel at the sun-dazzled shield. I would have been five years old at the time, maybe six, and it was only a little while later that my mother left him for good and I took a plane with her to England, where she remarried. My father meanwhile quit his job with the Department and set off on his own travels. He went here and there, to Arizona, New Mexico, all the way up to Montana, but he never did exactly make a journey. From time to time snapshots would arrive, showing him at the wheel of, or leaning up against, his latest ride — a Mustang, an AC Cobra, a pretty pink Cadillac. No one ever knew where the money came from, and only when I was in my teens did it occur to me to ask who was taking the pictures — his latest ride, presumably. That sounds bitter, but I couldn’t forget or quite forgive the brilliance of that orange Speedster, and when people who’d known him told me — as they often did — how strikingly my own appearance resembled his, I was filled with shame and even anger. His memory was something I tried not to dwell on, though when Lucy was born I promised myself that I was going to do it different, that I wouldn’t mess this up the way he had. I messed it up anyway.
My Porsche, I’d discovered, leaked in the rain. I drove it that night nonetheless, descending deserted boulevards I knew by heart, Culver and then Centinela, before making a left and heading down to the ocean on Washington, with a puddle slowly expanding beside me in the empty well in front of the passenger seat. By then it was after two in the morning, and the rain was still refusing to give up. It had been going on all day, pretty much all week. Great rivers ran in the gutters. Rain smashed against the windshield and drummed up a million tiny detonations on the hood. The center of Lincoln was a rink. In front of me a Cadillac skated slowly sideways and came gently to rest against a signpost. The top of the post buckled forward, a guy tipping his hat.
I started thinking about Ricky Lee Richards. After all, it was possible that even if I did find his mother’s murderer, did my job, and delivered him into the big top of the justice system, the murderer would still walk away. The top didn’t always spin right. I’d seen it happen. What if I were to find the guy, give him to Ricky Lee, and take the money? Really make sure that it was the guy, then let Ricky Lee’s savage justice take over? It would probably be more efficient, certainly more sure, and I’d save the city the cost of staging a trial it might not win. It didn’t really seem like an option, even though I needed the money. And I did need the money, but I also had a code, and the path it provided, though crude, was at least certain. Do the job and try to keep your head above the hullaballoo.
I waited until the driver had untangled his Cadillac from the post, waved, and then got on the car phone to order pizza, one pepperoni, one pepperoni with mushroom, and one four cheese with extra cheese in case I changed my mind. I hadn’t eaten since lunch and I still wasn’t hungry. I figured both that I needed to