Standing next to Blade was Tommy Lean. The contrast was clear. Blade favored cowboy shirts, jeans, and boots. Tommy looked like a poster boy for surfers. Lean was just like his name, tall and with the leanness of a college athlete, which he had been. He had blond hair that fell over his forehead that he routinely pushed back with his hand. He liked Hawaiian shirts and loafers. Unlike Christensen, during most of the year he carried his nine-millimeter automatic in a shoulder holster, which made his Hawaiian shirt bulge and look a little out of place, but in the winter he covered it with a coat. In the summer, Tommy conceded that a shoulder holster made people nervous, so he would wear a hip holster and drop his shirt outside his pants.
There was a difference in the way the two partners carried on their interrogations. Blade approached interrogation like he was circling his prey. Lean approached interrogation in a very laid-back manner, and he kept the intimidating demeanor to a minimum. By any stretch, they were an odd pair, the seasoned and cynical homicide detective who could look right through you and the younger detective who would ask how you were doing right after he slipped the cuffs on.
It takes a long time to develop a good partnership. And to make a good homicide detective takes even longer. A homicide detective, or any detective for that matter, has a different way of thinking than a street cop. The ability to size people up and slip inside their heads is more of a character trait than a learned skill. But it also requires experience and, often, a good mentor. Usually, the way you learned detective skills was from somebody who knew what he was doing, and Blade knew what he was doing. He and Tabler had been partners for twelve years before Tabler moved up to sergeant.
It was a difficult transition, changing partners, after years of getting used to being Art and Art. When Tabler and the captain asked Blade who he wanted for a new partner he remembered a young man who had done some work on a juvenile homicide. Blade told them, “Give me Lean.” If it takes a long time to become a good homicide investigator, it can take longer to make a good homicide team, to make a perfect fit, where each man knows what the other man is going to do before he does it. Blade was a plainspoken man and he didn’t pull his punches or worry about diplomacy or politics, nor did he have concerns about keeping his thoughts to himself. But so far, Blade hadn’t said anything bad about Lean, which for Blade was good. Lean had learned the first lesson—to keep his mouth shut, and he followed it most of the time. But he wasn’t one of those guys who could follow the lesson all the time. And he had a tendency to view regulations as suggestions, whereas Blade viewed regulations as a necessary inconvenience that you could bend but not ignore. Blade taught his younger partner restraint and Lean taught his older partner to loosen up. They had found a happy medium in their partnership, not unlike a marriage.
Tabler looked up and motioned for the two detectives to take a seat. “I got a call from an Inspector Leeper in the Sacramento sheriff’s office. He said they had a 211 the other day involving a kid named Raul Lopez or Raul Carrasco, depending on what name he wanted to go by at the time.”
In cop talk, a 211 is a robbery. The quickest way to show that you weren’t an investigative pro was to start referring to a crime as a robbery or a homicide or a murder. That would instantly mark you as some kind of wannabe. At least it would do so with experienced detectives, and these guys were experienced detectives. Part of the reason for using numbers instead of the names for crimes is for shorthand, part because of cop vernacular, and part because it depersonalizes the situation. Good cops and good detectives have to keep themselves separate from both the attitudes of the perps and the emotions of the victims. If you can’t do that, you lose your objectivity, and then you lose your perspective. You always have to remain outside the emotional box of the players.
Tabler threw a report toward the front of his desk, nodding for Blade to pick it up. “Anyway, this Lopez Carrasco kid, I guess, pulled a .45 auto out when he tried to rob some convenience store. Damn near shot himself.” Tabler smiled. “Just like some guys shoot other people when they try a cross draw with a shoulder holster.”
Blade picked up the report while Tabler continued. “Blade, you and Lean call Leeper and find out what he has for us. Could be nothing, but then it might turn out that we got a body we don’t know about.” Tabler drew out the moment before he said anything further. He knew Blade like he knew his own face in the mirror. “Anyway, you may be familiar with one of the names he gave me, Clarence Ray Allen. I told him Allen ran a rent-a-cop agency here in Fresno. He said the kid fingered Allen as the getaway driver.”
Tabler waited for Blade’s reaction. Blade had been bumping up against Clarence Allen since he had been out on patrol years before in the late fifties. There had been snitch reports and rumors about Allen, the owner of a local security agency, for years. Word on the street was that he was using the agency to case businesses for burglaries. People were saying that Allen Security offered its services, but if turned down, the next thing they knew the business was burglarized. However, nothing ever amounted to solid evidence. Blade remembered that when he was a patrolman, a liquor store had been cleaned out in a burglary. They took everything except the shelves. The liquor store owner said that he had received a call from Allen Security about protecting his business, but he hadn’t thought he would need it. And look what happened next. Ray Allen and his criminal activity had managed to remain nothing more than whispers on the street. Blade and Tabler had come close to getting him a couple of times, but never closer than a good sniff.
Blade glanced up sharply. Allen irritated the hell out of Blade and Tabler knew it. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Blade could smell a crook, and if he couldn’t nab him, he was like a dog chasing a bone. Both Tabler and Blade heard the rumors, but nothing stuck. In any event, they knew rumors were like smoke—somewhere there was a fire. Blade nodded his head in the slow, laconic way he reacted to most news. “Allen, huh? Well, that could be interesting.” He picked up the report. It had Leeper’s phone number written in pencil across the top. He looked at Leeper’s title and then he looked up and leaned back in his chair, carefully balancing on the back two legs. “Says here this Leeper is an Inspector,” he said with a touch of sarcasm, drawing out the word for emphasis. “Is that what I’m supposed to call him, Inspector? How come I’m not an Inspector?”
Tabler tilted his head and pushed his mouth to the side in a smirk. “You’re not an Inspector for the same reason you’re not a sergeant. Anyway, we don’t have inspectors in this department but we do have sergeants.”
Lean genially slapped his partner on the back. “He has a point. He does have a point, Blade. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to be an Inspector. Sounds too much like a sergeant or some kind of cop who doesn’t really work.”
Blade nodded. “You do have a point.”
Tabler waited until the two were through with their little routine. “Okay, I don’t care if he’s a lieutenant colonel, just call this guy and see what you can find out.”
Lean stood up. “We’re on it. We’ll get back to you as soon as we know something.” Blade stood up and nodded. His ears had perked up for other reasons when he heard Clarence Allen’s name. Blade ran horses and Allen often showed horses at some of the same auctions. A bad guy running horses interfered with Blade’s image of himself as a modern cowboy.
Blade and Lean walked back to their desks in what passed for the detective division offices. Actually, it was just a large room with as many desks shoved into it as the area allowed. If it was full of detectives, the room would be crowded, but it was rare that more than two or three were there at any one time. Most of the teams were out working and their paths crossed only at odd hours.
Blade picked up the phone and called the number on the report. “Inspector Leeper, please.”
Tommy motioned for Blade to put the call on the speaker. “Yeah, Inspector, this is Detective Art Christensen, Fresno S.O. How you doin’? Look, my partner’s here. I want to put this on speaker so he can hear. That okay?” He waited a moment and