Hollywood Crows

TEN

IT WORRIED RONNIE SINCLAIR that her partner, Bix Ramstead, was so troubled by the encounter with the Somalians. They were at Starbucks on Sunset Boulevard, both doing some paperwork before going end-of-watch. Bix, never garrulous, had been unusually quiet all day.

The third time he brought it up he said, “Sometimes I think being a copper turns you into an animal in more ways than one. The hair on my neck hasn’t settled down since we first laid eyes on that scar-faced Somali. That guy’s fifty-one-fifty, for sure.”

“He’s way out there, no doubt,” Ronnie said, “but what could we do about it? There was no evidence of violent behavior. I gave her every chance to walk outta there and she flat-out refused. What could we do?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” Bix said. “But wasn’t your blue radar blinking? That dude’s gonna hurt that girl.”

“He’s probably hurt her already,” Ronnie said. “Lots and lots of times. He owns her, according to their customs. You know we couldn’t pick her up and bundle her out on the basis of blue radar, Bix.”

“Of course,” he said, “but it still bothers me.”

“The way I look at stuff like that is, it’s not my tragedy. I have to see it, but I don’t have to take it home with me. I let it go.”

“My wife’s told me that for years,” Bix said. “That’s one of the reasons I got into CRO. Her telling me I was bringing too much shit home with me for too many years.”

“She was right,” Ronnie said, thinking that every once in a while she’d run into a cop like Bix Ramstead, someone who didn’t have the right temperament for the Job. Somebody who couldn’t let it go.

He suddenly looked a bit embarrassed, as cops do when they indulge in uncoplike self-revelatory talk. He turned the conversation to her. “You ever gonna get married again, you think?”

“I’m not in the market,” Ronnie said. “I’ve proven to be a bad shopper. Besides, I’m concentrating on passing the sergeant’s exam. But if I ever get married again, it will not be to another cop.”

Bix smiled and said, “Smart girl.”

And Ronnie thought, If you weren’t already bought and paid for, buddy, I might make an exception. She was surprised by how much she liked Bix. Those sensitive, dusky gray eyes of his could make a girl’s knees tremble.

She said, “Will you be staying on the Job until the bitter end?”

“Until I’m fifty-five, at least,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of teenagers who’ll have to get through college, and my daughter is talking about becoming a physician. I won’t be retiring any time soon, that’s for sure.”

Ronnie almost suggested that he might consider an inside job somewhere, one that would keep him from the likes of Omar Hasan Benawi and his pitiful wife, but she thought she shouldn’t be offering career advice to a veteran like Bix. Besides, the Community Relations Office was the next best thing to an inside job. How much real police work would they ever have to do as Crows?

She said, “A couple of us are heading up to Sunset after work for a few tacos and a tequila or two. Wanna come?”

Bix hesitated, but he obviously trusted Ronnie and could confide in her in ways he might not to a male officer. He said, “I’d better not join you. I have a bit of a problem.”

“Problem?”

“I haven’t had a drink for almost a month, and I’m reluctant to go places where everyone else is powering them down.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know,” Ronnie said.

“It’s nothing major,” Bix said. “I’ve been dealing with it for years. On the wagon, off the wagon. I deal with it.”

“I hear you,” Ronnie said. “My first ex was an alcoholic in denial. Still is.”

“I’m not an alcoholic,” Bix said quickly. “I just don’t handle booze very well. When I drink, my personality changes. My wife, Darcey, put me on notice last month when I came home hammered, and I’m grateful she did. I feel a lot better now. Getting too old for that nonsense.”

Ronnie didn’t know what else to say, and Bix obviously thought he’d said too much. They finished their cappuccinos and their reports silently.

Hollywood Nate Weiss could not wait to log out at 7:30 P.M. He’d changed from his uniform into a pricey white linen shirt, and black jeans from Nordstrom’s. He’d thought about really dressing up but figured it might make him look like some schmuck who’d never had a private supper at the home of some flaming hot, bucks-up chick in the Hollywood Hills. Which was the case exactly.

While driving to Mt. Olympus he thought of half a dozen opening remarks he could say to her, but rehearsing aloud made them sound dumber than they did in his mind. He almost parked on the street in front but decided that as a guest he was entitled to pull into the bricked motor court. The lot was quite expansive for a view site in the hills, where land was scarce, and the motor court was large enough for an easy U-turn. The house itself was deceivingly large, with a Spanish-tile roof, white plaster walls, exposed beams, and lots of arches, a style that realtors liked to call “early California.” A cinch to sell, especially to non-Californians who found it romantic.

Nate was very happy to see that there were no other cars in the motor court. He’d been worried that the babysitter might have decided to stay with the kid at Margot’s house. Or that maybe Margot had invited somebody else to her pasta supper. He attempted to stay calm, trying on the affable but poised mini-smile he’d used successfully in his last piece-of-shit movie, and rang the bell.

Margot showed him that dazzling smile when she opened the door. She too was wearing jeans, low-cut designer jeans, and a yellow tee that stopped six inches before the jeans began. His eyes went from her eyes directly to that tan, muscular belly. She’d pulled back her heavy butterscotch hair and pinned it with a tortoiseshell comb.

Extending her warm, dry hand, she took his and said, “Officer Weiss. You look so different in civilian clothes.”

“The uniform makes the man, huh?” He tried to keep the tremble out of his voice, needing one drink to mellow out.

Seeming to read his mind, she said, “What can I get you to drink? And to answer your question, you don’t need a uniform. In fact, you look much younger now.”

Nate tried on a broader smile and said, “Wine?”

“Name your flavor.”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Pinot grigio it is,” she said. “I’m not a wine snob. Just give me an honest California pinot and I’m happy as a lark in the park. Come in and pour while I finish the pasta.”

Nate entered and was drawn at once to the living room, with its view of Hollywood and beyond. Blankets of lights, some twinkling, some still, and the summer smog hanging low and dark against the golden glow of sunset actually calmed him. The view wasn’t as good as some he’d seen from houses in the Hollywood Hills farther west, but this would do. He couldn’t imagine how many millions a home with a view would cost around there.

As far as the furnishings, it looked a trifle overdone, like many of the westside living rooms he’d seen in Los Angeles magazine and the L.A. Times. An unpleasant image of the Arab ex sitting on one of those plush sofas smoking a hookah flashed and faded. Nothing could spoil it for him. It all smelled like big bucks to Hollywood Nate Weiss.

“You know,” he said, “from here even the smog looks beautiful.”

Margot chuckled and he thought it sounded charming and warm. Everything about her was warm.

She said, “Come on, boy, let’s away with us to the kitchen, where you can pour us some grape. I need to let my hair down whenever my five-year-old stays over with our au pair.”

Nate followed her into a very large gourmet kitchen with two stainless-steel side-by-side refrigerator-freezer combinations and a commercial gas range and oven, also done in stainless steel. There were three steel sinks, and he wondered which she’d choose when she drained a pan of pasta. Too many choices!

He picked up the corkscrew and the bottle of pinot grigio and tried to peel off the neck seal and extract the cork like he’d seen sommeliers do it on those occasions when he could afford to take a date to an expensive restaurant. He had some trouble with the cork, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Have you been a police officer long, Nate?” she asked.

“Yeah, almost fifteen years,” he said.

“Really?” Margot said. “You don’t look old enough.”

“I’m thirty-six,” he said. Then he added, “You don’t look old enough to have a five-year-old child.”

“I could have one a lot older, but I’m not telling you my age,” she said.

“I already know,” Nate said. “Your driver’s license, remember?”

“Drat!” she said. “I forgot.”

Nate poured wine into the glasses and put one on the drain board by Margot.

“Does your son stay with your nanny often?” Nate asked.

“Only on very special occasions,” Margot said, and there was that coy smile again.

He took a big swallow then but told himself to slow it down, way down. He began thinking of acting tricks, such as pretending that this was a movie starring Nate Weiss. Trying to get himself into character but uncertain whom the character should resemble. Hollywood Nate Weiss simply had no frame of reference for a date like this one.

“So are you really interested in the Mercedes?” Margot said.

“Of course,” Nate said nervously. “Why else would I have called?”

She stopped slicing the mango. Repressing a grin, she glanced at him before saying deadpan, “I can’t imagine.”

Nate felt his face burning. He was like a kid around this woman! “Am I lame or what?” he finally said. “Sure, I love the Mercedes, but I just bought a new car last year. You should kick me right outta here.”

Margot brought the wine bottle to the bar counter, topped off his glass, and said with sudden seriousness, “I was glad you called, Nate.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been frightened about something and I was thinking about talking to the police.”

“Frightened of what?”

“Let’s have supper and then we’ll talk,” Margot said.

Gert Von Braun was teamed with Dan Applewhite for the first time after he returned from his days off. The other cops figured that putting Doomsday Dan with someone as explosive as Gert would produce a match made in hell. The surfer cops had bets on how long Gert could listen to Dan talking about the worldwide Muslim calamity on the horizon, or the imminent collapse of the world financial markets, before she threw a choke hold on him. What they didn’t know was how much Dan and Gert’s mutual loathing of Sergeant Treakle would produce a bond that nobody could have predicted.

It began when Sergeant Treakle informed Gert that the accidental discharge of the shotgun was going to result in an official reprimand for certain, the first in her eleven-year career. She was ready for it, of course, but not in the way the information was delivered.

Sergeant Treakle, who rarely bothered to learn any cop’s first name, called her into the sergeants’ room and said, “Von Braun, you will be getting an official reprimand for your carelessness with the shotgun.”

“I figured,” Gert said and prepared to leave.

“Furthermore,” he said, and she paused at the doorway, “it will result in a serious penalty if such a thing should ever happen again.”

Gert’s rosy complexion went white around her mouth and she said, “You think it’s ever gonna happen again, Sergeant?”

“I’m just giving you a word to the wise,” the young sergeant said, looking away nervously. Gert’s collar size was larger than his, and it was rumored that she had embarrassed a male cop at Central Division when he’d boozily arm wrestled her at the Christmas party.

She forced herself to stay calm and said, “Thanks for the words of wisdom.” And again she tried to leave.

But Sergeant Treakle said, “Part of the problem could be your physical condition.”

That stopped her cold. In fact, she took a step toward his desk and said, “What about my physical condition?”

“Your weight,” he said. “It must be hard to move around quickly enough when something unexpected happens. Like your cell phone falling and you trying to grab it, and accidentally hitting the shotgun trigger. Police officers must be ready to think and act quickly. Like athletes, as it were.”

Gert dead-stared Sergeant Treakle for a moment and then said very softly, “I’ve passed every physical since I came on the Job. And I was first in the agility test for women in the academy. And I’ve competed twice in the Police Olympics. Now I have a question for you. Have you ever heard of EEO laws?”

“Equal Employment Opportunity?”

“That’s right, Sergeant,” she said. “It’s all about discrimination in the workplace. And I’m giving you a gift right now by forgetting about this conversation. Because you’re offending me in a very personal way.”

Sergeant Treakle blanched and said, “We’ll talk later. I’ve got some calls to make.”

By the time Gert Von Braun joined Dan Applewhite in the parking lot, the grim set of her jaw told him that it wasn’t the time to tell her that staph infections had stricken several officers in neighboring divisions and an outbreak was imminent.

She drove in silence for five minutes, and when she spoke, she said, “Have you had any personal dealings with Treakle?”

“Once,” Dan Applewhite said. “He told me I had a sour expression when talking to citizens and that my attitude needed improving. He said he was sure I could improve my outlook on life by attending Bible study with him. He’s a born-again and got baptized in a pond somewhere, with people singing on the bank.”

“He told you that?”

Dan Applewhite nodded. “I told him I’m a Unitarian. I could tell he didn’t know what that was.”

“Neither do I,” Gert said, then added, “we had a sergeant like him at Central Station. Things started happening to that guy.”

“What kind of things?”

“Mostly to his car. If he forgot to lock it, he’d find a string tied from his light-bar switch to the door. Or he’d find the plastic cord-cuffs hanging from his axle making noise while he was driving. Or he’d find talcum powder in his air vent. It’d make his uniform look like he was caught in a blizzard.”

“That’s kid stuff,” Dan Applewhite said.

“Once when a truck got jacked that was hauling huge bags of popcorn and candy to a chamber of commerce holiday party, we recovered it and somebody filled the sergeant’s private car with popcorn. I mean from the floor to the roofline. You looked inside his windshield and all you could see was popcorn.”

“That’s kid stuff,” Dan Applewhite repeated.

Gert said, “Then one night somebody paid a skid row derelict ten bucks to do some asphalt skiing. The cop who did it borrowed an old piece of plywood roofing from one of the makeshift lean-tos where the transients sleep. And tied a piece of rope to it and attached the rope to the sergeant’s car while he was inside a diner. And the derelict was promised another ten if he’d hang on for a whole block. He did, but it was pretty gnarly. Sparks were flying and the derelict started yelling and it pretty much all went sideways. People on the street were shocked, and the captain’s phone rang off the hook the next day. IA investigated the night watch for a month but never caught the culprit. All the derelict would say was, the guy who hired him was a cop and all cops look alike when they’re in uniform. The sergeant got ten days off for not looking after his car.”

“Well, that’s not childish,” Dan Applewhite said. “It’s much more mature when you can get an asshole like that a ten-day suspension.”

It was less than a half hour later that Sergeant Treakle himself rolled on a call assigned to 6-X-66. Dan Applewhite groaned when he turned and saw the young supervisor pull up in front of an apartment building in Thai Town that was occupied mostly by Asian immigrants.

“Chickenlips is here to check on us,” he warned Gert, who was knocking at the door.

The caller was a Thai woman who looked too old to have a twelve-year-old daughter but did. The girl was crying when the cops arrived, and the mother was furious. The girl’s auntie, who was a decade younger than the mother, had been trying to calm things. The auntie spoke passable English and translated for the mother.

The trouble had started earlier in the day when the local clinic informed the mother that her twelve-year-old daughter’s bouts of vomiting were the result of an early pregnancy. The mother wanted the culprit found and arrested.

Of course, the cops separated the kid from her mom, Gert walking the child into a tidy bedroom, talking to her gently, saying, “Wipe your eyes, honey. And don’t be afraid.”

The child, who was all cheekbones and kewpie lips, had lived in L.A. since she was eight, and her English was good. She stopped sobbing long enough to say to Gert, “Will I be taken to juvenile hall?”

“You won’t be taken anywhere, sweetie,” Gert said. “All of this can be handled. But we must find out who put the baby in you.”

The child dropped her eyes and asked, “Am I in trouble?” Then she began sobbing again.

“Now, now,” Gert said. “There’s no need to do that. You’re not in trouble with us. We’re your friends.” Then sensing someone behind her, she turned and saw Sergeant Treakle standing there watching.

Gert tried but failed to suppress the sigh that popped out of her, then said to the sergeant, “I wonder if you’d mind letting us females talk about this in private.”

Sergeant Treakle arched an eyebrow, grunted, and returned to the kitchen, where Dan Applewhite was getting a list of potential suspects for the follow-up by detectives. The child had no siblings, but there were uncles, cousins, and neighbors who were possibles.

Sergeant Treakle looked at his watch a couple of times, and when Gert left the girl in the bedroom and came back to the kitchen, he said, “Who’s the daddy?”

“I don’t know,” Gert said. “The sex crimes team will have to talk to her.”

“All that time and you don’t know?” Sergeant Treakle said.

Her voice flat as a razor, Gert said, “The child says she doesn’t know how it happened.”

Sergeant Treakle guffawed loudly and said, “She doesn’t know?”

Knowing his religious views, Gert Von Braun said, “Tell me, Sergeant Treakle, what if the young girl’s name was Mary? And the baby inside her was gonna be named Jesus, would you still scoff? After all, Mary didn’t know how the hell it happened either. Did she now?”

The sergeant’s jaws opened and shut twice, but nothing came out. He started to say something to Dan Applewhite, but nothing happened there either. He left the apartment and hurried to his car to make a negative entry in his log.

When they got back to their shop and started driving, Dan Applewhite took a good look at Gert Von Braun. He was a lot older and knew he wasn’t much to look at. And he couldn’t seem to keep a wife for very long, no matter how much money he spent on her. But he was starting to develop feelings he hadn’t had for a while. Despite her bulk and scary reputation, Gert Von Braun was starting to grow very attractive.

“What say we stop at Starbucks, Gert?” he said impulsively, then added something that usually interested other female partners. “I’d love to buy us a latte and biscotti.”

Gert shrugged and said, “I’m not much for sissy coffee, but I wouldn’t mind an In-N-Out burger.”

And zing went the strings of his heart! He grinned big and said, “Okay! One In-N-Out burger coming up!”

“With grilled onions and double the fries,” Gert added.

He was back at an ATM that night, a different one this time, on Hollywood Boulevard. Leonard Stilwell had worked diligently to set the film trap with the glue strips in place. He couldn’t sit around his room waiting for the job with Ali. The advance that Ali had given him was gone, smoked up in his pipe and lost on those goddamn Dodgers after he was stupid enough to make a bet with a sports book who’d beaten him 90 percent of the time.

Despite his prior misgivings and fear of all the cops he’d seen around the Kodak Center, the area offered an irresistible attraction in the persons of all those doofus tourists. So after casing carefully, he’d decided that a certain one of the ATMs wasn’t quite as dangerous as the others because it was in a dark corner and provided an easier escape route to the residential street several blocks away where he’d parked his old Honda. Now he was watching that ATM. Several Asians with cameras dangling from their necks almost bit. They’d be no good to him unless they spoke enough English to accept his “help.”

The ATM customer who finally stopped was the one he wanted. The guy was at least seventy years old and so was his wife. He was carrying a bag from one of the boulevard souvenir shops and she was carrying another one. They wore walking shorts and tennis shoes and their baseball caps had pins all over them from Universal Studios’ tour, Disneyland, and Knott’s Berry Farm. Her brand new T-shirt said “Movies For Me” across the back. Just looking at them made him imagine the heavenly smoke filling his lungs.

The guy put his card into the slot but nothing happened. He punched in his PIN and looked at his wife. Then he looked around, presumably for help, just as a younger man with hair the color of an overripe pumpkin, a wash of freckles, and a howdy-folks smile walked to the machine, holding his own ATM card in his hand.

“Are you finished with your transaction, sir?” Leonard said.

“There’s something wrong with the machine,” the tourist said. “My card won’t come out and the dang thing doesn’t work.”

“Golly,” Leonard said, as syrupy as he could manage. “I’ve run into this before. Do you mind if I try something?”

“Help yourself, young man,” the tourist said. “I sure don’t wanna be calling my bank and canceling my card. Not when we just got to Hollywood.”

“Don’t blame you,” Leonard said. “Let’s see.”

He stepped forward, put his fingers on the “enter” and “cancel” keys, and said, “Way it was explained to me is, you punch in your PIN number at the same time you hold down ‘cancel’ and ‘enter,’ and it should kick out the card. Wanna try it?”

“Sure,” the tourist said. “Let’s see, I hold down which two keys?”

“Here, lemme help,” Leonard said. “I’ll hold the two keys down and you just go ahead and punch in your PIN number.”

“I’ll hold down the keys,” a deep voice behind Leonard said.

He turned and saw a guy his age. A tall, buffed-out guy looking him right in the eye. Leonard’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“This is my son,” the tourist said. “There’s something wrong with the machine, Wendell. This fellow’s helping us.”

“That’s nice of him,” Wendell said but never took his stare from Leonard’s watery blue eyes, not for an instant.

Leonard said, “Go ahead and punch in your PIN number.” But he didn’t dare look at the keyboard. In fact, he made it a point to look away.

“Nothing,” the tourist said. “Not a goldang thing happened.”

“Well, guess you’ll have to cancel it,” Leonard said. “It was worth a try. Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

As he was sidling away, he heard the woman say, “See, Wendell, there’s lots of real nice, polite people in Hollywood.”

Leonard felt like weeping by the time he’d walked several blocks to his car. He needed crack so bad he couldn’t think of anything else. He wasn’t even hungry, although he hadn’t eaten a real meal for two days. And to make matters worse, there was a police car parked behind his car with its headlights on, and two cops were giving him a goddamn ticket!

“Is this your car?” Flotsam asked when Leonard approached, keys in hand.

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” Leonard said.

“What’s wrong?” Jetsam said. “Take a look where you’re parked.”

Leonard walked around to the front of the car and saw that he was halfway across a narrow concrete driveway belonging to an old two-story stucco house that was crammed between two newer apartment buildings. He hadn’t noticed the driveway when he’d parked, not after he’d circled the streets for twenty minutes, looking for a parking place where he wouldn’t get a goddamn ticket like this.

“Gimme a break!” Leonard said. “I’m between jobs. And even if I wasn’t tapped, I couldn’t give my ride to those goofy wetbacks at the pay lot. They’ll back your car right up onto the fanny pack of the first tourist dumb enough to take a shortcut through the parking lot, and then what?”

“Too late,” Flotsam said. “It’s already written. Lucky you came back, though. The guy in that house wanted your car towed.”

“No mercy,” Leonard said. “There ain’t a drop of mercy and compassion in this whole fucking town.”

Jetsam had his flashlight beam close enough to Leonard’s face to see the twitching and sweat. He raised the light to check Leonard’s pupils and said, “Got some ID?”

“What for?” Leonard said. “I haven’t done nothing.”

“You drive this car,” Jetsam said. “You have a driver’s license, right?”

Leonard reached in his pocket for his wallet. “Not a drop of mercy or compassion for a fellow human being,” Leonard said, taking the parking citation from Flotsam and handing Jetsam his driver’s license.

Jetsam took the license and walked back to their shop and sat down inside it.

“Aw, shit,” Leonard said. “What’s he doing, calling in on me?”

“Just routine,” Flotsam said, giving Leonard a quick pat-down.

“That’s what they always say,” Leonard whined. “Do you guys ever give a person a break? I mean ever?”

“Whadda you been arrested for?” Flotsam asked.

“You’re gonna find out in a few minutes,” Leonard said. “Couple of small-time thefts is all. I learned my lesson. I’m just a working stiff now. Between jobs.”

When Jetsam came back, he said to his partner, “Mr. Stilwell here has two priors for burglary and one for petty theft.”

“The burglaries were reduced to petty theft,” Leonard said. “I pled guilty and I only got county jail time. The petty theft was for shoplifting when I had to steal some groceries for an elderly neighbor who was sick. Jesus! Can’t a guy get a second chance?”

By then, both cops figured him for a crackhead or maybe a tweaker, and Flotsam said, “Mr. Stilwell, you wouldn’t object if we took a look in your car, would you? Just routine, of course.”

“Go ahead,” Leonard said. “If I said no, you’d find an excuse to do it anyways.”

“Are you saying no?” Jetsam said.

“I’m saying just do what the fuck you gotta do so I can go home. I give up. There ain’t a drop of mercy and compassion and charity left in this whole fucking city. Here.”

He pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them to Jetsam, who opened the door and did a quick search for drugs in the glove box, under the seats and floor mats, and in other obvious places. All he saw was a note behind the visor with an address on it. He recognized the street as one on Mt. Olympus near the house where a multiple murder involving Russian gangsters had occurred. He jotted the address down in his notebook.

When he was finished, he nodded to Flotsam and said, “Okay, Mr. Stilwell, thanks for the cooperation.”

By then Leonard was shaking his head in disgust, and when he got into his car, he was mumbling aloud about the merciless, pitiless, fucking city he lived in.

“Let’s drive up to Mount Olympus for a minute,” Jetsam said when they were back in their shop.

“What for?”

“That guy had an address behind his visor. What would a loser like that be doing up on Mount Olympus? Except casing a house, maybe.”

“There you go again,” Flotsam said. “Dude, you are determined to go all detective and sleuthy on my time. Maybe the guy’s looking to become a gardener or something. Did you think of that?”

“He’s the wrong color. Come on, bro, it’ll just take a few minutes.”

Flotsam headed for the Hollywood Hills without another word and, finding the winding street, followed it up to the top.

Jetsam checked addresses and said, “This number don’t exist.”

“Okay,” Flotsam said. “You satisfied now?”

He turned around just as Jetsam spotted a familiar car in a driveway a few houses away from where the street address should have been.

“That’s Hollywood Nate’s ride!” he said.

“That Mustang?”

“Yeah.”

“Dude, there’s lots of Mustangs in this town.”

Jetsam grabbed the spotlight and shined it on the car. “How many with a license plate that says SAG4NW?”

“What?”

“Screen Actors Guild for Nate Weiss. How many?”

“So?”

“Maybe we should stop and see if the resident knows a Leonard Stilwell.”

“Look, dude,” Flotsam said. “We already dragged Hollywood Nate into one of your wild goose chases. We ain’t gonna interrupt whatever he’s doing in there with another of your clues. And knowing him, whatever he’s doing in there involves pussy, that much is totally for sure. So he is not gonna be happy to see us, no matter what.”

“Bro, this could be something he should know about.”

“It’s the wrong goddamn address!” Flotsam said. “You can tell Nate all about it tomorrow. That thief we just shook ain’t gonna be killing no residents on this street tonight. You good with that?”

“I guess I gotta be,” Jetsam said.

“Tomorrow you can call Sleuths R Us if you get more brainstorms.”

“Bro, do you think you could stop ripping on me about that?” Jetsam said. “So I made a mistake about the SUVs. Can’t you just step off?”

Flotsam said, “I’m off it. Somebody’s gotta prove there’s a drop of mercy and compassion in this whole fucking city. Are we gravy, dude?”

“Gravy, bro,” Jetsam said. “Long as you don’t mention it again.”

“I’m off it forever,” Flotsam said. “And that’s the truth, sleuth.”