Illegal

SIXTY-SEVEN

Rigney liked his whiskey neat and his women messy.

At the moment, he was sipping Johnnie Walker Red and eyeing a woman with a little too much belly for her outfit, a sleeveless crop-top that stopped a foot short of torn, low-slung jeans. She was bent over the pool table, showing the crack of her ass to three young cops drinking Coronas and bantering with her.

I'd fuck her, but I wouldn't spend the night.

Rigney returned to his Scotch. He was hunched over the bar in a hole-in-the-wall tavern on San Pedro, two blocks from the Parker Center. Considering just how the shitstorm named Royal Payne had so totally fucked up his life.

Rigney had been grilled by Internal Affairs in the hundred-year-old Bradbury Building on South Broadway, and it hadn't gone well. The questions were antagonistic and threatening. The investigators seemed to blame him for Judge Rollins' suicide, Payne's escape, and the layer of smog that blanketed Pasadena.

Officially, he wasn't supposed to be looking for Payne, but he didn't give a shit. He wanted to find the bastard first, crack his head open, make him pay. He'd stopped by Sharon Payne's cubicle earlier today, but she wasn't in. He'd toyed with the idea of bugging her phone or planting a G.P.S. transmitter on her car. But if he was caught, they'd pull his badge and he could share a cell with Anthony Pellicano.

"Hey, Riggs. Don't you owe me a drink?"

A pudgeball named Lou Parell plopped onto the adjacent stool. Homicide. Three years from retirement. If Rigney had to hear about all the marlin the fat bastard planned to catch off Cabo San Lucas, he'd strangle the jerk.

"I don't owe you a drink, Lou. You owe me thirty bucks from poker."

"You sure?"

"At Schulian's house. You don't remember?"

Parell signaled the bartender and pointed to one of the taps. Bud Lite. As if low-cal beer would take off those forty extra pounds he was packing.

"Riggs, you catch Payne yet?"

Rigney drained his glass. "Don't bust my chops, Lou."

"I'm not. Just wondered if you knew you had competition."

"Meaning what?"

"Some badge from East Bumfuck called Homicide asking about the asshole."

Rigney slammed the cocktail glass on the bar. "Who? Who the fuck called?"

"Lemme think." Parell's light beer arrived, yellow as chilled piss. "Spanish name. But he didn't have an accent."

"What'd he say?"

"Asked about Payne hanging around our office last year. You know, when he was planning to go after that wetback who killed his kid."

"You ask the cop why he gave a damn?"

"Why would I?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because you're a detective, and detectives are supposed to be curious about shit that don't smell right."

"I figured he had his reasons."

"Jesus." Rigney signaled for a refill. "Did you tell him we had warrants out on Payne?"

"Yeah. He said he'd keep his eyes open."

"And you don't remember the cop's name or where he's from?"

Parell took a long pull on his beer. "Said he was the chief of police."

"Where, Lou? For Christ's sake, where?"

Parell seemed deep in thought, or as deep as he could go without a tutor. "In the San Joaquin Valley. I remember asking if they have much crime up there. And he said, just some migrants getting drunk and fighting when the peaches are all in and they get paid."

"Jesus, that really narrows it down. They grow peaches for three hundred miles."

If he could find the police chief, Rigney thought, he could find Butch Cassidy and the Mexican Kid. The last time anybody saw them, they were in a diner in the desert town of Thermal. What were they doing upstate? And what hell had Payne raised to get the locals on his case?

"A fish pond!" Parell blurted.

"What?"

"The cop said he was eating lunch outside his office, tossing bacon to the fish."

"Jesus, how do you remember that and not remember where he's from?"

"I don't know. It just stuck in my brain."

Like dogshit to treaded shoes, Rigney thought.

"A man's name," Parell said. "I just remembered. The town is named after some guy."

"Who?"

"I don't remember."

"Hanford?"

"Nope."

"Bakersfield?"

"Nah."

"The name's on the tip of my tongue," Parell said.

"Foam's on the tip of your tongue."

"Rutledge! The guy's the chief of police in Rutledge. You know where that is?"

"I can find it," Rigney said.