Kill the Messenger

51

Ruiz caught the call to the shooting. She showed up in a white suit and strappy sandals. Parker, sitting back against the hood of a black-and-white, didn’t have the energy to comment.

She walked up to him, shaking her head in frustration. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, shut up,” Parker said calmly. “I don’t need a bunch of crap from you, Ruiz.”

The no-bullshit sharpness of his tone set her back a step.

“You put a civilian in harm’s way,” she said.

“He’s not going to sue the city, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Parker said. “The kid had a stake in this. He wanted to do it for Eta. Despite all recent evidence to the contrary, there are a few people left in the world who know the meaning of honor and duty.”

“Don’t bag on me, Parker,” she bitched. “You could be blackmailing the preppie killer. You could be up to your ass in drug money, for all we know.”

“‘All you know’ doesn’t amount to much, does it?” he said. “Tell me, was Kyle standing right there when you called and tipped me on Pershing Square? Nice and close, so you could hang up the phone, turn your head, and give him a blowjob?”

She didn’t answer, and that spoke volumes.

“Who tipped Kyle?”

Ruiz opened her handbag, took out a cigarette, and lit it. “I did,” she said on a stream of blue smoke. “Damon really did call for you.”

“And you called Davis, so RHD could set up the whole thing,” Parker said. “In a public park at rush hour. An uncontrollable situation in an uncontrolled environment. I would say that trumps what I did.”

He reached out and yanked the cigarette from her lips. “Don’t smoke at a crime scene, Ruiz. Haven’t I taught you anything?”

He crushed the cigarette beneath the toe of his shoe, took it to a trash can, and threw it away.

“Parker! I’m not done talking to you!” she said, doing the high-heel jog to catch up with him. “I need to get your statement. I have to file the preliminary report.”

Parker looked at her like she smelled. “They couldn’t send a real detective?”

“I’m on the rotation until my paperwork from IA comes through.”

“Well, that’s your problem. I’ve said everything I have to say to you.”

He started to walk away again, then hesitated. “That’s not exactly true.”

Ruiz waited, stiffening for a tirade.

“I doctor scripts for Matt Connors.”

He might have told her he was a hermaphrodite. Her expression would have been the same. “What?”

“My big secret,” Parker said. “I doctor scripts and serve as a technical consultant to Matt Connors.”

“The movie guy?”

“Yeah. The movie guy.”

“Jesus!” she breathed. “Why didn’t you just tell us?”

Parker smiled a bitter, crooked smile and walked away, shaking his head. In this town, he probably would have gotten a promotion if he’d let on he was connected in the industry. He hadn’t wanted the attention. All he had wanted from LAPD was a chance to make it back from purgatory, and to do it through his own sweat and brainpower.

He could have held Renee Ruiz down and explained that to her nine thousand times, and she would never have understood.

The bitter irony was, in fighting for his own resurrection, he had ultimately revealed the fall of a woman he cared about. Yin and yang. Everything in life came with a price.

“I want my money back,” he mumbled as he approached Bradley Kyle.

Kyle stood amid a tiny forest of evidence markers, trying to boss one of the SID people around. He turned and smirked at Parker. “You really screwed the pooch this time, Parker. Or is that a poor choice of words? I hear you and Nicholson—”

Parker hit him so hard with a right cross, Kyle spun halfway around before he hit the dirt. Everyone stopped what they were doing, but no one made a move toward him.

Parker turned to Moose Roddick and said, “All the paperwork on the Lowell homicide is in my trunk. Come and get it.”

The news vans had rolled in. The choppers were swarming. They were just in time for breaking in live on the eleven o’clock news. But they wouldn’t have the story behind what had happened here. That shit would hit the fan tomorrow, and the feeding frenzy would begin.

Rob Cole was about to get another fifteen minutes of fame. The Good Man Wrongly Accused would be set free. Or, from a more cynical standpoint, an idiot too stupid to escape being framed for murder was about to be let back into the gene pool.

Parker didn’t know the whole story himself, but he was willing to bet Rob Cole was not the hero, and he knew there wouldn’t be a happy ending.

He turned his cell phone on as he walked toward his car, and hit the button for voice mail. He had one message. Ito saying he had the photograph ready.