Scavenger hunt

Chapter 23

"I don't know how you found me, but make it snappy," said Lashonda, pacing, a black wireless microphone dangling from her earpiece. All twelve phone lines on her board were blinking. "You got five minutes, and that's only 'cause you say you going to write something nice about Sugar."

Jimmy followed her as she walked her spacious living room in Pacific Palisades, the house a half-acre view property with a swimming pool and a tennis court. "You were the police dispatcher who took that 911 call on the Heather Grimm homicide."

"Weren't no homicide call." Lashonda listened to her earpiece as the board switched lines again. It was on a thirty-second interval- Jimmy had timed it. "It was a four one five domestic disturbance call. Wasn't till Sugar got there, it turned into a homicide call."

"Right."

"What happened to your face? You ask somebody a question they didn't like?"

Jimmy smiled, and it hurt. One side of his face was still swollen from his pick-up basketball game with the Butcher, his eye blackened. "The reason that Sugar took the call that night-"

"'Cause lazyass Reese and Hargrove was on another call and wasn't in no hurry to take a four one five. Sugar broke in, told me he was in the area. Everybody knows that." Lashonda peered at Jimmy over her half-glasses, a well-dressed, smooth-skinned black woman with four-inch nails and a turban of hair rising high above her head. "You wasting my time."

"Sugar was off shift. Did he jump in like that very often?"

"Teresa, you blowing it," Lashonda said, talking to someone on the end of the microphone. "The client wants to talk about himself, and you keep bringing up your own damn aura." She looked at Jimmy. "Why you asking how many times Sugar grabbed calls after he went off shift?"

"I told you-"

"Don't you ever say you sorry, Marvin," said Lashonda. "If you say her daddy on the other side, wants to let her know he's fine, and she tell you her daddy is driving an Oakland city bus, you don't say you made a mistake. You say, sometimes you see things before they happen, but that don't make them less true. Lashonda's Spiritual Hotline never wrong. You got it?" She looked at Jimmy again. "I know what you told me, mister. If I was stupid, I'd still be answering police calls instead of working for myself." Her face flattened out with anger. "This about Sugar's pension? You trying to get him in trouble after all this time, just 'cause he grabbed a little overtime once in a while?"

"No."

"Sugar's a good man, he don't talk down to a body. Not like some of them police, looking down on woman, making cracks, thinking he was high and mighty because he carried a gun and a badge. Sugar-" Lashonda wagged a finger at someone who wasn't there. "Deborah, you being too specific. Not France. Travel. Not quit his job. Experience life changes. Another thing, girl, you talking too fast. At four-ninety-nine a minute, don't be in any hurry." She looked at Jimmy. "Sugar was real people. He didn't hold himself any better than the rest of us."

"Lashonda, I don't care if Sugar got paid overtime or not. I just want to know if he freelanced calls on a regular basis. Just to help out."

"Sugar Brimley was one fine policeman. Most of them, when they clocked out, they was gone. Not Sugar. He was always ready to fill in. You need help, Sugar was your man." Lashonda pressed the earpiece, listening, waving Jimmy away.

Jimmy headed for the front door. He was grateful to Brimley for saving him from the Butcher, but the idea of an off-duty cop grabbing a call, a detective no less-it had made him wonder. His hand on the doorknob, he looked back at Lashonda overseeing her network of psychic counselors, impressed at the way she could keep a dozen calls going in her head, orchestrating the give-and-take, the need for reassurance. For answers. Jimmy could use a few answers himself.