by Tami Hoag
“I don’t think you common in any way, Madame Chen,” Parker said. “But for future reference, ma’am, Barneys’ parking lot always has an attendant.”
She gave him a look that might have melted lesser men.
Parker smiled. “I’m a regular.”
Unimpressed, she stormed off and disappeared into the building.
Parker sighed and looked around. The Chen family had a nice little business going. Neat as a pin. Everything A-one. He had purchased prawns here once for a quiet dinner with Diane. Excellent quality.
Maybe he would do it again when this case was closed.
He had left Diane asleep in his bed, putting an orange on his vacated pillow and a note that read: Breakfast in bed. I’ll call you later. K
It had been nice to fall asleep with her in his arms, and to wake up with her there. To do that more often seemed like a good idea. Not that he wanted something permanent, or legally binding. Neither of them wanted that. Rules and regulations altered expectations and issues of trust in a relationship, and not for the better, as far as he’d seen. But as he became more settled in his life outside the job, and more content with the reconstructed Kev Parker, stability and normalcy and connection were becoming more attractive to him.
He pulled his cell phone out and called Dispatch to have a black-and-white sent to sit on the Mini Cooper until he could get his warrant.
As he waited, he looked at the buildings across the alley. Plenty of windows overlooking the Chen lot. There were probably more than a few pairs of eyes glancing out even now. As soon as the black-and-white rolled in, the news would be all over Chinatown in a flash—among the Chinese, at least.
If he wanted to canvass the neighbors, he might find someone who had noticed the Mini Cooper missing, or perhaps had seen it leave or return. But Parker had no intention of doing that. He didn’t want Madame Chen as an enemy, or perceiving him to be one. There was no need to air her business with the neighbors and fan the flames of gossip.
The sensation of being watched crept over Parker’s skin. Not from above, but from straight on. His gaze swept the loading dock, the other side of the alley, and came to rest on a stack of wooden pallets sitting at the back of the next building.
Parker stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered—not toward the pallets, but across the alley, where tall bunches of purple irises and yellow sunflowers were being delivered in through the back door of a florist’s shop.
He eased his way down the alley, the pallets in his peripheral vision. When he was just past them, he glanced back.
A small figure shifted position to keep him in sight, wedging between the pallets and the brick building.
Parker turned and looked straight at his little voyeur. A kid. Maybe eight or nine. Swallowed up in a faded black sweatshirt nine sizes too big for him, his face peering out from the depths of the hood, blue eyes that went wide as gaze met gaze.
“Hey, kid—”
The boy bolted before the words were even out of Parker’s mouth, and the chase was on. Quick as a rabbit, the kid zipped past Chen’s lot, heading for the cover of a big blue Dumpster. Parker sprinted full-out after him, hit the brakes as the boy pulled a one-eighty, and skidded another ten feet before he could change directions.
“Kid! Stop! Police!” Parker shouted, sprinting back down the alley, his tie flipped over his shoulder, waving like a flag behind him.
The boy took a hard left into a parking lot wedged between a U of buildings. No way out Parker could see except to go in the back door of the center building. The door was closed.
The cars were parked nose-to-tail, two deep and four wide. Parker walked along behind the cars, his breath coming in hard, quick huffs. He set his hands at his waist and frowned at the fact that he was sweating. His shirt still had creases from the laundry. He hadn’t worn it two hours and he would be sending it back.
A quick glimpse of blond hair and blue jeans caught his eye as the boy dashed between a green Mazda and a white Saturn, crouching down to half his already small size.
“Okay, junior,” Parker said. “Come on out. I promise I won’t arrest you. No handcuffs, no pistol-whipping . . .”
There was a rustling on the fine gravel beneath the cars. A glimpse of pant leg, a black sneaker disappearing under a Volvo.
Parker stayed along the back of the cars, pacing slowly back and forth.
“I just want to ask you a couple of questions,” Parker said. “We could start with why you took off like that, but I’ll give you that one. A freebie. For future reference: If you run, cops will chase. We’re like dogs that way.”
He followed the scuttling sound back to the other side of the lot. He bent over and looked beneath a white BMW X5 with vanity plates that read 2GD4U. Big blue eyes stared back at him over a button nose smudged with dirt.
“Kev Parker,” he said, holding his badge down for the kid to see. “LAPD. And you are . . . ?”
“I have the right to remain silent.”
“You do, but you’re not under arrest. Is there some reason I should arrest you?”
“Anything I say can and will be used against me.”
“How old are you?” Parker asked.
The kid thought about that for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of answering. “Ten,” he said at last.
“You live around here?”
“You can’t make me talk to you,” the kid said. “I know all about my rights against self-in-crim-i-nation as defined by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
“A legal scholar. I’m impressed. What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t say. You really might as well not try to trick me,” the boy said. “I watch cop shows all the time.”
“Ah, you’re wise to us.”
“Plus, I’m probably a lot smarter than you are. I don’t say that to make you feel bad or anything,” he said earnestly. “It’s just that I have an IQ of a hundred sixty-eight, and that’s well above the average.”
Parker chuckled. “Kid, you’re a trip. Why don’t you crawl out from under there? You can explain the Pythagorean Theorem to me.”
“The square of the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle equals the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides. From the doctrines and theories of Pythagoras and the Py-thag-o-reans,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut as he sounded out the clumsy word, “who developed some basic principles of mathematics and astronomy, originated the doctrine of the harmony of the spheres, and believed in me-tem-psy-cho-sis, the eternal recurrence of things, and the mystical significance of numbers.”
Parker just stared at him.
“I read a lot,” the boy said.
“I guess so. Come on, genius,” Parker said, offering his hand. “All my blood is rushing to my head. Get out from under there before I have a stroke.”
The boy scuttled out from under the car like a crab, stood up, and tried in vain to dust himself off. The sleeves of his sweatshirt had to be six inches longer than his arms. The hood had fallen back, revealing a shock of blond hair.
“I don’t really consider myself to be a genius,” he confessed modestly. “I just know a lot of stuff.”
“Why aren’t you in school?” Parker asked. “You already know everything, so they sprang you loose?”
The kid pushed back a sleeve and consulted a watch that was so big for him it looked like he had a dinner plate strapped to his arm.
“It’s only seven thirty-four.”
“Your school must be close by, huh?”
The boy frowned.
“And you live in the neighborhood, or you’d be more concerned about the time,” Parker said. “You’re observant. You’re smart. I’ll bet you know a lot about what goes on around here.”
The one-shoulder shrug. The toe in the dirt. Eyes on the ground.
“You’re below the radar,” Parker said. “You can slip around, see things, hear things. Nobody even notices.”
The other shoulder shrugged.
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“So why were you watching me down there?”
“I dunno.”
“Just because? You working your way up to becoming a Peeping Tom so you can spy on girls?”
The little face scrunched up in distaste. “Why would I want to do that? Girls are weird.”
“Okay. So maybe you want to become a spy. Is that it?”
“Not really. I just have an in-sa-tia-ble curiosity.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Parker said. “Do you know the Chens? From the fish market?”
Both shoulders.
“Do you know a guy around here by the name of J. C. Damon? He’s a bike messenger.”
The eyes went a little wider. “Is he in trouble?”
“Kind of. I need to speak with him. I think he might have some information that could help me with a big investigation.”
“About what? A murder or something?”
“A case I’m working on,” Parker said. “I think he might have seen something.”
“Why won’t he just come and tell you, if that’s all?”
“Because he’s scared. He’s like you, running away from me because he thinks I’m the enemy. But I’m not.”
Parker could see the wheels turning in the kid’s head. He was curious now, and interested in the grudging way of someone pretending not to be.
“I’m not a bad guy,” Parker said. “You know, some people blame first and ask questions later. There could be cops like that out there looking for this guy Damon. It’d be a whole lot better for him if he came to me before they get to him.”
“What’ll they do to him?”
Parker shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have any control over them. If they believe this guy’s guilty, who knows what could happen?”
The kid swallowed hard, like he was swallowing a rock. Blond hair, blue eyes, good-looking kid. Just the way Parker had described Damon to Madame Chen. This one had been right there at the back of Chen’s, watching, listening. His interest now went beyond the excuse of the kid’s insatiable curiosity.
“Could they shoot him?” the boy asked.
Parker shrugged. “Bad things can happen. I’m not saying they will, but . . .”
He reached in a pocket, pulled out a business card, offered it to the kid. The boy snatched it as if he expected a manacle to snap around his wrist. One of those cop tricks he was wise to. He looked at the card, looked up at Parker from under his brows, then stuck the card in the pouch of the sweatshirt.
“If you see this guy Damon around . . .” Parker said.
The black-and-white radio car turned in at the end of the alley and stopped behind Chen’s. The uniform got out and called to him.
“Detective Parker?”
Parker started to raise a hand. The kid was off like a shot.
“Shit!” Parker shouted, bolting after him.
The boy had run back into the U of buildings. No way out, Parker thought, closing in on him. There was only the narrowest of spaces between two of the buildings, a ray of sunlight as thin as a razor blade. The kid ran around the front row of cars. Parker tried to cut the angle, jumping up and skidding on his ass across the hood of a Ford Taurus. He reached out to grab the kid as he came off the car, but he landed badly, stumbled, and went down on one knee.
The kid didn’t even slow down as he came to the buildings. He ran into the crack of space, fitting exactly between the two walls.
Parker swore, turned sideways, sucked in his breath, and started in, cobwebs hitting his face, the brick snatching at his suit. The boy was out the other end and gone before Parker had made it a dozen feet.
“Hey, Detective?” the uniform called from the parking lot.
Parker emerged, scowling, picking spiderwebs off the front of his jacket.
“Anything I can do for you?”
“Yeah,” Parker said, disgusted. “Call Hugo Boss and send my apologies.”
30
Ruiz sat at her desk with her head in her hand, her expression a mix of exhaustion, disgust, testiness, and fading hope. She had put her aromatic witness in Parker’s chair, at Parker’s desk, willing to suffer the stench in the name of revenge.
Obidia Jones appeared to have had a fine night’s sleep in a holding cell. A late dinner from Domino’s, coffee and pastry from Starbucks for breakfast. He paged through the mug books as if he were reading a magazine, occasionally remarking when he saw someone he knew.
“Personally, I prefer a heartier breakfast,” he said, as he tore off a delicate piece of his danish. “Something substantiated to stick to a person’s ribs. Something representing all your major food groups. A good big breakfast burrito.”
Ruiz rolled her eyes.
Kray walked past with a sour look on his face. “Can’t you take that somewhere else, Ruiz? Why should the rest of us have to put up with that filthy stink?”
Ruiz looked at him. “As much time as you spend with your head up your ass, Kray, I’d think you’d be used to the smell by now.”
Yamoto, standing by the coffeemaker, choked back a laugh and dodged the snake eyes his partner shot him.
“Bitch,” Kray muttered under his breath.
“Say that a little louder,” Ruiz taunted. “So I can file a harassment complaint against you. You can go through sensitivity training again. How many times would that be?”
Kray made a face and mimicked her like he was a five-year-old child.
Parker came into the squad, took three strides into the room, and was knocked back by the smell. When he saw Mr. Jones sitting in his chair, he turned a piercing look on Ruiz.
She smiled like a sly cat and said, “Touché.”
“I think I’ve got the car,” Parker said, ignoring her. “I’ve got to call an ADA for a warrant. If we’re lucky, we’ll have prints by noon.”
“Where was it?” Ruiz asked.
“Chinatown. Doesn’t make any sense now, but it’s going to. I can feel it.”
The anticipation was like a coffee buzz, like speed. He was moving faster, talking faster, thinking faster. The building high was almost better than sex.
“I love it when it all comes together,” he said. He had run home from his encounter at Chen’s Fish Market and changed suits. He wasn’t about to put his ass in his own chair now. He went to Kray’s desk and used the phone without asking, as if Kray weren’t sitting right there.
“How’s it going, Mr. Jones?” he asked as he waited for someone to pick up on the other end of his call.
“I’m very happy. You all are extremely magnimonious with your hospitality.”
“Ms. Ruiz there treating you well?”
“She was kind enough to bring me coffee.”
“We’ll have to mark that on the calendar,” Parker said. “She’s never that nice to me.”
“Must be your cologne,” Kray grumbled.
“I don’t need cologne,” Parker said. “I smell like a fresh spring morning. But you could change that ugly shirt, cracker. How many days you been stewing in that thing? Yamoto, how many days has he been wearing that shirt?”
“Too many.”
Scowling, Kray made a swipe at the telephone receiver. “Get off my goddam phone, Parker.”
“Fuck you— No! Not you, sweetheart!” He reached out and knocked one of Kray’s messy piles of unfinished paperwork over the edge of the desk and mouthed the word “asshole” at Kray. “It’s Kev Parker. Is this the astoundingly lovely Mavis Graves?”
Mavis Graves was sixty-three with upper arms the size of canned hams, but every lady loved a compliment.
“Mavis, doll, I need to speak to Langfield about a warrant. Is he in yet?”
Stevie Wonder came over the phone line. “My Cherie Amour.”
Parker pointed a finger at Ruiz. “Did my court order for Lowell’s safe-deposit box come through?”
“Not yet.”
“Langfield. What do you need, Parker?”
“I need a warrant to search a car I believe may have been used to flee an a
ssault.”
“You believe?”
“A car matching the description was used for a getaway. I have a partial plate from a witness, and new damage to a taillight. The car leaving the scene got clipped by a van and broke a taillight.”
“Where’s the car? Did you find it abandoned?”
“No. The car’s in Chinatown. It belongs to one pissed-off lady who isn’t being very forthcoming with me.”
“What does she say about the car?”
“That the car was never used yesterday, and the taillight got broken in a parking lot in Beverly Hills.”
“You have a suspect? Is she a suspect?”
“The woman isn’t a suspect, but I think she knows more than she’s saying. If I can get prints and put my suspect in the car . . .”
“So you’re fishing?”
“It’s the car.”
“There aren’t any other cars that match that description in LA?”
Parker heaved a sigh. “Whose side are you on, Langfield?”
“Mine. I’m not getting you a warrant you can only justify after you’ve done the search. The evidence will never make it past a judge. Can you connect your perp to this woman?”
“Not yet.”
“So you’re nowhere.”
“I have the car, the damage to the car, the partial plate—”
“You’ve got nothing. You can’t even sit and look at the car with what you’ve got.”
“Well, thanks for pissing all over my parade,” Parker said, rubbing at his temple. “You could have come through on this, Langfield. Judge Weitz would have signed off—”
“Judge Weitz is senile. I’m not bending rules for you, Parker. You’re the poster boy for what happens when cops cut corners. I won’t be a party—”
Parker tossed the receiver down on Kray’s desk. Langfield was still preaching.
“Prick,” Parker muttered, walking away, working to gather himself. He had to keep his eyes on the prize. He turned back, picked the receiver back up. “There’s paint marks on the damage to this car. If I can match the paint to the van that hit it—”
“You will have solved a traffic mishap. There’s still no reason to get inside the car.”
“That’s bullshit. It was leaving the scene of the crime!”