When Guido took the camera off his shoulder, he was laughing. “You two should go on the road with that card routine.”
“It’s already been on the road,” I said. “Part of the Mike Flint repertoire, right Hector?”
“What other stories he tell you?” Hector asked. He was blushing furiously.
“Tons of them. When he told me about the get-out-of-jail-free card stunt, he said, ‘Got us what we needed and no one laid a hand on the whore. That’s called good police work, my friend. Good police work.’ “
“That’s called bullshit,” Guido countered.
Hector laughed. “Same thing. With Flint, it’s an art form.”
Guido, who lives most of his professional life within the confines of university-directed tenets of political correctitude, visibly winced when I said “whore.” He was suddenly not very amused.
“Can we go home now?” Guido asked me. “I’ve got the crime scene, the victim, the cops, the witness.”
“Get the bystanders,” I said. “And the cars on the street.”
“Except the Blazer?” he said, sarcastic.
I reached into my pocket and switched off the tape recorder. “Everything except the Blazer. You have a problem with that?”
“No,” he said, jutting out his chin like a defiant kid. “I don’t have any problems. I’m having more fun than I’ve had since we camped out in the jungles of Salvador. At least here there aren’t any biting bugs and at the moment no one’s shooting at us. Just perfectly dandy. Doing this arty, interpretive shit is so much easier than working hard news: we don’t even have to pretend we’re looking for the facts as long as we get some hot footage. I always think patterns of light and shadow are more important than story content.”
I ignored the insult, put it down to an unguarded flash of jealousy. Best friends often feel pushed out when a lover comes on the scene, comes between them. I had been noticing ever since I moved down that Guido seemed to bristle every time Mike’s name came up. I walked away from him to give him space to cool off, but he followed.
“Hanna grew up in this general neighborhood,” I said, moving past the tantrum. He had stung me deeply, and he knew it. Why belabor the issue? “She went to that elementary school across the street, little girl with pigtails, maybe. I like the way this is all coming together. With some luck and persistence, we may be able to hook up with Hanna’s mother, or maybe the school administration, and find some old pictures of her. Little kid with gaps in her front teeth, cut to the body on the porch. That would be beautiful, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know if beautiful is the right word, but it would be powerful.” Guido, chagrined suddenly, dropped his gaze, did an unnecessary battery check. “Very powerful.”
“I love you, Guido,” I said.
“I know.” He looked at me through his long lashes. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Gloria was driven away. She waved to us from the backseat of the patrol car as she went past. I knew she faced an all-nighter, what was left of the night, under questioning at Southeast Division. I hoped they would at least buy her breakfast when it was over because she looked as if she hadn’t eaten for a long time.
The forensics people would probably be around the crime scene most of the day with their tape measures, chalk, and little plastic bags. I overheard them discussing whether a gouge on a metal fence post was a bullet impact or some other sort of collision, maybe a hard encounter with a bicycle handlebar. None of it seemed essential to our needs. Once Hanna had been taken away in the coroner’s van, there was no reason for us to stay.
Guido, still chastened, walked me back to the Blazer, where Hector was waiting. I had the envelope Hector had given me tucked under my arm.
“Hector,” I said, “did you know Wyatt Johnson?”
He shook his head. “I think he worked out of Hollywood or maybe Hollenbeck. I don’t know what he was doing down here.”
“Maybe there’s something in his file.”
“Could be,” he said.
“What they’re saying Mike did,” I said, but Hector held up his hands, stopped me from saying anything more.
“Mike Flint’s the best,” he said. “Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.”
“Thanks for coming out,” I said. I offered him my hand, but he gave me a long hug.
“Look after Mike,” he said. “Because trouble is always looking out for him.”
“I do my best. We’ll have you and your wife to dinner as soon as we get settled in.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll take you both out.”
I kissed his cool cheek and pulled away. “Go home. Get some sleep.”
It was a good idea. Guido talked all the way back to the Valley, on and on about a new video disk recorder he was trying to get a grant to buy for his department. He must have memorized all of the support literature, because I heard so much arcane technical detail that, had I tended at all toward the suicidal, I would have done myself in long before we reached the downtown interchange. I knew he was taking the responsibility for filling dead air space, atoning for his earlier outburst. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Mike, it was that he wouldn’t have chosen Mike for me.
Guido declined my offer of breakfast when he dropped me off. It was still awfully early. I went into a quiet house, hoping for company. Someone was in the shower-I could hear the hot water pipes. There was fresh coffee in Mr. Espresso. But no one was walking around.
I put eggs on to boil, dropped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, poured some coffee, and sat down at the table to look through the folder Hector had slipped to me.
Just as my toast popped, Mike came in the back door wearing running shorts and shoes and dripping with sweat.
He rubbed his salty, unshaven chin across the back of my neck as he looked over my shoulder. “What do you have?”
“Hanna Rhodes’s rap sheet.”
“Good.” He pulled out the chair next to me. “I asked Hec to run it.”
“And you asked Hec to come to the scene to watch over me.”
“Didn’t have to ask. He’s my old partner. He takes care of me.” He kissed my shoulder. “And mine.”
If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have challenged that “mine” remark. I wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so I began reading to him from the rap sheet.
“Booked under five versions of her name: Rhodes, Hanna S.; Rhodes, Hanna Sue; Rhodes, Hannah; Rhodes, Sue; Farmer, Demetria. The charges begin with possession of a controlled substance, detained and released for lack of probable cause.
One year later, arrested for petty theft and trespass: occupying property without consent. Convicted, sentenced to jail, sentence suspended. Two months later, arrested for burglary. Convicted. With a prior, Hanna went to county jail for six months. Another theft charge, robbery this time. With priors, given a year in jail. Out on probation, arrested for disorderly conduct: prostitution, solicitation. Pled nolo contenders, convicted, sentence suspended. Again, picked up for prostitution, plea-bargained sentence to time served. Four more disorderly conduct/prostitution charges, all of them bumped or plea-bargained for a total of maybe six months time in the slam. Finally, felony theft with a prior, sent to state prison for eighteen months, got an early release and hit the streets again last Friday. End of record. What does it tell you?” I asked.
“She was a junkie. Hooking, stealing to buy shit. She has a juvenile record, too. But it’s sealed. So, this paragon of veracity-if you believe the D.A.-has ten misdemeanor convictions and one felony over a six-year period. She’s out of prison three days and she takes one through the chest. I’d say the miracle here is that she didn’t take one a long time ago.”
“How did you know she took one through the chest?”
“Talked to Hector.” He pulled my by-now cold toast out of the toaster, buttered a piece, and began to eat it. “What bothers me is the timing of the shooting. I always have to look real hard at coincidence.”