of his face didn‟t budge; the bottom part went west. His jaw cracked like a gunshot. He was so ugly, it
was hard to tell whether the look on his face was one of pain or surprise. A second later his eyes did a
slow roll and he dropped to his knees.
He made a noise that sounded like “Arftoble.”
The Stick was standing beside me, shaking out his knuckles.
The other tough went for the Stick and I pulled my .38 from under my arm and stuck the barrel as far
up his left nostril as the gun sight would permit.
“Don‟t you hear good?” I said.
He stared at the gun and then at me and then back at the gun. The Stick kicked him in the nuts as hard
as I‟ve ever seen anybody kicked anywhere. He hit the ground beside his partner; his teeth cracked
shut, trapping the cry of pain. It screeched in the back of his throat. Tears flooded his eyes. He fell
forward on his hands and threw up. The other one was shaking his head, his jaw wobbling uselessly
back and forth.
“Gladolabor,” he said.
I thought about what Cisco had told me, about how Stick was young and not too jaded, and about how
I might give him a few pointers on due process. Now was hardly the time. He was doing just fine. I
put my artillery away and smiled.
“Y‟know,” he said, “we got a pretty good act here.”
“Yeah. Maybe we should tighten it up a little, take it on the road,” I agreed.
Stick and 1 checked over the terrace, ignoring the two stricken mastodons.
“Obstructing the scene of a crime,” he mused. “Where did you come up with that?”
“It sounded good,” I said. “Did it sound good to you?”
“I was convinced,” he said. “Cisco says you‟re a lawyer; I figured you should know.”
He stepped into the gazebo and threw on the lights. The calliope music started, but the merry-goround was destroyed, tilted on one side like a bloody beret. It was eerie, the mutilated horses frozen in
up-and-down positions, heads blown away, feet missing, while the calliope played its happy melody.
“Cisco likes to tell people I‟m a lawyer, to impress them,” I said. “I never practiced law”
“How come?” he asked.
A bloody horse‟s head, with flared nostrils and fiery, bloody eyes, lay at my feet. I lifted it slightly
with the toe of one shoe and peered under it, as though I expected to find some important bit of
evidence under there.
“I had the stupid notion it was still an honourable profession,” I said.
He laughed this crazy laugh, his eyes dancing between the lids, his mouth turned down at the corners
instead of up. It could have been mistaken for a snarl.
“I knew better than that the first time I was briefed by a prosecutor. He as much as told me to perjure
myself.”
“And what‟d you tell him?”
“1 told him to get fucked. It didn‟t happen the way he wanted it to happen and that was that. He ended
up plea-bargaining the case away rather than taking a shot with the true facts.”
“Just after I took the bar I was interviewed by this big law firm in San Francisco,” I said. “This was
one of the most prestigious law firms in the city. The old partner who did the interviewing spent an
hour explaining to me how fee splitting works. Nothing is ever said between two opposing lawyers;
they just exchange D and B‟s on the clients and decide how much they can milk them for. When the
well‟s dry, they reach a settlement. When I left, I was so disgusted I almost threw up. I wandered
around the hill for a while, then went down and joined the police force.”
“But you felt good about it,” he said, flashing that crazy smile again.
“No, I felt like shit if you want to know the truth,” I admitted to him. “Three years in law school and I
end up driving a blue and white.”
The Stick listened to the music for several seconds and finally flicked the switch off. I looked above
us, up to the top of the dunes.
“Up there,” I said.
We huffed and puffed through the sand to the top of the sharp embankment and found ourselves
staring at the ocean far below. It twinkled in the moonlight.
“What‟re we looking for?” the Stick asked.
“You were in the army,” I said. “What makes a discharge when it‟s fired and another one when it
hits?”
“Mortar?”
“Too close.”
He snapped his fingers. “Grenade launcher.”
“It fits,” I said.
We checked the trajectory from the hill to the pool. The terrace could be seen only from the very edge
of the dune. It didn‟t take us long to find a scorched place in the grass on the back of the dune with a
smear of gun grease behind it.
“Right here,” I said. “Whoever killed the old man lobbed his shot from here, right onto the terrace. He
couldn‟t even see him; he lined up his shot with some point on the pool and it blew up right in the old
man‟s lap.”
1 flashed the light around the dune, looking for footprints.
“There,” the Stick said, pointing to several depressions in the side of the dune leading toward the
ocean.
We looked closer.
“Looks like Bigfoot,” the Stick said. The depressions were fairly shallow and about the size of a small
watermelon. There was no definition to them.
I pointed the light to the hard sand at the bottom of the dune. The tide was almost full. Ridges of foam
lay near the foot of the dune.
“Great,” I said. “The tide‟s in. There goes any tracks on the beach.”
“Knew what he was doin‟,” the Stick said. “A blind shot like that and the timing was perfect.”
“This took a little planning. He had to know the setup. He knew when high tide was. And with those
two goons down there, he only had one shot. Confident son of a bitch. We better not make too many
tracks; forensics may turn something up.”
“One Ear,” the Stick said.
“Right. Let‟s get him over here.”
We went back down and told Lundy what we had found and he sent two men and a photographer up
the hill.
“Those two gorillas up there may need some medical assistance, too,” the Stick said. “They give you
any shit, book „em for assaulting an officer.”
Lundy‟s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Yeah, thanks,” he said with a touch of awe.
“I‟m goin‟ inside,” said the Stick. “See if 1 can raise Charlie One Ear.”
I joined Dutch, who was leaning on the corner of the house gnawing on a toothpick. He was obviously
impressed.
“You guys weren‟t gone long to be so busy,” he said with a
I looked at my watch. It was past ten and my stomach was telling me it hadn‟t been fed since noon.
“I‟ve gotta fill Mazzola in and get something to eat,” I said. “Then I‟m calling it a night.”
“I could use some food too,” the Stick said, rejoining us. “Charlie‟s on his way and not too happy
about it. I told Lundy to keep people off the bill.”
The Stick produced a small tan calling card.
“You ever need me,” he said, handing me a card, “my home number‟s on the back. There‟s a machine
on it. If it rings four times before it answers, I‟m there, just takin‟ a shit or a shower or something.
Leave a number, I‟ll usually get back to you in a coupla minutes. If it answers after one ring, I‟m out.”
“Meet us at the Feed Mill,” Dutch said to Stick. “Jake can drive down with me.”
I was grateful for that.
As we walked back to the cars I said, “We can throw in with you on this. I think we can assume the
weapon was a grenade launcher and that‟s an illegal weapon and that makes it federal.”
“Gee whiz,” Dutch growled. “Ain‟t due process grand.”