Strummer explained that they’d heard complaints of marijuana use and loud music, and rumors that the boys living here had broken into a neighboring home, stolen a flat-screen plasma HDTV and put the family’s Chihuahua in the freezer before they left. The dog was almost dead when the family found it, but it had survived. Nobody had filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Department.
“Single mom, Jacquilla Roberts,” said Strummer. “Sons sixteen and eighteen, down with the Southside Crips. Two young ones. She’s got a boyfriend, of course-a Lynwood felon who smelled the easy pickings up here in the desert. He’s not supposed to live here but he mostly does. Fine citizens all.”
“We’ll see what we see,” said Hood.
He and Laws followed the investigators up the walk. The porch light was on.
“If you guys draw some iron we’ve got a better chance of being invited in,” said Strummer.
“Draw your own iron,” said Laws.
“Would if I could.”
“That’s exactly why nobody will give you a gun.”
“I’m trying to do my job.”
“Then do it.”
Strummer banged hard on the front door and waited. Then he banged again.
A woman’s voice asked who it was and Strummer told her to open the goddamned door.
She was a tall black, strongly built and angry. Hood guessed upper thirties. She had on white warm-ups and white athletic socks and a white sweatshirt. Her hair was straightened and pulled back from a handsome face. She looked at each one of the men with an unhurried hostility.
“I don’t have to let you in.”
“We’ve had reports of drug use and loud music,” said Strummer. “We want to talk to you and your sons.”
“Come back with a warrant.”
“We have the cops instead,” said Fernandez. “These are Deputies Laws and Hood. We have no warrant because we don’t wish to arrest you. We simply want to assess your status under Section Eight. We’ll be back with the paper tomorrow, or we can get this interview out of the way now.”
She shook her head and pushed open the door. The house was warm inside and smelled of fried fish and vinegar and mentholated tobacco. By the time Jacquilla Roberts had shut the door, Strummer was marching into the heart of the house, followed by Fernandez.
“They can’t do that,” she said, watching them walk into her kitchen. “I know they can’t.”
“They can’t come in if you don’t invite them,” said Laws. “But once inside they can do a plain-sight search.”
She glowered at Laws.
“Are your sons home?” asked Hood.
“Two young ones are upstairs watching the TV. Two older ones are out I don’t know where. I got home from the plant about half an hour ago. I barely had time to get my long pants and work shoes off and you show up. That story about the dog in the freezer ain’t true. Everyone talking about it. My older ones have some problematic behavior at times but they don’t go puttin’ no dogs in freezers.”
“Tell the housing guys,” said Laws.
“ Authority. They have no authority over me.”
“Don’t aggravate them,” said Hood. “They can make your life miserable.”
He and Laws followed her down a short hallway and past the stairs. Two boys watched in silence from the shadows on the landing. Hood nodded at them and he heard the wind whistle against the house outside.
The kitchen opened to the dining room. There were pans and dishes in the sink and cut flowers on the counter and big boxes of kids’ cereal and a jar of instant coffee under the cupboards. A pile of newspapers by a red trash can. A stainless steel bowl of dry cat food and a matching one of water. Hood saw that things were messy but not dirty.
Strummer was using a blue pen to poke around in a big red glass ashtray on the counter by the flowers.
Fernandez was looking down into a big fake-snakeskin purse that sat slumped and open on the dining room table. He pulled a hardpack of Kools from the purse, tilted open the top and looked inside as he shook it. “We heard some boys broke in one block over, on Shady Lane, and ripped off a big-screen and put this dog-”
“You heard bullshit, mister.”
“Good weed isn’t cheap,” announced Strummer. “Maybe these boys-whoever they were-broke in, looking for some money to buy more of this.”
He held up the pen, which wasn’t a pen at all but a mechanical pencil, the kind with the clamp at the end to hold the lead. Or to grasp something. In this case, a small black roach.
Jacquilla looked at Hood, then at Strummer. “It ain’t mine.”
“But it’s here,” said Strummer. “And our drug policy is zero tolerance. That really does mean zero. This is enough to get you evicted. Fifty percent of our investigations result in evictions, Ms. Roberts. Fifty.”
“It ain’t mine. Mister, I got friends come here, maybe party sometimes. I got two older ones that might get into some trouble now and then. I admit. But that ain’t mine and I’m who signed the Section Eight papers to live here and I am not going back to South Central on account of what is not mine.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Laws. “There’s no profit in this.”
The wind kicked up and flailed at the walls.
“How many kids you have?” asked Strummer.
“Four.”
“By how many men?”
She glared at him and said nothing.
“Where are your two older sons?”
“They gone to get take-out. I don’t feel like cooking again tonight, not after eight hours on the PCB line.”
Fernandez looked at his clipboard. “Keenan and Kelvin. We need to see their rooms.”
The youngsters scattered as the four men started up the stairs. A door slammed and there was laughter behind it. The room shared by the older boys was hot and cramped and smelled like bleach and cigarette smoke. There was a twin bed along one wall and a sleeping pad and bag along another. A closet stood open, mounds of clothing piled on the floor, more hanging. An old Zenith TV sat on the floor in a corner, with labyrinths of wires leading to a DVD player and a satellite receiver and an Xbox. The carpet was dirty and strewn with games on CD. From amid the sea of plastic game boxes rose a push-up bench with two hundred pounds on the barbell. Strong boys, thought Hood. The walls had posters of Suge Knight and Tupac, Mary Blige and Ludacris, Snipes as Blade, Smith as Ali, and the old Death Row Records logo with the masked guy strapped into the electric chair.
Fernandez went to the closet, leaned in and sniffed at something. Jacquilla stared at him.
“Keenan and Kelvin drive to get the take-out?” asked Strummer. “Or did they walk?”
“They took my car, soon as I got home.”
“An hour and a half to get take-out?”
She tried to glare again at Strummer, but Hood saw something go out of her. “It might be late.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it might be,” said Strummer. “You don’t even know where they are, do you?”
“Out there. In the wind.”
Strummer shook his head and sighed. “We’ll be in touch. Come on, Al. I’ve seen enough.”
Laws and Hood thanked Jacquilla on their way out and she slammed the door behind them. Strummer gunned the van down Storybook.
“Idiots,” said Laws.
Hood let himself into the cruiser. As Laws settled in, Hood looked out at the swaying peppertree and wondered how long Keenan and Kelvin would be out tonight. Terry closed his door.
Hood turned the key and got nothing.
Dead battery, thought Hood.
“Let’s take a look,” said Laws.
Hood was feeling for the Interceptor’s hood release when he saw the windswept swaying of the peppertree become a different kind of motion-something thicker, concentrated and purposeful.
Someone coming.
Someone stopping in front of the car, on Laws’s side.
Black man. Detroit Tigers hoodie. Sunglasses, red bandana worn pirate style, shiny black gloves. Vaguely familiar. And an M249 SAW machine gun pointed at Laws.