Tony shook his head. "You're a remarkable man."
"Not particularly," Tucker said. "I'm just living in a remarkable place and a remarkable time."
Frank was holding the manila envelope that contained the mug shots of Bobby "Angel" Valdez. He tapped it against his knee and looked at Tony and said, "I think maybe we've come to the wrong place this time."
"It sure looks that way," Tony said.
Tucker slid forward on his chair. "What was it you wanted?"
Tony told him about Bobby Valdez.
"Well," Tucker said, "I don't move in the circles I once did, but I'm not completely out of touch either. I donate fifteen or twenty hours of my time every week to Self-Pride. That's a city-wide anti-drug campaign. I feel sort of like I've got debts to pay, you know? A Self-Pride Volunteer spends about half his time talking to kids, the other half working on an information-gathering program, sort of like TIP. You know about TIP?"
"Turn in Pushers," Tony said.
"Right. They have a number you can call and give anonymous tips about neighborhood drug dealers. Well, we don't wait for people to call us at Self-Pride. We canvas those neighborhoods where we know pushers work. We go door to door, talk to parents and kids, pump them for anything they know. We build up dossiers on dealers until we feel we've really got the goods, then we turn the dossiers over to the LAPD. So if this Valdez is dealing, there's a chance I'll know at least a little something about him."
Frank said, "I have to agree with Tony. You are rather remarkable."
"Hey, look, I don't deserve any pats on the back for my work at Self-Pride. I wasn't asking for congratulations. In my day I created a lot of junkies out of kids who might have done right if I hadn't been there to steer them wrong. It's going to take me a long, long time to help enough kids to balance the equation."
Frank took the photographs out of the envelope and gave them to Tucker.
The black man looked at each of the three shots. "I know the little bastard. He's one of about thirty guys we're building files on right now."
Tony's heartbeat accelerated a bit in anticipation of the chase to come.
"Only he doesn't use the name Valdez," Tucker said.
"Juan Mazquezza?"
"Not that either. I think he calls himself Ortiz."
"Do you know where we can find him?"
Tucker stood up. "Let me call the information center at Self-Pride. They might have an address on him."
"Terrific," Frank said.
Tucker started toward the kitchen to use the phone in there, stopped, looked back at them. "This might take a few minutes. If you'd like to pass the time looking at my designs, you can go into the study." He pointed to a set of double doors that opened off the living room.
"Sure," Tony said. "I'd like to see them."
He and Frank went into the study and found that it was even more sparsely furnished than the living room. There was a large expensive drawing table with its own lamp. A high stool with a padded seat and a spring back stood in front of the table, and beside the stool there was an artist's supply cabinet on wheels. Near one of the windows, a department store mannequin posed with head tilted coyly and shiny-smooth arms spread wide; bolts of bright cloth lay at its plastic feet. There were no shelves or storage cabinets; stacks of sketches and drawing tablets and draftsman's tools were lined up on the floor along one wall. Obviously, Eugene Tucker was confident that eventually he would be able to furnish the entire townhouse with pieces as exquisite as those in the living room, and in the meantime, regardless of the inconvenience, he did not intend to waste money on cheap temporary furniture.
Quintessential California optimism, Tony thought.
Pencil sketches and a few full-color renditions of Tucker's work were thumbtacked to one wall. His dresses and two-piece suits and blouses were tailored yet flowing, feminine yet not frilly. He had an excellent sense of color and a flair for the kind of detail that made a piece of clothing special. Every one of the designs was clearly the work of a superior talent.
Tony still found it somewhat difficult to believe that the big hard-bitten black man designed women's clothes for a living. But then he realized that his own dichotomous nature was not so different from Tucker's. During the day, he was a homicide detective, desensitized and hardened by all of the violence he saw, but at night, he was an artist, hunched over a canvas in his apartment-studio, painting, painting, painting. In a curious way, he and Eugene were brothers under the skin.
Just as Tony and Frank were looking at the last of the sketches, Tucker returned from the kitchen. "Well, what do you think?"
"Wonderful," Tony said. "You've got a terrific feeling for color and line."
"You're really good," Frank said.
"I know," Tucker said, and he laughed.
"Does Self-Pride have a file on Valdez?" Tony asked.
"Yes. But he calls himself Ortiz, like I thought. Jimmy Ortiz. From what we've been able to gather, he deals strictly in PCP. I know I'm not on solid ground when I start pointing the finger at other people ... but so far as I'm concerned, a PCP dealer is the lowest kind of bastard in the drug trade. I mean, PCP is poison. It rots the brain cells faster than anything else. We don't have enough information in our file to turn it over to the police, but we're working on it."
"Address?" Tony asked.
Tucker handed him a slip of paper on which the address had been noted in neat handwriting. "It's a fancy apartment complex one block south of Sunset, just a couple of blocks from La Cienega."
"We'll find it," Tony said.
"Judging from what you've told me about him," Tucker said, "and from what we've learned about him at Self-Pride, I'd say this guy isn't the kind who's ever going to knuckle down and rehabilitate himself. You'd better put this one away for a long, long time."
"We're sure going to try," Frank said.
Tucker accompanied them to the front door, then outside, where the patio deck in front of the townhouse offered a wide view of Los Angeles in the basin below. "Isn't it gorgeous?" Tucker asked. "Isn't it something?"
"Quite a view," Tony said.
"Such a big, big, beautiful city," Tucker said with pride and affection, as if he had created the megalopolis himself. "You know, I just heard that the bureaucrats back in Washington made a study of mass transit possibilities for L.A. They were determined to ram some system or other down our throats, but they were stunned to find out it would cost at least one hundred billion dollars to build a rapid transit railway network that would handle only ten or twelve percent of the daily commuter crush. They still don't understand how vast the West is." He was rhapsodizing now, his broad face alight with pleasure, his strong hands tossing off one gesture after another. "They don't realize that the meaning of L. A. is space--space and mobility and freedom. This is a city with elbow room. Physical and emotional elbow room. Psychological elbow room. In L.A., you have a chance to be almost anything you want to be. Here, you can take your future out of the hands of other people and shape it yourself. It's fantastic. I love it. God, I love it!"
Tony was so impressed with the depth of Tucker's feeling for the city that he revealed his own secret dream. "I've always wanted to be an artist, to make a living with my art. I paint."
"Then why are you a cop?" Tucker asked.
"It's a steady paycheck."
"Screw steady paychecks."
"I'm a good cop. I like the work well enough."
"Are you a good artist?"
"Pretty good, I think."