by Teri White
“No.” She opened the purse again and took out a piece of paper. “I wrote down the names of his friends, with their addresses. The ones I know, anyway. There might be others.”
“Where does he spend his time?”
“You mean besides shut up in his bedroom? At the beach, mostly, I think. Santa Monica. Venice, maybe. Wherever kids hang out these days.”
“Where they hang out depends on what they’re looking for.”
She handed him the paper and then a picture. “I thought you might need one for the report. You probably don’t have a recent one.”
He shook his head. The only picture he had of his son showed a six-year-old dressed in a cowboy outfit. That smiling child in the fringed vest and matching pistols bore little likeness to the sullen teenager in this school photo. He thought that this face looked strangely angry. He put the paper and the picture into his wallet.
Karen looked at her watch again. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m showing a house in twenty minutes. You’ll call me tonight?”
“If I have anything.”
She stood. “Even if you don’t have anything, call. Just to let me know you’re looking.”
He nodded.
“Should I be scared?” The voice was a whisper, and at that moment she seemed very much like the girl he must have loved once upon a time.
Spaceman reached out to pat her hand. “Hell, no. And when I find him, I’ll kick his ass all the way home for making you worry like this.”
She tried a smile. It almost worked. “Talk to you later, then.”
“Yeah, later.”
She swung the bag over her shoulder and hurried out, looking once again like a successful woman on the move. Spaceman finished off the ice in his glass and picked up the check. This day was going from bad to shit. What the hell else could happen?
Outside, the air was hotter than ever as the temperature moved toward yet another record. He looked in the direction of the hills, wondering if the fires were still raging.
Hell of a job that, putting out fires.
Chapter 9
Spaceman managed to forget all about his appointment to see McGannon after lunch. He went back to the office to take care of the paperwork on Robbie, which bothered him more than he thought it should have, and then he was ready to hit the street and see what he could turn up on the Lowe boy.
But before he could get away from his desk, the phone rang. A bored voice from the medical examiner’s office informed him that the autopsy on Lowe, Peter would begin in one hour. He thanked the voice and hung up.
That didn’t give him enough time to do anything else first, so he was a sitting pigeon, just skimming the Times and working on a cigarette when McGannon opened the door of his office and waved him inside.
Spaceman swore under his breath. He didn’t know what was coming, but it was damned sure not to be anything good. McGannon looked too happy; nothing made him that cheerful except finding some new way to screw up Spaceman’s life. He slowly crushed the cigarette and walked with heavy steps into McGannon’s cubbyhole.
McGannon, safely behind the damned desk again, had a slight and dangerous smile on his face. Spaceman’s gut tightened. This was going to be nasty, no doubt about it.
It was only then that Spaceman noticed the third man in the room. The stranger smelled like Money, which made him a little nervous. He thought quickly, but couldn’t come up with anything he’d done lately to get a bigshot mad at him. He tucked in his gut, smoothed his tie, and decided to tough it out.
“Kowalski, this is Maguire. I guess you heard about the shift in personnel City Hall wants? ‘More efficient deployment of available manpower’ they call it.”
“I heard.”
“Well, Maguire here got caught in the winds of change. He’s just been transferred into the division.”
The stranger was a cop?
Spaceman took another look. Slender and tanned, Maguire looked more like a professional polo player than a homicide dick. His beige slacks and brown pinstripe didn’t seem to have wilted in the heat at all. Or maybe he came wrapped in cellophane.
Maguire stood, extending a hand. One finger bore a silver ring set with a large, dull green stone. “Blue Maguire,” he said, flashing a Bobby Kennedy grin.
Spaceman shook the hand quickly. “Spaceman Kowalski,” he mumbled.
“Spaceman?”
“It’s a long story.” He dismissed Maguire and turned back to McGannon. “I gotta take off. The post on the Lowe kid.”
“Good. On the way over, you can fill Maguire in on what you have so far.”
Spaceman didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he just looked from McGannon’s shit-eating grin to the GQ cover boy standing next to him. “What?”
The grin widened to what seemed impossible dimensions. “As of now, the two of you are working together on this case.”
Spaceman was peripherally aware that Maguire seemed to be as stunned by the news as he himself was. “Hey, lieutenant,” he said in a strangled voice, “I work alone, you know? I do a solo,” he explained to Maguire.
Maguire just looked at him.
McGannon snorted. “This isn’t the Metropolitan Opera,” he said. “We don’t need any damned prima donnas.”
“But you know I don’t work so good with other people.” Spaceman knew from long and painful experience that this was a losing battle, but he had to give it his best shot anyway. “My personality is like sandpaper. I antagonize people. That’s what you told me, remember?”
The bastard didn’t seem to mind having his own words thrown back in his face. He shrugged. “You’ll adapt. Besides, Maguire is a college graduate. Maybe you can learn a few things from him.”
Spaceman gritted his teeth together tightly so he wouldn’t say something he’d be sorry for later. Then: “Oh, shit,” he said anyway.
He turned on his heel and left the office.
Blue nodded a polite farewell to McGannon and followed Kowalski.
He wasn’t thrilled. The unexpected transfer was bad enough, but now Spaceman Kowalski had been thrust into his life. And just when he’d decided to give his all to the damned job and make a smashing success of it. This partnership was bound to put a crimp in his grand design.
Kowalski paused next to an amazingly cluttered desk and immediately plucked a thin file from somewhere in its depths. He didn’t seem to know or care whether Blue was following him. In silence, they walked out of the building and across the parking lot, coming to a stop beside a battered Chevy. “You want to be wheelman?” Kowalski asked, finally acknowledging his existence.
“I don’t mind,” Blue said. He looked at the car again. “We can take mine, if you want. It’s air-conditioned.”
Kowalski looked as if he would rather get into the hot Chevy, just to prove some point, but then he shrugged. “What the hell.” His voice was slightly husky, like that of a man who smoked and drank a little too much.
They walked a short distance across the lot to where the Porsche was parked. Kowalski stared at the seafoam-green car for a moment, then looked up. “One question.”
“Sure,” Blue said, unlocking the door.
“You on the take? I don’t need a crooked partner. I’ve got a reputation.”
That was no doubt the truth, although what kind of reputation he had was probably open to debate. Blue knew what he was getting at, though, because it wasn’t the first time the question had come up. Usually, of course, it was more subtle. “No,” he said. “I’m not on the take. I’m just rich. Very rich.”
“Okay, then.” Kowalski got inside and settled his bulk snugly into the passenger seat. “If you’re so fucking rich,” he said, “why are you in this racket?”
“I like it.”
“You like it?” The idea seemed to amuse him.
“Sure. Don’t you?”
“Well, yeah. I guess. But I’m not rich.”
Blue shrugged and started the car. “What’s this case?” he asked, after a moment both men spent li
stening to the purring engine.
Kowalski lighted a cigarette. In an obvious afterthought, he held out the pack.
“No, thanks. I quit. Found out they were screwing up my endurance.”
“Yeah? Interesting.” Kowalski took a long drag.
Blue jerked the blower up another notch. “The case,” he said again.
“Oh, yeah. Somebody killed a kid in Griffith Park. A very bloody knife job.”
Blue released his breath slowly. “Bad.”
“Very.” Kowalski frowned suddenly, as if a more troubling thought had crossed his mind. But he didn’t say anything.
Blue concentrated on driving. “I’ll try not to fuck up your life too much,” he said after several minutes.
“What?” Kowalski seemed startled; his thoughts had obviously been someplace else.
“I know you’re not crazy about working with me.” Diplomatically, he refrained from saying that the feeling was definitely mutual.
“Oh, hell,” Kowalski said with a shrug. “Nothing personal. This happens all the time. You’ll get fed up before long, and McGannon will let you off the hook.”
Blue didn’t have much hope for this partnership. Starsky and Hutch they weren’t. They were just a couple of departmental loose ends that somebody was hoping to tie up by tying together. The only thing he could do was make the best of it. Go along for the ride. Most importantly, he had to show them that Blue Maguire was, above all, a team player. One of the boys.
Blue inhaled some of the drifting cigarette smoke. It tasted great.
Chapter 10
Spaceman had stopped counting the autopsies a long time ago. He tried to be there in person as the pathologist worked, instead of just getting the facts later in a written report. Not that he got off on watching somebody cut a stiff into pieces. It was just that seeing what had been done to some poor slob inspired the cop in him, made him even more eager to hit the streets, find the bastard responsible, and in his own mind at least, exact some measure of justice.
Over the years, there had been a lot of bodies.
His feelings never changed, though. And neither did the smell of the place. It was a more subtle stink than might have been expected, but it was also unforgettable. It lingered. On the clothes, the hair, the edge of whatever soul he still had left. It made him want to turn and run away as fast as he could. The old primal instinct to survive, ignited by a dumb fear that dying, like the flu or herpes, might be contagious.
But was the fear really so dumb? He wasn’t sure. A cop could see so much death that it would finally wear him down, erode his humanity until there was nothing left. Spaceman figured that would happen to him eventually.
For now, he just swallowed the fear, trying not to taste it.
Almost forgotten next to him, Maguire sighed. “I really hate this place.”
Spaceman shrugged. “All part of the job,” he said, not wanting to let on that it was the place of many of his worst nightmares. “Let’s get to it.”
He led the way through the swinging doors.
Three of the tables were in use. Ignoring the first two, Spaceman walked to where a slender woman in white stood checking a cart of instruments. She glanced up as they approached. “This yours, Spaceman?”
“Lucky me. I get all the good stuff.” He gestured over his shoulder. “You two know each other?”
“Never had the pleasure,” she said.
“Maguire. My latest partner.” If there was any sarcasm in the tone of the introduction, no one seemed to notice. “And this is Sharon Engels. Doctor Engels is a very kinky broad, who gets her kicks playing around with dead bodies.”
Engels and Maguire smiled at each other.
Spaceman had never been able to figure out why a woman would take a job like this. It wasn’t even like Engels was some kind of dog, either. She was a damned good-looking broad.
Unfortunately, she kept sidestepping his attempts to score. Despite that, it was one of his favorite fantasies, imagining what Sharon Engels would be like in bed. Probably a real tiger. Even now, wearing the damned lab coat, and with her usually untamed auburn hair pulled into a severe bun, she had the kind of stuff that got a man thinking. In her domain, sex and death coexisted.
After a moment of mental eroticism, however, he turned his attention away from her and toward the table. A skinny Chicano seemed bored as he finished hosing the body down. Water that was still rusty pink with blood swirled through the metal grating and disappeared into the tub below.
Spaceman stood to one side, keeping both hands carefully in his pockets. A habit here. He didn’t want to touch anything by accident. Engels gave a fleeting look at the tray of specimen containers, syringes, knives and then switched on the overhead tape recorder. “The body is that of a well-developed and well-nourished white male,” she began in a measured tone.
Stretched out naked under the glaring lights, Peter Lowe looked even younger than he had in the park. The ugly slashes across his chest and stomach gleamed redly.
“Jesus.” It was Maguire’s voice.
“… approximately sixteen years old … head hair is dark blond, eyes are blue, each pupil 3.5 millimeter in diameter … all teeth present. Fingernails are chewed very short.”
Spaceman moved away slightly, carefully.
Engels worked slowly, precisely, giving the boy more attention in death than he had probably ever received in life. “Evidence of sperm present in the mouth and the anus … twelve slash wounds in the chest …” It went on and on.
Spaceman listened without expression to the familiar whirring of the small electric saw used to cut through the skull. Every once in a while, a case came along that got to him more than usual. This one, he knew already, was going to be one like that. Maybe it was the fact that the victim was a kid like Robbie and Robbie was missing. Whatever. Spaceman knew that he had to get the bastard who had done this. Maybe Peter’s own father didn’t care, but one cop sure as hell did.
Spaceman glanced sidewise at the pale but impassive face of Maguire. Even if breaking this case meant getting along for a while with Detective Perfect here, he’d do it.
Having decided to succeed and knowing that in the end justice would be done, Spaceman could bear to tune in again to the cool discourse of Sharon Engels.
In the hallway again, Blue leaned against the wall and wished that he could ask for one of Kowalski’s damned cigarettes. Instead, he said, “I want a drink.”
Kowalski raised a brow. “You drink on duty?”
“Not usually. I’ll make an exception.”
“Really bothered you, huh?”
“And it didn’t bother you, for Chrissake?”
“Hell, I’m used to it.”
Blue realized that Kowalski was lying. No matter how much he might deny it, the other cop was shaken by what had been done to that kid. Maybe the surly son of a bitch was human after all.
Kowalski flipped the end of his cigarette into the overflowing sand bucket in the corner. “Let’s go,” he said abruptly.
“Where to?”
“First to have a drink and wash the taste of this place out of my mouth. Then we’re going to find that bastard.” He turned and walked out.
Blue followed. The exit line had been corny and melodramatic, like a piece of dialogue from a bad movie, but he didn’t mind. Somehow he was convinced that Spaceman Kowalski meant just what he said.
Chapter 11
There weren’t many customers in the Red Dog Lounge. Aside from one fat woman perched precariously on a stool near the door, and two old winos arguing politics with the bartender, Tom and Jody had the cool dark refuge of the rundown bar all to themselves.
Which suited Tom just fine. The backroom and the pool table there belonged to them alone. His game was very rusty, because pool had been against the hospital rules, but that didn’t matter. It felt good just to have a cue in his hands again, and there was no pressure in the playing. Jody, like him, was content to take it easy, play slowly, downing lots of cold
beer and rapping about things that weren’t important.
Tom felt great. The whole afternoon passed in a kind of golden fog, accompanied by the soft clicking of the balls hitting against one another and the taste of the thick dark stout.
When at last Tom managed to win a game from his brother, they replaced the cues in the rack and took their drinks to the last booth. A quieter mood seemed to descend on them suddenly. Jody began to build a tower of stale pretzels. “What’re we going to do, Tommy?” he asked.
Tom took a slow sip of his Guinness. This was a moment he’d known would have to come sooner or later, and maybe now was as good a time as any. Except that the day had been so nice, so perfect, that he hated to lose the good feelings by talking about the past. But it had to be done. “Time to get down to business,” he said regretfully.
“You said that before, and I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If you want my opinion, I think we should just leave town. For a while, at least.”
“We will. After.”
“After what?”
“After we get even, Jody.” He finished off the stout in his mug, then stood. “I’ll get us a couple refills, then we’ll talk, okay?”
He walked to the front and waited impatiently for the husky black bartender to pull himself away from a heated discussion of Reaganomics and do his damned job. “Hope I’m not interrupting,” he said sarcastically, but softly.
The bartender just filled the mugs and pushed them across the bar at him.
Jody was still playing with the pretzels when he got back to the table. Tom took one of the nonessential pieces of the emerging structure and ate it. “You remember when they sent me away?” he asked suddenly.
Jody ducked his head and nodded.
“I promised then that I was going to get even with the bastard who did it.”
“Who, Tommy?”
“The cop,” he said flatly. “The dumb polack pig who busted me, and then told them in court that I was crazy.”
Jody’s eyes were squeezed shut. “I don’t remember him,” he said in a strained whisper.
“What do you remember, Jody?”
