The Murder Book

The first two calls had been your basic bar shootings, juicehead perpetrators drunk enough to stick around when the uniforms arrived- literally holding the smoking guns, putting up no resistance.

Milo watched Schwi

"Good boy," he'd say afterward to the suspect, as if the asshole had passed a test. Over-the-shoulder aside to Milo: "How's your typing?"

Then back to the station, where Milo would pound the keys and Schwi

Cases Three, Four, and Five had been domestics. Dangerous for the responding blues, but laid out neatly for the D's. Three low-impulse husbands, two shootings, one stabbing. Talk to the family and the neighbors, find out where the bad guys were "hiding"- usually within walking distance- call for backup, pick 'em up, Schwi

Killing Six was a two-man holdup at one of the discount jewelry outlets on Broadway- cheap silver chains and dirty diamond chips in cheesy ten-karat settings. The robbery had been premeditated, but the 187 was a fluke that went down when one of the stickup morons' guns went off by accident, the bullet zipping straight into the forehead of the store clerk's eighteen-year-old son. Big, handsome kid named Kyle Rodriguez, star football player at El Monte High, just happened to be visiting Dad, bringing the good news of an athletic scholarship to Arizona State.

Schwi

That one stuck in Milo 's head for a while: Kyle Rodriguez's beefy bronze corpse slumped over the jewelry case. The image kept him up for more than a few nights. Nothing philosophical or theological, just general edginess. He'd seen plenty of young, healthy guys die a lot more painfully than Kyle, had long ago given up on making sense out of things.

He spent his insomnia driving around in the old Fiat. Up and down Sunset from Western to La Cienega, then back again. Finally veering south onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

As if that hadn't been his intention all along.

Playing a game with himself, like a dieter circling a piece of cake.

He'd never been much for willpower.

For three consecutive nights, he cruised Boystown. Showered and shaved and cologned, wearing a clean white T-shirt and military-pressed jeans and white te

Night three, he found himself a stool in a bar near Larabee, sweating too damn much, knowing he was even tenser than he felt because his neck hurt like hell and his teeth throbbed like they were going to crumble. Finally, just before 4 A.M., before sunlight would be cruel to his complexion, he picked up a guy, a young black guy, around his own age. Well-dressed, well-spoken, education grad student at UCLA. Just about the same place as Milo, sexual-honesty wise.

The two of them were jumpy and awkward in the guy's own crappy little grad student studio apartment on Selma south of Hollywood. The guy attending UCLA but living with junkies and hippies east of Vine because he couldn't afford the Westside. Polite chitchat, then… it was over in seconds. Both of them knowing there would be no repeat performance. The guy telling Milo his name was Steve Jackson but when he went into the bathroom, Milo spotted a date book embossed WES, found an address sticker inside the front cover. Wesley E. Smith, the Selma address.

Intimacy.

A sad case, Kyle Rodriguez, but he got over it by the time Case Seven rolled around.

A street slashing, good old Central Avenue, again. Knife fight, lots of blood all over the sidewalk, but only one db, a thirtyish Mexican guy in work clothes, with the homemade haircut and cheap shoes of a recently arrived illegal. Two dozen witnesses in a nearby cantina spoke no English and claimed blindness. This one wasn't even detective work. Solved courtesy of the blues- patrol car spotted a lurching perp ten blocks away, bleeding profusely from his own wounds. The uniforms cuffed him as he howled in agony, sat him down on the curb, called Schwi

By the time the detectives got there, the idiot was being loaded onto a gurney, had lost so much blood it was touch-and-go. He ended up surviving but gave up most of his colon and a bedside statement, pled guilty from a wheelchair, got sent back to the jail ward till someone figured out what to do with him.

Now, Number Eight. Schwi

Finally, he wiped his mouth. "Beaudry, top of the freeway, huh? Wa

Milo said, "Either way," just to hear the sound of his own voice.

Even away from the wheel, Schwi

Forty-eight years old but his hair was dead white and skimpy, thi

Then he'd paused and looked the young detective in the eye. Expecting Milo to say something about his own heritage.

How about Black Irish Indiana Fag?

Milo said, "Like the Steinbeck book."

"Yeah," said Schwi

"Sure."

"I didn't." Defiant tone. "Why the fuck should I? Everything in there I already learned from my daddy's stories." Schwi

Milo kept quiet.

Schwi

"Yeah, it can get excessive."

"You've got the size. Play sports in college?"

"High school football," said Milo.

"Not good enough for college?"

"Not nearly."

"You read much?"