L.A. Requiem

"Yes, sir. Please, call me Elvis."

He laughed. "Don't know as I could do that with a straight face."

What do you say to something like that?

"I'd invite you in, but it's hotter in there than out here. You want a beer? All I got is this Mexican shit. Fresh out of American."

"No, sir. But thanks."

A slim Chicana who couldn't have been more than twenty appeared in the trailer's door and frowned out at him. Somebody had sprayed a thin cotton print dress over her body, and she was barefoot. Hot in there, all right.

She said, "No me hagas esperar. No me gusta estar sola."

McCo

She stuck out her tongue and pouted back into the trailer. The guys on the truck nudged each other.

McCo

He led me to a redwood table set in the shade between the eucalyptus trees, and had some of the Modelo. A USMC globe and anchor was so faded on his right forearm that it looked like an ink smudge. "Got two thousand square yards of St. Augustine goin' out this evening to a Chinaman in San Marino. If you're looking for St. Augustine I might not be able to help you, but I got twelve other kinds of sod. What are you thinking about?"

I gave him one of my cards. "I'm afraid I wasn't being straight with you, Mr. McCo

He read over the card, then put it on the table. He reached around behind him like he was going for a handkerchief, but came out with a little black.380 automatic. He didn't aim it at me, he just held it.

The men on the truck stopped eating.

"Lying's a poor way to start, son. You carrying?"

I tried not to look at the gun. "Yes, sir. Under my left arm."

"Take it out with your left hand. Two fingers only. I see more than two fingers on metal, I'll pop you."

I did what he said. Two fingers.

"You keep holding it like that, away from your body like it smells bad. Walk on back over there and drop it in your car, then come on back."

The hired hands were poised on the bed like swimmers on their starting platforms, ready to dive if the shooting started.

Imagine: Coming north all the way from Zacatecas to get shot in a sod field.

I dropped the gun into the front seat, then walked back to the table.

"I didn't come here to make trouble for you, Mr. McCo

McCo

"You always carry that little gun out here?"

"I spent thirty years on the job, twenty-five in Internal Affairs. I prosecuted cops who were every bit as rotten as any thug on the street, and I made enemies doing it. More than one of 'm has tried looking me up."

I guess I'd carry the gun, too.

"I'm trying to learn about a deceased officer named Abel Wozniak. He was investigated when you were on the job as a supervisor, but I don't know why, or what came of it. You remember him?"

He gestured with the.380. "Why don't you tell me what your interest is in this first."

Retired Detective-Three Mike McCo

McCo

"Shits-his-pants Krantz! Hell, I was there the day that squiggly weasel let go!" He enjoyed the memory so much that the.380 drifted away from me. The guys in the truck relaxed then, and pretty soon they were balling up paper bags and climbing into the truck's cab. The show was over and it was time to get back to work.

McCo

"That's right."

"Pike's the one made Krantz shit his pants."

"Yes, sir. I know."

McCo

I thought about that, and how humiliated Krantz must've felt. It had hurt his career, and he still carried the name.

"You remember why Krantz was investigating Wozniak?"

"Oh, sure. Wozniak was involved with a burglary ring."

He said it like it was nothing, but when I heard it I stiffened as if he'd reached out and flipped my off switch.

McCo

"You're saying that Wozniak was dirty."

"That's right."

"You're telling me that Joe Pike's partner was part of a burglary ring."

Like maybe I'd heard him wrong and wanted to be sure.

"Well, we weren't at a point in the investigation where we could make the case and charge him, but he was good for it. After he died we could've kept going, but I decided to let it drop. Here was this man's family, a wife and the children, why put them through that? Krantz was livid about it, though. He wanted to keep going and nail Pike."

"Because Pike had embarrassed him?"

McCo

"Not that at all. Harvey believed that Pike was involved."

Sometimes you hear things that you never want to hear, things so alien to your experience, so outlandish that it seems you've rolled out of bed into a Stephen King novel.

"I don't believe that."

McCo

McCo

McCo

McCo

"Mr. McCo

" Harvey didn't believe Pike's story about what happened in that motel room. He thought they'd had a falling-out with each other because of the investigation, and that maybe Pike was worried that Wozniak was going to give him up to cut a deal. Krantz had been trying to do that, you know. Play them against each other. He was sure that Pike murdered Wozniak to keep him quiet."