Potshot

"Well you look like you can handle the job."

"You look like you could provide firm guidance yourself," I said. "To rebellious teenagers."

"We got school police with shotguns. They help me."

"Are sock hops waning in popularity?"

"Waning," Atkins said. "You wanted to talk to me about Steve Buckman?"

"Yes."

"You say he's been killed?"

"Yep."

"How did he die?" Atkins said.

"He was murdered."

"Jesus Christ," Atkins said. "What do you need to know?"

"Anything you can tell me," I said. "I'm just feeling my way around in the dark."

"Aren't we all," Atkins said.

"Was he a good football coach?"

Atkins paused a moment, thought about it, and decided.

"Not for us," he said. "This isn't the NFL. Any coach wants to win. But it's also about the kids. About learning to work hard, and achieve some selfcontrol, and respect one another and win with grace and lose with dignity and cooperate, and follow directions, and think on their feet, and, for crissake, to have some fun."

"Buckman get any of that?"

"Got the win part, though not the grace part. Got the follow directions part, as long as they were his directions."

"Did he leave voluntarily?"

"No. I fired him."

"Any specific reason other than being a jerk?"

"I don't even remember the official reason. There always has to be one. But that was the real reason."

"How'd he take that?"

"He said it was a racial thing. Said he was going to kick my ass."

"Did he?"

"He figured he was a pretty tough guy," Atkins said. "Been in the Marines. Was a ru

"And?"

"I been in the Marines and played football."

"Where'd you play?"

"SC."

"Offensive tackle?"

"Very."

"So what happened between you and Buckman?"

"I invited him to the office and offered him the chance to kick my ass."

"He take it?"

Atkins smiled. "No."

"He have any kind of part-time job?" I said.

"Most teachers do. I think he was a personal trainer."

"At a gym?"

"No. Takeout. He'd come to your home."

"Besides coaching," I said, "did he teach something?"

Atkins smiled.

"Typing," he said.

"Could he type?"

"I don't think so. But we had to do something with him. We don't pay enough to hire a coach just to coach."

"Know anything about the outfitting business he ran in the desert?"

"I think that was mostly the wife," Atkins said.

"How about the wife?"

"Lou," he said. "He met her in college, I think. She was pleasant, perky at social events. I don't really know her."

"She work as well?" I asked.

"I think she worked with the DWP."

"Department of Water and Power?"

"Yep."

"Know what she did?"

"Nope."

"Know any of her friends?"

"No."

"They get along?"

"Don't know."

"Anyone who would know?"

"Woman in our English department," Atkins said. "She was pretty friendly with Buckman."

"What's her name?"

"Sara Hunter," he said. "White girl out of Berkeley. Wants to do good. We're just a tryout for her eventual aim, which is to teach in my old neighborhood."

"South Central?"

"Yep. Work off her upper-middle-class guilt."

"She working it off this summer?"

"Not here," Atkins said. "She lives in Westwood, I think. I'll give you her home address."

He found her card in his Rolodex, and copied her address down on a piece of pink telephone message paper. I tucked it into my shirt pocket.

"You don't know much about them," I said. "Is that typical?"

"There are people on the faculty I spend time with," Atkins said. "And people I don't. I didn't like Buckman. I didn't spend time with him."

Atkins paused and sort of smiled.

"You really are feeling your way along," he said.

"You bet. I just try to keep you talking and see if something comes up."

"Like what?"

"Got no idea," I said. "I just hope I'll know it when I see it. You have any record of where they lived? While they were here?"

"Maybe," Atkins said.

He consulted the Rolodex again.

"You think the Buckmans weren't kosher?"

"I don't know enough to think anything," I said. "I'm trying to find out."

Atkins found the address in the Rolodex, copied it down on another piece of message paper and gave it to me. I put it in my shirt pocket with Sara Hunter. Atkins stood, and put out his hand.

"Good luck," he said.

"Luck is the residue of design," I said.

Atkins looked at me blankly for a minute.

"I'll bet it is," he said.

Chapter 25

STEVE BUCKMAN HAD owned a small pink stucco house in Santa Monica, on 16th Street, below Montana. It had a blue front door, a flat roof, and a lemon tree in the front yard.

I rang the front doorbell. Inside a dog barked. I waited. Then a young woman with her dark hair up opened the door a crack. Behind her leg, I could see a dog trying to get a better look at me. I could hear children in the background and a television going.

"I'm looking for Mr. and Mrs. Buckman."

"Excuse the door," she said. "But I don't want the dog to get out."

"Of course," I said. "Are you Mrs. Buckman?"

"Oh God no. I'm Sharon Costin. The Buckmans don't live here anymore."

"Did you know them when they did?" I said.

"Just when we bought the house from them."

"How about some of the other neighbors?" I said. "Would they know the Buckmans, you think?"

"People next door," the woman said. "Why you want to know?"

"I'm from the State Treasurer's Office," I said. "Division of Abandoned Property. We have some money for them."

In the background I could hear some children fighting. One of them started to cry. The dog wasn't a quitter. He kept trying to squeeze by her leg.

"Talk to the people in the next house," she said. "Name's Lewin."

She shut the door.

I said "thank you" politely to the door, and went next door. A woman wearing te

"I saw you next door," she said. "You selling something?"

I smiled my open, friendly smile. And told my lie about abandoned property.

"Oh, sure, Steve and Lou Buckman. Mary Lou."

"You know them?"

"Knew them. We lived next door for, what? I was pregnant with my first when we moved here, so nine years."

"What can you tell me about them?"

"They moved out east someplace," she said. "Town with a fu

"Potshot," I said.

"Yes. That's it. They had some sort of business out there."