JUDGE CONNORS DROVE up behind the Ford Ranger and tapped his horn interrupting our kiss. I pulled Nicky into one last hug and whispered, “Ah, shit.”
She peeked over my shoulder. She stiffened. He expression turned proffesional. Back to the problem at hand. “The judge? Really, Bruno, you called the judge and didn’t warn me?”
“It’s not illegal, is it?”
“Don’t try and dodge the issue. And no, it’s not illegal, but it’s not exactly protocol either having a judge see the informant. That’s not the problem here. He saw us.”
“If I could’ve pulled this off any other way, I would have. The judge insisted that he be present so who am I to say different? Conners isn’t like other judges.”
“He won’t be able to preside over the case; he’ll have to conflict out.”
“I don’t think he cares. I think he’s just bored with his job and wants a little excitement. He’s doing a good thing, helping to take a murderer off the street. And maybe even two.”
Nicky put on a fake smile and waved to the judge as he got out of his Mercedes. “You okay, big guy?” she said out of the corner of her smile.
“Fine. I just wish you’d have told me that story back at your apartment when you were still naked.”
“Not my fault. That’s a male thing. You guys always jump to the wrong conclusions when it comes to women. If you could just slow down long enough to ask, to talk about your skewed emotions, we could avoid messes like this. In fact, we’d probably have world peace.”
Talking about emotions was the third rail of relationships and was to be avoided at all costs. I knew that much at least. “You think we could continue this later on?”
“Damn straight we will.”
I waved. “Hi, Your Honor.”
Connors walked up smiling, wearing tweed pants, a long-sleeve shirt, and loafers. He looked like a lost literature professor from the sixties who had stopped for directions to Haight and Ashbury. He had a nervous tic and continually smoothed down his mustache with two fingers.
He ducked a little and pointed toward the truck cab. “Is that the woman to whom I owe the money?” He patted the bulge of his shirt pocket where the top quarter of some U.S. currency peeked out.
“Yes,” I said, glad that he chose to ignore what he’d seen when he pulled up.
“Then I’d like to talk to her.”
“Your Honor, that’s not a good idea. I appreciate you coming out and the money; it’s really going to help, but—”
“My money, my game. And if you’re worried about it, don’t. I’ll indemnify the both of you from any future policy violations. This is all on me.” He looked around for a place. “Why don’t we step back to my car where there’s more room?”
I looked at Nicky. She shrugged.
I waved to Twyla. She got out and followed us to the Mercedes. We got in and closed the doors that vacuum-pressed our ears and muffled the outside sounds down to almost nothing. I sat in the back seat with Twyla. Nicky was in the front with Connors.
“How’s this going to work, Bruno?” the judge asked.
“Show her the money, so she knows we have it and that we’re not playing any games. Then—”
“Hold on,” Twyla said. “I’m callin’ bullshit here.” She slapped her own hand. “I don’t just get to see it; I get the money now or I’m not talkin’, pure and simple.”
The judge stared her down with his gray eyes. “Young lady, like he said, this is not a game. This is serious business.”
“Don’t I know it. But I’m the one who has to look out for number one.” She hooked her thumb back toward herself. “No one else is going to do it.”
“How is your daughter doing?” the judge asked. “Her name’s Chloe, right?”
Judge Connors, before he moved up to trying homicides, worked in Family Court, the drudgery of all the courts, a place where nobody won, everyone lost. He also had a memory unsurpassed by anyone I’d ever met, except maybe my father. The freaky kind of memory.
Confidence bled out of Twyla’s expression. She nodded and was at a loss for words.
I said, “Give her the money. She’s staying with us until this thing is done. Right, Twyla?”
She was staring at the judge. “You’re the one who took Chloe from me?”
He nodded. “That’s right, but I also gave you visitations and promised to revisit your custody as soon as you got your life straightened out.”
Twyla looked down at her hands and picked at her fingernails, already bitten down to the quick. “Chloe’s with some very nice foster parents now. She’s better off.” She looked up, angry. “If we’re going to do this, let’s get it done. I got places to go, people to see.”
The judge pulled the sheaf of hundred-dollar bills from his shirt pocket. The paper bank wrapper read $10,000. He handed it to her.
She started to thumb through the bills, her lips silently moving as she counted.
The judge said, “Well, for crying out loud, what, you don’t trust us?”
“It’s my life we’re talking here. I don’t trust anyone when it comes down to me.”
We waited until she finished. She rolled the bills up and stuffed them into her front shorts pocket. The wad wouldn’t fit all the way and some peeked out.
“Okay,” I said. “Where to?”
“Little Genie, he isn’t far from his hood. He’s hidin’ up in the Jungle.”
“The Jungle?” the judge asked.
I said, “Crenshaw and what?”
“Slauson, just off 10th.”
The judge turned back around in the seat, started the Mercedes, put it in gear, and took off into the traffic on Wilmington. “Just tell me where to go. I’m not familiar with that area of Los Angeles.”
Twyla muttered, “Most crackers aren’t.”
I’d leave my truck and come back for it later.
Nicky said, “What are we doing here, Bruno? You are going to call in for backup, right? You can’t take this guy down by yourself. In fact, I think for someone like this, protocol dictates that you call and put the SWAT team on standby.”
Of course, she was right, but the SWAT team didn’t seem like the right fit at that moment. Not with their current commander. “We’re just going to peep it, get a feel for the location, and then I’ll call in the violent crimes team. That’s what they do. That’s what they’re good at. We’ll let Wicks handle it.”
“Peep it, that’s all, Bruno. I’m serious. Then you’re going to call it in.”
“That’s what I said. Take it easy. I can’t call in the violent crimes team until I have something to give them, an address, or at the very least a description of the place.”
The judge looked at me in the rearview. For the first time in the two years I worked with him, I couldn’t read what he was thinking.
There was no scenario in the world where I would get involved in a violent confrontation taking down an escaped fugitive wanted for murder. Not while driving around in a Mercedes with a judge, a deputy DA, and a sketchy informant. Even to me, it sounded like the start of an absurd joke.