CHAPTER 25

No sense even dreaming of a run across the border. Blue gringos can’t melt into Mexico. Meanwhile, to keep from going crazy, Gillespie worked on his abs in the garage. Reviewing what she’d told him, her brother got electrocuted taking a shower in Iraq, which somehow was Dick Cheney’s fault. And this was supposed to prove that when Sussman claimed she’d embezzled a bunch of money from him, he was making it all up. “No one knows him like I do,” she’d said. “He’s a total pig. You have no idea. He’s an uncaring evil shit, a phony and he knows it. Once people know the truth, who’ll believe him?”

Didn’t sound like much of a plan. She’d also stopped paying Sussman’s bills, which meant he’d be onto her soon if he wasn’t already. If she hadn’t been so greedy she could have stayed under the radar. But now she’d be caught, just like Gillespie. Taking her money would accomplish not much more than adding felonies to his rap sheet.

Before her confession he’d assumed she inherited her money, a snob like her. This was a broad who could keep her nose stuck in the air while sucking a guy’s dick. Now he understood he’d been underestimating her nerve and overestimating her sanity. It takes guts to steal what you want. The world just doesn’t want to give it up. It wants to keep you down in your hole—in Gillespie’s case a faded stucco box with no space to put anything. Like living in a junkshop. The garage was the only room he could stand to be in. How many assholes had he busted with bigger houses, prettier wives, nicer cars? How’d everything get so unfair? It all traced back to those flakes on the City Council. If they hadn’t stopped paying overtime he probably wouldn’t have sicced Shrek onto that score. And it was just dope money. It’s not like he’d raped kids or stuck up a gas station. Is the world any better off if biker gangs keep their drug profits?

The older kid was watching him again, sneaking around without saying anything. What’s wrong with that kid? Plenty, feared Gillespie, who’d lost count of his stomach crunches again. Still hadn’t worked up much of a sweat. Finally the kid spoke in a low voice, half whispering like his mom: “You’re supposed to take us to soccer practice.”

Damn, Tina had told him twice before she left for work. “Okay,” he said. But it wasn’t. Nothing was okay. And then the phone in the house rang, four rings before his daughter picked up. Can’t they just answer it?

“Da-ad, I don’t know who it is!”

“Ask ’em for Christ’s sake!”

“You better come!”

Gillespie recognized the voice right away as a cop voice before the cop identified herself as an LAPD detective. He decided not to thank her for getting back to him. Mustn’t sound overeager. Just routine business. Yeah, she said, they had the guy in custody he’d asked about. For a carjacking in Studio City. She had a kind of naturally sweet voice, a gentle delivery, but the words weren’t gentle at all. That’s how she made it into a cop voice.

“Well, he’s helping us clear up some cases here, and we hate to see him jammed up like this,” Gillespie told her. That shouldn’t sound so unusual.

“We’re talking about a piece of shit who yanked a teacher out of her car and knocked her on her ass. What’s he giving you? Shoplifters? Unless he can bring you another John Dillinger, taking this shitbird down is more important than whatever information you’re getting from him, okay? In fact, we notice he fits the description of a suspect from your neck of the woods. The Roland Sussman thing? Home invasion? Probably the biggest thing in Hermosa Beach since forever. You must want to clear that one, right? I’ll shoot you a mug shot.”

“Sure, that’s great, but I kind of doubt it’s him ’cause—”

“Why’s that?”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“Well detective, if you’re not—”

“It’s sergeant detective.”

“How you make sergeant in Hermosa Beach? Rescuing cats?”

“Fuck you.”

“Is this a bad connection or are you talking with a rag in your mouth? I can barely understand you.”

“You understand me all right.”

“Wait a minute, what’s your name? Gillespie? I heard of you. Aren’t—”

Gillespie didn’t hang on for the rest. He already knew he was the dumb bastard who’d turned himself blue. Oh Jesus, everything that can go wrong, it goes wrong. How much longer before they break down Shrek? They might be pulling it out of him right this moment. He’d get years off his sentence for delivering a cop. And for a cop no one wanted around anyway? He could walk. The worst part was sitting around and waiting it out, having to act natural, to keep living the same bullshit life and hoping to dodge the bullet somehow.

GOT TO soccer practice ten minutes late, so the kid had to run all the way around the field even though, as he told the coach, it wasn’t his fault. Fucking kid. The girl just sat on the sidelines and smiled. What’s so fucking funny?

Next he had to meet with Rosen again. A moron who couldn’t solve a crime on his own if the perp carved a confession on his ass and mooned him with it. And these days he was a one-note commander—all Sussman all the time. “So how’s it look on this suspect they’ve got up in the Valley? We ready to ship him down here?”

Normally Rosen didn’t care what Gillespie was up to. He assumed, like all the others, that Gillespie was a loon the department had to hang on to because the liberal establishment protected people with issues of race, color, gender, and all the rest. The department couldn’t wait for him to finish his twenty and beat it so he’d stop embarrassing everybody. They only made him a detective so he wouldn’t wear the uniform around town.

“I really don’t think it’s him,” Gillespie said, “but even if it is, which I doubt, they still want to keep him for carjacking.”

“Boss won’t like that.” The boss, the chief, was too important to talk to anybody directly. Like a pope, only he made fewer appearances. But he was the reason Rosen, who was assistant chief and commander of detectives, was bugging him. Rosen had squinty little eyes like a turtle. Photos of his wife and turtle kids behind him. Wife not bad. Like just about every other male officer in the department except Gillespie he’d pumped his body into a thick tube of liverwurst. Gillespie preferred the sinewy look.

“The witnesses see this guy yet?”

“I’m setting it up, but—”

“I know. You said it’s probably not him. But I’m not asking you that.”

“I know, but—”

“What’d I ask you?”

“Whether the witnesses saw him yet.”

“No I didn’t. I asked you when they’ll get a look at him. And don’t say next week, Sergeant.”

“It’s not what you asked me.”

“Goddammit, when do they get a look at him?”

“If I have to spend all damn day in your office? Not soon.”

“Out.” Rosen didn’t raise his voice, which meant he was extra angry and would probably look for payback. Gillespie should apologize. But he didn’t.