“Hey,” Robby said, “I thought I was going to buy you some lunch.”
“Yeah, sure, that’d be great.”
“Whatta ya say, since we’re so close, for old times, we run up to Stops for a hot link?”
I didn’t have much choice. The entire purpose of the court appearance was to follow Dora Bascombe when she left the courthouse. Now she was nowhere to be seen. Robby had already cheesed that. I’d have to get the information I needed another way, which meant I had to tell Marie all about what I was doing. She wasn’t going to be happy.
We walked in silence out to his car, the same one he’d given me a ride in to Killer King the night the Violent Crime Team killed the kid out in front of Mr. Cho’s. We got in, he started up.
He put his arm over the seat to back out, his face close to mine, “What was it that you were going to talk to me about?”
I was tired and my mind felt full of sludge. “I need your help.” I never intended on telling him, but there was nothing else I could say that he would believe or at least not see right through.
“I’m here for you, man. You know that,” he said.
He steered the car over to Willowbrook Avenue and headed north in the late morning traffic.
“Well, you gonna tell me or sit there like a bump on a log?”
“Detective Mack paid me a visit.”
“Ah, shit. I thought I had that fixed. I’m sorry, man, really. You can bet your ass it won’t happen again. Not after I get through with that little son of a bitch.”
“I’ve been thinking about it. If he came at me after you talked to him, talking to him a second time is only going to make things worse. I’d appreciate it if you’d just lay off him. Maybe he’ll cool out all on his own.” I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but all I had to do was dodge Mack for another week, and then it just wouldn’t matter anymore.
Robby shook his head in disgust. “You know his kind. He’s not working the Violent Crimes Team because he shies away from trouble.”
“I know, but I think I can duck him long enough that he’ll forget about me.”
“It really pisses me off he went against my orders. I’ll go along with you, but only on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“If he catches up to you on some lonely dark street, you leave enough of him for us to identify.”
I smiled. Robby still had far too much confidence in me. I was nothing more than a broken-down, wrong-side-of-forty ex-con.
Before I could say anything in response, he said. “I need your help. I’m just going to lay it out. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours and I’m dead on my feet.”
“Help you how?”
“Like the old days. I need the best of the best to shut down this asshole who’s torching everyone, and you’re it. He hit again last night, fried another one. He’s doing it more frequently now.”
“How can I help? I’m on parole.”
“I can call in a favor, fix it with your PO. I’m calling in a lot of favors on this one. All I got.”
“I can’t help you, Lieutenant, it would only get us both in trouble and you know it.”
“Like I told you, I’m so tired I can’t see straight. I don’t have time to stroke your ego or pat you on the head. You owe me, and I’m calling in your marker. You know I never intended to do it, but this situation is getting real shitty. You can’t imagine the pressure they’re putting on me.”
I did owe him. Going back a long time. He was a patrol sergeant, and I was new to the streets pushing a radio car in South Central. It was something I didn’t want to ever think about, the images of that night. Just the thought of it—her name—I’d pushed her name out of my memory and wouldn’t let it back in.
Robby stopped at a red signal at Compton Avenue. “Say something, Bruno. You know that if you and I team up like the old days, we’d have this son of a bitch all grappled up inside a week. That’s all I want from you is one week. One week, pays you up in full.”
On second thought, I really didn’t owe him, not after he shot me, though independent of his argument, I did feel the tug of morality, to do what was right.
The signal turned green. We sat at the light. Cars behind us honked. He waited.
I looked at his haggard face, his bloodshot eyes. He looked a thousand years old. Maybe I did owe him for all the times he did what was right to shut down a violent offender in the ghetto. And beyond that, he had done what was right when he went alone in the back door of the house and saved the kid from Johnny Wayne Bascombe. I hadn’t known he’d been the one. Why wouldn’t it be him? He had always championed the underdog, walked the line, often venturing into the gray area of the law to throw assholes in jail. He’d taught me to do the same. For that and nothing else I knew I was going to help him. Before I could form the words, he said her name before I could stop him. “I’m calling in your marker, pal, for the little girl twenty years ago. You owe me for Jenny.”