Once called Santa Barbara Avenue, the street where Cinque Lewis’s body was found had been renamed in 1968 in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Funny how streets renamed to commemorate a man of peace were usually the rowdiest in the city. Someone had spray-painted the name Rodney over Martin’s on the street sign at the corner where the taco stand stood. It made me wonder how many cities in America had a street named after a black man that didn’t commemorate his violent death or ass-whipping.
I parked my car in the glass-strewn spot where Dr. Mitchell’s Infiniti had been Friday night. I noticed how far away he had parked his car from where he was delivering the medicine—at least a half a block. No way would I have parked a fifty-thousand-dollar car so far away from where I needed to go, whether I was going to get some burritos later or not.
A couple of young Latinos—maybe late teens to early twenties, wearing highly polished Stacey Adams wing tips, flannel shirts, and Gap chinos doing some serious hang time around their behinds—were standing on the concrete steps of 1559, the brick apartment building closest to the stand. The black bandannas sticking out of their pockets and “MLK” tattoos on the side of their necks and hands told me they rolled with the Muy Loco Killers, the dominant gang in the area.
“Who got smoked?” the big one asked when I told him I was investigating a homicide.
“A man by the name of Robert Lewis.” I produced the Polaroid from the crime scene and an earlier photo of Lewis from my murder book. “His street name was Cinque. Either of you seen him hanging around anywhere?”
The other kid, on closer inspection, appeared to be black and Latino, with a gap in his mouth where one of his front teeth had been. “I ain’t never seen him.” Snagglepuss handed the photo to his obese partner.
Gordo agreed: “I ’ont think he was from none of the sets ’round here.”
Residents of the nearby buildings weren’t any more forthcoming. Hurrying to work or hustling their children to the school bus, most of them were immigrants and probably illegal from the averted looks I got when I told them I was with la policía. All they wanted was to put me and the violence of the past few days as far behind them as possible. I ended up back on the steps with Gordo and Snagglepuss. I was just getting their names—Hiram Rubio and LaJohn Myers—when a disheveled black male opened the foyer door. He was muttering to himself and twisting the frayed edge of a once-green letterman’s sweater that engulfed his thin frame like a big blanket. Embroidered on the big H at the pocket was the year 1966. No way did this man graduate then; he was seventy if he was a day.
“Why ’ont you ax ol’ Riley in number fourteen what he seen?” LaJohn suggested. “His windows face the stand.”
Riley’s eyes, brown irises rimmed in milky blue, darted about, then rested on a spot somewhere above my head. He took my card and looked past it to the street beyond. “I see everything that happens in this neighborhood, Detective. Name’s Jerry Riley, but they call me the Sentinel.”
“Like the black newspaper?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure why Hiram and LaJohn started tittering until Riley’s hostile eyes turned and lasered through the boys, then zeroed in on me. “No! Like my namesake, the prophet Jeremiah, God set me to stand guard over the nations and kingdoms, to root out, and pull down, and destroy, and to throw down the evils of the world.”
There wasn’t a hint of humor on the Sentinel’s face or in his fire-and-brimstone voice. My horoscope in the paper that morning predicted a clandestine meeting would add spice, but I wasn’t expecting this.
“Okay, Mr. Sentinel, were you on duty Friday?” I left my notebook in my purse; I sensed the chances of getting anything useful from this old man were slim to none.
“That was the third day the streets ran with the blood of our warriors,” he intoned. “I had taken up my position on the parapet—” an ashy finger pointed up to an iron railing surrounding the building’s rooftop, “—when I saw the armored land carrier arrive.” He gestured down the street. Hiram and LaJohn hooted and pounded each other’s shoulders.
“You mean the police bus?”
“No, it was a black armored land carrier with little windows in the sides. The enemy forces inside had on shiny helmets and carried ray guns. They approached a young warrior king and tried to subdue him, but he fought back valiantly.”
I had a hunch he was describing the Mitchell situation. I asked if the warrior king was driving a car.
“X-wing fighter, Detective. It was a white metallic X-wing fighter.”
Maybe the old man was having a Star Wars flashback. Or just maybe he was describing Lance Mitchell’s Q45. As I got out my notepad, I could hear Grandmama Cile’s chastising voice in my head: Never judge a book by its cover.
“The warrior king had emerged from his fighter,” the Sentinel continued, “and had spoken to one of his subjects in a ringing declaration of peace and prosperity. When he returned, the invaders tried to cut him down and make slaves again of our race!”
“Where did this speech take place?” The old man pointed to the left, in the direction of the stand. My heart fluttered. “How was this warrior king dressed?”
The Sentinel frowned, his hands trying to sculpt what was in his mind’s eye. “His raiment was the green of the whispering pines, and he wore an ebony coat made of the skins of animals proud to be sacrificed for such noble shoulders.”
Mitchell had been wearing dark green scrubs and a black leather jacket. If my semicoherent witness was to be believed, then Lance Mitchell had been with another man, most likely Cinque Lewis, behind that taco stand. I handed the Sentinel the Polaroid of Lewis. “Was the warrior king with a man who looked like this?”
He brushed off my question and the photo. “In the sorry history of our tribe, the enemy has always tried to destroy the New Zulu Nation of God.” He clutched LaJohn’s arm. “They tried in Watts, and now they’re at it again. But you cannot surrender. You are God’s chosen people!”
LaJohn tried to throw the old man off by circling his arm. “Bet’ keep yo mu’fuckin hands offa me, ol’ man!”
The Sentinel reached out for me. “The enemy aliens can take them prisoners, torture them, even kill them with their lasers, but the New Zulu Nation of God will not surrender!”
I backed him up by dangling the Polaroid in front of his face again. “Mr. Riley, did you see this man at Mel’s Tacos with Dr. Mitchell?”
Suddenly Riley’s head snapped back like a boxer on the wrong end of a Muhammad Ali combination. “Doctor? I’m not going to any doctors!” He hurried away from me, up the steps and into the apartment building’s foyer, where he started pacing in a tight circle, talking to himself. The loose thread from his sweater got caught in the door, and I could it see pull at the old man’s sleeve before he broke free and stumbled down the hallway toward the stairs.
Neither young man was laughing now. “You shouldn’a said nuthin’ ’bout no doctors, Five-oh,” Hiram chided. “The Sentinel’s a regular in the loco ward out at the VA. He hates him some doctors!”
“Where’d he go?”
“Probably up to the roof or out the back door,” LaJohn replied. “It’ll take him a while to chill out. Maybe you should come back tomorrow.”
I spent a good hour searching the area for the weapon and even retraced our path down King to the foul-smelling doorway where I huddled with Mitchell, waiting for Cortez to bring help.
Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see a black-and-white pull up alongside me. The window slid down, two men whistled, then one of them said, “Hey, mama, you got some fries to go with that shake?”
I could feel my neck getting hot. Was this what female citizens had to put up with on the streets? I whipped around to give them a good piece of my mind and found myself scowling into the faces of Chip LeDoux and Darren Wright, the Southwest Division uniforms who were my escorts to the hospital Friday.
I could tell Darren had made the comment from the way he was leaning across the mobile digital terminal, his wide brown face creased by a big, mischievous grin. LeDoux was riding shotgun, the bulky Kelvar vest squeezing his midsection, making him look like the Officer Teddy Bear toys they sell at the Police Academy gift shop. I noticed above the bandage on LeDoux’s arm the edge of a tattoo and a quintet of five-year hash marks on his shirt sleeve. Given the amount of gray in his black mustache and close-cropped hair and the leathery crinkles around his blue eyes, I was betting he was more than halfway to number six. Almost thirty years on the job, God bless him.
“Wha’s up, Detective Justice?” LeDoux smiled.
“Not much, fellas. Just making another sweep of the area for the weapon in that Lewis homicide.”
Wright, a little younger and trimmer than his partner, his bald head gleaming like Charles Dutton’s, leaned across the terminal again. “You ain’t got no business out here alone, Detective.” The drawl in his stern voice made me think of my Texas-bred neighbor Mrs. Franklin. “These gangs out here have no fear of cops at all since the riots. Besides, if that gun was out here, the patrol unit for this area would have picked it up by now.”
“I thought this was your area.”
“Naw, we’ve got a sector up in Baldwin Hills,” LeDoux explained.
“Not a bad way to wait out your retirement,” I joked. Baldwin Hills was just north of my parent’s house, in another one of L.A.’s Negro golden ghettos. A few car burglaries, some breaking and enterings—B&Es—nothing too rough. But why were they way over here?
Wright must have read my mind. “We’re Code 7, on our way to grab some breakfast, when we spotted you. Would you like to join us?”
I hated to say no to that big smile, but I really had no interest being in a quasi-social setting with a cop, even one as cute as Wright. But it made me wonder if Darren Wright was single, and whether my girlfriend Katrina might be interested.
“How’s it comin’ with the investigation?” LeDoux asked.
“Slowly, but I was just talking to a potential witness who may have seen the whole thing go down.”
“That so?” Wright asked.
“Yeah. Old guy in the building next door by the name of Riley. I thought I was getting somewhere until he upped and ran off when I said the word doctor. Couple of MLKs in the building say he’s a got a season’s pass to the psych unit out at the VA.”
LeDoux and Wright looked at each other solemnly for a moment, then busted out laughing. “Sounds like you’re getting kind of desperate, Detective, goin’ after the schizos,” LeDoux teased, shaking his head.
“Well, if you or the unit that has this sector see him today, would you call Steve Firestone at RHD?”
“We’ll put the word out,” LeDoux promised, making a note on his clipboard in a cramped, southpaw scrawl. “He’ll turn up somewhere.”
“Heard in roll call that guy Friday was one of those fugitive radicals from the seventies,” Wright said.
“Well, he ain’t gonna be no fugitive no more,” LeDoux joked. “Somebody ran that old boy to ground like a rabbit in huntin’ season.” He half-laughed and drew a bead with his finger, turned, and squeezed off an imaginary shot at his partner’s head.
“That shit ain’t funny, man.” Wright had quickly lost his smile. Maybe he heard the undercurrent in LeDoux’s joke, too.
LeDoux punched him playfully in the shoulder and laughed. “Just kiddin’, man. My partner here is a little cranky, Detective. Let us go so I can get some caffeine into him.”
I let my hand rest on the car door and peered inside. “Hey, if I didn’t say it before, thanks for having my back last Friday. I haven’t had a chance to send out my thank-you notes.”
“Think nothing of it,” Wright smiled. “We gotta take care of our own.”
“And we’ll find that old man for you,” LeDoux assured me, “even if he is nuttier than a fruitcake.”
As they drove away laughing, I realized I felt kind of silly making such a big deal about Riley, but my gut told me there was more to his words than met the eye. Never judge a book by its cover. And I wasn’t going to let two cynical patrolmen turn me around, good-natured though they may be.
I checked my watch. Almost nine. Not a bad time to take a ride to the beach.
Driving to the Marina has always been a weird experience for me. I could never go there without thinking of a sliver of sand a few miles south called Dockweiler State Beach. Beginning at the end of Imperial Highway, the southern end of Dockweiler was where my parents used to go as teenagers and was one of the few beaches open to “colored” in their day. They took us there one Sunday for a picnic, before it was swallowed up by LAX in an eminent-domain grab. Matt and Joymarie’s beach was deserted now, part of a condemned stretch of no-man’s land under the airport’s flight patterns, permanently blanketed by engine noise and lethal mists of jet fuel.
I remember riding back from Dockweiler Beach that day to our house on the Eastside, through swampland and fields of celery, wild mustard, and fennel. That swamp was now called Marina del Rey, a Fantasy Island for upscale runaways, running from the bad weather back east, bad air in the valleys, or a bad marriage right in their own backyards. And, in keeping with changing times, black folks populated the Marina now like they did Dockweiler in my parents’ day—strolling along the channels and shopping centers as if it were the only beachfront property open to them. There was even a soul food restaurant in a shopping center across from where Aubrey worked, although, truth be told, it was frequented as often by whites as blacks.
CaER was located on the second floor of a wood-sided office building. I waited in the lobby until a door opened and Aubrey walked briskly to the receptionist’s desk. He was dressed in street clothes—a white linen shirt, a long drape of taupe gabardine slacks, tasseled brown loafers, and no socks. Only the stack of files in his arms and the redness in his eyes hinted that Aubrey Scott was more than just another well-heeled buppie on his way to some celebrity gym or lunch at the Brentwood Country Club.
He ushered me into his office and settled me into a chair. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”
Aubrey’s office was dominated by a high-tech glass and polished-steel desk on which sat the CaER name and logo in Lucite, a Nikon camera, slide projector, and a big pile of folders and reports. There were books on emergency medicine, medical group management, and mergers and acquisitions on wall-mounted shelves to the right of the door. The wall on the left was dominated by a huge tropical seascape that appeared to undulate toward me. The other two walls were floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the shopping center that housed that soul food restaurant to the west and a condo development to the north. I didn’t see any photos of his wife, kids, or a girlfriend on Aubrey’s desk or on the shelves. None of a boyfriend either—these days a woman would be a fool not to consider all the possibilities.
Aubrey returned and sat behind his desk, but reached out to me with a smile. “So are you back at work?”
“Officially, no—not until I get a clean bill of health from the doctor. Which I hope to do today.”
“So is this an official or unofficial visit?”
I tried to suppress the color I could feel rising to my cheeks. “A little bit of both, I guess.” I paused a moment and cleared my throat before explaining I was helping out on the Cinque Lewis murder and just wanted to ask him a few questions. “We know that Dr. Mitchell was off duty when we encountered him on King Boulevard . . .”
“That’s right. Lance had pulled four consecutive twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, and the strain was getting next to him. I finally told him he needed to go home and get some rest.”
I could relate to that. “So what time did Mitchell leave?”
“About three thirty, a couple of hours before the others. But after almost forty-eight hours, I wasn’t going to hold that against him. Lance and his staff had put forth a Herculean effort. I knew my instincts about him had been right.”
“What do you mean?”
“We brought Lance into the group as a partner just about two years ago. He’d been in L.A. for a number of years, though, knocking around in a bunch of ERs with a group called Valley Emergency Medical Care Partners.”
I asked Aubrey why Mitchell joined CaER. “A couple of reasons. For one, we’re the fastest growing emergency medical group in the state.” Aubrey sat up a little straighter in his chair, transformed by my question into CaER’s publicity director. “We got that way by specializing in inner-city areas, offering a higher level of sophisticated care than ER docs who work those carriage-trade markets.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You know—soccer injuries, skateboard accidents, the occasional heart attack—suburban stuff. Definitely not what you see in an inner-city hospital. We provide skilled professionals like Lance with the means to practice the highest level of emergency medicine without all the administrative or political hassles, and for a decent wage.”
Very decent, if Mitchell’s car was any indication. “You said there were two reasons he came to CaER.”
The features of Aubrey’s face shifted into something harder, less open. “I don’t feel comfortable discussing Lance’s personal business.”
“If we’re going to get to the bottom of what happened out there, we need to find out everything we can about Dr. Mitchell,” I reminded him.
He was still uneasy. “Well, I doubt that this would be helpful.”
“Does it have anything to do with the assault on his wife?”
Aubrey seemed relieved I had brought it up. “Lance’s wife is a class A bitch. That whole assault nonsense was her just trying to get even. She had jumped in front of his car to stop him from moving some things out of their house in Beverly Hills, then lied and swore he tried to run her over.” Lance had been trying to leave his wife for a long time, Aubrey said, before he made his final escape on Valentine’s Day to a house the couple still owned in Baldwin Hills.
“Brotherman’s timing was not the best,” I noted. “So they’re not final yet?”
Aubrey shook his head sadly. “They’ll be fighting over practice values and real-estate appraisals for years.”
“Sounds like the missus is a serious gold digger.”
“You’d be surprised. You ever hear of Holly Hightower Mitchell?”
“You mean Dr. Holly, the relationship expert?” Now that was a surprise. My grandmother listened to her radio show all the time. “Isn’t Dr. Holly getting a divorce kind of like the cobbler’s children having no shoes?”
“That’s how she took it. More than the insult to her ego is the effect the split could have on her syndication deal. One hundred and ten stations tuned into a divorced ‘Love Doctor’?” Aubrey threw up his hands, palms to the ceiling. “But I can’t see what that would have to do with the LAPD’s investigation.”
“Now that you’ve explained it, probably nothing,” I conceded. “I’m just trying to get a feel for Lance Mitchell, figure out why he would take such a chance out there on King Boulevard. We’ve talked to the patient and the hospital staff, so his alibi checks out. I’m just wondering if there was some other reason he’d go out of his way to deliver some medicine to a patient.”
Aubrey perked up at that. “What kind of medicine was it?”
“Something called Cardura, I think.”
“That’s a hypertension medication,” Aubrey explained and sat back in his chair. “Knowing how devoted Lance can be to his patients, that doesn’t surprise me.”
I asked Aubrey why he had loaned Lance money that day.
“He hadn’t been able to get to a bank, and I just gave him some cash rather than see him risk going to one of the ATM machines around the hospital. Lance does dumb shit like that sometimes. Thinks he’s invincible.”
“Borrowing a couple of hundred dollars just seems odd if all you’re going to do is drop off some medication, grab a burrito, and go home,” I noted. “Is there any other reason Dr. Mitchell would have been over on King near Vermont?”
It turned out patients from that neighborhood were sent to California Medical Center a lot. “Maybe he saw a kid he knew out there about to torch a building or something and tried to stop him,” Aubrey said.
“Or maybe he saw a kid having a beef with the victim.”
Aubrey frowned. “That’s possible, I guess, but if he did, wouldn’t he be needlessly putting himself under suspicion by not telling the truth?”
“Sound like something Dr. Mitchell would do to help a kid in trouble?”
He shrugged. I intentionally let the question hang in the air, the silence stretching out a bit, until Aubrey stepped in to fill it. “Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Anything else you want to tell me?”
“Not about Dr. Mitchell.”
For a moment I thought the sun must have broken through the coastal haze, because I swear I could feel the temperature change in Aubrey’s office. We sat for a minute regarding each other, Aubrey’s smile seeping into my pores and warming me like his hand on my shoulder did Friday night.
“So how’s Janet?” I tried to distract him with an unexpected question like I had with Steve the night before.
This man didn’t even blink. “I wouldn’t know. We’ve been divorced for years.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” It was the first out-and-out lie I told Aubrey Scott.
“I’m not. It was the best decision I ever made.” The smile again, briefly, then a cloud passed over his face. “Perris told me about your husband and daughter.”
I nodded, wondering just how much my brother had blabbed in the ER Friday night.
“That must have been rough. Was it an accident?”
Thank God Perris didn’t tell him everything. “In a way,” I said with an odd sense of relief.
Aubrey nodded, thankfully letting it go. “You ever remarry?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“Nope. Despite rumors to the contrary, being married to a doctor isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Especially an emergency doc. Most women just don’t understand that removing a splinter from a construction worker one minute and trying to stuff some kid’s intestines back in his body cavity the next might make me a little jumpy by the time I get home. And not that interested in going to some Westside hair-tossing restaurant or charity ball.”
“Been there, done that,” I laughed. “Being a cop is hell on your private life, too, especially if you work Homicide. Most men don’t understand the long hours, getting paged in the middle of the night, just when they might have had something else in mind.”
“Been there, done that,” he agreed.
“They expect you to drop your career at the door and be totally tuned into them—dinner on the table and decked out in a black negligee.”
“Hmmm . . . that could be interesting,” he said.
You sure left yourself open on that one, I chastised myself. I decided to shine it on, and the warmth his comment stimulated in me somewhere below my waist.
I was saved by a knock at the door. Before Aubrey could answer, Lance Mitchell walked in, wearing an oversized purple and black nylon sweatsuit, an Arsenio Hall Show baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, and preceded by Aubrey’s very flustered assistant. “Hey, man, have you still got my camera . . . ,” he said from behind her.
“I told Dr. Mitchell you were in a meeting,” the assistant began, “but he . . .”
Mitchell’s confident bop was stalled when he saw me sitting in Aubrey’s office. “Charlotte just stopped by to say ‘hi,’ ” Aubrey explained. “She’s on her way to a doctor’s appointment.”
“Looks like she already has one,” Lance mumbled and turned to Aubrey. “Where have you been, man? I’ve been calling your house since Friday!”
“You could have left a message with the service. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I’m off until tomorrow. I didn’t think I was obligated to check in with you, too,” he said testily, with an uneasy glance in my direction.
“Of course you’re not.” The tone in Mitchell’s voice brought out an edge in Aubrey’s, too. “But after everything that went down, I was just concerned . . .”
“I didn’t mean to jump down your throat, man,” Mitchell apologized. “I decided to stay with a friend for a few days. After someone stole the keys out of my car Friday night, I didn’t feel comfortable going back to my house until I could get the locks changed.”
“Well, you should have said something,” Aubrey replied. “Do you need to talk to me privately? We can step outside . . .”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just wanted to get my partner’s distribution check.”
Aubrey nodded to his assistant, who left the room and returned with a long blue envelope.
“Did you take out the two hundred I borrowed?” Lance asked as he slit open the envelope.
Aubrey waved him away. “Don’t worry about it.”
Mitchell’s eyes darted from me across the desk to Aubrey and back again. “Dr. Scott and I were just catching up on old times. We went to high school together,” I explained, hoping the half lie would put him at ease. “How are you?”
“Fine, especially after I got past your partner. That Detective Cortez is something else.”
“She does her job,” I said cautiously.
“But Sandra Douglass, does hers better.” He laughed bitterly. “I guess all lawyers aren’t like that shark my wife hired.”
I was beginning to get a feel for the war brewing between the Drs. Mitchell. In the awkward silence that followed, Mitchell asked Aubrey if I told him why my partner was so interested in whether he knew the man at the taco stand. In an attempt to cut him off at the pass, I quickly gave Aubrey the abridged Cinque Lewis story.
“Doesn’t sound like a revolutionary to me,” he said.
“He wasn’t,” I replied. “Far as I’m concerned, he was a drug dealer and a murderer.”
Maybe I said it a little too forcefully because I saw a funny look pass between Aubrey and Mitchell. “But from what Ms. Douglass tells me,” Mitchell added quickly, “Lewis was also the primary suspect in the murder of your husband and child.”
With Sandra Douglass’s mother and mine serving together in the same social clubs—most notably the Bench and Bar Mother’s Guild, L.A.’s black matriarchs’ bragging-rights club—there was no way she wouldn’t have heard the full back story on Cinque Lewis. But the way the intimate details of people’s private lives got dissected by the L.A. niggerati still made my skin crawl.
A gasoline truck rumbled past in the street below us. Inside, it was so quiet I could hear those rats pissing all over that cotton, just like my father always said.
“I . . . I . . . didn’t know,” Aubrey stammered. “Perris never mentioned . . .”
“That’s why I’m not working the Lewis case—conflict of interest. That and my injury.” I gestured toward my restrained arm and turned so I could see Mitchell’s face. “I think my superiors are concerned I’d want to pin a medal on whoever did Lewis instead of investigating the case.”
Mitchell’s face was stone-cold. “Or look the other way.”
This brother needed a major attitude adjustment. But before I could think of a good comeback, he had turned to Aubrey. “You haven’t forgotten about the TAGOUT reception tonight at Spiral West, have you?” He hefted the Nikon on Aubrey’s desk. “And don’t forget to bring my camera.” He checked the display on the top of the camera. “I’ve got about a dozen exposures left. Take some shots for the group’s newsletter.”
“Isn’t TAGOUT that tagging crew?” I asked. “You’re involved with them?”
“They prefer to be called ‘writers’ or ‘aerosol artists,’ ” Mitchell replied, setting the camera down with a little laugh. “We’re putting on an art exhibit of some of our at-risk youth’s work and giving a scholarship to one of the kids in the program this evening.”
“You mean you’re giving a scholarship.”
Aubrey turned to me. “Lance donated most of the money himself for one of the kids to attend CalArts, including room and board.”
I made some approving noises—they were talking about a good chunk of change.Aubrey looked across the desk at me, eyebrow raised. “Would you like to go? I could pick you up.”
“A cop is probably the last person those kids will want to see tonight.” The same could be said of Mitchell, from the look of him.
“I think young people need to understand that not every police officer they meet is out to get them,” Aubrey countered, ignoring the face Mitchell was making. “Sure wasn’t the case for Lance.”
The intensity of Aubrey’s smile made me fumble through my purse for no reason. “I don’t know. I’m not into high-profile events like that.”
“Don’t push her, man,” Lance cut in. “If she’s not interested . . .”
“It’s not that . . .”
“If you’re not working the case,” Aubrey prodded, “why can’t you go?”
He had a point, at least on the surface. Plus I could use the opportunity to learn a little more about the increasingly jumpy Lance Mitchell. “Okay, I surrender. What time?”
“I’ve got it down here for seven, and the awards presentation is at eight.” Aubrey looked to Mitchell for confirmation. “Right, Lance?”
Mitchell was staring out the window. “Oh, yeah . . . that’s right.”
I jotted down my address and phone number and gave it to Aubrey. “How about I pick you up at a quarter to seven?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said, mentally scanning my wardrobe for something to wear that might not look too gruesome with a sling.