'He changed his mind. Your machine was turned off. He's been trying to reach you all afternoon. He didn't have your mobile number, so I gave it to him. The way this is going, you better start leaving your cell phone on.'
'Oh,' Shane said. He'd turned his answering machine and cell phone off because he was afraid that Barbara would call. He'd been having second thoughts about seeing her and wanted to put some distance between them for the time being. 'You got his number handy? I don't have it with me.'
Rags Whitman gave it to him, and Shane dialed.
'Go,' DeMarco said when he answered. Shane could hear a mellower brand of rap being played in the room behind the conversation. This time he thought it was L. L. Cool J.
'It's Shane.'
'Where've you been? I changed my mind. I gotta get one more swing at that bitch advocate Alexa Hamilton. I've been trying to reach you all day.'
'I had my cell off by mistake. I'm glad you reconsidered. I got this fucking Letter of Transmittal. It's a complete load a' shit. They're fuckin' me over, Dee.'
'Meet me at the beach as soon as you can.'
'I've gotta go pick up a friend's kid at school. I promised his mother. Okay if I bring him?'
'Sure, I'll meet you at the Silver Surfer. It's a bar-restaurant on the Strand, about six doors up from my place. How 'bout an hour?'
'How 'bout an hour and a half?'
'See ya then.'
'Hey, Dee… thanks. I feel better with you on this. I wanna go to war. I don't wanna plead out this bullshit. I wanna fight it.'
'We'll talk in an hour.'
When he arrived at Harvard Westlake, Brad Thackery was waiting for him. Thackery followed Chooch to the car and immediately came around to the driver's side.
'We still haven't heard from Chooch's mother,' he said angrily, shoving his thin, pinched features and wiry hair down into Shane's face.
Chooch got in the passenger side and pretended to pay no attention, looking out the side window at the football field.
'Whatta you want me to do about it?' Shane said sharply.
'I want you to have Mrs. Sandoval get in touch with my office.'
'I told her to call you two days ago.'
'Obviously, neither you nor she have any idea of the seriousness of Chooch's situation. This is about his future here at Harvard Westlake.'
'I told Sandy. I can't do more than that.'
'Facta non verba' Thackery said with a smirk, then added, 'Actions speak louder than words.'
'Gobbelus feces' Shane replied, and after a second to figure it out, Chooch burst into laughter.
Shane put the car in gear and pulled out onto Coldwater. He was smoking mad. Of course, he knew it wasn't Thackery, it was his whole damn life that was pissing him off.
'Gobbelus feces. Eat shit pretty fuckin' good,' Chooch crowed.
'Calm down, will ya… it wasn't that funny.'
Chooch looked at him carefully, then turned off his headset and put the rig back into his book bag.
'Don't worry about Thackery, okay? It doesn't matter that Sandy didn't call. They're gonna throw me out anyway. It's a done deal. I'm not even in regular classes anymore. I'm in detention. They don't care if I do my homework or not. They're just sitting on me till they can tell her I'm dust.'
'Shit,' Shane said. 'Good goin'.'
'I don't care, so don't sweat it.'
'Yeah, that's right, I forgot. I'm just this month's paid jerkoff.'
'That was before. You're not a paid jerkoff anymore. You've been promoted.'
'To what?' Shane was barely paying attention. His mind was spinning, a kaleidoscope of horrible, career- ending problems.
'You're my doobie brother,' Chooch said with a grin, 'my ganja gangtsa and Rasta weed warrior.'
'Listen, Chooch, you gotta forget about that. Okay? I'm having a rough time right now, I'm not thinking straight. That was a huge mistake.'
'Shit, it was the first thing you did that I liked. Showed me some stones, man. No other cop I know would sit around with some kid and bogart a fatty.'
'Chooch, if you tell anybody about that, I'm gonna kill ya.'
'No sweat. I can keep a secret.' He smiled, then put his headphones on again and cranked up the tunes. He stayed plugged in until Shane made the turn onto the Santa Monica Freeway. It was the wrong way home, so Chooch took off his headset and looked over. 'Where we going?'
'I gotta go to a meeting down at the beach. It should only take an hour, maybe less. You can hang for a while, okay?'
Chooch cocked an eyebrow. 'Something's going on, right? You're in the soup, just like me, aren't ya?' he said with surprising intuition.
'It's okay. I can handle it.'
They shot off the end of the freeway, back onto the Coast Highway. Five minutes later Chooch and Shane were walking through the front door of an almost empty bar-restaurant with a sawdust floor and a neon sign that read SILVER SURFER.
It was 4:15 in the afternoon.
They found DeMarco seated at the bar. He was wearing cutoffs and a blue-jean vest with no shirt, working on his third beer. The other two empty brown glass longnecks were lined up on the bar beside him.
When Shane introduced DeMarco to Chooch, the teenager looked at the longhaired defense rep and smiled. 'Cool fuckin' earring, dude.'
'I like your friend, Scully. You're finally kicking.' The defense rep smiled at Shane.
'Is it okay for him to be in here?' Shane asked, referring to the fact that they were in a bar that served hard liquor.
'Yeah, he can go play the video games over there. Technically, that's not in the bar area.'
Shane dug into his pockets and gave Chooch some change.
The boy moved over to a small alcove in sight of the bar, sat on a stool, and began feeding coins into one of the machines.
Shane slid the Letter of Transmittal over to DeMarco, who read it carefully, then set it on the bar between them. 'Mark, gimme another Lone Star,' he yelled. 'How 'bout you?' he asked Shane.
'Slow down on the brewskies, will ya? I'm on fire here.'
'Then you're in luck. With this bladder, I can piss it out for you,' DeMarco quipped. 'In your telephonic absence, I went ahead and covered some pro forma ground. Tell ya this much, Alexa Hamilton doesn't let much grass grow under her magnificent gym-trained ass. She already got the rotation list for your judging panel and faxed it to me. Seven names: four sworn members of the department above the rank of captain and three civilians. If you remember how it works from before, you get to throw off two of the cops and two of the civilians, leaving you a panel of three judges: two sworn, one civilian.' He reached into his blue-jean vest pocket and pulled out two slips of paper. 'This ain't much of a beauty contest,' he said, sliding both slips over to Shane. 'In my opinion, all of these department guys are douche bags. Tell me who you like. I hate the whole bunch.' DeMarco read the names aloud while Shane studied the list. 'Captain Donovan McNeil, West Division; Commander Mitchell Van Sickle, Ad Vice; Deputy Chief Laurence Gadsworth he's the chief's administrative staff officer, so forget him; and Captain Bernard Cookson.'
'Jesus,' Shane said, 'except for Donovan McNeil, who I used to go fishing with occasionally, aren't these guys all in Chief Brewer's golf foursome?'
'Yep. But it gets worse. Look't the civilians: all lawyers from South Temple Street; one's a retired judge, a Crispin crony, of course. I checked the others all work at the municipal courthouse and all have strong political ties
