Blood O. G.'s. I think this city is about to erupt in interracial gang war. At first I just thought it would be Crips and Bloods, but the kicker here is that the wit who saw the last two killings says that the shooters were Mexicans, not blacks.'
'You said there was going to be a power vacuum. Maybe with Stone down, the Mexican Mafia is going for their share of this,' Shane said.
'We need to pick up some street intel. I've got a feeling there's a big piece missing. We don't have the whole picture and right now we're getting zip from our regular snitches.'
'And you think I can just go to the head of the local Emes and get him to tell me?'
'I thought he was your friend. It was just a thought.'
'Well, it's a shitty thought,' Shane said angrily, and walked out of the kitchen into the living room. Although he felt a strong sense of gratitude toward American Macado, Shane was also afraid of him. Not in the way men on opposite sides of the law usually fear one another, but in a more personal way. He'd always suspected that there was still a deep bond between Chooch and Amac, which was stronger than Chooch had let on. Shane feared that if Amac ever called out to Chooch for help, his son would drop everything and respond, that his son, out of some sense of brotherhood or Hispanic loyalty, might be drawn back into that dangerous world. Even with Chooch on the verge of going to college, Shane still feared it.
But at Magic Mountain, Amac had looked at Chooch and warned him, Don't get off the gate. Don't come back into this. Then he had said, 'Tti no quieres mi vida loca.' You don't want my crazy life. So maybe Shane could kick a sleeping dog, just this once, and get away with it. He was a cop; people were dying. He had a duty to try to find out what was going on.
Shane turned and walked slowly to Chooch's room. He hesitated for a moment before he knocked.
'Yeah,' he heard his son call out.
'Got a minute?' Shane asked as he pushed the door open. This had once been a guest room; now it was Chooch's territory: floor-to-ceiling pictures of him playing football, school artwork-freehand sketches of huge, Doom-like monsters, dragons with bat wings-good drawings but a little off-putting. Over his dresser were the required posters of Shakira and Jennifer Lopez along with a collection of Harvard Westlake prom night photos.
As Shane crossed the room and sat on the bed, Chooch quickly turned over his essay and laid it facedown on the desk. Shane experienced another moment of annoyance, but pushed past it.
'What is it, Dad?'
'Do you ever hear from Amac?' Shane asked. 'American?' Chooch's eyes went a little shady and he glanced away.
'Yeah, American. You ever hear from him? He ever call you or anything?'
'Gee… uh… I don't think so…'
'Gee, uh, you don't think so?' The males in this family are shitty liars, he thought. 'Here's the reason, okay?' 'Sure.'
'You know your mom's handling all this gang violence that just started, the killings they're talking about on TV.' Chooch nodded.
'At first she thought it was going to be a shootout between the Bloods and Crips, but now it looks like La Eme is in the mix.'
'Really?'
'Yeah. And I was thinking if you had Amac's number or some way to contact him, maybe I could try and get in touch. I need to talk to him. He might be getting into something dangerous.'
'You told me not to have anything more to do with Amac.'
'Yeah, I know. I just thought-'
'That I'd disobey you?'
'Well, not disobey, exactly… I thought on his birthday, or yours, maybe you guys still got in touch.'
There was a long silence. This time Chooch held Shane's eyes, but said nothing.
'Okay… How's that essay coming?'
'It's… I'm still working on it.'
'Am I ever gonna get a chance to read it?'
'Well, thing is, I I…' and he stopped.
'Forget it… talk to you later.'
Shane left the room. Whether it was the conversation about Amac, or because his feelings were hurt over that damned essay, Shane was definitely off balance. He almost turned around and went back in to talk with his son again, but then at the last moment decided not to. He pulled himself away from Chooch's door and moved down the hall and out into the backyard.
Alexa was sitting there, looking at the canal. She had two beers and gave Shane an Amstel Light as he sat down next to her.
Shane reached into his pocket, took out his shield, and handed it to her. 'Forgot to tell you, Captain Haley returned this to me today.'
She took it, rubbed her thumb over the badge, and smiled. 'Y'know, I never would have thought I was going to marry a cop. On balance, cops are such cynics. But you taught me it doesn't have to be that way. You taught me that cops can even be great lovers. I don't know if I ever thanked you for that.'
Shane thought she was really trying to tell him she was sorry about asking him to invite a dangerous gang leader back into their lives. He smiled and squeezed her hand, but didn't answer.
The phone started ringing, so Shane got up and walked into the living room, where he picked it up. 'Yeah.'
'Shane, it's Lee Fineburg. I got something on this Farrell character you asked me to run.'
'Really?' With a sudden pang of guilt, Shane looked over his shoulder at Alexa, who was still sitting on the back lawn out of earshot. 'What is it?'
'When I first started, it was more what it's not, if you know what I mean.' He paused, then continued. 'There was nothing anywhere on this guy. It's like three years ago he parachuted in here from Pluto. My brother's looked everywhere: the Justice Department computer, the IRS, even ViCAP. You'll never guess where he finally turned up.'
'Where?'
'WITSEC over in the U. S. Marshal's office. He's in their computer, and nowhere else. The marshals must have erased everything.'
'Witness Protection?'
'Only now they call it Witness Security. My brother couldn't break the nine-digit spaghetti code to get the actual file, but Farrell Champion is definitely on an asset list in their mainframe.'
'Wait a minute… hold on. That doesn't make sense. WITSEC isn't going to give a new identity and protection to a high-profile guy like Farrell Champion. Everybody knows who he is. He's in half of last year's People magazines, for Chrissake.'
'Shane, if you wanna argue with me about it, help yourself. I'm just telling you what my brother found. This guy looks like he's a protected witness. That's gotta be why there're no IRS or LAPD records. Because the Justice Department keeps him scrubbed clean-no back story, no records, nothing that can be used to trace him.'
'Then why would WITSEC let him be so high profile?'
'I don't know, I agree it's weird. But unless we got two Farrell Champions, which seems highly unlikely given the unusual name and the circumstances, your boy is in the program.'
Shane knew that a lot of the clients of WITSEC were violent criminals who turned state's evidence to keep from going to jail. Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano, who'd killed nineteen people for John Gotti, was the poster boy for that fact.
'How do we find out for sure?' Shane asked.
'My brother Doug said if you can get a set of his prints, he can keep going, try to find out his real name. To make it quick, he needs a thumb, index, and at least one digit.
Doug says that somewhere there's a record. Those prints are gonna go back to some original piece of I. D., like an old state driver's registration or hospital birth records-something sitting in somebody's computer. You can't erase everything. Get me those prints and we'll give it a go.'
'Okay… okay, I'll try.' Shane looked over again at Alexa, who still had her back to him, sitting in the metal
