your man day and night until after the election.'
I couldn't help but wonder if the Marines might be Agent Love's doing.
'If we go tonight, are you still up for this?' Carlos asked. He had suddenly developed a tic at the corner of his right eye.
'We haven't discussed price. The mayor said it was a paying job.' I wanted to lock in a premeditated murder- for-hire solicitation.
'I asked around up in L. A. I believe ten thousand is a good number,' he said, quoting the exact price from my Sammy from Miami meeting.
'That works.'
Carlos put a brown paper bag on the table. It didn't look like money, so I laid my hand on top of it. I could instantly feel the contours of a small automatic under my palm.
'It's a six-shot Para Covert Carry with a three-inch barrel,' he said, as his eyebrows did a little jig. 'It's nontraceable, so drop it at the scene. Alonzo and Horace will cover you.'
'I want the cash up front.'
'Half now. Half when the job is done.' Real pulled a fat envelope out of his pocket and slid it across the table. 'That's five,' he said. 'The rest comes after proof of death. We good?' Twitching and jerking like a hooked flounder.
'We're good.'
He slid out of the booth without another word and disappeared into the throng, leaving behind a cold street gun, five thousand dollars and the smell of cheap cologne.
'I hope this money isn't part of our cafeteria policing deal,' I said. 'I'd hate to pass half of it back up to the same guy who just gave it to me.'
'All yours,' Alonzo said.
He looked at his watch. 'Okay, we got a tight timetable if we're gonna get this done tonight. Let's go.'
Once Horace, Alonzo and I were outside, I stopped them.
'I need to hear how you guys think this is gonna work,' I said.
'Rocky's gonna give a campaign speech tonight at a rally over in Municipal Park in Vista,' Alonzo answered. 'We wouldn't give him a rally permit for Haven Park or Fleetwood, so he's doing it over there. It's at ten o'clock. According to one of the phone taps we got on him, after the speech he's gonna visit his new girlfriend, that lawyer bitch we met at the jail three days ago. Rocky's got a secret fuck pad somewhere over in Fleetwood. We don't know where it is yet so we need to go to the rally, and once it breaks up we follow him to the tuna. That's where you do the job.'
'I just shoot him? That doesn't sound too sharp. The guy's very popular. We need a good reason for the murder or this will never be off the six o'clock news. We need an old enemy or something.'
'Rocky's got a lot of jealous girlfriends,' Alonzo said. 'We stage it to look like he got shot by this abogada, this Carmen Ramirez person. The story is she shot him, then shot herself, because he wouldn't stop seeing that reporter, Anita Juarez. A classic taco triangle. You leave the gun in the dead bitch's hand. It goes into the books as a murder-suicide.'
'Thats still a tad loose, guys. What about forcnsics? Blood splatter? My hair and fiber?'
'None a that shit matters,' Alonzo said. 'After you shoot him, you call a guy I got waiting by a phone. He'll make the 911 call in Spanish. Since you're gonna be the first blue on the scene, your hair and fiber aren't a problem. After the department puts out the shots-fired call, you grab it, then ask for backup. Me and Horace roger that. We all work the case together. Talbot Jones will handle the one-eighty-seven investigation. It's gonna go down the way we want and get booked exactly the way we say 'cause we're the ones working the crime scene.'
'It's starting to sound a little better,' I said.
'Good. Now get in the Escalade.'
I climbed in and Horace piled in behind me. Alonzo pulled out of the parking lot and headed back into Haven Park.
'I thought you said the rally was in Vista,' I said. 'We're going the wrong way.'
'Gotta stop at the station first.'
'How come?'
'Before you do this, you've gotta take a polygraph.'
Chapter 39
As soon as we pulled into the parking lot of the Haven Park PD, Alonzo and Horaee got out of the Esealade. I just sat there. I was almost certain that Alexa and Olivia hadn't had enough time to locate and block the polygrapher. While I was trying to figure out what to do, Alonzo jerked open the passenger door. 'You coming?'
'Yeah,' I said as I climbed out, 'but is this really necessary?'
'The mayor wants it,' Alonzo said. 'He's a cautious guy. So lets just get it done. That way we all know there's no rats, okay?'
'Okay.'
The three of us walked into the station. From the look of the lobby, the swing shift was having a busy night. There were half a dozen tense brown faces — mostly women. Mothers and girlfriends sitting in worn leather chairs, their knees tight together, clutching worn fabric purses, waiting for ugly news about loved ones courtesy of the corrupt Haven Park PD.
I followed Alonzo into Talbot Jones's empty office.
'We're gonna do it in here,' he said.
He picked up the phone and dialed an extension. 'There should he a guy out there from FSA. That's Electronic Systems Analysts. He's a polygraph operator. Hunt him up and send him hack to Tal's office.' After he hung up he said, 'Who wants to go first?'
I certainly didn't. I had a wide, dishonest smile that felt like I'd borrowed it from a drugstore Halloween rack. Horace Velario was still staring at me suspiciously.
Alonzo picked up the phone again. 'Let's go. Where is the guy? We need to be over in Fleetwood by ten- fifteen.' He listened, then said, 'You can't be serious!' He slammed clown the phone and left the office without saying anything.
Velario continued to stare at me.
I endured his gaze for almost half a minute. Then I said, 'My fly open?'
'You need to know how it is with me and Alonzo,' he finally said. 'We played high school football together at Long Beach Poly. The press called us Omelet and Toast. I was Omelet. Weak-side linebacker. They called me that 'cause when I hit somebody I scrambled their eggs. Bell was on the strong side and made the toast. We were fucking dangerous. You didn't want what we were dishing out. Between the two of us we logged almost two hundred tackles our senior year.'
'That's real nice,' I said, tuning him out. My mind was elsewhere, trying to come up with a way to avoid taking the damn polygraph.
'The reason I'm boring you with this shit is you need to know that since then, I never stopped watching Al's back. He looks big and tough, but underneath all that he's got this dumb trusting side, which dickheads always try and take advantage of. When that happens, I scramble up an omelet. My job over the years has been to pick off the bullshitters. Fve been looking at you for two clays now, and I've come to the decision that you're a lying sack a shit.'
That got my attention.
'You're the fucking mole,' he said.
'You need to stop taking yourself so seriously,' I responded. 'This isn't the Long Beach Poly defensive backfield.'
'I told Alonzo you're the rat, but since he vouched for you with the Avilas, it's in his best interests for you to be okay, so he don't believe me. But I'm still over here covering the weak side, just like always.'
