'Hey, man,' Barry said. 'You're from Boston.'
'I am.'
'What are you doing out here?'
'I came to talk with you.'
'Me? Hey, that's really cool.'
'Way cool,' I said. 'Anything you can think of.'
'Sure,' Barry said. 'Sure thing.'
He took in a long pull of marijuana smoke and held it. I walked to the door. Barry was still holding the smoke. As I opened the door, he let it out slowly and smiled pleasantly at me through the smoke.
Reefer madness.
28
Hawk and I were staying up in La Jolla, at La Valencia. I called Susan. After that, Hawk and I took a run along the cove and had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was near the top of the hotel and had spectacular views of the Pacific. We each started with a martini.
'It always amazes me,' I said to Hawk, 'how some kids can grow out of the trash heap they started in.'
'Daryl?' Hawk said.
I nodded.
'Her mother,' I said, 'apparently slept with everybody that would hold still long enough and then got murdered. Her father did dope until he turned into a mushroom. And she grows out of that, apparently on her own, to become a functioning adult and a good actress.'
The sun was almost touching the far rim of the ocean. Five pelicans swung over the cove, flying in an orderly arrangement. The last two divers came out of the water. I drank a little of my martini. Hawk's martini was the traditional straight up with olives. Always the rebel, I had mine on the rocks with a twist. I sipped again. The martini tasted like John Coltrane sounds.
'A little like Paul,' Hawk said.
'Yeah,' I said. 'But Paul had me. Who has she had?'
Hawk looked out at the wide, slow ocean, with the evening beginning to settle onto it.
'Maybe she have a lot of stuff in her,' Hawk said.
'Maybe.'
'And maybe she have Paul,' Hawk said.
I thought about it, and so as not to waste time while I was thinking, I drank some more martini.
'I don't know if he's known her long enough,' I said.
'Paul a smart kid,' Hawk said.
'I know.'
'And he pretty strong,' Hawk said.
'He is.'
'Got from his uncle,' Hawk said.
'Uncle Hawk?'
'Sho' nuff.'
'Jesus Christ,' I said.
29
In the morning, Hawk and I ate huevos rancheros outside on the patio. Then we strapped on our rental guns, got in our rental car, and headed for the 405. It's a two-and-a-half-hour drive from San Diego to L.A., unless Hawk drives, in which case it's just less than two hours. At twenty past noon we checked into the Beverly Wilshire Hotel at the foot of Rodeo Drive. 'This pretty regal,' Hawk said in the high marble lobby, 'for a couple of East-Coast thugs with loaner guns.'
'We deserve no less,' I said.
'We deserve a lot less,' Hawk said. 'But I won't insist on it.'
Captain Samuelson had his office in the Parker Center. I left Hawk outside on Los Angeles Street with the car. It saved parking, and I figured Sonny Karnofsky wouldn't make a run at me inside LAPD Headquarters.
Samuelson's office was on the third floor in the Robbery Homicide Division, in a section marked Homicide Special Section I. Samuelson came out of his office in his shirt sleeves. He was fully bald now, his head clean shaven, and he'd gotten rid of his mustache. But he still wore tinted aviator glasses, and he was still one of my great fans.
'The hot dog from Boston,' he said, standing in his office doorway.
'I thought I'd swing by,' I said. 'Help you straighten out the Rampart Division.'
