how we might spend the rest of the afternoon. I would laugh him off, being cute and ‘not wanting to hurt his feelings’—then one day he pulled me down on his lap on top of his hard-on and slipped his hand under my skirt.”
“Barbara!”
“Yeah, well, I should have shot the sucker between the eyes but instead … I didn’t handle it very well. I cried. Told him I had a boyfriend. Some damn lie or other. This was before sexual harassment cases.”
She whips the pearl back and forth.
“He would take me to lunch when we were supposed to be discussing a case and talk about how we should get the penthouse suite at the Beverlywood Hotel, how Mormon males are great in bed, they have some super sexual secret, that’s why they have so many wives and children … when the truth is, he hates women.”
I look again at the little Catholic schoolgirl from Chicago in the yellow suit and pearl necklace, still so ladylike in her obsessive rage. “I am so sorry you had to put up with that shit.”
“After I got married I deliberately transferred back to Duane Carter’s squad. For years he thought he had this dirty little secret on me. But times have changed and I’ve got it on him.”
“How? It’s too late for legal action.”
“I’m watching him and he knows it. Why do you think I’ve hung in as robbery coordinator so long? It’s the perfect position to keep sticking it to him. Like right now — you’re going to bust this guy for
I put my arm around her shoulder. She is my friend. “Don’t spend your life on Duane Carter.”
“It makes me happy.” Her thin rosy lips compress into a tight smile.
“Someday,” I tell her, “you’re coming with me over the wall.”
“Go with God.”
• • •
Three hours later I am in a stuffy interrogation room at the Metropolitan Detention Center with my guy, whose name is Dennis Hill. I had interviewed him when I gave him his rights and had him sign the FD395 form, but he had refused to talk. He’s wearing orange overalls with MDC on the back and looks just as sullen as he did yesterday, when I busted him — a jowly unshaven face and unkempt gray hair matting and merging with curls growing up the back of the neck.
“You’re a pretty good bank robber, Dennis.”
His eyes watch me. I see intelligence there.
“This is not your first job. You’ve just never been caught before. Am I right?”
He doesn’t answer.
“That makes you pretty good. Not great. But good.”
I show him the two surveillance photos, one from his most recent work, the other stretching back into history.
“We pulled down these photos. That’s you. Both times.”
He looks at the photos and back at me with heavy eyes.
“It’s okay, Dennis. You don’t have to say anything. We’ve got you on two.”
I slip the photos back into the envelope.
“You’ve got me on dick.”
His first words. How charming.
“Is that so?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
He puts both hands on the table and pushes his chair back. I tense involuntarily, even though there is a six- foot-four cop standing at the door.
Dennis runs a hand through his greasy hair.
“You know where I used to live?”
“Paris.”
“Palos Verdes. In a house that was worth at the time … maybe half a million dollars.”
“You must be a better robber than I thought.”
He shakes his head. “I was an executive sales director at Hughes Aero-Space. Made two hundred thousand dollars a year.”
He is quiet, as if waiting for me to put the pieces together. I remember my first impression when I confronted him in his car in the parking lot. He didn’t resist. He seemed edgy … down … on the down side of a high.
“Who got you into the powder?” I ask gently.
“Nobody but myself. High roller. Big deal with women. Nice car. Liked the ponies. Big shit, you know?”
I nod. “You got in over your head. Started selling your assets to pay for the habit. And when you lost it all you got desperate and robbed a bank. It was easy. So you did it again.”
A tremble goes through him. “I’ve got a son. He came to see me this morning. He still loves me.”
He bites a corner off the nail on his thumb.
“You’re a smart, educated guy, Dennis. Why didn’t you go for help?”
“Because I happen to love cocaine.”
We sit in silence for a while. He loves cocaine. I have never heard it said more clearly or more completely without apology. He loves cocaine more than he loves his own son.
I believe I can smell the sweat on him and the sweat on the cop and the rancid layers of sweat on the grimy tile walls of a thousand other murderers, pederasts, rapists, junkies, movie stars, and thieves who will tell you with the same unself-conscious certainty that they did it, whatever it was, because they were in love. And being in love absolves them and makes them innocent.
I stand up. “Let’s get a stenographer in here and get your statement.”
“Statement on what?”
“The other robbery.”
Of course he hasn’t actually admitted to the Culver City job. I’m angling. I’m hoping.
“I didn’t do another robbery.”
I wait it out a moment, thinking, I’m getting somewhere with this guy. We have a rapport. I’ll come back—
Then he says, “I did six.”
• • •
Donnato treats me to lunch the next day at Bora-Bora, a collegiate hangout where the waitresses wear skimpy little shorts and Hawaiian shirts and everything is served in plastic baskets and it is so noisy we can hardly hear each other.
“This is the one that’s going to do it for you,” he says. “Get you above the crowd.”
“I’ll miss you, Donnato.”
He shrugs and takes a bite of a chicken burrito. “You’ve got to move on. I told you: seven years. That’s the time most agents light their blue flame.”
“You think the Kidnapping and Extortion Squad is the right move?”
I have asked him this before but for some reason I want to prolong the moment.
‘I told you: less pressure. More involved cases. You can take some in-service courses, and the supervisor is a nice guy.”
I reach over and smooth some tortilla flakes from his beard.
“What are you going to do without me?”
“Drive some other split-tail crazy with lust.”
“Is that what you think?”
