the streets but it’s gonna take time for word to get back to us. We may eventually get a name we can start on, a witness if we’re lucky. People in that neighbour-hood are always wanting to make deals with us for one thing or another.’
‘That’s it? That’s how you work?’
‘That’s how
Stratton couldn’t guess at the number of unsolved crimes in LA but he imagined it must be high. ‘Can you tell me where it happened, at least?’
‘Venice. In back of Gold’s Gym. That area is getting cleaned up, big money moving to the beach, but there’s still a lot of lowlifes there. Hey, twenty years ago even
Draper’s mobile phone rang.
‘What about Sally’s body?’ Stratton asked.
‘See the desk officer and he’ll give you the paperwork,’ Draper said as he checked the screen of his phone. ‘I gotta take this,’ he said, raising it to his ear and walking away.
Half an hour later, having lined up to see the desk officer, Stratton stepped onto the street outside the police department, folding several sheets of a form into his pocket. He looked at a map of the city that he had bought the night before. Venice was less than a mile from the Police Department and he decided to walk.
He took Main Street south. It paralleled the beach a couple of blocks east of it and was lined with restaurants, bars and various clothes, art and antique shops. A window cleaner washing a shopfront gave Stratton directions to Gold’s Gym. It was tucked into the backstreets a couple of blocks past the last of the shops and after finding it he headed around the back into a more decayed residential part of the city. The multicultural atmosphere of Main Street gave way to a predominantly black and Hispanic one: graffiti was everywhere and each house and apartment block, new and old, had some kind of visible security, usually heavy-duty bars over windows and entranceways.
Stratton saw a group of Latino kids sitting on the front steps of a house and crossed the road towards them. They stopped talking as they watched him approach and remained seated as he stopped in front of them.
‘You lookin’ for drugs, man?’ one of them asked. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old.
‘No – I’m looking for something else,’ Stratton said, deciding that the drug pusher was not the leader.
‘What would that be, man?’ another boy asked, getting to his feet and circling behind Stratton, an expression of contempt on his face that looked more forced than natural. The others got to their feet to look at Stratton in a similar fashion.
Stratton didn’t sense that the move was entirely hostile. He reckoned that they were simply fluffing their feathers. He concentrated on the boy, probably the leader, who was circling him, and when the youngster eventually stopped in front of him Stratton looked him straight in the eyes. There was not a great deal of intelligence behind them, the lids drooping halfway across the eyeballs, but there was a maturity beyond the boy’s years in his posture and also confidence.
Stratton went for the direct approach. ‘A woman was killed here two days ago,’ he said.
‘You a cop?’ the boy asked, dryly.
‘No. I’m not American so I couldn’t be a cop. She was my sister.’
‘That was your sister?’ one of the other boys asked. ‘Man, she took a bitchen’.’
The other boys agreed, some of them grinning.
‘You see it?’ Stratton asked the boy who appeared to be the youngest. His age was probably in single digits.
‘Never said I saw nothin’,’ the boy said, already developing his street wisdom.
One of the others uttered some Latino phrase and the whole group laughed.
Stratton studied them for a moment and had a rethink. Dealing with near-morons required a certain approach. ‘I’ll give you fifty dollars if you show me where it happened,’ Stratton said.
‘Fifty dollars?’ the leader asked, appearing unimpressed. But Stratton knew that he was undoubtedly interested.
‘Just to show me where,’ Stratton said, reaching into his pocket and plucking out a note. It was a hundred- dollar bill.
‘We ain’t got no change, mister,’ one of them laughed.
‘Then I’ll give you a hundred,’ Stratton said. ‘If you tell me more than just where it happened.’
The leader looked around the street, instinctively cautious. Then his slow eyes came back to focus on Stratton’s face and he blinked. ‘Maybe we’ll just beat you and take your money,’ he said.
‘You can try,’ Stratton said, rolling up the bill into a ball. ‘But I’ll eat it before you can get it. Or you can just give me what I want and you can have it without any trouble.’
The leader looked into Stratton’s eyes and saw no trace of fear and, if anything, amusement. ‘We can’t tell you nothin’. That’s the way it’s gotta be,
‘So, you can show me where it happened?’ Stratton asked.
‘Down there.’ The boy indicated with his chin.
‘Show me,’ Stratton said.
The leader did another check around, then looked at the smallest kid in the group. ‘Show him. And be cool.’
‘Why do I gotta take him?’
‘’Cause I said. Walk down there in front of him, then pick up the money and come back here.’
The kid reluctantly obeyed his master, walked down the steps and stopped in front of Stratton, his head no higher than Stratton’s waist. ‘Come on,’ he said and set off.
Stratton followed the kid for a block and a half until the boy broke into a short run, stopped, made a point of turning on the spot and walked back towards Stratton. Stratton opened the hand with the wadded-up note in it. The kid took it as he passed and jogged back up the street towards his pack. The leader checked the note and then they all walked away around a corner.
Stratton looked down at his feet. They were surrounded by bits of car-window glass and he imagined Sally lying on the car’s bonnet, dead, with Josh watching her. The broken glass was spread over the street as if her vehicle had been in the centre of the road and not parked against the kerb. Whatever had happened had taken place while she was in transit. He doubted that she would have stopped in a place like this for anything less than a breakdown.
He scanned the sidewalks and houses on either side but the place was deserted, as if everyone knew his purpose and wanted nothing to do with him. Then his gaze fell on a corner shop further up the street where an oriental man was standing in the doorway, looking directly at him. As soon as their stares made contact the man went inside. Stratton wanted to talk to someone and since banging on doors didn’t seem like a good idea round here he decided to start with the only living person in sight.
Stratton stepped onto the sidewalk and headed for the shop that was very much in keeping with its surroundings: grubby, grille-covered windows and in desperate need of a paint job.
He paused in the doorway to look inside. Every bit of space was packed with product apart from a narrow path from the entrance that led around an island of shelving in the centre. The counter was near the front door and two convex mirrors in the opposite corners covered the blind spots at the back of the store. The oriental man was stacking cigarette packets onto shelves behind the counter while a fat white woman at the far end sorted through some vegetable racks.
Stratton stopped in front of the counter and took a packet of gum from a box, all the while staring at the shopkeeper to catch his eye. But the man appeared determined not to look at him.
‘How much is the gum?’ Stratton asked.
‘Fifty cents,’ the shopkeeper replied in a thick Korean accent.
Stratton held out a dollar bill and as the man reached for it Stratton drew it back a little. The man’s eyes flashed at Stratton and held his unblinking gaze for a moment, a hint of anger in them. Then he stretched for the bill and took it.
‘A woman was killed two days ago in front of your shop,’ Stratton said in a low voice so that the woman in the back could not hear.
The man did not reply, avoiding Stratton’s stare again, and put the fifty cents change on the counter.
