though-a younger man didn’t want to set an older woman worrying. A younger man with a heart didn’t, anyhow. “Nobody you’ve got to worry about. Believe me,” he said now.
And Louise did believe him. She brought the paper plate over to the table and sat down beside him. No police scanner farted out calls. The TV wasn’t on, tuned to the news. Nothing but the two of them and dinner. Who needed more?
Sitting by Teo, she had no trouble forgetting Mr. Nobashi, either, or her anxieties about Excel. And if that wasn’t magic, what would be?
VIII
Colin Ferguson tried to carry around in his head a map of everything the San Atanasio Police Department was doing at any given moment. The city grid was easy enough. He knew the routes the patrol cars took, and when each car would be where.
He also knew where the detectives were working, and about the meth buy the drug squad was trying to arrange. Before long, though, something always screwed up his perfect picture. There’d be a big accident, or a knifing outside a strip club on Hesperus, or a shooting in one of the Cuban bars at the north end of San Atanasio Boulevard. Like splashes in a calm pool, the ripples from something like that would distort the picture for a while.
He didn’t need to do any of that. He’d been passed over for chief, the one slot where such an encyclopedic grasp of what was going on really mattred. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure of making captain, even. He’d annoyed enough people that simply passing the exam might not do the trick. He carried around the mental map anyway. He’d started making one back in the days when he still rode a patrol car himself. He could no more stop now than he could stop breathing.
The telephone rang. “Ferguson,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Stu Ayers, down in Palos Verdes,” said the voice on the other end of the line. Ayers was also a lieutenant, and a pretty good guy. Like Colin, he was chasing the South Bay Strangler.
“What can I do to you today, Stu?” Colin asked.
“To me, huh?” Ayers plainly didn’t miss many tricks. Chuckling, he went on, “Could you shoot me the lab reports from your latest Strangler case?”
“Will do. What’s your e-mail?”
Instead of giving one connected to the city of Palos Verdes, Ayers offered Colin a gmail. com account. Half apologetically, he explained, “My captain thinks I’m spending too much time on this. Let’s keep it private, huh?”
“Sure,” Colin said. After he hung up, though, he thoughtfully rubbed his chin. He called up the fat folder of documents, but didn’t e-mail it right away. He looked up the Palos Verdes Police Department’s phone number, called it, and asked to be connected to Lieutenant Ayers.
“Who’s calling, please?” Whoever the gal handling the PVPD’s calls was, she owned one hell of a sexy voice.
“This is Lieutenant Ferguson, from San Atanasio.”
“Please hold, Lieutenant. I’ll put your call through.”
The music Palos Verdes played while you were on hold was different from what San Atanasio used, but no more interesting. Fortunately, Colin didn’t have to listen to it for long. “Stu Ayers here. What’s cooking, Colin?”
“Did you just call me a minute ago and ask for the electronic file on the latest South Bay Strangler killing?”
“Not guilty,” Ayers responded answered at once. No, it wasn’t the same voice as before. Not too different, but definitely not the same. The authentic Lieutenant Ayers went on, “Somebody just did, huh?”
“Yup. Dunno if he’s a snoopy ordinary civilian or a reporter or what, but he wanted that file.”
“You didn’t give it to him?”
“Nope. I’m not always as dumb as I look-only sometimes,” Colin said. Ayers laughed. Colin went on, “My bet’s on a reporter. He knew to use your name and everything. So he could have taken some wild-ass guesses for the Times or the Breeze or whoever’s paying him.”
“Like those cocksuckers don’t do enough of that anyway,” Ayers said.
“Tell me about it. Well, thanks. I’m glad I thought to stop and check.” Colin exchanged good-byes with his opposite number, then got off the phone. He eyed the folder front and center on his monitor, the one he’d almost e-mailed. A nasty smile crossed his face. He created another folder with an almost identical name. He filled that one with subfolders and subsubfolders, and on down for several levels. All of them bore titles that had to do with the case. All of them led nowhere-except to other interestingly named folders nested within.
Well, all but one. If Mr. Snoop out there was persistent enough, he would eventually find a deeply buried folder called Evaluation of Case. That one did have a document in it, one with Colin’s three-word assessment of the situation. Nice try, asshole, he typed. He sent the spurious folder to the no doubt equally spurious gmail. com address.
That done, he deleted the folder from his own hard drive and leaned back in his chair till it creaked. He felt he’d accomplished more than he did on some days when he cracked a case. The SOB on the other end, whoever he was, would have to open all those folders one by one. With all that horseshit around, he was bound to find a pony in there somewhere… wasn’t he?
Now that you mentioned it, no.
For the rest of the afternoon, Colin was actually interested every time his phone rang. Would it be the fellow he’d thwarted, calling to tell him where to head in? Or would the so-and-so come up with some new scheme to seduce information out of him? No and no, respectively, but anticipation did keep Colin in the game.
He knocked off at five on the dot. That didn’t happen every day-or every week, either. He put on his jacket and drove home. The L.A. basin was sweltering through a late-summer heat wave. Weathermen bleated that it might hit 110 in the Valley. Newsmen said the brushfire danger was extreme.
All of which meant jack diddly in the South Bay, which reliably got the sea breeze. It had topped out in the mid-eighties at San Atanasio City Hall, across the street from the cop shop. By now, it was at least ten degrees cooler than that. Whatever fires the Santa Anas blew up wouldn’t come within miles.
As usual, the first thing Colin did when he got home was pull the mail out of the mailbox. A pile of catalogues-retailers could smell Christmas from months away-a cable bill, a bill from the pool guy, a statement from his lawyer… and a postcard from Rob. It showed a big apple, with a good-sized worm, iridescent green, sticking out his head and neck. The worm wore a toothy grin and a Yankees cap.
Colin snorted. That was his older son’s style, all right. Glued to the back of the card was the little New Yorker notice about Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles’ local appearance. The commentary below was in Rob’s spiky script: Still not famous, but we may make it in spite of ourselves. Love from your kid.
That anyone could want to be famous still mystified Colin. As TV had trained him to do, he associated the word with divorces and court appearances and rehab and jail time. He knew more than he wanted about all of those except rehab, and that was the one famous people blew off anyway.
He went inside. He had a little steak waiting in the fridge. He’d broil that while he nuked a package of frozen mixed veggies. As usual, not exciting cooking, but functional. A hell of a lot better for him than the fat-and-sodium bombs that masqueraded as frozen dinners. He’d eat the rest of the vegetables tomorrow with whatever meat he defrosted then.
He thought about a beer. Not without regret, he shook his head. It wasn’t that he never drank alone. But he didn’t do it very often. A drink had a way of turning into a few drinks. A few drinks had a way of turning into a drunk. He’d done too many drunks for a while right after Louise left. He remembered waking up hungover in that Motel 6 in Jackson goddamn Wyoming.
He’d met Kelly that day. If he’d scored with the waitress the night before… He didn’t think he’d be as happy as he was now. The way thingshad worked out, he counted himself pretty lucky. If Kelly’d been here now, he would have had a beer with her. But she was off in Yellowstone, keeping track of the new volcano.
