Cole?'
'Yeah.' He had sandy hair and thick, blocky hands and a deep tan because most of his time would be spent on the street. He wore a little red and green and gold Vietnam service ribbon beneath the badge on his left breast and a marksmanship pin beside the ribbon.
'Andy Malone,' he said. 'We can talk back here.' He put out his hand and I stood and took it, and then I followed him through the door.
We went down a long hall past three candy machines and a soft-drink machine and a couple of rest rooms for people who weren't cops to use. At the far end of the hall there was a booking desk where a couple of cops were processing a tall skinny black kid. The kid's hands were cuffed. One of the cops was white and the other was black, and they both were thick across the chest and back and arms, like they spent a lot of time in the gym. Guess you work in a war zone, you want to be as threatening as possible. The white cop was trying to unlock the cuffs and the black cop was shaking his finger about two inches from the kid's nose, saying, 'Are you listening to me?' The kid was giving with attitude and you knew he wasn't listening and wasn't going to. Your bad guys are often like that.
There were a couple of varnished wood benches in the hall opposite a door that said SERGEANT'S OFFICE. We went into the office and Malone closed the door. 'You want coffee?'
'Sure. Thanks.'
Malone filled a couple of paper cups, handed one to me, then went behind a cluttered desk and sat. He didn't offer cream or sugar. Maybe they didn't have any.
I sat across from him in a hard chair, and we looked at each other and sipped our coffee. He said, 'My buddy Lou Poitras says you want to know about Charles Lewis Washington.'
'Uh-huh.'
'You're a private investigator.'
'That's it.' The coffee was hot and bitter and had probably been made early this morning.
'Make any money at it?'
'No one's getting rich.'
He took more of the coffee and made a little smile. 'The wife's been after me to leave the force since the riots. All this time, she's still after me.' He made a shrugging move with his head, then set the cup on his desk. 'So tell me why you're digging around Charles Lewis.'
'His name came up in something I'm working on and I want to run it down.'
Malone nodded and had more of his coffee. He didn't seem to mind the taste, but then, he was used to it. 'How do you know Poitras?'
'Met on the job. Got to know each other.'
He nodded again and leaned back. When he did, the old swivel squealed. 'Lou says you pulled time in Vietnam.'
'Yep.'
He put down his coffee and crossed his arms. 'I was there in sixty-eight.'
'Seventy-one.'
The chair squealed again. The nod. 'People think the Nam they think the sixties. Lot of people forget we still had guys there till March twenty-nine, 1973.'
'Lot of people don't care.'
He made a little smile. 'Yeah. We kicked ass in Saudi. That sort of makes up for things.'
'Don't forget Panama and Grenada.'
The smile got wider. 'Kick enough ass, and pretty soon you forget the losers. Who wants to remember losers when you got so many winners running around?'
I said, 'Hell, Malone, we're not that damned old, are we?'
Malone laughed, uncrossed his arms, and said, 'What do you want to know about Washington?'
I told him.
Malone went to a battered gray cabinet, took out a manila folder, and brought it back to the desk. He skimmed through it for a couple of minutes, then he closed it. He didn't offer to let me see. 'Washington worked in a pawnshop over on Broadway, down in South Central. We had information that the shop was being used as a fence drop for some of the guns looted during the riots, so REACT put eyes on the place, then went in with a sting.'
'And it went bad.'
'That's a way to say it. Washington thinks he's making a buy on ten thousand rounds of stolen ammo, the officers think it's under control, but when they flash the badges he goes a little nuts and decides to resist. Washington dives behind a counter, and comes up with a piece, but our guys are thinking Rodney King, so they don't shoot him. There's a scuffle and Washington hits his head and that's it.'
'I hear it was controversial.'
'They're all controversial. This one less than most.'
'What do you have on Washington?'
Malone checked the report again. 'Twenty-eight. A longtime Double-Seven Hoover Crip with multiple priors.'
