LA Requiem

cut a deal. Krantz had been trying to do that, you know. Play them against each other. He was sure that Pike murdered Wozniak to keep him quiet.'

'Do you believe that?'

'Well, I never believed that we knew what really happened in that room. Wozniak lost it with DeVille and knocked him out. We know that much for sure because DeVille and Pike told the same story. But after DeVille was out, all we know is what Pike told us, and some of it didn't make sense. Here was

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Pike, young and strong and fresh out of the Marines, knowing all that karate stuff the way he did. It just doesn't make a lot of sense that he'd have that much trouble trying to cool out Woz-niak. Krantz thought Pike was stonewalling us, and maybe he was, but what are you going to do? We couldn't make the case.'

I didn't like hearing any of this. I was getting irritated with it, and pissed off that McConnell was distracted by the guys in the field. Now the other two guys joined the younger guy in the artificial rain, jumping around with him.

McConnell said, 'Oh, this really is out of hand.'

'Do you think Krantz was right?'

McConnell shouted in Spanish again, but the men still didn't hear him.

I went around and stepped in front of him so he had to look at me instead of the men.

'Was Krantz right?'

'Krantz hadn't turned anything that we could make a case on. I figured one tragedy was enough, so I told Krantz to drop it. That's what we did. Look, I'm sorry I can't help you, but I gotta get out there. Those crazy bastards are costing me money.'

He started around me, and when he did I trapped his hand and twisted away the gun. He wasn't expecting it, and the move had taken maybe a tenth of a second.

McConnell's eyes widened, and he froze.

'What about these two fences? You think either of them might be trying to set up Joe Pike?'

'Wozniak was nothing to those two. Reena hauled ass back to Tijuana because he got into a beef with some meth- head. Uribe was shot to death at a gas station when he got into an argument.'

'Wozniak's file showed that he had received administrative punishments on five separate occasions, and twice been suspended for using excessive force. Seven complaints, and in five of those the complainant was either a pedophile or a pimp dealing in child prostitution. Do you know who the informant was who tipped Wozniak about DeVille?'

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McConnell 's eyes flicked to the gun, then came back to me.

'No. Wozniak probably had several. That's what made him such an effective patrol officer.'

'How could I find out?'

'The divisions keep a registered informant list. They have to do that to protect the officers. But I don't know if Rampart would still have one for Wozniak, all of that being so long ago.'

McConnell looked past me to the fields again, then shook his head. 'Goddamnit, you gonna shoot me, son, or you gonna let me go take care of my business? Look at the water they're wasting.'

I looked at the gun, then handed it back to him. I felt myself turn red.

'I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that.'

'Kiss my ass.'

He stalked toward the Cadillac. When he got to the door, he turned back to me, but he didn't look angry anymore. He looked sad.

'Look, I know how it is, your partner gets in trouble. Just so you know, I never believed that Pike had anything to do with that burglary ring. And I don't think he murdered Wozniak. If I'd thought he had, I would've stayed after him. But I didn't.'

'Thanks, Mr. McConnell. I'm sorry.'

'Yeah. Right.'

McConnell climbed into his Caddie and roared away into his fields.

I went back to my car, put my own gun back in its holster, and sat there, thinking. The smell of the fertilizer was stronger now. Rainbows floated around the dancing men in the mist from the rainbirds. The Caddie skidded to a stop behind the truck and McConnell got out, pissed off and shouting. One by one the men stopped jumping and went back to work. McConnell turned off the water and the rainbirds died.

Sitting there, I reread the LAPD incident report and found the reference again: Acting on information received from an unnamed informant, Officers Wozniak and Pike entered room #205 of the Islander Palms Motel.

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The more I sat there thinking, the more I thought about the unnamed informant, and what he might know. He or she probably didn't know anything, but when you've got nothing the way I had nothing, a long shot starts to look pretty good.

I went back through the rest of my notes and found Woz-niak's widow. Paulette Renfro.

Maybe Wbzniak talked about his work to his wife, and maybe she knew something about the informant. Maybe she knew something about Harvey Krantz, and how the Leonard DeVille file had come to be missing.

You look for connections.

I started my car, pulled in a wide circle, and drove back toward the highway.

Behind me, the sod had already begun to bake in the afternoon heat. Steam rose from the ground like a fog from hell.

29

You're getting close to Palm Springs when you see the dinosaurs.

Driving through the Banning Pass, a hundred miles east of L.A. where the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains pinch together to form a gateway to the high deserts of the Coachella Valley, you emerge into the Morongo Indian Reservation. A towering apatosaur and tyrannosaurus rex stand just off the freeway, built there by some sun-stricken desert genius long before Michael Crichton created Jurassic Park. Years ago, they were the only thing out here, monstrous full-sized re-creations standing in the desert heat as if they were frozen in time and place. You could pay a dime and walk around them, and maybe have your picture taken to send to all

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the folks back home in Virginia. Look, Ma, here we are in California. The dinosaurs have been there for years, but drunks and hopheads still stumble into the bars down in Cabazon, swearing they've seen monsters in the desert.

A few miles past the dinosaurs, I left the freeway and followed the state highway along the foot of the San Jacintos into Palm Springs.

During the winter months, Palm Springs is alive with tourists and weekenders and snowbirds come down from Canada to escape the cold. But in the middle of June with temperatures hovering at one hundred twenty degrees the town is barely breathing, its pulse undetectable as it wilts in the heat like some run-over animal waiting on the side of the road to die. The tourists are gone, and only the suicidal venture out during the day.

I stopped in a tee-shirt shop to buy a map of the area, looked up Paulette Renfro's address, then made my way straight north across the desert, one moment with dinosaurs and Indians, the next passing the science-fiction weirdness of hundreds of sleek, computer-designed windmills, their great flimsy blades rotating in slow motion to steal energy from the wind.