'Yeah. I guess you'd better give me your phone number.'
I gave her the card.
'I'll call you.'
'Okay.'
'You can't tell her, all right? If she knew, she wouldn't allow it.'
'I won't tell.'
'Our little secret.'
'That's right, Evie. Our little secret.'
I drove back down off the mountain, Palm Springs far in the distance, shimmering in the heat like a place that did not exist.
Man of Action
The cell was four feet wide by eight feet long by eight feet high. A seatless toilet and a lavatory stuck out from the cement wall like ceramic goiters, almost hidden behind the single bunk. Overhead, bright fluorescent lamps were secured behind steel grids so the suicidal couldn't electrocute themselves. The mattress was a special rayon material that could not be cut or torn, and the bed frame and mattress rack were spot-welded together. No screws, no bolts, no way to take anything apart. The single bunk made this cell the Presiden-
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tial Suite of the Parker Center jail, reserved for Hollywood celebrities, members of the media, and former police officers who had found their way to the wrong side of the bars.
Joe Pike lay on the bunk, waiting to be transferred to the Men's Central Jail, a facility ten minutes away that housed twenty-two thousand inmates. His hair was still damp from the lavatory bath he'd given himself after exercising, but he was thinking that he wanted to run, to feel the sun on his face and the movement of air and the sweat race down his chest. He wanted the peace of the effort, and the certain knowledge that it was a good thing to be doing. Not all acts brought with them the certainty of goodness, but running did.
The security gate at the end of the hall opened, and Krantz appeared on the other side of the bars. He was holding something.
Krantz stared at Pike for a long time before saying, 'I'm not here to question you. Don't worry about your lawyer.'
Pike wasn't worried.
'I've waited a long time for this, Joe. I'm enjoying it.' Joe. Like they were friends.
'You look bad, being wrong about Dersh.'
Pike spoke softly, forcing Krantz to come closer.
'I know. I feel bad about Dersh, but I've got the Feebs to share the blame. You hear Dersh's family already filed suit? Two brothers, his mother, and some sister he hadn't seen in twenty years. Bellying up to the trough.'
Pike wondered what was with Krantz, coming here to gloat.
'They're suing the city, the department, everybody. Bishop and the chief can't fire me without it looking like an admission that the department did something wrong, so they're saying we just followed the FBI's lead.'
'They should win, Krantz. You're responsible.'
'Maybe so, but they're suing you, too. You pulled the trigger.'
Pike didn't answer that.
Krantz shrugged. 'But you're right. I look bad. A year from now when everything's calmed down, that's it for me. They'll ship me out to one of the divisions. That's okay. I've got the
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twenty-five in. I might even make thirty if I can't scare up something better.'
'Why are you here, Krantz? Because I humiliated you?'
Krantz turned red. Pike could tell that he was trying not to, but there it was.
'I didn't ruin you, Krantz. You took care of that yourself. People like you never understand that.'
Krantz seemed to think about that, then shrugged. 'For the humiliation, yes, but also because you deserve to be here. You murdered Wozniak and got away with it. But now you're here, and I like seeing it.'
Pike sat up. 'I didn't murder Woz.'
'You were right in with him on the burglaries. You knew I was going to nail him, and you knew I would get you, too. You were a chickenshit, Pike, and you decided to take out Wozniak because you're an amoral, homicidal lunatic who doesn't think twice about snuffing out a human life. Which is about as much thought as you gave to Dersh.'
'All the time you spent investigating, and that's what you came up with. You really think I murdered Woz in that room to keep him quiet?'
Krantz smiled. 'I don't think you killed him because you thought he'd give you up, Pike. I think you killed him because you wanted his wife.'
Pike stared.
'You had something going with her, didn't you?'
Pike swung his feet off the bunk. 'You don't know what you're talking about.'
Krantz smiled. 'Like your asshole friend says, I'm a detective. I detected. I was watching her, Pike. I saw you with her.'
'You're wrong about that, and you're wrong about Dersh, too. You're wrong about everything.'
Krantz nodded, agreeable. 'If you've got an alibi, bring it out. If you can prove to me that you didn't do Dersh, I'll personally ask Branford to drop the charges.'
'You know there's nothing.'
'There's nothing because you did it, Pike. We've got you on tape casing his house. We've got the old lady picking you
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out of the line. We've got the residue results and your relationship with the girl. We've got this.'
Krantz showed Pike what he was carrying. It was a revolver wrapped in plastic.
'This is a .357 magnum. SID matches it with the bullet that killed Dersh. It's the murder weapon, Pike.'
Joe didn't say anything.
'It's a clean gun. No prints, and all the numbers have been burned off, so we can't trace it. But we recovered it in the water off Santa Monica exactly where you said you talked with the girl. That puts you with this gun.'
Pike stared at the plastic bag, and then at Krantz, wondering at the coincidence of how the murder weapon turned up at the very place where he admitted to being.
'Think about it, Krantz. Why would I admit to being there if that's where I threw the gun?'
'Because someone saw you. I think you went there to ditch the gun, and did, but then someone saw you. I didn't believe you about the girl at first, but maybe you were telling the truth about that part. Maybe she saw you there, and you were worried we'd find her and catch you in a lie if you denied it, so you tried to cover yourself.'
Pike looked at the plastic bag again. He knew that cops often showed things to suspects and lied about what they were to try to elicit a confession.
'Is this bullshit?'
Krantz smiled again, calm and confident, and in an odd way Pike found it warm. 'No bullshit. You can ask Bauman. The DA's filling him in on it right now. I've got you, Joe. I couldn't make the case with Wozniak, but this time I've
