“Good.” Gay smiled at him as he waived her past. Stupid cops, not telling Danny, how dumb.
She used her clicker to open the gate for tenant parking, found her spot and parked. At her condo, she saw the door next door was open. She clenched her fists, tensed. She didn’t like the thought of police in Margo’s home. She wasn’t a criminal.
“Yo.” Gay recognized Bruce Kenyon’s voice. He must’ve come in right behind her and parked in the guest parking. She turned and waited. “So, what’s the deal?” he said. “The guy at the gate says there’s cops here to see Margo.”
“I don’t know anything about it.” Gay sighed, she didn’t like Margo’s ex. She didn’t know anybody who did.
Bruce walked into Margo’s apartment without knocking. Gay followed. They were in the living room, making themselves at home. The Hispanic one sitting in one of the rattan chairs had his hair pulled back into a ponytail. The other one, the albino, was sprawled out on the sofa. Gay could spot a cop in a crowd any day, but these two would’ve fooled her.
“Mr. Kenyon.” The one in the chair got up, hand extended to Bruce, but it was the albino on the couch who didn’t get up that caught Gay’s attention. He seemed too relaxed, too at ease, as if he had every right to be where he was, as if he were sitting in his own home, in his own living room. She wondered if anything ever fazed him.
“How’d you get in?” Bruce took the offered hand, shook it. Gay saw the look on Bruce’s face. Contempt.
“Alvarez, Jesse Alvarez. Homicide, Long Beach. That’s my partner, Abel Norton on the divan.”
“I asked how you got in,” Bruce said again, voice tough, like he was brow beating a witness on the stand. Lawyers, Gay didn’t like them, never had.
“Door wasn’t locked.” Norton made no move to get up. The albino had shoulder length white hair, whiter skin and pale grey eyes. A pair of hippy cops.
“You have a warrant?” Bruce said.
“We need one?” Norton shifted on the sofa, caught Gay’s eyes, smiled. It was sincere.
“If you don’t, you’re gonna be looking for a new job.” Bruce had a sneer in his voice now.
“Relax, counselor.” Alvarez tapped his chest, indicating he had the warrant in his inside coat pocket. “We’re covered. As we were when we came in the other day and looked around.”
“You were here Monday,” Gay cut in, “but you didn’t go in her house.”
“We came back Wednesday, about 2:00, 2:30, something like that,” Alvarez said.
That figured, she thought, Danny’s day off. He’d have told her, had he known. “We were at the movies, me and the girls. My daughter and Jasmine.”
“Say again,” Norton said from the sofa. He looked so relaxed in his rumpled cord sportcoat, brown over a plain yellow shirt and faded brown Dockers. The other one seemed uptight in a three piece suit.
“You got a hearing problem?” Bruce said, confrontational. He was a big man, probably a bully when he was in school, Gay thought.
“Sorry,” Norton said. “We thought your wife and daughter had disappeared. Now I hear your daughter is still around and I’m curious.”
“Nobody’s disappeared.” Gay clenched her fists again. None of the men noticed. “It’s Spring Break, so Margo doesn’t have any classes. She’s spending the holiday up in Big Bear. Jazz is staying with me.”
“Doing what?” Alvarez wanted to know.
“She’s on a writer’s retreat.”
“Boy, you guys are stupid!” Bruce Kenyon said. But Gay knew he hadn’t known where Margo was either. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have shown up at her doorstep like he did every Saturday afternoon to annoy her by taking his daughter for whatever was left of the day. Had he known she wasn’t home and Jazz was staying next door, he wouldn’t have bothered.
“Don’t fuck with us.” Norton smiled when he said it. The effect was ghostly.
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Bruce said.
“I think he’s serious,” Alvarez said to Bruce.
“Fujimori raped that little girl two weeks after you got him off,” Norton said. “How’d you feel about that?”
“The DA didn’t have a case.”
“Yeah, well you lost on the second one.”
“Can’t win ’em all.”
“He got paroled last month.”
“And you guys let him get killed. Some police force.”
“That’s it.” Norton was up quicker than Gay thought a man could move. He grabbed Kenyon by the arm, spun him around, cuffed him and slammed him face down on the sofa he’d just vacated. “Frisk him!”
“Pleasure.” Alvarez ran his hands over Bruce, checking everywhere. He wasn’t gentle. When he finished, he pulled him up by his shirt collar, turned him and set him down on the sofa, hands behind his back.
“You guys are off base here.” Bruce didn’t seem so arrogant anymore.
“Maybe. But we got a couple witnesses say you were in a car parked outside when Fujimori was shot. Everyone knows how crazy your wife was about him getting out,” Norton said.
“I was following Margo. She went in the store after Frankie. I didn’t have anything to do with him getting shot. Besides, she’s the one who wants the bastard put away, not me. I’m his lawyer for Christ’s sake.”
“Your wife didn’t take off before the police showed up. You did. You haven’t been cooperating with us, she has,” Alvarez said.
“Did she tell you I was there? Is she the one?”
“Get him out of here,” Norton said.
“Get up!” Alvarez grabbed Bruce by the arm, jerked him off the sofa, dragged him toward the door.
“I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” He was whining. “I didn’t have any reason to talk to the cops. I was just trying to catch Margo harassing Frankie, so I could get a restraining order against her.”
“You make me sick.” Norton turned as Alvarez led Kenyon away.
“He’s a jerk,” Gay said. “But he didn’t kill anyone.”
“I know,” Norton said. “But he was there.”
“How’d you ever get a judge to sign off on an arrest warrant?”
“He’s a good lawyer, but he’s a prick. Winning isn’t good enough, he’s gotta rub your nose in it. That’s never a good strategy, because someday the attorney you creamed in court, then ridiculed in the press, might become a judge.”
“You didn’t read him his rights.”
“What for? He’ll be out by this afternoon. Still, I enjoyed it.”
“So did I,” Gay said. “Thank you for letting me be here.”
“No problem. Thank you for clearing up the whereabouts of Mrs. Kenyon for us.
“Glad to be of service.”
“Appreciate it.” The albino smiled at her again, tapped his forehead in a two fingered salute. Then he left.
Jazz had seen her dad go into the condo with Gay. She was afraid he was telling the police her mom was unfit to be a mother. Yeah, that’s what he was doing. They were gonna take her away and make her go and live with him. She hated that he’d tried to get her in court, because he didn’t want her, not really. He only wanted to hurt her mom. He hated her mom. How could he be so cruel?
They were coming out. Her dad and one of the cops. Good, they were leaving. She sighed. Then her dad looked right up at her. She could feel his eyes, like he was looking deep into her. Any second he could come charging across the lawn, then up the steps after her. She had to get out. Now.
She took her fingers away from the blinds and ran to the door. She had it open in a flash.
“Jasmine!” her dad called out.
She was outside now, charging for the staircase. Holding onto the rail, she flew down the steps, skipping every other one.
“Jasmine!” her dad yelled out again.
