“ Sure, anything.” The guard beamed.
“ You got an occupant here, a Jim Monday. You noticed anything unusual about him?”
“ One thirteen? Nice guy, not much trouble, but like all the rest, he thinks I work for him. Wants me to keep an eye out for his place because he’s gone a lot.”
“ Why do you think that is?” Washington knew that it was because he lived somewhere else. Monday only used the condo when he felt like spending a few days at the beach.
“ Gee, I dunno.”
“ Think he might be using it as a hidy hole? In case we get too close, or in case one of his drug deals goes bad?”
“ I knew there was something funny about him,” the guard said.
“ You know, Bill, can I call you Bill?” Washington read the name tag over the guard’s breast pocket.
“ Sure.”
“ The problem with people like him is the American Civil Liberties Union.”
“ I hate them,” the guard said.
“ They want to undo every bust we make.”
“ They’re all commies,” the guard said.
“ Ain’t it the truth. They cause us nothing but problems. No matter how dirty someone is, we can never get a warrant.”
“ I couldn’t let you in even if I wanted. I don’t have the keys.”
“ I have a key. All I have to do now is get past you,” Washington smiled.
“ What are we waiting for?” the guard said. “This way.” The two policemen followed him around a walkway that led down to the beach and around to the ocean-front side of the condos. “There it is. Next to the pool,” the guard shouted back over his shoulder. In his enthusiasm he was almost running.
“ What a deal,” Washington said. “The ocean in front and the pool on the side. I can’t believe it.”
“ That I can believe,” Walker said in a hushed tone, so the guard couldn’t hear, “but what I can’t believe is how eager that dummy is to be part of a real cop operation. I bet he asks for our autographs on the way out.”
“ How do you want to do this?” the guard asked when the policemen caught up to him at Monday’s condo. He was panting like a faithful lapdog.
“ How about you unlock the door and we go in?” Washington tossed him the keys.
“ I can go in, too?”
“ I don’t see why not,” Washington said. “We have to stick together. That’s the way I see it.”
“ Yeah, me too.” The guard’s hands shook with anticipation as he opened the door. It was the last thing he ever did.
A 767 roared overhead, taking off from John Wayne Airport, but even the noise from its powerful jet engines couldn’t drown out the gunshots that exploded from the center of Jim Monday’s condo. The first shot took the security guard’s face apart as it lifted him up and threw him out of the doorway.
A wave crashed and the second shot smashed into Walker’s elbow, spinning him around like a ballerina, throwing him into the brick wall that was Hugh Washington. Their heads collided, skin and skulls smashing together in a dancing concert of frenzy and fear, sending the two men crashing to the ground in a silent fall, their struggles drowned out by the jet and the sea.
Hugh Washington was conscious of Walker’s heavy body on top of him. He had a pain in his ribs, where his partner’s holstered pistol dug into his side. He had a pain in his shoulder, where his left arm was wrenched behind his back. He had a pain in the right side of his face, where the back of Walker’s head had smashed into him. And he had a pain in his heart, because he hadn’t been ready for this. He had been so stupid, so careless.
He used his free right arm to roll out from under Walker’s bleeding body. He groaned as the pressure on his left arm was released and muscle and bone screamed relief as he grabbed for his weapon.
He wrapped scraped and bleeding fingers around the butt of the pistol, had it half way out of the holster, when out of the corner of his eyes he saw the blue barrel of a forty-five automatic come slicing through the bright sky and then everything went dark.
“ I know you can hear me, Washington, so stop playing like you’re asleep. I’m not going anywhere. I have as long as it takes.”
“ Head hurts.” Washington forced his eyes open, only to squint against the light. He raised a bandaged right hand to a bandaged forehead.
“ Nasty gash where you were clobbered, the hand’s only skinned.”
“ Where am I?” he whispered through a sore throat.
“ Hope Hospital, Costa Mesa, and lucky to be alive.”
“ Need water,” he rasped.
“ Are you okay?”
“ Need water.”
“ Can you talk?”
“ Not without water.”
“ What did you think you were doing?”
“ Come on Captain,” Washington said, “no water, no talk.”
“ Sometimes I wish you still worked for me and sometimes I’m glad you don’t.” Captain John Hart picked up a plastic glass, filled it from a plastic pitcher. “Now is one of the times that I’m glad you don’t.” He reached behind Washington’s head with his left hand, helped him up, offering him the water with his right.
Washington drank greedily.
“ Take it easy.”
“ Why?”
“ I don’t know, it’s what they say in the movies.”
He finished the water and Hart eased him back onto the pillow.
“ You know, Hugh, when I assigned you to a case, I always forgot about it.” John Hart brushed baby-fine hair out of his eyes. “You’re like a bulldog, once you get your teeth into something, you worry it until it gives up what you want.”
Washington grunted and stared into the man’s cool blue eyes. John Hart had always been an enigma to Washington. With his long hair, blue eyes and baby face, he looked more like a twenty-five year old college student than the forty-five year old captain of detectives that he was. He jogged five miles daily, but he smoked. He scorned religion, but believed in God. He loathed politicians, but loved politics. He wore his views, about everything from government to sport, on his sleeve, but nobody could get into his head.
“ Sometimes I like you, John and sometimes I don’t,” Washington said, mimicking his former boss. “I think this is going to be one of the times I don’t. Why don’t you just get it over with?”
“ I should lay into you, scream my head off. I should sink you so deep in jail that you’d never get out. Hell, I should shoot you myself. But I’m too sophisticated to scream. You haven’t broken any laws. And I got too much respect for what you once were to shoot you.”
Hugh Washington closed his eyes.
“ Are you listening to me?”
“ I’m listening.” He wanted to shut out the captain’s voice, but he couldn’t. He knew what was coming.
“ You got a security guard killed and your partner badly shot up.”
“ How is he?”
“ He’ll live, no thanks to you. What in the world did you think you were doing?”
Washington didn’t answer.
“ Good, don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know. You went to Monday’s house without a warrant or backup and Monday kills an innocent man and wounds your partner, not to mention putting you out of commission. Why am I not surprised?”
“ It wasn’t Monday,” Washington said.
“ Oh, who was it?”
“ I didn’t see.”
“ Then how do you know it wasn’t him?”
