Ruiz rolled her eyes.
Kray walked past with a sour look on his face. “Can’t you take that somewhere else, Ruiz? Why should the rest of us have to put up with that filthy stink?”
Ruiz looked at him. “As much time as you spend with your head up your ass, Kray, I’d think you’d be used to the smell by now.”
Yamoto, standing by the coffeemaker, choked back a laugh and dodged the snake eyes his partner shot him.
“Bitch,” Kray muttered under his breath.
“Say that a little louder,” Ruiz taunted. “So I can file a harassment complaint against you. You can go through sensitivity training again. How many times would that be?”
Kray made a face and mimicked her like he was a five-year-old child.
Parker came into the squad, took three strides into the room, and was knocked back by the smell. When he saw Mr. Jones sitting in his chair, he turned a piercing look on Ruiz.
She smiled like a sly cat and said, “Touché.”
“I think I’ve got the car,” Parker said, ignoring her. “I’ve got to call an ADA for a warrant. If we’re lucky, we’ll have prints by noon.”
“Where was it?” Ruiz asked.
“Chinatown. Doesn’t make any sense now, but it’s going to. I can feel it.”
The anticipation was like a coffee buzz, like speed. He was moving faster, talking faster, thinking faster. The building high was almost better than sex.
“I love it when it all comes together,” he said. He had run home from his encounter at Chen’s Fish Market and changed suits. He wasn’t about to put his ass in his own chair now. He went to Kray’s desk and used the phone without asking, as if Kray weren’t sitting right there.
“How’s it going, Mr. Jones?” he asked as he waited for someone to pick up on the other end of his call.
“I’m very happy. You all are extremely magnimonious with your hospitality.”
“Ms. Ruiz there treating you well?”
“She was kind enough to bring me coffee.”
“We’ll have to mark that on the calendar,” Parker said. “She’s never that nice to me.”
“Must be your cologne,” Kray grumbled.
“I don’t need cologne,” Parker said. “I smell like a fresh spring morning. But you could change that ugly shirt, cracker. How many days you been stewing in that thing? Yamoto, how many days has he been wearing that shirt?”
“Too many.”
Scowling, Kray made a swipe at the telephone receiver. “Get off my goddam phone, Parker.”
“Fuck you— No! Not you, sweetheart!” He reached out and knocked one of Kray’s messy piles of unfinished paperwork over the edge of the desk and mouthed the word “asshole” at Kray. “It’s Kev Parker. Is this the astoundingly lovely Mavis Graves?”
Mavis Graves was sixty-three with upper arms the size of canned hams, but every lady loved a compliment.
“Mavis, doll, I need to speak to Langfield about a warrant. Is he in yet?”
Stevie Wonder came over the phone line. “My Cherie Amour.”
Parker pointed a finger at Ruiz. “Did my court order for Lowell’s safe-deposit box come through?”
“Not yet.”
“Langfield. What do you need, Parker?”
“I need a warrant to search a car I believe may have been used to flee an assault.”
“You believe?”
“A car matching the description was used for a getaway. I have a partial plate from a witness, and new damage to a taillight. The car leaving the scene got clipped by a van and broke a taillight.”
“Where’s the car? Did you find it abandoned?”
“No. The car’s in Chinatown. It belongs to one pissed-off lady who isn’t being very forthcoming with me.”
“What does she say about the car?”
“That the car was never used yesterday, and the taillight got broken in a parking lot in Beverly Hills.”
“You have a suspect? Is she a suspect?”
“The woman isn’t a suspect, but I think she knows more than she’s saying. If I can get prints and put my suspect in the car . . .”
“So you’re fishing?”
“It’s the car.”
“There aren’t any other cars that match that description in LA?”
Parker heaved a sigh. “Whose side are you on, Langfield?”
“Mine. I’m not getting you a warrant you can only justify after you’ve done the search. The evidence will never make it past a judge. Can you connect your perp to this woman?”
“Not yet.”
“So you’re nowhere.”
“I have the car, the damage to the car, the partial plate—”
“You’ve got nothing. You can’t even sit and look at the car with what you’ve got.”
“Well, thanks for pissing all over my parade,” Parker said, rubbing at his temple. “You could have come through on this, Langfield. Judge Weitz would have signed off—”
“Judge Weitz is senile. I’m not bending rules for you, Parker. You’re the poster boy for what happens when cops cut corners. I won’t be a party—”
Parker tossed the receiver down on Kray’s desk. Langfield was still preaching.
“Prick,” Parker muttered, walking away, working to gather himself. He had to keep his eyes on the prize. He turned back, picked the receiver back up. “There’s paint marks on the damage to this car. If I can match the paint to the van that hit it—”
“You will have solved a traffic mishap. There’s still no reason to get inside the car.”
“That’s bullshit. It was leaving the scene of the crime!”
“Do this ass-backward and anything you find that could lead you to your perp is going to get thrown out because the search was no good. You want another one to take a walk because you—”
Parker threw the receiver down again. He walked out of the squad, went into the men’s room, and washed his face in cold water, then stood there holding his wrists under the faucet.
He stared at himself in the mirror, but he didn’t ask himself how long he was going to be made to pay for the crime of arrogance. He didn’t bother to go over the old ground that he’d been singled out as a scapegoat, and that it wasn’t fair.
He never offered excuses. What had happened had happened. Even if other people wouldn’t, he had to leave it in the past and own his present. He would find a way to get the car. He couldn’t waste time and energy being angry that it wasn’t a walk in the spring rain.
When he went back into the squad, Kray’s phone was still off the hook, and playing “Isn’t She Lovely.”
Captain Fuentes came out of his office and crooked a finger. “Kev? Can I see you in here?”
Parker followed him and closed the door behind him. “I didn’t do it. It’s not mine. And I swear she was nineteen.”
Fuentes, who was a good guy and had an easy sense of humor, didn’t laugh. He had soulful black eyes that seemed to carry the sorrows of the world when he was serious like this.
“You look like you’re about to tell me I have six weeks to live,” Parker said.
“I got a call a little while ago. RHD is taking your homicide.”
Parker shook his head. The rage seemed to start boiling in his feet and pushed its way upward. This was worse than being told he had six weeks to live. In six weeks’ time he at least had the chance to try to save himself. He was losing his case, today, now, not six weeks from today. The first case he’d had in years that smelled big. The kind of case a detective made his chops on—or rode back out of purgatory.
“No,” he said. “Not Lowell.”
“There’s nothing I can do, Kev.”
“Did they give any explanation?” In his mind’s eye he could picture the scene Diane had described to him over the phone. Bradley Kyle and his partner, Moose Roddick, and Tony Giradello with their heads together.