James Edward Washington wanted to chill with Ray for a while, so he stayed, and I walked out to my car, making a big deal out of taking off my jacket so that I could look up and down the street and across the intersections. Joe Pike drives an immaculate red Jeep Cherokee, and I was hoping to spot him or the blue sedan, but I saw neither. Of course, maybe they weren't there. Maybe the blue sedan hadn't really been following me and I was making a big deal with the jacket for nothing. Elvis Cole, Existential Detective. On the other hand, maybe the guys in the blue sedan were better than me and I wasn't good enough to spot them. Not.
I climbed the ramp to the I-10 freeway and went west, changing lanes to avoid slower traffic and speeding up when the traffic allowed and trying to play it normal. Just another Angeleno in the system. It paid off. A quarter mile past the La Brea exit I spotted the blue sedan hiding on the far side of a Ryder moving van, two lanes over. The guy with the Dodgers cap was still driving and the guy with the butch cut was still riding shotgun.
I took the La Cienega exit and went north, timing the lights to get a better view, but always just missing. They were good. Always three or four cars back, always with plenty of separation, and they didn't seem worried that they'd lose me. That meant they knew they could always pick me up again, or that they were working with a second car. Cops always use a second car.
La Cienega is four lanes, but Caltrans was at it again, and as La Cienega approached Pico, the two northbound lanes became one. There's a 20/20 Video in a large shopping center on the northeast corner, and the closer I got to the 20/20, the slower I drove. By the time I cleared the work in the intersection, a guy behind me in a Toyota 4x4 had had enough and roared past, giving me the finger. I stayed in the right lane as I crossed Pico, and the remaining two cars behind me turned. Then there was just me and the blue sedan. The driver swung right, making the turn with the two other cars as if they had never intended anything else, and that's when I picked up the slack car. Floyd Riggens was driving his dark brown sedan two cars back, sitting in traffic behind a couple of guys on mopeds. My, my.
I stayed north on La Cienega and three blocks later the blue sedan sat at a side street ahead of me, waiting. As soon as they made the turn onto Pico they must've punched it like an F-16 going into afterburner, then swung north on a parallel side street to come in ahead of me. Floyd would've radioed that he still had me in sight, and that we were proceeding northbound, and that's how they'd know where to wait. Floyd hung back, and after I passed, the blue sedan pulled in behind me again. Right where I wanted them.
I turned east on Beverly, then dropped down Fairfax past CBS Television City to the Farmer's Market. The Market is a loose collection of buildings surrounded on all sides by parking lots used mostly by tour buses and people from Utah, come to gawk at CBS.
I turned into the north lot and made my way past the buses and about a million empty parking spots toward the east lot. Most of the traffic stays in the north lot, but if you want to get from the north lot to the east, you have to funnel through a cramped drive that runs between a couple of buildings where people sell papayas and framed pictures of Pat Sajak. It's narrow and it's cramped and it's lousy when you're here on a Saturday and the place is jammed with tourists, but it's ideal for a private eye looking to spring an ambush.
When I was clear of the little drive, I pulled a quick reverse and backed my car behind a flower truck. A teenaged girl in a white Volkswagen Rabbit came through the gap after me, and, a few seconds later, the blue sedan followed. It came through at a creep, the guy in the passenger seat pointing to the south and the driver sitting high to see what he was pointing at. Whatever he saw he didn't like it, because he made an angry gesture and looked away and that's when they saw me. I jumped the Corvette into their path and got out of the car with my hands clear so they could see I had no gun. The kid with the butch bounced out and started yelling into a handi-talkie and the Hispanic guy was running toward me with his badge in one hand and a Browning 9mm in the other. Floyd Riggens was roaring toward us from the far end of the lot. Thurman wasn't with him. Thurman wasn't anywhere around.
The Hispanic guy yelled, "Get your hands up. Out and away from your body." When the guns come out there's always a lot of yelling.
The guy with the butch ran over and patted me down with his free hand. I made him for Pinkworth. The other guy for Garda. While Pinkworth did the shakedown, some of the people from the tour buses began to gather on the walk and look at us. Most of the men were in Bermuda shorts and most of the women were in summer-weight pant suits and just about everyone held a camera. Tourists. They stood in a little group as they watched, and a fat kid with glasses and a DES MOINES sweatshirt said, "Hey, neat." Maybe they thought we were the CBS version of the Universal stunt show.
Garcia said, "Jesus Christ, we've got a goddamned crowd."
I smiled at him. "My fans."
Pinkworth looked nervous and lowered his gun like someone might see it and tell. Garcia lowered his, too.
Riggens's car screeched to a stop and he kicked open the door. His face was flushed and he looked angry. He also looked drunk. "Stay the fuck away from my wife."
Garcia yelled, "Floyd," but Floyd wasn't listening. He took two long steps forward, then lunged toward me with his body sort of cocked to the side like he was going to throw a haymaker and knock me into the next time zone.
He swung, and I stepped outside of it and snapped a high roundhouse kick into the side of his head that knocked him over sideways.
The fat kid said, "Look at that!" and the fat kid's father aimed a Sony video camera at us.
When Riggens fell, Garcia's gun came up and Pinkworth started forward, and that's when Joe Pike reared up from behind their car, snapped the slide on a 12-gauge Ithaca riot gun, and said, "Don't."
Garcia and Pinkworth froze. They spread their fingers off their pistol grips, showing they were out of it.
The crowd went, "Ooo." Some show, all right.
Joe Pike stands six-one and weighs maybe one-ninety, and he's got large red arrows tattooed on the outside of each deltoid, souvenirs from his days as a Force Recon Marine in Vietnam. He was wearing faded blue jeans and Nike running shoes and a plain gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and government-issue sunglasses. Angle the sun on him just right, and sometimes the tattoos seem to glow. I think Pike calls it his apparition look.
I said, "Gee, and I thought you'd got lost in traffic."
Pike's mouth twitched. He doesn't smile, but sometimes he'll twitch. You get a twitch out of Pike, he's gotta be dying on the inside. In tears, he's gotta be.
I took Garcia's and Pinkworth's guns, and Pike circled the blue sedan, finding a better angle to cover Riggens. When he moved, he seemed to glide, as if he were flowing over the surface of the earth, moving as a panther might move. To move was to stalk. I'd never seen him move any other way.
Garcia said, "Put down that goddamned gun. We're LAPD officers, goddamn it."
Pike's shotgun didn't waver. An older woman with a lime green sun hat and a purse the size of a mailbag looked at the other tourists and said, "Does the bus leave after this?"
I pulled Riggens's gun and then I went back to Pinkworth and Garcia and checked their IDs. Pink-worth said, "You're marked fuck for this, asshole. You're going down hard."
"Uh-huh."
Riggens moaned and sort of turned onto his side. His head was bleeding where it had bounced on the tarmac, but it didn't look bad. I took the clips out of the three police guns, tossed them into the blue sedan's backseat, then went back to Riggens. "Let me see."
Riggens pushed my hand off and tried to crab away, but he didn't do much more than flop onto his back. "Fuck you."
Pinkworth said, "You're in a world of shit. You just assaulted a Los Angeles police officer."
I said, "Call it in and let's go to the station. Maybe they'll give Riggens a Breathalyzer while you guys are booking me." You could smell it on him a block away.
Garcia said, "Quiet, Pink."
A green four-door sedan identical to the other two cop sedans came toward us across the lot. Riggens was still trying to get up when the green car pulled in behind him and a tall guy with short gray hair got out. He was wearing chino slacks and a striped short-sleeve shirt tucked neatly into his pants and short-topped Redwing trail shoes. He was tanned dark, like he spent a lot of time in the sun, and his face was lined. I made him for his mid-forties, but he could've been older. He looked at Riggens, then the two cops by the blue sedan, and then at Joe Pike. He wasn't upset and he wasn't excited, like he knew what he'd find when he got here and, when he got here, he knew that he could handle it. When he saw Joe Pike he said, "I didn't know you were in on this."
Pike nodded once.
I gave them surprised. "You guys know each other?"
Pike said, "Eric Dees."
Eric Dees looked at me, then looked back at Pike. "Pike and I rode a black-and-white together for a couple of months maybe a million years ago." Pike had been a uniformed LAPD officer when I'd met him. "Put away the shotgun, Joe. It's over, now. No one's going to drop the hammer."
Pike lowered the shotgun.
Pinkworth craned around and stared at Pike. 'This sonofabitch is Joe Pike? The Joe Pike?" Pike had worn the uniform for almost three years, but it hadn't ended well.
Riggens said, "Who?" He was still having trouble on the ground.
Dees said, "Sure. You've just been jumped by the best."
Pinkworth glowered at Pike like he'd been wanting to glower at him for a long time. "Well, fuck him."
Joe's head sort of whirred five degrees to line up on Pinkworth and Pinkworth's glower wavered. There is a machine-like quality to Joe, as if he had tuned his body the way he might tune his Jeep, and, as the Jeep was perfectly tuned, so was his body. It was easy to imagine him doing a thousand pushups or running a hundred miles, as if his body were an instrument of his mind, as if his mind were a well of limitless resource and unimaginable strength. If the mind said start, the body would start. When the mind said stop, the body would stop, and whatever it would do, it would do with precision and exactness.
Dees said, "Long time, Joe. How's it going?"
Pike's head whirred back and he made a kind of head shrug.
"Talkative, as always." Dees looked at the people from Des Moines. "Pink, move those people along. We don't need a crowd." Pinkworth gave me tough, then pulled out his badge and sauntered over to the crowd. The fat kid's father didn't want to move along and made a deal out of it. Dees turned back to me. "You're this close to getting stepped on for obstruction and for impersonating an officer, Cole. We drop the hammer, your license is history."
I said, "What's your connection with Akeem D'Muere and the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys?"
Dees blinked once, then made a little smile, like maybe he wasn't smiling at me, but at something he was thinking. "That's an official police investigation. That's what I'm telling you to stay away from. I'm also telling you to stay the hell out of Mark Thurman's personal life. You fuck with my people, you're fucking with me, and you don't want to do that. I'm a bad guy to fuck with."
Riggens made a sort of a coughing sound, then sat up, squinted at me, and said, "I'm gonna clean your ass, you fuck." He got most of his feet under himself but then the feet slipped out and he sort of stumbled backwards until he rammed his head into the green sedan's left front wheel with a thunk. He grabbed at his head and said, "Jesus."
Dees stared hard at me for another moment, then went to Riggens. "That's enough, Floyd."
Floyd said, "He hit me, Eric. The fuck's takin' the ride." There was blood on Riggens's face.
Dees bunched his fingers into Riggens's shirt and gave a single hard jerk that almost pulled Riggens off the ground and popped his head back against the sedan. "No one's going in, Floyd."
Riggens got up, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed at his head. The handkerchief came back red. "Shit."
I said, "Better get some ice."
"Fuck you."
Dees made a little hand move at Garcia. "Pete, take Floyd over there and get some ice."
Floyd said, "I don't need any goddamn ice. I'm fine."
Dees said, "You don't look fine. You look like a lush who got outclassed." When he said it his voice was hard and commanding and Floyd Riggens jerked sideways as if he had been hit with a cattle prod. Garcia went over to him and took him by the arm. Floyd shook his hand off but followed him into the Market.
Joe Pike said, "Elite."
Eric Dees's face went hard. "They're good, Joe. They didn't cut and walk away."
Pike's head whirred back to lock onto Eric Dees.
I said, 'That's the second time I've seen Riggens and the second time I've seen him drunk Your people always get shitfaced on duty?"
Dees came close to me. He was a little bit taller than me, and wider, and maybe six or eight years older. He reminded me of a couple of senior NCOs that I had known in the Army, men who were used to leading men and taking care of men and exercising authority over men. He said, "I take care of my people, asshole. You'd better worry about taking care of you."
Joe Pike said, "Easy, Eric."
Eric Dees said, "Easy what, Joe?" He looked back at me. "This is your wake-up call, and you're only going to get one. The little girl's problems with Mark are going to be solved. She's not going to need you anymore. That means you're off the board."
"Is that why four LAPD officers have nothing better to do than follow me around?"
"We followed you to talk to you. It was either talk to you or kill you."
"I'm shaking, Dees." The detective plays it tough. "What did Akeem D'Muere have to do with Lewis Washington's death?"
When I said Lewis Washington, Dees's eyes went hard and I wondered if I'd pushed too hard. "I'm trying to play square with you, Cole. Maybe because of Joe, or maybe because I'm a square guy, but if you're not smart enough to listen, there are other ways I can solve the problem."
"Where's Mark Thurman? You give him the day off?"
Dees looked at the ground like he was trying to think of the magic word, and then Pinkworth came back with Riggens and Garcia. As soon as Pinkworth turned away, the crowd came back. The fat kid's father was smiling. Riggens got into his sedan and Pinkworth and Garcia went back to the blue. Dees looked up at me with eyes that were profoundly tired. "You're not helping the girl, Cole. You think you are, but you're not."
"Maybe she has nothing to do with it anymore. Maybe it's larger than her. Maybe it's about Lewis Washington and Akeem D'Muere and why five LAPD officers are so scared of this that they're living in my shorts."
Dees nodded. Like he knew it was coming, but he wasn't especially glad to see it arrive. "It's your call, bubba."
Then he went back to his car and drove away.
Riggens cranked his sedan and took off after him with a lot of tire squealing. Garcia fired up the blue, and as they pulled out after Riggens, Pinkworth gave me the finger. When he gave me the finger the fat kid in the DES MOINES sweatshirt laughed and shook his dad's arm so that his dad would see.
A Kodak moment.