Sanchez and I sat in my Mustang outside Harbor Junior High in Anaheim. A low vault of cobalt gray clouds hung low in the sky. We were eating donuts and drinking Diet Pepsis, the staples of surveillance. In a few minutes school would be out.
“You ever going to get a new car?” asked Sanchez, sipping his diet soda with one hand, and working on a glazed with the other.
“No.”
“How about some air conditioning?”
“How much is air conditioning?”
“Eight, nine hundred bucks.”
“No.”
We waited some more. I think I dozed. I felt an elbow in my rib, but might have dreamt it.
“You’re snoring.”
I sat up. “Not anymore.”
“Some detective you are.”
“You’re the one detecting,” I said. “I’m sleeping.”
“I bought the donuts, which means you’re on my time.”
“Fine,” I said. “You have a picture of the kid?”
Sanchez removed from his shirt pocket a folded up page torn from a school yearbook. He pointed to a goofy-looking kid with big ears. “He’s our man.”
“What’s his name?”
“Richard.”
We drank some more Diet Pepsi. Occasionally, a cold wind rocked the Mustang, whistling through the cracked windows.
Sanchez dozed.
Later, I elbowed him, pointing.
Richard had emerged from the school’s central hallway with a pack of kids. The pack boarded a waiting bus. We gave pursuit. Along the way, we watched Richard shove a red headed kid’s face into the bus’s rear window. Perhaps amplified by the glass, the freckles along his forehead were huge. Judging by the way that the redhead resigned himself to his fate, I surmised this was a daily routine.
“I really don’t like this kid Richard,” said Sanchez.
“Yup,” I said. “Then again, the other kid is red headed.”
“True.”
The bus dropped Richard off, along with a half dozen other kids. We followed Richard home from a safe distance. Along the way, we watched him turn over three trashcans and knock over a “For Sale By Owner” sign in front of a house.
Sanchez said, “I ought to bust his ass for vandalism.”
“You realize we’re trained investigators following a twelve-year-old kid.”
“Kid or no kid, he took part in a pre-meditated beating of a defenseless eleven-year-old. My defenseless eleven-year-old,” said Sanchez. “And I’m the only trained investigator here. You’re just a rent-a-dick.”
“Hey, we both fell asleep.”
The kid turned into an ugly white home, and promptly chased away an ugly orange cat off the wooden porch. He went inside. Sanchez pulled out a notebook and wrote something down.
“What are you doing?”
Sanchez checked his watch. “Noting the mark’s time of movements, assessing the daily routine.”
“Did you include abusing the redhead?”
Sanchez ignored me. When finished, he snapped the notebook shut. “Same time tomorrow, but this time we bring Jesus.”
“Good,” I said. “I could use some more ice cream.”