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"I think that's how it's going to go down."
"You didn't answer my question."
He took a swizzle stick off his dashboard and put it in his mouth. A neutral ground with palm trees on it streamed past his window. "I can't see Jerry Ace getting taken down by pukes. Not like this, anyway. Maybe if he got capped—"
"Why would he be down by the Desire?"
"He dug R&B. He was a paratrooper. He thought he had magic painted on him . . . Dave, don't try to make sense out of it. This city's in flames. You just can't see them."
Jerry Joe's blue Buick had already been towed to the pound. A uniformed cop opened the iron gate for us and walked with us past a row of impounded cars to the back of the lot. The Buick was parked against a brick wall, its trunk sprung, its dashboard ripped out, the glove box rifled, the leather door panels pried loose, the stereo speakers gouged with screwdrivers out of the headliner. A strip of torn yellow crime scene tape was tangled around one wheel, flapping in the wind.
"Another half hour and they would have had the engine off the mounts," Clete said.
"How do you read it?" I said.
"A gang of street rats got to it after he was dead."
"It looks like they had him made for a mule."
"The side panels? Yeah. Which means they didn't know who he was."
"But they wouldn't have hung around to strip the car if they'd killed him, would they?" I said.
"No, their consciences were clean. You hook them up, that's what they'll tell you. Just a harmless night out, looting a dead man's car. I think I'm going to move to East Los Angeles," he said.
We went to the District and caught the scene investigator at his desk. He was a blond, tall, blade-faced man named Cramer who wore a sky blue sports coat and white shirt and dark tie with a tiny gold pistol and chain fastened to it. The erectness of his posture in the chair distracted the eye from his paunch and concave chest and the patina of nicotine on his fingers.
"Do we have anybody in custody? No. Do we have any suspects? Yeah. Every gangbanger in that neighborhood," he said.
"I think it was a hit," I said.
"You think a hit?" he said.
"Maybe Jerry Joe was going to dime some people, contractors lining up at the trough in Baton Rouge," I said.
"You used to be at the First District, right?"
"Right."
"Tell me when I say something that sounds wrong—a white guy down by the Desire at night isn't looking to be shark meat."
"Come on, Cramer. Kids aren't going to kill a guy and peel the car with the body lying on the street," I said.
"Maybe they didn't know they'd killed him. You think of that?"
"I think you're shit-canning the investigation," I said.
"I punched in at four this morning. A black kid took a shot at another kid in the Desire. He missed. He killed a three-month-old baby instead. Short Boy Jerry was a mutt. You asking me I got priorities? Fucking 'A' I do."
His phone rang. He picked it up, then hit the "hold" button.
"Y'all get a cup of coffee, give me ten minutes," he said.
Clete and I walked down the street and ate a hot dog at a counter where we had to stand, then went back to the District headquarters. Cramer scratched his forehead and looked at a yellow legal pad on his blotter.
"That was the M.E. called," he said. "Short Boy Jerry had gravel and grains of concrete in his scalp, but it was from a fall, not a blow. There were pieces of leather in the wounds around his eyes, probably from gloves the hitter was wearing or a blackjack. Death was caused by a broken rib getting shoved into the heart."
He lit a cigarette and put the paper match carefully in the ashtray with two fingers, his eyes veiled.
