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Reed said, “Mixed martial is fine but an army against you changes everything.”
Milo said, “Okay, onward. Moe, you’ve had contact with Hoffgarden’s landlady so you do the victim’s warrant and you and Alicia handle the toss. Sean will stay on the phone search and I’ll be here until I start to feel useless.”
“Got it, L.T.”
The two of them left.
Milo said, “Let’s take a stretch.”
—
We walked past the pop-up, got back on the footpath until it ended at a surprise: a copse of young sycamores ranging from two feet of tender growth to trees six feet tall.
Scattered planting, not a human intervention. Sycamores are native trees, fast growing, always primed for a reboot. A couple more seasons and they’d be towering.
Ten to twenty years.
Milo stood with his back to the mini-grove, pulled out a panatela, lit up, blew perfectly circular smoke rings.
I said, “The kids think robbery. You’re not buying no link to Cordi.”
“There’s gotta be something,” he said. “Don’t know what it is, but stuff just doesn’t happen.”
I wondered about that. A man with temper issues like Tyler Hoffgarden had plenty of opportunities for getting into trouble.
My jacket pocket vibrated; my turn to get a text. Superior Court judge Wendy Abrahamson.
Milo said, “You need to get that?”
“Eventually.” I pocketed the phone.
“Any thoughts about Hoffgarden?”
“Not yet,” I said. “His phone records could tell you a lot.”
He crossed his fingers. “Thanks for that and thanks for coming. Probably a waste of your time but I know you like to look at scenes.”
“I do.”
“I’ll walk you back. Keep you posted.”
CHAPTER
27
I called Judge Wendy Abrahamson’s chambers from the Seville. Her clerk put her on immediately.
“Thanks for the quick get-back, Alex. This is no doubt bullshit but I got a complaint about you from a lawyer. A case you haven’t even started.”
I said, “Lewis Evan Porer,Deeb versus McManus.”
“Something really did happen?”
“He tried to pressure me into changing the way I work.”
“How so?”
“He kept pushing for me to sit down with him before I met the principals on the pretext of educating me. You know what he was really after.”
