The chief dug him. Rank and filers resented him. Sam Yorty grooved his Uncle Tom act.

Marsh cranked it. Woooo, some crescendo! He stabbed the air like JFK. He hit the MLK note of redemption. He got a standing ovation.

The audience swarmed the lecturn. Marsh was Mr. Gracious. Scotty winked on his way out.

Armed Robbery-211 PC. His den treasure-troved it.

Eighteen wall pix. Eighteen kills documented. The twelve Panthers went unsung. You can’t photograph the dead-and-buried.

Liquor-store jobs and market rips. Sitting-duck ambushes and shoot-outs. Eighteen dead male Negroes.

Marsh thought he hated black folks. Marsh was wrong. He never said the word nigger. He hated killers, dope-pushers and heisters. Black militants were up there. His all-black kill sheet was luck and demographic. Shit played out that way.

Ann and the kids were in Fresno. The house was a stag-party zone. Scotty laid out booze, dip and Fritos. Scotty pulled all his files out.

Marsh Bowen tweaked him from the get-go. Marsh passed that ink-stained cash. Marsh worked at the Peoples’ Bank briefly. Marsh got on LAPD. All tweakers, but inconclusive.

Then Marsh goes Fed and fucks him. Then Marsh starts making heist queries. Then he runs a DMV check and gets 84th and Budlong.

Scotty snarfed Fritos and bean dip. The wall photos spoke.

Rydell Tyner said, “Jesus, Scotty.” He said, “Son, I warned you.”

Bobby Fisk bled out at All-American Liquor. He gave Bobby’s flash roll to his grandma.

Lamar Brown had a pencil neck. Triple-aught buck severed his head.

The basement bell rang. Scotty opened up. Marsh was back in civvies.

“Hello, partner.”

“Hello, Scotty.”

“Make yourself at home. If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

Then to now: six years and ten months. Marsh kicked it off. He was there that day.

There was a third robber. He was black. The lead guy shot him, chemically scalded him and left him for dead. The third man crawled to an alley and hid. Marsh lived on that block then. He saw the third man. He saw his bulletproof vest and extra precautionary gauzing. He figured it saved the man’s life. LAPD was out bruuutal. Marsh was outraged. He took the man to a doctor neighbor’s house and hid him there. The doctor treated the man’s wounds and burns. The man refused to discuss the heist-killings and never revealed his identity. He left two days later. He gave the doctor twenty thousand dollars in ink-stained cash. The doctor deposited it in the Peoples’ Bank of South Los Angeles. He told Lionel Thornton to leak the cash back to the community. Charity donations: do it prudently. Small amounts of cash surfaced in the black community. Scotty leaned on the passers. The doctor died in ‘65. Marsh got obsessed with the case. He got a job at the bank, learned zero and quit.

Scotty took over. He was there that day. He sensed the case as The Case from Jump Street. He beat the bluesuits to the crime scene. He found nicked shells from a jammed automatic and pocketed them. The armored-car guards fired revolvers. Likewise the milk-truck driver, the lead guy and the two dead heist men. Thus: a third man had come and gone. He fired with the jammed automatic.

A third man-logic now physically confirmed.

Scotty walked the crime scene. He saw a blood trail leading away from it. The trail stopped near that alley. He blotted up a blood sample and got enough to type. He found some chemical-scalding pellets a few feet away. They were saliva-coated. He figured the third man spat them out.

They both knew that day: a third man escaped.

Scotty had the blood tested, covertly. The type: rare AB-. The other dead men had different blood types. The nicked shells: no go, brother. He jam-tested and test-fired every automatic in LAPD custody. Then to now: every booked-in mid-size auto. The results: all negative. He had the pellets tested. Shit-no chemical make.

Marsh jumped ahead. I’ve got a new lead. I’ll tell you at the wrap-up. I’ll drop some confirmation now. I checked the files at University and 77th. I discovered bogus routing numbers. I know you’ve got a private paper stash.

Scotty pointed to his file trove. Scotty refueled their drinks and took off.

He tracked the emerald shipment and made some progress. It started in the Dominican Republic, all government-vouched. The government stonewalled LAPD. Scotty tried everything. Other cops tried with less gusto. Nobody could track the stones’ provenance. Scotty’s take: the origin was dirty, the jewels were rogue. The senders decided against diplomatic-courier shipping. They chose Wells Fargo instead.

And:

The shipment records vanished from the Wells Fargo office a week after the heist. It was a pro B amp;E. The Wells Fargo execs went stonewall. They refused to talk to LAPD at all.

Marsh cut in. He’d heard rumors-black folks in need receive emeralds, anonymously. Scotty knew the rumors. Ghetto legend, who knows, I can’t verify it.

Scotty revved up to the good part. This is the glue. It all sticks together here.

He glommed a partial eyeball witness six months after the heist. The guy said the lead robber was white. Okay, he’s Caucasoid. Okay, there’s the black robber rumors. Oreo teams in ‘64-veeeeery rare indeed. The witness had no further description. Scotty got frustrated there. You win, you lose. He built a lead sheet on a Wells Fargo exec. It never bloomed past speculation.

The guy’s name was Richard Farr. He disappeared after the heist and the Wells Fargo B amp;E. Farr was half Anglo, half Dominican. Scotty culled paper on him. No lead tweakers resulted. The D.R. connection was a tweaker. Sub-tweaker: Farr might be some kind of Commie.

Scotty poured refills. Marsh took on a schoolboy look-sir, please teach me.

The investigation sandbagged. Nothing popped. Leads melted to sludge. Scotty worked the ID angle. It took years. He brought in his coroner pal, Tojo Tom Takahashi.

Tojo Tom froze flesh grafts from the scorched bodies. He isolated skin cells off one guy and lab-tested them. He found diseased leukocytes. The disease was indigenous to white men only.

Scotty did a fifty-state paper check. It took years. Paydirt, late ‘69. The place: Dogdick, Alabama. The man: Douglas Frank Claverly.

Dougie had that skin disease. Dougie was a Klanned-up ex-armed robber. Exhaustive background check-zero. Yeah, but: Dougie disappeared in 1/64-one month pre-heist.

Scotty redeployed Tojo Tom. Tojo ID’d the bogus milk-truck driver. A melted good-luck ring did it. The ring was embedded in a skin cavity.

Tojo extracted the ring and lab-tested the skin cells attached. Okay, it’s a black guy. Tojo brought in chemicals and microscopes and raised words off the ring: JJL amp; CV.

Scotty traced the ring to Modesto. It took fucking weeks. Jerome James Wilkinson ordered the ring. He was a male Negro. He had no criminal record and no family. He worked as a strikebreaker. He vanished 1/64, one month pre-heist.

Enter Dr. Fred Hiltz. Punch line: the emeralds were going to him.

Marsh drop-jawed that one. He used to work lefty groups for Dr. Fred and Clyde Duber. Scotty said he knew that. Scotty contradicted long-held heist text.

The stones were allegedly headed to a Wells Fargo vault. The cash was a bank-deposit load. The stones were really being sent to Dr. Fred himself. A dummy corporation would hold them. A Dr. Fred stooge would play courier. Dr. Fred craaaaved the stones. There was some nutso right-wing emerald myth he creamed for.

Dr. Fred was offed in ‘68. Marsh said he knew the basic facts. Scotty laid out the inside scoop.

He popped Jomo C. for that liquor-store spree. Someone pretended to be Marsh himself. The fake Marsh offered up the liquor-store snitch and a snitch on a major gun stash. That shit brought Marsh ghetto peril. Marsh knew that all too well. Marsh knew that Jomo confessed to the Dr. Fred snuff and to whacking his crime partner. Here’s the shit Marsh didn’t know.