One blue belly stayed with his knees on my back, making it difficult to breathe, pinning me to the dirt. The others stood and brushed off their uniforms.

Good said to his trainee, “Get on the radio, advise 60L8 we have his package.” He turned to the blue bellies. “Nice stop. This guy’s wanted. There’s a BOLO out for him from our homicide division.” He kicked my hip. “He’s a real piece of shit. Used to be one of us, believe it or not. You guys can clear. We’ll handle it from here.”

I was on the ground again, handcuffed with white cops standing over me, deciding my fate. I didn’t like it, not one damn bit.

Down Imperial Highway came a screaming police car running the red signals, braking hard and accelerating, his engine winding out in a roar in between each stop. The blue bellies stepped back in the shadows, sensing something was about to happen. Good put his foot on my head in a pose, the great white hunter.

The car slid to the curb.

Robby Wicks jumped out, came up, and shoved Good. “Get the fuck off him. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Robby stood me up and brushed me off. The coincidence that this was the second time it happened was not lost on me.

I looked him in the eye. “This is getting to be a habit with you.”

“You were late for our meet. I thought you might be jacking me off. I put out the call. Just to make sure you knew how serious I am about you helping on this thing.”

“So you’re not arresting me?”

“No. Have you done something I don’t know about?” He’d said it purely for the benefit of his audience. A question he’d never ask, not wanting to know the answer.

“Come on, take the cuffs off.”

“I don’t think so, not after what happened the last time.” He escorted me over to his car, hands still cuffed behind my back.

Johnson yelled, “You’re welcome. Those are my cuffs. I want ’em back.”

Robby turned, smiled, “Okay. For your own safety, get in your car and lock the door. I’ll bring them to you.”

He started to take the cuffs off. “You be cool, we have too much to do tonight for any more bullshit. You already put me behind the eight ball being late like this.” I nodded. I rubbed my wrists. He walked over and tossed the cuffs in onto Johnson’s lap. Johnson peeled out, tires spinning. The blue bellies quietly walked over to their car, got in, and left.

Robby waited until they were out of sight, saw me looking at my car. “You can’t drive. You don’t have a driver’s license. It’s a parole violation.”

“How am I supposed to get around?”

“Last I heard, you were laying your head in that burnt-out derelict apartment house over on 117th and walking or taking the bus to the liquor store.”

How’d he know about the pad on Alabama? “I don’t work there anymore.”

“Don’t dodge the question.”

“All of a sudden you know a great deal about me.”

“I told you, I want you to help me out with this thing. When you FTA-ed I gotta come look for you. Why all of a sudden are you driving a car? And whose car is it?”

“Okay, truce. I can’t leave my car here. I’ll follow you. Where’re we going?”

He hesitated, thinking it through. He knew I wouldn’t run, not with him following. “We got the witness stashed over at the Shamrock on Atlantic.” He looked at my car and thought some more. I didn’t give him a chance and headed back, got in, started up.

He wandered to his car, checked over his shoulder one last time before he got in, and fell in behind as I pulled out.

How did he know about my place on 117th and Alabama? That was supposed to be a cold pad. My residence of record was Chantal’s on Crenshaw. What else did he know? How long had the FBI been on me? Two weeks prior was when I’d first sensed I was being watched and didn’t trust my instincts. The money Jumbo paid me, the cash I buried out back of 117th, did they know about that too? Was the whole deal blown?

I was going to have to play along until I found out.

We stayed on Imperial Highway all the way east until Atlantic and turned south. He pulled into Taco Quicky, a joint owned and operated by a reserve deputy. Like Lucy’s, the cops from all around came to eat for free. The parking lot was an absolute safe zone that crooks walked a wide path around. He rolled down his window. “Leave that heap and get in.”

I locked up and did as he asked. We pulled a U-turn in the parking lot and came right back into the drive-thru. Robby said, “I gotta get something in my stomach. I got a bleeding ulcer from all this stress. You want something?”

“No.”

He ordered two tacos and a cup of joe.

“That’s not exactly the best food to put down on top of an ulcer.”

His head jerked around about to spit fire and realized he was better off with the you catch-more-with-honey approach. He opened his mouth then shut it.

We pulled up further in line, two more cars before our turn. “I heard you came over and talked with Chantal.”

“Nice gal, great equipment. You tapping that? I know I would.”

He spoke too fast, covering for being found out.

I almost told him about Marie but didn’t want to give him anything he didn’t already have, especially if the FBI was onto our rescue operation. “How’s Barbara?”

The smile left his eyes, “She’s still the same old Babs. You know what I’m sayin’?”

I’d tossed back many a beer and had more than a few barbeques with Robby and his wife Barbara. He met her when he was a detective in narcs. She was a police officer working patrol for the city of Montclair when she pulled him over one night on the freeway doing a hundred and ten. They both loved to tell the story. She walked up and asked for his license and reg. He flashed his star, told her he was en route to a two-kilo coke deal in East L.A., and had twenty minutes to get there. She said, “License and registration.”

“If I have to get out of this car,” Robby told her, “I’m going to handcuff you to your bumper.” He drove off and left her standing in the oscillating red light of her cop car, cite book in hand. It ate at him all night. He sent her red roses the next day. A month later they were married in Vegas and had been together ever since, close to two decades.

I needed to pump him for information without him knowing. He was playing me, and I didn’t have a clue why. “Who’s the witness at the Shamrock?”

He pulled up to the window and like a gentleman tried to pay for the food with a tattered twenty. The clerk recognized the car as on the job and waved off the money. He reached into his ashtray, dug out a handful of change and put it up on the counter as a tip before he drove off. He parked in the parking lot not far from my Plymouth, unwrapped a taco, and took a bite. I fought the urge to look at the Plymouth and wonder if the money in the trunk would be there when I got back. We needed that money, the kids, Marie.

“You going to tell me the name of the wit or is it some big secret?”

“It’s Chocolate.”

“Debbie Brown?” That at least made a little sense. She had been my snitch when I worked the street, a beautiful streetwalker, and after the first toke, a slave to the glass pipe. She would only talk to me. No matter what kind of information, dope, stolen cars, or murder, she’d only give it up to me.

He took a bite of taco and a sip of coffee. After he swallowed he winced, put his hand on his stomach and burped. He dropped the taco in the box and dumped the coffee out the window.

“Don’t you say a thing.” He put it reverse and we drove.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The stench was the first thing that hit me when the night clerk buzzed the glass entry door to the Shamrock. It smelled as if a hundred soaked St. Bernards had been let in to roll on the tattered carpet. Inside, the narrow hall led past the window where a disinterred skeleton of a night clerk sat. Robby held up the room key. The night man behind the bulletproof glass couldn’t care less. He glanced over then went right back to his Hustler magazine, a glossy page with lots of skin color.