I paid the cabby twice the fare to take me up to Crenshaw and then gave him a twenty-dollar tip for busting some of the red signals at empty intersections. At the gate to the apartment my hand was almost too swollen to get in my pocket for the keys. Chantal lived in a three-story apartment building, one as upscale as they came for the Crenshaw district. I fumbled the keys, got the gate open, and looked back to the street for the light-blue, nondescript government car Ben always drove. Still too early for his visit. Though, this was an extraordinary situation that added variables. He never made a home visit on Sunday. Something was definitely up. And added fuel to the theory that the cops on Long Beach Boulevard may have been watching for more than the torch, the guy robbing his victims and afterward tossing the can of gasoline on them.

I had a key to the apartment door and had promised to always knock out of courtesy to Chantal, a kept woman, a high-dollar executive’s, on-the-side squeeze. She allowed me to give her address as my residence of record as long as her sugar daddy never knew about it.

I’d met Chantal back before the big fall, back when I was running and gunning on the Violent Crimes Team. I’d helped her out with a problem her nephew had with the law, and she returned the favor. Ben Drury promised to always call and it worked out as long as I let Chantal know where I could be reached.

I stopped at the door, fist raised to knock. If her sugar daddy was in there, that would be it. The jig, as the saying goes, would be up. I’d have ruined her life, and she’d be mad enough to tell Ben some simple, basic details to get me a year’s violation back in the joint. And worse case, an add-charge, a new case with ten to twenty years’ exposure.

But she’d been the one to call. She had to know I’d be coming over. I knocked and waited. Knocked again. Out on the street I heard a car pull up. A door slam. I went to the open balcony in the hallway and looked out. The light-blue nondescript government car sat at the curb. I saw the top of Drury’s brown hair bob as he walked toward the gate. Back at the door, I knocked again, this time with more urgency.

The door opened a crack. I shoved my way in. Chantal started to protest. I put my hand over her mouth and closed the door behind us. “It’s okay, it’s me. Paroles are coming up right behind me, right now.” Her body hot, against mine, my hands slick on smooth silk.

I yanked my shirt off, the white t-shirt underneath was splotched with drying blood from my hands. I yanked my t-shirt off and tossed them both to her.

“What happened to you?” She asked, calm as if nothing of import ever happened, her eyelids pinned and her pupils constricted. Heroin. Shit. Perfect timing, girl.

“Ditch that stuff, he’s going to be here any second.”

“Relax, would you?” She sauntered back into the bedroom. She wore a silk eggshell-white nightgown that clung to her body and let every beautiful curve in the cleave of her lovely heart-shaped bottom show off with each rise and fall of her long, perfect legs. Her skin was cocoa smooth, without blemish. She kept her hair down around her shoulders, a different look. She always wore it up.

I sat on the living room couch and tried to control my breathing. The couch, made of cushy white leather, matched the white fur carpet. I sank in. Everything else in the room was hand picked, all chrome and black.

Ben knocked at the door. I looked to the hallway. Chantal was taking her sweet damn time.

“Chantal, someone’s at the door.”

“Can you get it for me, babe?”

“I guess, yeah, sure why not?”

I quickly untied my boots and kicked them off as I walked to the door. I was about to open it when I realized what I still had in my pocket, twenty-two thousand dollars, a red-hot parole violation. Again the knock, more urgent this time. “Open up, police.”

Police? Ben Drury, State parole, right? Not the police, it can’t be the police.

I tossed the wad of bills in a waist-high fake oriental vase with silk flowers, next to the entertainment center, and shoved it down its throat. I went to the door, took in a deep breath, and opened it.

A big hand shoved my chest. I stumbled backward and almost fell. The hand came in attached to the thug cop I’d only recently met out in front of Mr. Cho’s store. The cop who’d kicked me in the face. The cop whose nose was red and swollen three times its normal size from the roundhouse I’d given him.

Chapter Six

The thug cop had run a check on me, found out about the parole, called Ben Drury at home, got him out of bed early on a Sunday to come out for a little get-even time. Back in the day, as a young and full-of-testosterone copper, it wouldn’t have been out of the realm of something I would have done. The parole tail on me gave him the balls to overlook Robby Wicks’s warning.

The thug said, “Morning, Mr. Bruno Johnson. We’re here on a routine home check.”

I looked over at Ben, who looked away. No doubt, the thug had something on Ben.

“Nice digs you got here, Mr. Johnson. How can a piece of shit like you, who works at a chickenshit little hole-in-the-wall grocery store, afford a place like this?” He kept walking, shoving me on my chest until I was back at the couch and sat down hard.

“What’s going on?” Chantal came from the hall, her eyes a little more alert from the adrenaline, her nipples poking straight out of her nightgown like a couple of number two Black Warrior pencil erasers. The thug cop moved closer to her for a better view, lust apparent on his shovel face.

His sudden change in behavior, from aggressive to ogling, stopped her cold. “Mr. Drury, who is this? He has no right to come into my home.”

“Just calm down, Ms. Sykes, he’s a deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. His name’s John Mack, and he does have a right to be here.”

“Chantal,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

Mack made no effort to hide his ogle as he kept his stark, blue eyes locked onto her breasts.

Chantal crossed her arms on her chest. “If you say so, Mr. Drury, that’s fine. I trust your discretion. I’m not happy about it, but I’ll go along. For now.”

“For now?” Mack said, “Who do you think you are? You uppity little nig—”

Drury stepped in between them and pointed a finger at Mack, looking him in the eye as he addressed Chantal, “We’re sorry for the intrusion this morning. I promise this won’t take long.”

“How can we help you, Mr. Drury, to get you out of here sooner?”

He turned back to face her. “I heard some disturbing news about Bruno. I came over to make sure everything was okay.”

“Is that right? Exactly what did you hear?”

“He had a run-in with the police last night. He slugged one.”

Chantal looked at Mack, and brought her hand up to her mouth, stifling a smile. “Oh, really, who could that be?”

Mack’s gaze snapped off her breasts, his expression instantly transformed to ugly. He took two quick steps toward her. I jumped up to stop him. He pivoted and shoved me back down on the couch. Chantal brought her fists up to defend herself as her eyes flared. She had grown up in Nickerson Gardens and knew how to defend herself.

“Hold it. Hold it,” Ben yelled. “Let’s everyone just calm down.”

Mack looked at Chantal, his expression softening.“Hey now, lookee here, the arrest gods have shined down on me this lovely Sunday morn. It looks as if our lovely lady is smacked back. She’s under the influence.” He reached to grab her wrist. She jerked away. Ben moved in between. “Stop it. We had a deal, no misdemeanor bullshit.”

“Okay, but if she’s under the influence, then she has to have her kit and dope somewhere in the pad. And dope is a solid felony. I’ll just have a little looksee.”

“You have no right to search my house without a search warrant.”