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“It’s not about anything that happened in your jurisdiction.”
“I think of myself as a detective to the world.”
“Nobody’s been killed,” Tim said, and mentally added yet.
“Remember, I’m in the robbery-homicide division.”
“The only thing that’s been stolen is a coffee mug with a ceramic parrot for a handle.”
Scowling, Linda declared, “I loved that mug.”
“What’d she say?” Pete asked.
“She says she loved that mug.”
Pete said, “You want me to believe this is all about a stolen coffee mug?”
“And an egg-custard pie.”
“There was only half a pie left,” she said.
On the phone, Pete said, “What’d she say?”
“She says it was only half a pie.”
“But it’s still not right,” she said.
“She says,” Tim reported, “even half a pie, it’s not right.”
“It’s not just the cost of the ingredients,” she said.
“It’s not the cost of the ingredients,” Tim repeated to Pete.
“He’s stolen my labor, too, and my sense of security.”
“He’s stolen her labor, too, and her sense of security.”
“So you want me to believe,” Pete said, “this is about nothing more than a stolen coffee mug and half an egg-custard pie?”
“No. It’s about something else entirely. The mug and the pie are just associated crimes.”
“What’s the something else entirely?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. Listen, is there any way to find out if Kravet has another driver’s license under a different name?”
“What name?”
“I don’t know. But if the address in Anaheim was bogus, then maybe the name is, too. Does the DMV have any facial-recognition software that could search its files for a repeat of Kravet’s image?”
“This is California, dude. The DMV can’t keep its public restrooms clean.”
“Sometimes,” Tim said, “I wonder if The Incredible Hulk had been a bigger hit on TV, ran a few more years—maybe Lou Ferrigno would be governor. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I think I would trust Lou Ferrigno,” Pete said.
To Linda, Tim said, “He says he would trust Lou Ferrigno.”
“I would, too,” she said. “There’s a humility about him.”
“She says Lou Ferrigno has humility.”
Pete said, “That’s probably because he had to overcome deafness and a speech impediment to become an actor.”
“If Lou Ferrigno were governor, the state wouldn’t be bankrupt, DMV restrooms would be clean, and you’d have that facial-recognition software. But since he’s not the governor, is there any other way you can search to see if Kravet has a license under a different name?”
“I’ve been thinking about that while we’ve been talking about Lou Ferrigno,” Pete said.
“I’m impressed.”
“I’ve also been rubbing Zoey’s ears the way she likes.”
“You’re a full-on multitasker.”
“There’s something I can try. It might work. Keep your cell charged, and I’ll get back to you.”
“Ten-four, holy one.”
As Tim terminated the call, Linda said, “Holy one?”
“Santo means ‘saint.’ Sometimes we call him holy one.”
“We?”
Tim shrugged. “Some of us guys.”
While Tim had been on the phone, Linda had set out for Santa Ana. They were ten minutes from the address where, according to the DMV, the Chevy sedan registered to Kravet might be found.
“You and Santo,” she said, “you’ve been through something together.”
“We’ve known each other a long time.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been through something, too.”
“It wasn’t college. Neither of us went to college.”
“I didn’t think it was college.”
“It wasn’t an experimental gay relationship, either.”
“I’m absolutely sure it wasn’t a gay relationship.” She stopped at a red traffic light and turned that analytic green gaze on him.
“There you go again with those things,” he said.
“What things?”
“Those eyes. That look. When you go carving at somebody with that look, you should have a medic standing by to sew up the wound.”
“Have I wounded you?”
“Not mortally.”
The traffic light didn’t change. She continued to stare at him.
“Okay,” he said. “Me and Pete, we went to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert once. It was hell. We got through that hell together.”
“If you don’t like Peter, Paul and Mary, why did you go?”
He said, “The holy one was dating this girl, Barbara Ellen, she was into retro-folk groups.”
“Who were you dating?”
“Her cousin. Just that one night. It was hell. They sang ‘Puff, the Magic Dragon’ and ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,’ and ‘Lemon Tree’ and ‘Tom Dooley,’ they just wouldn’t stop. We’re lucky we got out of there with our sanity.”
“I didn’t know Peter, Paul and Mary performed anymore. I didn’t even know they were all still alive.”
“These were Peter, Paul and Mary impersonators. You know, like Beatlemania.” He glanced at the traffic light. “A car could rust waiting for this light to change.”
“What was her name?”
“Whose name?”
“The cousin you were dating.”
“She wasn’t my cousin. She was Barbara Ellen’s cousin.”
“So what was her name?” she persisted.
“Susannah.”
“Did she come from Alabama with a banjo on her knee?”
“I’m just telling you what happened, since you wanted to know.”
“It must be true. You couldn’t make it up.”
“It’s too weird, isn’t it?”
“What I’m saying,” she said, “is I don’t think you could make anything up.”
“All right then. So now you know—me and Pete, our bonding experience, that night of hell. They sang ‘If I Had a Hammer’ twice.” He pointed to the traffic signal. “Light’s green.”
Crossing the intersection, she said, “You’ve been through something together, but it wasn’t just Peter Pauland Marymania.”
He decided to go on the offensive. “So what do you do for a living, besides being self-employed and working at home?”
“I’m a writer.”
“What do you write?”
“Books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Painful books. Depressing, stupid, gut-wrenching books.”
“Just the thing for the beach. Have they been published?”
“Unfortunately. And the critics love them.”
“Would I know any titles?”
“No.”
“You want to try me?”
“No. I’m not going to write them anymore, especially not if I end up dead, but even if I don’t end up dead, I’m going to write something else.”
“What’re you going to write?”
“Something that isn’t full of anger. Something in which the sentences don’t drip with bitterness.”
“Put that quote on the cover. ‘The sentences don’t drip with bitterness.’ I’d buy a book like that in a minute. Do you write under the name Linda Paquette, or do you use a pen name?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing.”
“I didn’t clam up on you.”
She glanced sideways at him, cocking one eyebrow.
For a while they rode in silence through an area where the prostitutes dressed only slightly less brazenly than Britney Spears, where the winos sat with their backs against the building walls instead of sprawling full-length on the pavement. Then they came into a less-nice precinct, where even the young gangsters didn’t venture in their low-rider street rods and glitterized Cadillac Escalades.
They passed grungy one-story buildings and fenced storage yards, scrap-metal dealers that were probably chop-shop operators, a sports bar with windows painted black and the air of a place that included cockfights in its definition of sports, before Linda pulled to the curb in front of a vacant lot.
“According to the numbers on the flanking buildings,” she said, “this is the address on the registration for that Chevy.” A chain-link fence surrounded a weed-filled empty lot.
