Hinky (3)

“Yeah, that’s him,” Yates heard himself say even though he’d never seen the man in his life. On the drive up Figueroa to Fourth, he’d rehearsed every possible permutation and, in the end, Yates blurted out the only response he’d determined he shouldn’t give. He was, however, able to restrain himself from adding that he’d just eaten dinner with the guy who most likely murdered the victim.

“Did you make a stop?” the Lieutenant asked him.

“No, I checked for warrants and went to dinner. The car was clean.” God help him if the dead man’s car was discovered at the very location Yates had called Code 7.

“What happened to him?”

“Looks like he crawled under a car and died. The lady over there got in her car and couldn’t back out because something was blocking her wheels. By the way, what color was his car?”

“Eight shades of grey.”

Yates wasn’t worried about the time of death. Elvis Presley could have been driving the Mercedes behind dirty windows at the time he ran the plate and no one would have seen him. What did worry him was that Clive might have left the car sitting at the Pantry just to tie him to the situation. Yates took the Harbor freeway south to Eighth and made his way to the pay lot, which served the restaurant. No Mercedes and no Clive.

Yates then drove around the immediate area to see if the car had been abandoned within walking distance, but it hadn’t been. He headed north on Figueroa once again, this time aimlessly cruising while thinking about the events of the past hour or so. That’s when he noticed the white card tucked under the windshield wiper of his patrol car.

Yates veered to the curb with such ferocity that anyone seeing the maneuver would have thought that he swerved to miss a pedestrian. He leapt out of the car and tore the card from the wiper blade. It read: Sloan Used Tires. He turned the card over to find the handwritten scrawl of a seven-year-old. It read: To collect your Happy Birthday present come to Roscoe’s at 5 tomorow.

Later, when Yates returned to his studio apartment in a complex on Barham that catered to recently divorced men, traveling executives working their way down the corporate ladder and an assortment of women whose last lodging had been the Sybil Brand Institute, he found a message on his answering machine. It was from Horvath in Robbery-Homicide.

“Got some questions for you about a cadaver/citizen. He didn’t just die. Someone gave him a thirty-eight caliber assist. Call me when you get this; see me before your next shift.”

Yates turned on the television, which was already tuned to the Country Music channel, and settled into his lounger with a beer.

“Fuck you and the snake you rode in on,” he said in reply to Horvath, Clive and just about everyone else he’d ever met.

More to follow...

(c) 2006 Stephen Mitchell