Hinky (4)

Yates spent a part of the next morning going through mug shots in search of Clive. As far as Yates was concerned, the man was already wearing a homicide jacket and drugs were probably a signature element of his lifestyle if not his commerce. Whoever made the statement that “they all look alike” never sat for a mug shot review in Robbery-Homicide. You could put the whole collection into a coffee table book titled “Faces from Hell” and make a fortune with it. After an hour of browsing, Yates gave up and left Parker Center without bothering to check in with Horvath.

Leaving downtown, Yates drove to a neighborhood in North Hollywood where a car thief with strong emotional ties to the Aryan Brotherhood resided with a lap dancer who specialized in stealing side arms from off-duty Sheriff’s Deputies at private functions. She usually sold the guns at premium prices since the bonus of implicating a member of law enforcement in whatever violent crime was to follow was extremely attractive to her clientele. Yates received his merchandise at wholesale as a result of past services rendered. It was unlikely that whoever had originally owned the weapon would have any connection to Clive. Furthermore, it was Yates’ belief that the Deputy in question would not have accurately reported the circumstances under which the service weapon had been lost, thereby leaving the lap dancer in the clear.

“What about the copyright laws?” the lap dancer asked him. Her name was Chrysstale, after the Champagne she would say, though the misspelling rather mooted the reference. She had just shown Yates her new tattoo, which inscribed “LAPD Rules!” across her lower abdomen.

“I’m not here to make an arrest, but I think the fact that he forgot the periods rules out infringement.”

“What periods?”

“Just give him the fucking gun and stop showing off!” Swanson was getting impatient and no doubt was anxious to score with the money Yates was exchanging for the gun.

Yates thought to ask the neo-Nazi if he’d ever come across someone of Clive’s description, but decided against it. Since Swanson was never more than a prepositional phrase away from a psychotic episode, the less he knew of Yates’ interests the better. Instead, he took a different approach.

“Know anything about a guy named Raymond Sloan?” he asked as casually as he could.

“Are you shittin’ me? Do I look like someone who’d know a Raymond Sloan?” Clearly, Swanson’s Aryan sensibilities had been offended.

“I just thought since he’d been murdered…”

Swanson took a moment to reflect on this, nodding his head slowly as though coming to terms with a new paradigm. “Cool. I’ll ask around.”

It was the best Yates could hope for.

“What periods?” Chrysstale demanded to know.

More to follow...

(c) 2006 Stephen Mitchell