L. A. Heat (26 page)

David stepped into Chris’s walk-in closet,
dragging out a matching leather luggage set and carelessly tossing them onto
the unmade bed.

“Pack,” David said. He pointed at the suitcases.
“Enough for at least a week. You can stay at my place tonight, but after that
things are likely to get too hairy, so you’ll have to book a hotel somewhere.
If you want, get one out by the hospital, then you can visit Des once he comes
around—”

“Why am I not just coming back here?”

“Alone?”

“Why not with you?” Chris planted himself in front
of David. “What was that all about out there with Martinez if you’re just going
to brush me off?”

“I’ll be lucky to be employed next week, let alone
in a position to be of any use to you or anyone.”

When Chris made no move to pack, David started
pulling things out of the closet, with no regard to what he was grabbing. Wool
pants fell on the floor amid silk blazers and something that looked like a zoot
suit straight out of the forties.

“They can’t fire you!”

David frowned at him, holding two crumpled dress
shirts in his big hands. His mind was working furiously, trying to see how
things were going to unfold. Knowing it wasn’t going to be pretty. He wondered
if he’d even be able to shield Chris from the worst of it.

“It’s going into the weekend. I’m damned lucky the
captain’s on vacation, or he might just put me on desk duty right now. As it
is, the machinery won’t get rolling until Monday, but if the damned tin
collectors get involved, there’s no telling what level they could take this
to.”

“Who or what are the tin collectors?”

“Internal Affairs. They collect badges. Sometimes
they even take them off cops who deserve to lose them.”

“I’m not even a suspect anymore. You said so
yourself.” Chris looked scared. David wished he had more time to explain
things. “What can they charge you with?”

“Bad judgment. You may not be a suspect, but
you’ve never formally been discharged, either. And fraternizing with victims or
witnesses is not exactly a business practice the LAPD approves of.”

“I was never charged with anything in the first
place.”

Chris sat down on the bed, surrounded by the
clothes from his closet. David finally came over and sat down beside him. He
picked up one of Chris’s cold hands.

“If I can’t stay here,” Chris said. “Then why
can’t I stay at your place? Oh, shit—”

“What is it?”

“I have to call Petey.” Chris scrambled to pick up
the bedside phone. “He thinks I’m going to Denver on Sunday—”

“Whoa, wait a minute.” David grabbed Chris’s hand
again before he could lift the phone. “What do you mean, Denver?”

“He booked me for a conference there—I’m replacing
Becky. It was a last-minute thing. I forgot all about it...”

David’s eyes narrowed. His mind whirled with new
thoughts. “Does anyone else know you’re going on this junket?”

“No. I told you. It was last-minute. I only
learned yesterday—”

David swung off the bed and drew Chris against
him. He was smiling.

“That’s perfect.”

“What is?”

“You, my friend, are going to Colorado. No one
will ever find you there.”

The house echoed with the sound of someone’s fist
on the wooden door. Chris jumped. David stepped back, his gaze gravitating
toward the front of the house.

“Martinez.” David tossed the last pair of shirts
he’d been holding to Chris, who caught them limply. “I have to go talk to him.
Be ready when I get back.”

“David—”

“I’ll drop you at my place, but then I’ll have to
go in to work for a while.” Suddenly David pulled Chris back into his arms. He
kissed him soundly on the mouth. “You a half-decent cook?”

“Sure, I—”

“Good. There’s a market down the street from my
place. We can grab some stuff there. You stay for two days, and Sunday I’ll
take you to the airport.”

“And when I get back?”

“With any luck the worst of this will be history.”
David cupped Chris’s chin in his big hands. He forced a smile. “I can’t promise
anything beyond that, Chris. Maybe it won’t be so bad. But if things do get
bad, hell, I always wanted a sugar daddy.”

Chris didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
David kissed him again, leaving him a little breathless.

“I have to go talk to Martinez,” David said when
the pounding resumed. “Be down in twenty minutes, packed. I’ll have the car
ready.”

Friday,
8:20 am, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles

David was true to his word. He
had the car unlocked and was standing beside it when Chris descended the front
step. He passed the gauntlet of cold-eyed cops who stopped what they were doing
to watch him dump his suitcases into the backseat of David’s unmarked.

Martinez was standing beside David. It was obvious
the two had been arguing. Martinez seemed loath to let the argument go. “This
is crazy, man. You want to throw your life away? For what? Some cheap
joto
loco
?”

Chris curled his lip at the man. “Listen, you
fat—”

David put his hand on Chris’s shoulder, silencing
him. He swung around to face Martinez. “That’s the way it is, Martinez. This is
one genie you can’t put back in the bottle. I’m sorry it came out this way, but
I’m not sorry for what I am.”

Chris slipped into the passenger’s seat and pulled
the door shut; it made a solid clunk. He rolled the window down in time to hear
Martinez say, “What you are is a cop.”

David waved his arm impatiently. “I’m still a
cop,” he said. He slid in beside Chris and leaned out the open door. “And until
someone says otherwise and makes it official, I’m going to keep doing my job,
too.”

Martinez stalked back to his car, which was parked
behind David’s. Chris tensed when he grabbed something off the front seat and
walked stiffly back. David slammed his door shut.

Chris eyed Martinez as he approached his side of
the car. He pulled his arm inside the open window.

Martinez leaned down to meet David’s gaze. “You
wanted these—well, here are your copies.”

Ignoring Chris, he tossed a bundle of loose papers
into the car. Most of them landed on Chris’s lap, and several sheets skidded to
the floor at his feet.

He bent to retrieve them.

The topmost image caught his eye. He frowned down
at it.

“What are you doing with my picture?” He held up a
five-by-eight photo taken of him on a street somewhere. In the reproduction the
grainy background looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

He glared up at Martinez, who smirked at David.

Martinez showed his teeth and his muddy brown eyes
were full of malice when they met Chris’s. “We were showing it around to see
who might remember you. He forget to mention that?”

“He knows,” David said. “He also knows he’s no
longer a suspect.”

“Not sure everyone agrees with you on that. His
friends have a nasty habit of ending up dead. You might want to remember that.”

“Which in most people’s books makes me a victim,”
Chris said. He was pissed at David for not telling the asshole to fuck off. The
least he could do was tell him to shut up.

When David did neither, Chris jammed the pictures
into a haphazard pile on his lap. He grabbed the other sheets to put them all
together. That was when he saw the other image.

This one was a pencil sketch. Done in surprising
detail.

“What are you doing with a picture of Trevor?”

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Friday,
9:20 am, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles

BOTH DAVID AND Martinez swung
around to look at him.

“Who is Trevor?” David asked.

Chris shrugged uneasily, his gaze moving between
both men.

“A...guy I know,” he said. “Just a guy...”

“Trevor who? What’s his last name?” David reached
in and snatched the picture out of Chris’s fingers. “You got an address on
him?”

He tried to sound casual, knowing he was unnerving
Chris, but unable to keep the tension out of his voice. He could hear it in
Martinez’s, too, when he leaned down and braced his elbows on the open window
and asked, “What’s he to you, this guy?”

Chris pulled away from the window, spilling the
other pictures onto the floor at his feet. “Nothing. I know him, that’s all—”

“How well? You sleep with him?”

“Martinez.”

But Martinez refused to let it go. David knew he
was baiting Chris deliberately. “You and him like to play bedroom games?”
Martinez’s eyes blazed. “That how you found your buddy’s friend so fast? You
knew he was over there doing them and you wanted in on it—”

“No!” Chris was white and shaking. “No!”

“Martinez! That’s enough.” David walked quickly
around the car and got in. He rammed the key into the ignition, jerked the gear
into reverse, and glared at Martinez. “Back off.”

David reversed out of the driveway, barely missing
Martinez’s bumper, then peeling out onto the cruiser-filled street.

David took in several deep breaths, trying to calm
the roaring in his head. He’d really lost it that time. Stupid. Stupid not to
try to deal with this calmly, rationally. They were both cops, for God’s sake.
Supposedly after the same thing. Instead they’d been going after each other
like a couple of bulls.

He awkwardly patted Chris’s knee. “Sorry, you
shouldn’t have had to hear that. Martinez is just—”

“Pig-headed? A walking advertisement for Rodney
King’s defenders? An asshole? Tell me, what exactly is he, David?”

David winced. He withdrew his hand and wrapped his
fists around the steering wheel, wondering absently why it didn’t buckle under
his grip.

“Okay, forget Martinez. I need you to tell me
everything you can about this Trevor.”

Chris rubbed a shaking hand over his face. “Can we
go to your place first? I don’t want to talk in the car. Okay?”

It wasn’t, but David knew he’d pushed him as far
as he could. If Chris was going to cooperate, he needed to be handled gently
right now.

He patted Chris’s knee again, squeezing the bony
cap. “Sure.”

He doubted Chris was fooled.

Friday,
10:30 am, Piedmont Avenue, Glendale

David had bought his house
several years before, after a drug dealer with a meth lab had nearly burned it
down. It had taken a lot of sweat equity to restore the building to its present
condition. It still needed a lot of work, but a cop’s salary only stretched so
far in the tight L.A. housing market, so he figured he had been lucky to get
it.

His needs were simple. Up until now he had never
considered what it might look like to others.

Now he saw the brown, stiff grass on the
table-sized lawn for what it indicated—neglect. Paint was peeling off the
wooden door jamb and the scarred siding had barely survived the fire. Even the
bricks looked tired, as though the poisoned air of L.A. had leached out of them
whatever vitality they might once have had. Under the gently pitched broad
gables a pair of windows overlooked the street. A second gable sloped over the
doorway.

David looked at Chris before he mounted the wooden
steps to the front door. He dug out his key.

“Sorry if it’s cluttered,” he said, grabbing the
largest suitcase. “I haven’t been home much lately.”

Chris passed him silently, carrying the other
suitcase and his laptop case. He still clutched the picture of Trevor in one
hand.

“Where’s your car?”

“At the station,” David said. “You can put that
stuff in the backroom.” It was more of a junk room than an extra bedroom, but
it did have an old sofa bed that pulled out into a double. Right now David wasn’t
about to suggest any other sleeping arrangements.

The front room was shadowed, all the curtains
closed. A musty smell rose from the old furniture he had picked up at garage
sales and auctions over the years. Throwing open windows as he moved around, he
felt a tepid breeze move through the room behind him.

Chris reappeared, empty-handed. David motioned him
into the ancient kitchen. He pulled out a painted wooden chair and indicated
Chris should sit. Sweeney appeared in the doorway, eying the stranger haughtily.

“Ready to talk?”

Chris nodded, returning the cat’s unblinking
stare. “What’s your name?”

“That’s Sweeney.”

“Sweeney? As in Todd?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw it at the Next Stage last year.”

David’s face brightened. “Me too. It was a pretty
decent production.”

Chris picked the cat up and stroked it. “You got
coffee?”

“Nothing but instant,” David said.

“Sure.”

Chris toyed with the salt cellar on the vinyl
tablecloth-covered table while David filled the kettle with water and pulled
down two mugs. Milk and sugar followed and David sat down to wait for the water
to boil. He pulled out his notepad and pencil.

“What can you tell me about this guy?”

“I—not much. I met him a few weeks ago. Des—” His
slender fingers white-knuckled the saltcellar. “Jesus, Des introduced us. Des
was always doing charity shows, usually AIDS stuff, since we’ve both had a lot
of friends who—oh, never mind. It hardly matters. Des set us up.”

“What’s his last name?”

“Watson. Trevor Watson.”

“Got an address on him?”

Chris refused to meet his eyes. He stared down at
his knotted hands and shook his head.

“He never told you where he lived? Never took you
there?”

“No.”

“He give you a phone number?”

This time Chris nodded. “Yeah, he did. Wait...I
have it in my BlackBerry—”

He vanished down the hall and reappeared moments
later with the device, punching at the miniscule keys with his finger.

“Here it is.” He rattled off a West Hollywood
exchange. “But I think it’s a cell.”

David wrote it down. “We’ll check it out. If it’s
a landline we can do a reverse lookup. If it’s a cell, maybe we can get a
warrant for the company records.”