Robert Crais - Free Fall

We turned away from the park, made the block, and came back to a side street that gave an unobstructed view of the basketball players and the outfield and the ice cream truck on the far street. I parked on the side street so we’d have an easy, eyes-forward view, and then I shut the engine. If the neighbors saw us sitting there, maybe they’d think we were scouting for the NBA.

Maybe eight or nine minutes later four guys in a white Bel Air turned onto the far street, slowed to a stop, and the guy with the X hat went over to them. One of the guys in the backseat of the Bel Air gave something to the X, and the X gave something to the guy in the Bel Air. Then the Bel Air drove away and the X went back to his leaning. A little bit later a kid on a bike rolled up the sidewalk, jumped the curb down to the street, and skidded to a stop. The kid and the X traded something, and the kid rode away. Washington said, “Cool T better be giving it to us straight about those cops.”

I pointed at the X. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

“He’s here, but will the cops come, and if they come are they coming because they’re cops or because they’re working with the Eight-Deuce?”

“We’ll find out.”

“Yes. I guess we will.” James Edward shifted in the seat, uncomfortable, but not because of the seat. “They don’t come and run this muthuhfuckuh off, maybe I’ll do it myself.”

“Maybe I’ll help you.”

Washington glanced at me and nodded.

A couple of minutes later Joe Pike came up along the sidewalk and squatted beside my window. I said, “Joe Pike, this is James Edward Washington. James, this is my partner, Joe Pike.”

Pike canted his head to lock onto James Edward Washington and reached in through the window. You can’t see his eyes behind the dark glasses, but it’s always easy to tell where he’s looking. His whole being sort of points in that direction, as if he were totally focused on you. James Edward took his hand, but stared at the tattoos. Most people do.

I told Pike about the X at the ice cream truck and what Cool T had said about Thurman’s REACT team and their involvement with the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys.

Pike nodded. “Dees and his people are supposed to thump this guy?”

James Edward said, “That’s the word.”

Pike looked at the X. “It’s a long way across the playground to the ice cream truck. If Dees moves the action away from us, we’ve got too much ground to cover to catch up. We might lose them.”

I said, “Why don’t you set up on that side, and we’ll stay here. If Dees moves that way, you’ve got them, and if he moves in this direction, we’ve got him.”

Pike stared behind us up the street, then twisted around and looked at the park. “You feel it?”

“What?”

Pike shook his head. “Doesn’t feel right.”

He stepped away from the car and stood without moving for a time and then he walked away. I thought about what Joe had said. They’re going to have to make a move.

James Edward watched Pike leave. “He’s sorta strange, huh?”

“You think?”

A few minutes later we saw Pike’s Jeep pass the ice cream truck and turn away from the park. James Edward looked at me. “You don’t think he’s strange?”

We moved deeper into the afternoon, and business was good for the man in the ice cream truck. Customers came by in cars and trucks and on motorcycles and bicycles and on foot. Some of the cars would slow as they passed and the X would stare and they would make the block a couple of times before they finally stopped and did their deal, but most folks drove up and stopped without hesitating. The X never hesitated, either. Any one of these people could’ve been undercover cops but no one seemed to take that into consideration. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe business was so good and profits were so large that the threat of a bust was small relative to the potential gain. Or maybe the X just didn’t care. Some people are like that.

Once, two young women pushing strollers came along the far sidewalk. The X made a big deal out of tipping his cap with a flourish and giving them the big smile. The women made a buy, too. The one who did the talking was pregnant. Washington rubbed his face with both hands and said, “Oh, my Jesus.”

School let out. More players joined the basketball games. The guy running wind sprints stopped running, and the time crept past like a dying thing, heavy and slow and unable to rest.

James Edward twisted in the seat and said, “How you stand this goddamn waiting?”

“You get used to it.”

“You used to be a cop?”

I shook my head. “Nope. I was a security guard for a while, and then I apprenticed with a man named George Fieder. Before that I was in the Army.”

“How about that guy Pike?”

“Joe was a police officer. Before that, he was a Marine.”

James Edward nodded. Maybe thinking about it. “You go to college?”

“I had a couple years, on and off. After the Army, it was tough to sit in a classroom. Maybe I’ll go back one day.”

“If you went back, what would you study?”

I made a little shrug. “Teacher, maybe.”

He smiled. “Yeah. I could see you in a classroom.”

I spread my hands. “What? You don’t think there’s a place for a thug in the fourth grade?”

He smiled, but then the smile faded. Across the park, a girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen pulled her car beside the ice cream truck and bought a glassine packet. She had a pretty face and precisely cornrowed hair in a traditional African design. Washington watched the transaction, then put his forearms on his knees and said, “Sitting here, seeing these brothers and sisters doing this, it hurts.”

“Yes, I guess it does.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t black. I see it, I see brothers and sisters turning their backs on the future. What’s it to you?”

I thought about it. “I don’t see brothers and sisters. I don’t see black issues. Maybe I should, but I don’t. Maybe because I’m white, I can’t. So I see what I can see. I see a pretty young girl on her way to being a crack whore. She’ll get pregnant, and she’ll have a crack baby, and there will be two lifetimes of pain. She’ll want more and more rock, and she’ll do whatever it takes to get it, and, over time, she’ll contract AIDS. Her mother will hurt, and her baby will hurt, and she will hurt.” I stopped talking and I put my hands on the steering wheel and I held it for a time. “Three lifetimes.”

Washington said, “Unless someone saves her.”

I let go of the wheel. “Yes, unless someone saves her. I see it the only way I can see it. I see it as people.”

Washington shifted in the bucket. “I was gonna ask you why you do this, but I guess I know.”

I went back to watching the X.

James Edward Washington said, “If I wanted to learn this private eye stuff, they got a school I could learn how to do it?”

James Edward Washington was looking at me with watchful, serious eyes. I said, “You want to learn how to do this, maybe we can work something out.”

He nodded.

I nodded back at him, and then Floyd Riggens’s sedan turned onto the far street and picked up speed toward the ice cream truck.

I said, “Camera in the glove box.”

Mark Thurman was in the front passenger seat and Pinkworth was in the backseat. The sedan suddenly punched into passing gear and the X jumped the chain-link fence and ran across the outfield toward the basketball court. He was pulling little plastic packs of something out of his pockets and dumping them as he ran.

James Edward opened the glove box and took out the little Canon Auto Focus I keep there. I said, “You see how to work it?”

“Sure.”