Robert Ferrigno - Scavenger hunt

Brooke continued to watch him, one hand lightly holding the reins, slightly amused. She was a deeply tanned brunette wearing well-worn boots and faded jeans, an embroidered denim shirt with the sleeves rolled.

"You go for the full treatment at the spa?" said Jimmy. "Manicure, pedicure, salt massage, and Brazilian wax. Yeah, I bet your husband likes you all sleek and smooth. I bet Walsh does too. Walsh couldn't call you at home, but he knew he could reach you at the spa every week. Same time, same place."

Jimmy had hoped to get a rise out of her, but Brooke just looked over her shoulder, back in the direction of her house on the hill.

"Take me to Walsh."

She started to speak, but stopped herself. He liked her for that. She had been about to lie, about to deny what they both knew was the truth, but she was smart enough to know that it wasn't going to work. "I can't." She jerked her head toward the house again. "Michael is expecting me back in about an hour or so."

"I want to see Walsh. If you can't do it, or won't do it, I go to the cops."

Brooke Danziger looked down at him. "Men. You love giving ultimatums to women."

"Think of it as a promise."

"I'll bring you to see him tomorrow."

"Today."

"My husband has plans for us today. I can't get out of them." Jimmy watched her. "Tomorrow, then."

The horse stirred, but she kept him in place with a gentle tug on the reins, still watching Jimmy. Her eyes were a deep brown. "Garrett was very impressed with you, Mr. Gage. None of this would have happened if he hadn't thought you could get the job done."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

Brooke Danziger almost smiled. "I warned Garrett. I told him if you were intelligent and tenacious enough to be useful, you were also bright enough to be dangerous. He said it was worth the risk." She leaned forward, the saddle creaking. "You'll have to ask him when you see him if he still thinks it was worth it." "I just don't know how I can help you, detective," said Sugar. "It's been a long time ago. Everything I know about the case is part of the public record."

"Don't shit me," said Katz, her voice breaking up over the phone. "One cop to another, we always save the best stuff for each other. Let's get together and kick things around."

Sugar opened his cooler with his foot, gently laid the tarpon onto the bed of cracked ice, and tossed the net aside. "From what I read in the paper, Walsh's death was ruled an accident." The fish flopped against the ice. "I thought the case was closed."

"This damn case has given me an itch. You know what that's like. I want you to help me scratch it."

Sugar looked out to the blue horizon. "I don't know. I'm kind of busy."

"You're retired, Brimley. How busy can you be?"

Sugar watched the waves. "How about lunch tomorrow?"

"Don't mind if I do."

Sugar wrote down her phone number and said he'd call her tomorrow morning and give her directions. He snapped the phone shut, tucked it back into his pocket. It seemed like all the sound in the world had been turned off. No sound, no color, no feeling. Just Sugar out there on the high seas, trying to maintain his balance on a shifting deck. He turned to the cooler and stared at the tarpon. His fist thudded against the fish without him even being aware of the desire to hit it. Ice sprayed against his bare chest as he beat the tarpon. Blood and scales drifted slowly through the air, and the only sound that Sugar could hear was his howling in his heart.

"I bet you hated leaving your lucky sunglasses in the koi pond," said Jimmy.

"You don't forget a thing, do you?" Walsh poked at the hot dogs smoldering on the hibachi with a fork, a joint stuck in the corner of his mouth. "I was wearing those Wayfarers the night I won the two Oscars, kept them with me through thick and thin. But I tossed them in the water next to Harlen and was glad to do it. Even stuck the linoleum knife in his back pocket. Whatever it took to convince you."

"Is that what it was all about, convincing me?"

"Convince you, convince the cops. One way or the other I figured it was healthier for me to be dead than alive." Walsh's grin exposed a chipped front tooth. He slid his tongue across the rough edge, aware that Jimmy had noticed. "Busted it the night Harlen drowned. Fell right on my face and never felt a thing. The two of us were so wasted."

"Did he drown on his own, or did he have help?"

"You think I killed him?" Walsh was wreathed in smoke. "You got a mind like a corkscrew, tough guy. That's what they used to say about me, because they could never tell what I was up to. No wonder I like you."

Jimmy didn't return the sentiment. The two of them leaned against the railing of Walsh's balcony, a concrete slab overlooking the Dumpsters in the alley. The apartment itself was a by-the-week rental in Manhattan Beach, a small studio with orange shag carpeting, a toilet that never stopped running, and cast-off furniture from previous tenants. The unit was located just a couple of miles and a half-million dollars from the cottage where Heather Grimm had died. Jimmy had driven right past the Kreamy Krullers shop, thought of Sugar, and almost stopped for a dozen.

Walsh rubbed a hand across his scruffy beard. It was a lousy disguise, more vanity than anything else, thinking the world was full of fans who would recognize him. He squatted on his haunches now, wearing baggy shorts and a new red cowboy shirt with bucking broncos on the yoke. The shirt was unbuttoned in the afternoon heat, the pits stained with sweat. He balled up some newspaper and pushed it onto the coals, the flames flaring up, the hot dogs popping. "I've always been impatient," he said, stabbing the dogs with the fork. "Me and Harlen stood in the middle of the koi pond that night, pissing on the fishies. I finished first and staggered back across the rocks, in a hurry to get back to the crack pipe. I woke up at dawn, eyes swollen half shut and spitting teeth, but I still looked better than Harlen. Damn fish had already nibbled away his eyeballs when I rolled him over." He dragged again at the joint and flicked the roach off the balcony. "Put me off my Froot Loops, that's for certain."

"Don't make jokes, Garrett." Brooke sat inside on one of two mismatched kitchen chairs, wearing sandals and a short sundress the color of ground mustard. Her legs were long and tan, her toes daubed with coral. "You're going to give Jimmy the wrong idea."

"Jimmy knows I didn't kill Harlen." A truck rumbled past on the street outside, rattling the windows. "Jimmy doesn't give me that much credit."

"You'd be surprised, Walsh. I'm more impressed with you now than ever."

"The feeling is mutual." Walsh speared one of the burned hot dogs and held it up to his lips, blowing on it. "You sure you don't want one?" He shrugged. "Just for curiosity's sake, what clued you in that I was still alive? Was it this?" He reached inside his shirt and flicked the gold ring through his right nipple. "I thought about it after I left, but I didn't want to go back and try sticking it on Harlen's tit. Tell you the truth, after a couple days, I didn't want to touch him."

"No, I missed that, but it wouldn't have mattered. He didn't have any nipples left by the time they ran the autopsy."

Brooke winced at the image, but Walsh seemed unaffected, finishing the first hot dog and reaching for the other one. "What was it, then?"

"Your last two calls were to Vacaville."

"How did you know that? I used a prepaid cell phone. They're untraceable."

"Not anymore."

Walsh stopped chewing. It wasn't being caught that bothered him. It was the realization that everything had changed in the seven years he had been gone.

"I thought maybe you had been killed on some prison contract and the killer was just checking in afterward. I never considered that it wasn't you dead in the koi pond. The police had a dental match, and there was the devil tattoo. Then a friend of mine mentioned these gangbangers she had seen, and they all had the same tattoo. It made me rethink things."