Ken Douglas - Gecko

A large room, many desks, two possible ways out. Which one to take? He had to decide. He couldn’t ask. Then luck attacked like lightning strikes. He saw his wife, on the far side of the room, talking to an elderly man in a cheap suit and a loud Hawaiian print tie. He stopped, saw her shake the man’s hand, turn and go through door number one.

He followed her into another hallway, moving faster in an effort to catch up. In spite of his trouble, she’d come for him. Maybe she’d finally seen Kohler for what he really was. Maybe she wanted him back. Maybe everything was going to be all right, after all.

He followed her out of the police station.

“ Julia,” he called, but the striking woman turning her head to meet his gaze wasn’t his wife. Even though she had been crying, her smile was too quick, too real. Julia hadn’t smiled like that in a long time.

“ Hello, Jimmy,” Roma, his wife’s twin, said as she smiled at him through her tears.

After booking Jim Monday, writing the report and dealing with the motor pool about the damaged car, Washington and Walker were forty-five minutes over shift. Walker wanted to go home and Washington, after lighting his third cigarette for the day, wanted to go to work.

He wanted the Askew case. He wouldn’t get it, because he wasn’t a homicide detective anymore and there probably wasn’t going to be a case. Hit and run-open and shut. That’s what they were calling it. But it didn’t feel right. People didn’t speed around corners in Belmont Shore during the middle of the day. Too many cars, too many people. It felt wrong.

Whoever was driving that Buick wasn’t out for the Southern California sun or the specialty shops. He was out for murder. That car came out of nowhere, struck Askew, made a quick right on a residential street and was gone in a flash. It wasn’t accidental and Washington wanted the case.

“ There is no case, so you can stop worrying about it,” Walker said.

“ I wasn’t worrying about it.”

“ You were worrying about it.”

Walker was amazing, Washington thought, he’d only been his partner for six months and he could read him better than his wife, better than his daughter, better than any partner he’d ever had. Maybe it was because they were a lot alike, both from poor backgrounds, both overeducated and they both loved police work better than life.

“ Fess up, you think it was murder and you want the case. Admit it,” Walker chided.

“ Yeah, I think it was murder and if I didn’t at first, the bullet through the back window would have changed my mind. Hell, it would have changed anybody’s. And the Buick-that had to be a set up. That SOB was waiting. He saw his target, stepped on the gas, got him and vanished. Yeah, it feels like murder to me and I’ll bet it feels like murder to you.”

“ Easy counselor, I went to law school, too. You don’t have to convince me. Use your logic on somebody who can do something about it.”

“ Nobody wants to hear.”

“ Then it’s over.”

“ If I was still in Homicide, we could work it in.”

“ What do you mean we, kimosabe? This Injun has a wife and two little girls at home, who don’t see enough of him as it is.”

“ Maybe you should have stayed a lawyer.”

“ Least I tried it, you didn’t even take the bar.”

Silently Washington agreed. He’d gone into the academy five days after he’d graduated from law school. Jane was pregnant. He had to get married. He had to provide a home. He told himself he’d take the bar next year, when they got a little ahead, but next year just never seemed to roll around.

“ How come you gave it up?” Washington knew Walker had quit a prestigious Century City law firm.

“ I didn’t like getting rich, white collar crooks off the hook. What I really wanted to do was put them behind bars. So I quit and became a cop. Now I do what I like. I was lucky, the money helped.”

Walker was an enigma to Washington. His parents had been killed in a small plane crash when he was sixteen. He was an only child, with grandparents in California. He came west to live with them and inherited twenty-one million dollars on his twenty-first birthday, a million for each year he’d been alive. He didn’t have to work, he could live comfortably off the interest.

“ The guy in the Buick is guilty,” Washington said.

“ That he is,” Walker agreed.

“ He should be put away.”

“ That he should.”

“ We could do it.”

“ The suits will get mad,” Walker said.

“ Are you with me on this?”

“ They’ll get real mad.”

“ Are you with me, or what?”

“ I’m with you.”

“ Because you’re right, they’ll get real mad.”

“ I’m with you.”

“ And if we do make a case, they’ll take it away from us and give it to Homicide.”

“ I’m with you.”

“ I won’t want to stop, even if they take it away. It’s the way I am.”

“ I said, I’m with you. I’m with you till we, not some dick in Homicide, we, us, you and me, masked man, the two of us, find the son of a bitch in the Buick and put him away.”

“ Spoken like a true rebel. Now let’s get out of here and get to work.”

They went to the locker room and changed into street clothes without saying a word. Washington was lost in thought. He was back on the trail of a murderer. He wondered about Walker-because bucking the system would be like swimming out into unknown waters for him. Walker had always been a by-the-book cop, but Washington knew he wanted to make the bust. He wanted to move up to where Washington had been. He wanted to be where the action was. He wanted Homicide.

After changing, they headed for the street.

“ Your car or mine?” Walker asked.

“ Yours I think. Mine is a little under the weather.”

“ Noooo,” Walker said, stretching out the word, “say it isn’t so.”

“ You’re not making fun of Power Glide?” Washington said. It was no secret in the department that Washington held a rather juvenile attachment to Power Glide, his 1959 Chevy Impala.

“ Never,” Walker said.

“ Come on, it’s a great car.” Washington reached to his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. He started to lift them out, then stopped himself and let the pack slide back into its nest.

“ It never runs,” Walker said through a wide grin.

“ Yes it does,” Washington said.

“ We’ll take my car.” Walker laughed, closing off that part of the conversation as he lead Washington to a new white Mercedes.

“ One ten El Jardin Drive,” Washington said.

“ And that is?”

“ Jim Monday’s address.”

“ How’d you get that?”

“ Off his driver’s license. I have a great memory.”

“ Too bad it spends most of its time in the fifties.”

“ I just wish I could have lived back then. The cars were simple. The music was better. You didn’t have to lock your doors. What can I say? They were better times.”

“ Before or after Mrs. Brown’s little girl was allowed to go to that white school, or Rosa Parks rode that bus?”

“ Yeah, there was a bad side to those times. I guess I tend to forget.”

“ Why are we going to Monday’s?” Walker started the car.

“ Because we have to start somewhere.” Washington’s voice trailed off as he let his head sink back into the plush leather headrest. He closed his eyes.

“ But if Monday was the intended victim and not Askew, aren’t we looking in the wrong place?”

“ We only have Monday’s word. For all we know, he set up the whole thing.” Washington kept his eyes closed.

“ But the shot in the alley?” Walker said.

“ We don’t know for sure that was related. We think it was, but we don’t know for sure.”