39

Tom spotted the club’s unlit neon sign sticking out over the sidewalk and eased off the gas. A block ahead, he saw an Acura edging away from the curb, and he slapped on the turn signal. The cars in his rearview mirror slowed obediently, and heads behind windshields turned to see if they could maneuver around him. The Acura up ahead shot into his lane, and Tom came to a stop next to the car just beyond the empty space and turned around to find that the idiot in the Toyota behind him had ignored the turn signal and followed him to a stop so he couldn’t back into the space. Tom waved to direct the idiot around him, but the cars in the second lane filled it, boxing them in.

He cursed. Hathaway glanced over his shoulder, snapped his gum, and snickered. “There ought to be an IQ test for people to drive.”

Tom waved his arm again, but the Toyota behind him had nowhere to go. “Aww . . .” He cursed and shifted back to drive and punched the gas. At the corner he turned right. One more block farther away from the Ragtop Club, he found a place to park.

“This is probably another huge waste of time,” he told Hathaway.

“Yeah, you said that already.” Hathaway levered his door open. Tom couldn’t get out before Hathaway slammed it shut. The thud resounded behind the lump on his forehead and spiked the pain deeper. He stepped out into the street and elbowed his own door closed and thumbed the remote, and the horn sounded a sharp toot against the muffled traffic noise draped behind every sound in the city.

They rounded the corner onto Venice and approached the front door of the place without saying anything else about the Ragtop Club or its owner, Shawn Barnes, or the self-defense he had claimed in the beating death of Elwood Peavy two nights ago in the back room of the club. It was a long shot, and Tom wouldn’t let Hathaway forget it, but the homicide dick assigned to Peavy’s case suspected a connection, and it was worth checking out anything that looked remotely like something Flip might do. Or that was what Hathaway thought, anyway.

The door was locked. A sign on it told them the club’s hours of operation.

Hathaway pounded on it. He stood back, and a breeze rolled down Venice Boulevard to balloon Hathaway’s print of palm trees and hibiscus away from his chest. This shirt was mostly blood-red. It was supposed to be the color of sunsets.

Hathaway stepped forward and hammered on the door again. Tom was just about to tell him to give it up when the latch clicked on the door and it swung out.

A tall guy with a bruised face held on to the edge of the door. The arm away from the door was in a sling. He looked from Hathaway to Tom. “What do you want?”

Hathaway had his badge out. “Are you Shawn Barnes?” He pocketed the badge.

“No.”

The tall guy hesitated a moment, his hand still on the edge of the door, and Tom thought he was about to slam the door. He pulled out Flip’s mug shot and flashed it in the tall guy’s face. “We’re looking for Flip Dunn.”

The guy leaned down to get a better look at it. He said, “So that’s his name. Come on in.”

Hathaway smiled and gave Tom a smug wink before he ducked inside.

“I hate it when you’re right,” Tom said to his back.

A couple of brooms were being pushed around the room by guys who seemed to need them for support. Stools scraped the concrete floor as they made room for tidying. Somebody was behind the bar counting bottles. The tall guy led them among the tables toward the back.

Hathaway said, “When’s the last time you saw him?”

They were in the hallway leading to the bathrooms. “Two nights ago.”

The night Elwood Peavy was killed. Hathaway looked over his shoulder. Another wink. Tom said, “Shut up.”

Through the door at the back of the hall marked Employees Only, they moved into another hallway. The fragrance of fried food, sugar, and oil made Tom’s stomach turn. He realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

The tall guy knocked twice on a door and listened. Pretty soon someone answered, and he opened the door. “Two more cops to see you.” He nodded them in. He was about to head off, but Tom stopped him.

“Hang around.”

Behind the desk, the man who must be Shawn Barnes got to his feet, standing a shade over six feet tall. Above a carefully trimmed beard, his nose was bandaged and his eyes were bruised. His skin was creased and tanned, like a worn-out brown leather jacket Tom had owned once. He wore a short-sleeved black shirt that revealed spindly arms. The shirttail hung over black jeans, and a thick gold chain peeked out from underneath his open collar.

Hathaway stuck his hand out. “So. The giant killer.”

Barnes took Hathaway’s hand. “My lawyer told me not to talk to you guys anymore without him here.”

Hathaway plopped down in the chair in front of the desk. “Fine with me. We can wait.”

Barnes measured Hathaway for a moment before turning his eyes to Tom. Hathaway popped his gum and drew Barnes’s attention back.

Tom turned to the beat-up tall guy. “Why don’t you close that door?”

He looked at his boss, and Barnes must have given him the okay, because he closed it and put his back to it. He probably would have folded his arms if not for the sling.

Barnes was in his chair when Tom turned around. “Aw, who needs lawyers anyway?” Barnes said. “I got nothing to hide. Where do you want me to start? I said it so many times I could repeat it in my sleep.”

“We read the report,” Hathaway told him. “I really just wanted to meet you. See the guy who did Peavy.”

Barnes rolled his tongue around in his mouth like he was trying to get at something stuck in his teeth. He switched his eyes from Hathaway to Tom and kept his mouth shut.

“I mean, come on. Guy with a rap sheet like that? Big, too. I mean, hey, Tom, did you see the mug shots of that guy?” Hathaway craned around in the chair to make his point to Tom, then swiveled around again to Barnes.

Tom let Hathaway go on.

“You wouldn’t know this, Mr. Barnes, but they only got him on like a quarter of the stuff they brought him up on. And they probably only brought him up on this much of what he really did.” Tom held his thumb and forefinger a quarter-inch apart. “He was one bad dude, man. But you took him out, didn’t you?”

Barnes shrugged. “I’ve been in a few scrapes myself.”

“Oh, I’ll bet. You must have been. I mean, look at you. You could’ve spent Thursday night out there dancing instead of mixing it up with a guy like Elwood Peavy.”

“You want to go ahead and make your point?”

“What do you go, one-seventy? One-eighty?”

Barnes’s eyes narrowed; the creases around the eyes in his leathery face deepened.

“Couldn’t be one-eighty-five. I’d guess six-foot, maybe one-seventy-five. Tom, you remember Peavy’s stats?”

Tom folded his arms.

Hathaway didn’t wait for an answer. “Peavy was six-six, two-sixty when they took him into P-Bay three years ago.” He snapped his gum, shook his head. “Shoot, man, you must be some kind of black belt or something. That it?” He held his hand palm up over his head and signaled Tom by crimping his fingers.

Tom put the picture of Flip in Hathaway’s hand. Hathaway held the picture and looked at it. “Now Flip Dunn here—” he ticked it with his middle finger—“this guy I could see pulling it off. Maybe.” He tossed the picture onto Barnes’s desk.

Barnes didn’t look at it.

Hathaway leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Look, Barnes, this is just us boys talking. We’re off the record, okay? You can keep the cred for this. We don’t care, do we, Tom?”

“We don’t care.”

“See? It’ll be our little secret. We’re not LAPD. We’re state POs. We got no problem letting you work this. Nobody’ll mess with you for a long, long time after this. Am I right? I mean, once this gets around—what you did to Peavy.”

Barnes worked his tongue around some more. He said nothing. But he glanced at Flip’s picture.

Tom stepped forward. When he bent over to put his hands on Barnes’s desk, the pressure behind his forehead felt like the front of his brain was an anvil. “Hey. Barnes.”

Barnes looked up.

“Level with us. ’Kay? None of this gets to LAPD. I just want this guy.” He pounded his finger on the picture.

Barnes picked up the picture and grinned. “I never saw him before.” He flipped it at Tom. It bounced off his chest.

Hathaway said, “That’s not what your boy here says.”

The bruised guy came away from the door. “I never said that.”

Tom was eight inches away from Barnes’s head. He wanted to swipe his fist at that carefully combed head, but he didn’t. “Or we could leave here and go see LAPD right now. Blow up your story. Is that what you want?”

Hathaway stood. “I guess so. He’s not talking.” He went to the tall guy at the door.

Barnes picked up the picture. “So his name’s Flip Dunn?”