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opened the drawer and took out my passbook and the check and the deposit slip. I put the passbook back and closed the drawer. I tore the deposit slip in quarters and threw it away. I wrote VOID across the face of the check. Her first check. I folded it in two and put it in my wallet and then I went to see Lou Poitras.

9

    I parked in the little lot they have next to the North Hollywood Police Department headquarters and went around front to this big linoleum-floored room. There were hardwood benches on two of the walls, a couple of Coke and candy machines, and a bulletin board. A poster on the bulletin board said POLICE FUND RAISER—A NIGHT OF BOXING ENTERTAINMENT—COPS VERSUS FIREMEN! SPECIAL EXHIBITION BOUT: BULLDOG PARKER AND MUSTAFA HAMSHO . Beside the poster a skinny white kid with stringy hair spoke softly into a pay phone. He leaned against the wall with one foot back on a toe, his heel nervously rocking.
    I went around two Chicano men in Caterpillar hats with green jackets and dirty broken work shoes and through a reinforced door, up one flight of stairs, and down a short hall into the detectives’ squad room. Also known as Xanadu.
    The detectives live in a long gray room with all the desks against the north wall and three little offices at the far end. Across from the desks are a shower, a locker room, and a holding cell.
Days of Our Lives
was going on the locker room TV. Two brown hands were sticking out through the holding cell bars. They looked tired. Poitras’ office was the first of the three at the far end.
    Lou Poitras has a face like a frying pan and a back as wide as a Coupe de Ville. His arms are so swollen from the weights he pumps they look like fourteen pound hams squeezed into his sleeves. He has a scar breaking the hairline above his left eye where a guy who should’ve known better got silly and laid a jack handle. It lent character. Poitras was leaning back behind his desk as I walked in, kielbasa fingers laced over his belly. Even reclined, he took up most of the room.
    He said, “You didn’t bring that sonofabitch Pike, did you?”
    â€œI’m fine, Lou. And you?”
    Simms was sitting in a hard chair in front of Lou’s desk. There was another chair against the wall, but it was stackedhigh with files and folders. First come, first served. Simms wore street clothes: blue jeans and a faded khaki safari shirt with an ink stain on the pocket and tread-worn Converse All Stars. “You get promoted?” I said.
    â€œDay off.”
    Lou said, “Forget that. Gimme the kid’s picture.”
    I handed him the little school picture of gap-toothed Perry Lang. He yelled, “Penny!” and flipped the photo over to read the back, jaw working.
    Penny came in. There was a lot of dusty red hair and tanned skin. She had to be six feet tall. “Sheena, right?” I said. She ignored me. Lou gave her the little picture. “Color-copy this, front and back, and have a set phoned up to McGill in Lancaster right away.” When she left, Simms looked after her. So did I.
    â€œShe’s new,” I said.
    Simms smiled. “Uh-huh.”
    Poitras looked sour. “You two try to control your glands.”
    â€œYou get anything new on the cause of death?” I said.
    â€œI called the States up by Lancaster after we talked. They say four shots, close range. ME’s out there now.”
    â€œWhat about the boy?”
    â€œMcGill up there, he’s okay. McGill said there was nothing in the Caddie to indicate the boy was in the car when his old man got it. They put some people out to search the roadside, but it’s gonna be a while before we hear.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Poitras leaned forward and looked at me, his forehead wrinkling up like a street map of Bangkok. “Simms says you’re in on this.”
    I started from the beginning, telling them how Ellen Lang had hired me and why. I told them about Kimberly Marsh and said her