Guilt by Association (16 page)

“That’d be my guess,” I replied.

Eddie gave me a little smile. I turned to his friend. “Dante?”

Dante exhaled and shook his head, a small frown wrinkling his brow. “I don’t remember him ever talking about a regular.”

The answer seemed sincere, so I moved on. “When was the last time you saw Kit?”

They both shrugged.

“You don’t remember? Seriously? A friend gets murdered, and you don’t remember the last time you saw him?”

Dante looked around the cafeteria and Eddie looked out the window, but neither one of them answered my question. I could almost
hear them planning their exit. For some reason, they’d both decided they’d done enough cooperating. I could feel Bailey getting
ready to step in and be a little more persuasive, but we didn’t have
anything to threaten them with—at least not yet. Right now, the smart move was to back off and leave looking like good guys.

“Whatever you thought of Kit, you know what happened wasn’t right. If you help us, nobody’ll know. I promise we’ll keep it
quiet.” Which was true. I
had
to keep it quiet if I wanted to keep my job. I didn’t feel the need to share that with the boys. I handed them my card and
told them to call me, then turned and walked out. Bailey gave them one more hard look and followed.

I could feel about one hundred pairs of eyes follow us as we left the cafeteria. We walked down the front steps of the school,
and I exhaled loudly as we hit the street and headed for Bailey’s car. The sidewalks were still relatively quiet, except for
the mom-and-pop grocery and liquor stores, each of which was showing its own particular signs of life. We briskly covered
the four blocks to Bailey’s car in silence, lost in our own thoughts. Mine were largely devoted to my decidedly unfond memories
of high school. Apparently Bailey’s were too.

“High school sucks,” she remarked with disgust.

“My sentiments ex—”

At that instant—we were just steps from Bailey’s car—the air cracked with the sound of a shot fired at close range.

“Holy shit!” Bailey said.

We both hit the ground; I saw a bullet ricochet off the sidewalk ahead of us, spitting up a spray of concrete inches from
my face. Another shot nearly split my eardrums, this time even closer. I heard the bullet ping loudly off the fire hydrant
just ahead of me.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as we each whipped out our guns and simultaneously rolled to shelter behind a parked
car. I held my gun out in front of me, though I had no idea where to aim. Ears still ringing from the shots, I quickly scanned
the area across the street but saw nothing—unless I counted the freaked-out shoppers who’d jumped out of their skins. A grapefruit
and two
avocados rolled out of the grocery bag one of them had dropped before running for cover.

We both rose into a crouch and looked through the car windows, our guns at the ready, but there was nothing to see. Bailey
jerked her head in the direction of her car and signaled to me to stay low.
No shit,
I wanted to say. I bit back the impulse to tell her I thought we should skip. We duckwalked, staying in a crouch to make
ourselves smaller targets, and ran for Bailey’s car.

We crawled in from the passenger side to give us cover. As soon as we were in, Bailey hunched down, gunned the engine, and
peeled out. I slid down in my seat and tried to look over the dash to see where the shots might have come from, but as we
flew out of there, I realized they could’ve come from too many places—the alley between the gas station and the Korean acupuncturist,
a window on the floor above the Armenian grocery store, or behind a myriad assortment of parked vehicles. I gave up and stayed
low in my seat as Bailey jerked the car through the streets at a speed that left my stomach several blocks behind us.

When the adrenaline rush ebbed somewhat, I started to think about who’d done this. It had to be personal. There’d been no
gang “hit up”—the usual “Where you from?” that precedes a random gang shooting, and they didn’t usually target women our age
anyway. But there was a gang-style brazenness to it, which made it likely that the Sylmar Sevens were behind it. When Bailey
had cleared us out of the immediate area and slowed down enough to make conversation a little less life-threatening, I said,
“I want to say this was the Sevens.”

Bailey, who was continually darting looks into the rearview mirror, gave a short nod. “A long way out of their territory.”

“So’s my hotel. The only way they could’ve known about either place was by following us from the Criminal Courts Building.”

“True,” Bailey agreed.

“Though from what I’ve learned, the Sylmar Sevens aren’t exactly a big-time operation. Don’t get me wrong. They’ve done their
share. But I’m having a hard time believing Revelo’s important enough to be worth all this work… and risk,” I said.

Bailey turned right, toward the bridge that would take us over the freeway and into downtown.

“Not much risk so far. We haven’t caught anybody, right?” she said dryly.

She had a point. “I suppose it’s possible. Maybe if they merged with a bigger gang, and Revelo’s the new shot-caller…”

I completed the thought mentally: then the BGs—baby gangsters—of the new and improved Sylmar Sevens would want to impress
the new boss and shot-caller by taking out the prosecutor that was causing him trouble. And from their perspective it was
a win-win situation: if they didn’t get caught, they’d look like heroes, and if they did get caught, they’d look like even
bigger heroes.

These were not comforting thoughts.

“If we’re going to call this in, we’d better get back there and do it now,” Bailey said as she continued to drive down Broadway
toward the Criminal Courts Building.

The sound of sirens, distant at first but fast approaching, told me we didn’t have much time to decide.

It hadn’t been an easy decision.
At first I thought that maybe we did have to report the shooting. But upon reflection it occurred to me that in a neighborhood
like that, with gangs on all sides, a random shooting to claim new turf was a far more logical explanation than the possibility
that we were being targeted by the Sylmar Sevens—a small-time gang with limited resources. And the downside of reporting the
shooting was that—if I got lucky, at the very least—I’d get a full-time tail, which would effectively end my work on Jake’s
case. If I didn’t get so lucky, I’d get busted for sticking my nose into a case I’d specifically been warned off of—a firing
offense.

I told Bailey, “I admit, our chances of solving Jake’s case are probably going to get somewhat slimmer if we’re dead, but
if I’m right and this was random, then we’ll have shut ourselves down for no reason.”

Bailey didn’t like it, but I eventually wheedled her down… on one condition: “You don’t leave the office without me. Ever.
You never leave for work before eight a.m.—”

Fine by me. I’m not exactly nature’s freshest flower before noon anyway…

“—and when you do walk to the courthouse, you wear a vest.”

That momentarily cooled my jets. I hate those things with a blinding passion. Stiff, hot, uncomfortable—but worst of all they
make you look like Frankenstein. I opened my mouth to protest, but Bailey held up her hand. “Nonnegotiable, Knight.”

I capitulated.

But this morning, as I opened my closet doors, I reflected that it was a hell of a day to take my first crack at working a
bulletproof. Today I was having lunch with Lieutenant Graden Hales, which meant I had enough wardrobe issues on my hands without
worrying about body-armor couture. I don’t have a lot of patience for dress-up, so deciding what to wear usually takes less
than three minutes. But now I uncharacteristically found myself noodling over my choice of wardrobe. I didn’t want to look
like Dita Von Teese, but I didn’t want to look like Gertrude the Security Guard either. The goal was to seem slick but not
slutty. This is not as easy as it seems. My cobalt-blue sweater was flattering but clingy—too slutty. My starchy white blouse
with metal cuff links was court worthy but mannish—too blah. Finally I settled on a charcoal-gray cashmere turtleneck thin
enough to tuck into a pair of high-waisted wool trousers and finished it off with low-heeled boots—people downtown usually
walk to lunch, and I didn’t want to suffer through a multiblock hike on spiky heels. The only thing left to decide was outerwear.

I considered which jackets would fit over the bulky body armor, then walked out onto the balcony to get a feel for the weather.
It was brisk, but the sky was a cerulean blue that said clouds were unlikely, and the sun was a brilliant diamond that promised
it wouldn’t stay this cool for long. The air was scrubbed clean, not a shred of smog in sight. As I had many times before,
I thought that days like this were probably the norm for L.A. back in the ’30s. I decided on a roomy cream-colored blazer
but had to settle for carrying my .22 Beretta, because the pockets weren’t big enough for the .357. I wouldn’t ordinarily
have made that compromise, but since I’d be wearing the vest, I still felt loaded for bear. Especially since, after I got
to work, I’d be with one cop or another all day—and they got to carry .44s.

On my walk to the office, I told myself that I was moving fast so
I could squeeze in some aerobic benefit to make up for all the gym days I’d missed recently. True or not, my effort was significantly
encumbered by the stiff, heavy bulletproof vest that made me feel like I was climbing up the side of a building. After just
two blocks, I was already out of breath. Terrific. If someone wanted to shoot me now, the vest was my only hope, because I
sure as hell couldn’t outrun them. As I slogged my way up the hill, I reconsidered the possibility that the shooting yesterday
might have been a random event. The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that it had to be. I sincerely doubted
that ours was the first unreported shooting in that area, which meant it would probably be impossible to figure out what kind
of bullets had been fired at us. The more I thought about it, the happier I was that we hadn’t reported it. Though, given
the sirens I’d heard, it was likely someone—maybe a teacher at the school—must have.

I picked up my pace and furtively looked around for baggy clothing or tattoos. I keyed in on the guy selling churros from
a pushcart. I thought his pants looked pretty loose. He caught my gaze. When our eyes met, he started to give me what probably
used to be his sexy smile. He looked like he was about ninety, and his sexy smile needed work. It’d probably been a very long
time since he’d seen someone checking out the junk in his trunk. Unless someone was looking at his car.

I blew out a sigh of relief as I briskly pushed through the doors of the Criminal Courts Building and ran for the elevator,
but a familiar sight brought me to a stomach-lurching halt. There was no mistaking that thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair.
Or the sound of that rich baritone voice. Daniel Rose, my ex. My heart beat slow and hard as I watched him chatting easily
with a couple of prosecutors at the bank of elevators. My vision blurred, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I quickly turned
away and moved into the crowd near the metal detector. Of all days to run into Daniel, I thought, it had to be
today. Since our breakup, dating was a rare occasion for me. My last date—a mini-break for coffee in the outdoor café of the
Ahmanson Theater—had been four months ago. What kind of sick twist was it that I had to see him today? Feeling defeated by
fate, I waited for his elevator to arrive and finally allowed myself to breathe when I heard the ding and saw the doors close.
I moved out to the nearest elevator on leaden feet and punched the up button.

On the eighteenth floor, I ran into Toni as I was getting off the elevator.

“Hey, you!” she said. Then she stopped and looked at me more closely. “What’s up? Are you okay?”

I nodded wordlessly, not wanting to tear up in front of the whole world. Toni pulled me into the ladies’ restroom across the
hall. Luckily we had the space to ourselves.

“I just saw Daniel downstairs,” I said quietly. I swallowed and tried to push the lump out of my throat.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, honey.” Toni put her arms around me and patted my back.

I held on to her and breathed for a moment, grateful for the comfort. After a minute, I pulled away. “Thanks, Toni,” I said.
“I just feel like I’m never going to get over him, and I’m sick of feeling this way.”

“And you’ll keep feeling that way until you
are
over him. You know what I mean?”

“No, I really don’t.”

“You’ll be hurting until you won’t be anymore. It just takes time,” she said gently. “And you’ll probably always feel at least
a
little
something when you think of Daniel, because he’s a good guy. That’s how it is with the good guys.”

I nodded.

“And you also haven’t really tried to see anyone else. That’s keeping it fresh too.” Toni looked at me with a steady gaze.

I returned her stare for a moment, then looked away. Toni and
Bailey had been trying to get me back out in the mix for at least six months. So far I hadn’t been able to make it past a
single cup of coffee, let alone into a relationship. But I didn’t tell her about my lunch date with Graden because I was seriously
thinking about canceling, and I knew Toni would try to talk me out of it. And I admitted to myself that I probably hadn’t
told her before this because, deep down inside, I’d had a feeling I’d want to get out of it anyway.

I hugged her again.

Toni leaned back, held my shoulders, and looked me in the eye. “You going to be okay now?”

I nodded. “Work beckons,” I said with a rueful smile.

“Your great escape,” she agreed. “I’m around if you need me. Okay?”

“Yeah.” I sighed. I knew I wouldn’t want to talk about it, though. I never did.

Toni gave me a knowing smile. She knew that too.

We walked out into the hallway. The ding of the elevator sounded, and Toni trotted out to catch it. She stepped inside and
blew me a kiss, and I smiled and blew one back. I punched in the security code and made my way toward my office, lifting my
hand to wave to Melia as I passed by Eric’s anteroom. Her head was bowed, and she was staring down into her lap, reading one
of her tabloid mags under the desk. That meant Eric had probably just left for a meeting, because she knew better than to
let him catch her at it.