requested.
‘Let me just ask you, right off: You have a problem with people of the Jewish persuasion?’
It was the first thing he said to me upon my arrival, and it knocked me off stride before I’d ever said a word. I was already wondering what business I had to be here, and how big a mess I could make of things working so far outside the realm of my expertise, and now I had no doubt. Against a pro like Fine, I was bound to botch the job of interrogation.
‘Me? No. Why would I?’
‘Because our friend the mayor does, I think. We’ve always gotten along, don’t get me wrong, but I sometimes get the feeling that, if it weren’t for the occasional need, he wouldn’t choose to deal with my kind at all.’
I looked Fine straight in the eye and said, ‘I seriously doubt that’s true.’ Mildly surprised, because I would have thought O’s senseless hard-on for Jews would have proven itself too embarrassingly ignorant, and politically inexpedient, to hold on to all these years.
Fine took a seat at one of the stone dining tables in the area, and I joined him on the opposite side. The day had turned slightly overcast, so the shade we were sitting in was no draw for the park’s only other visible visitors, three toddlers and a pair of adults moving about a playground in the distance.
‘I understand you and the mayor go back a ways.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And Burrow too?’
I hesitated before answering, unsure of what O’ did or did not want this man to know. ‘R.J. was a good friend of mine as well, yeah,’ I said eventually.
‘So what do you wanna know?’
‘Whatever you can tell me about where Santa Monica PD’s investigation stands at the moment. Mayor Holden tells me you used to work out there.’
‘Four years. I left in ’02 to come to Bellwood.’
‘But you still have friends in the department?’
‘I still have friends everywhere. I’m that kind’a guy.’ He grinned in a way that had me envisioning a burning cross on my own front lawn. ‘Mind if I ask what your interest in the info is? This a professional matter to you, or a private one?’
‘Strictly private. I’m just a friend of the family checking status.’
‘The family can’t do that themselves?’
‘I think they’re concerned that your friends in Santa Monica are a little hesitant to tell them everything there is to know.’
‘Or that what they are telling them is total bullshit. That what you mean?’
‘You want to know where I’m coming from before you talk to me. OK. I’m not a cop, and I’m not an investigator, and nobody’s hired me to do anything. I’m just an old friend of the deceased who’s not going to sleep worth a damn if the police fuck this one up, accidentally or otherwise, so yeah, I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. Now, does that answer all your questions, or did I leave something out?’
Fine found a crumpled pack of cigarettes in a pocket of his uniform shirt, asked me if I had any objections to his lighting one up. I shook my head and watched him get one going, his first draw off it long and deep, as if it had been days since his last smoke.
‘I don’t have to tell you how disappointed I’d be, word got around I’d been talking to you,’ he said.
‘No. You don’t.’
‘Mayor Holden and I get along real well, his unfortunate anti-Semitism notwithstanding. He asked me to find out what I could about the Burrow investigation, and I was happy to do it. The man who signs all my checks, what am I gonna say, no?’
‘But I’m not the mayor.’
‘No. Not even close. So if somehow, some way, the wrong people find out about this—’
‘You’re going to take it up with me, and not His Honor. I get it. Anything else?’
He didn’t like being pushed, because pushing was always his job, but he could see from the look on my face that this was one dog who had jumped through his last hoop.
‘You’ve got fifteen minutes. First question.’
‘Suspects. Do they have
‘Let me just ask you, right off: You have a problem with people of the Jewish persuasion?’
It was the first thing he said to me upon my arrival, and it knocked me off stride before I’d ever said a word. I was already wondering what business I had to be here, and how big a mess I could make of things working so far outside the realm of my expertise, and now I had no doubt. Against a pro like Fine, I was bound to botch the job of interrogation.
‘Me? No. Why would I?’
‘Because our friend the mayor does, I think. We’ve always gotten along, don’t get me wrong, but I sometimes get the feeling that, if it weren’t for the occasional need, he wouldn’t choose to deal with my kind at all.’
I looked Fine straight in the eye and said, ‘I seriously doubt that’s true.’ Mildly surprised, because I would have thought O’s senseless hard-on for Jews would have proven itself too embarrassingly ignorant, and politically inexpedient, to hold on to all these years.
Fine took a seat at one of the stone dining tables in the area, and I joined him on the opposite side. The day had turned slightly overcast, so the shade we were sitting in was no draw for the park’s only other visible visitors, three toddlers and a pair of adults moving about a playground in the distance.
‘I understand you and the mayor go back a ways.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And Burrow too?’
I hesitated before answering, unsure of what O’ did or did not want this man to know. ‘R.J. was a good friend of mine as well, yeah,’ I said eventually.
‘So what do you wanna know?’
‘Whatever you can tell me about where Santa Monica PD’s investigation stands at the moment. Mayor Holden tells me you used to work out there.’
‘Four years. I left in ’02 to come to Bellwood.’
‘But you still have friends in the department?’
‘I still have friends everywhere. I’m that kind’a guy.’ He grinned in a way that had me envisioning a burning cross on my own front lawn. ‘Mind if I ask what your interest in the info is? This a professional matter to you, or a private one?’
‘Strictly private. I’m just a friend of the family checking status.’
‘The family can’t do that themselves?’
‘I think they’re concerned that your friends in Santa Monica are a little hesitant to tell them everything there is to know.’
‘Or that what they are telling them is total bullshit. That what you mean?’
‘You want to know where I’m coming from before you talk to me. OK. I’m not a cop, and I’m not an investigator, and nobody’s hired me to do anything. I’m just an old friend of the deceased who’s not going to sleep worth a damn if the police fuck this one up, accidentally or otherwise, so yeah, I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. Now, does that answer all your questions, or did I leave something out?’
Fine found a crumpled pack of cigarettes in a pocket of his uniform shirt, asked me if I had any objections to his lighting one up. I shook my head and watched him get one going, his first draw off it long and deep, as if it had been days since his last smoke.
‘I don’t have to tell you how disappointed I’d be, word got around I’d been talking to you,’ he said.
‘No. You don’t.’
‘Mayor Holden and I get along real well, his unfortunate anti-Semitism notwithstanding. He asked me to find out what I could about the Burrow investigation, and I was happy to do it. The man who signs all my checks, what am I gonna say, no?’
‘But I’m not the mayor.’
‘No. Not even close. So if somehow, some way, the wrong people find out about this—’
‘You’re going to take it up with me, and not His Honor. I get it. Anything else?’
He didn’t like being pushed, because pushing was always his job, but he could see from the look on my face that this was one dog who had jumped through his last hoop.
‘You’ve got fifteen minutes. First question.’
‘Suspects. Do they have
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