Howtown by Michael Nava

depicting him in headdress and loincloth, tomahawk in hand. Next to that was a picture of him crossing the finish line in a footrace, muscled torso straining with effort. A final picture concluded this triptych. It showed a row of boys in sweatsuits with the letters PAL printed across their chests. Morrow stood at the end in jeans and a windbreaker lettered COACH .
    Only in this last picture did his face show any animation at all. He was almost smiling—the lips curved upwards, but the eyes still looked as if they were examining autopsy photographs—and almost handsome. I felt something of a shock when I concluded from this picture that he was probably a few years younger than I.
    “Okay,” he said, “I’ll get back to you,” and hung up. He directed his unsmiling attention to me.
    “I’m Henry Rios,” I said. “I’m representing Paul Windsor. Dom Rossi said you had something for me, some discovery.”
    “It was on the chair.” His unfriendliness seemed impersonal.
    I lifted the stack of papers from the floor and examined the first sheet. It was a page from the medical examiner’s report.
    “This is all of it?” I asked.
    He was curt. “Rossi gave me a list. I filled it.”
    “Fine,” I replied, with equal disdain. It has never taken much for me to dislike a cop. My automatic assumption that most of them are assholes is seldom disappointed.
    “Sign the receipt.” He pushed a piece of paper across his desk toward me.
    I scanned it. It acknowledged full compliance with my discovery request. It wasn’t normally the sort of thing I argued about, since it had no real legal effect, but I didn’t care for Detective Morrow’s broomstick-up-the-ass machismo.
    “I can hardly say you’ve complied until I examine the packet.”
    “So examine it.”
    “When I have the time,” I said, rising.
    He looked up at me and said quietly, “I’m doing you a favor by giving you this stuff without a court order. In my book, you owe me a favor back.”
    I shook my head. “Discovery in a criminal case isn’t a matter of favors, Detective, it’s a matter of right. Now,” I rattled the sheet of paper, “I’m not waiving any of my client’s rights until I’m good and sure that you’ve given me everything I asked for.”
    His expression, unfriendly to begin with, turned actively hostile. In another moment he’d be giving me my Miranda rights. “Rossi warned me you’d be a smart ass.”
    I shrugged. “Well, he told me you were a good cop. I guess he was wrong about both of us.”
    He reached for the receipt. “Get out of here.”
    I gathered up the papers. “I appreciate your cooperation.”
    “You’re not going anywhere with those.”
    I glanced at the papers in my hand. “Rossi and I had a deal.”
    He picked up the receipt. “This is part of it. You don’t want to sign, you can leave the papers until you get a court order.”
    I moved toward the door. “Rossi didn’t say anything about signing a waiver.”
    “Vega,” he shouted, looking past me. A moment later a bulky uniformed cop appeared in the doorway. His face was familiar—the cop I’d seen in the Winchell’s a few days earlier, the Schwarzenegger with the baby face. “This guy is trying to walk out with police records,” Morrow told him. “What are you going to do about it?”
    The big cop looked at me in confusion.
    I said, “This is what you might call a test of your manhood, Officer, but you better be sure of your grounds before you do anything.”
    “I asked you a question, Vega,” Morrow said.
    The boy mumbled, “You want me to arrest him?”
    I was feeling better by the second. Confrontations with cops always had a tonic effect on me.
    “On what charge? Doing my job? You wouldn’t be the first cop who wanted to.” I sat down. “I tell you what, why don’t you call Rossi and talk this over with him before you give me more ammunition to cross-examine you on.”
    He stared angrily as he dialed the phone. As he explained to