Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

DT SGT BEASLEY

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So Ed Beasley had made Detective Sergeant. That was nice. He had been my partner for two and a half years a while back. We got along just fine until he got a case of ambition. But he was a good cop.

Unlike Roscoe, Ed knew the streets. As a young black kid growing up in L.A., he’d stepped over the line more than once before settling on becoming a cop, and he was one of the few people who knew from both sides the sick thrill of walking down an alley in the Nickel, not knowing if you’d find a wino puking or an ice head with a MAC 10.

Ed Beasley lived through some tough years on the street and he deserved to be Detective Sergeant. He could even be a lieutenant if that’s what he wanted. I just couldn’t figure out why he wanted to talk to me so urgently.

“I thought so,” said Nicky, nodding. He was a slow reader, but he read everything he could get his hands on. Even my mail.

“You thought what?”

He clapped a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “Yer lumbered, mate. They’ve got the wood on you good.”

I looked at him, still irritated. His gigantic brown eyes radiated all-knowing good humor at me.

“What language is that, Nicky?”

He cackled. “Oh, you’re in it good, mate. Your rising sign is in Aquarius. Until the new moon you got discord, loss of harmony, big problem with authority, which is where the coppers come in, see? Oh, and travel. You’re taking a trip. It’ll be awrful. At least until the new moon.”

“Okay, Nicky.” I’d had enough. I stood up, moving to the front door. “If you say so.”

“Clear as mud, mate. Clear as mud. See if it ain’t.” He cackled again and moved off through the yard, back to his place. I never knew if he really believed all that stuff, but he sure could spout it.

I pushed into my house and put the telegram on the seat of my chair. I stared down at it. I didn’t want to call anybody in Los Angeles. I didn’t want to think about Los Angeles being there at all. All of it, the whole smog-drenched crap-heap of a city, led right to those two small graves along Sepulveda—but Ed Beasley was a decent guy, a good cop. He had been my partner, and unless you’ve been a cop yourself you can’t really appreciate how much that means. It’s a close relationship. It’s for life.

I sat by the telephone and dialed.

I let it ring thirteen times. On the fourteenth ring, Ed picked it up himself.

“Beasley,” he said. I knew him well enough to hear the strain and fatigue in his voice.

“It’s Billy Knight, Ed,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Billy,” he said, and I heard him take a deep breath. I could imagine him sipping from his cup of regular coffee—cream and two sugars—and reaching for the Kool that would be smouldering in the ashtray beside him. “Roscoe McAuley is dead.”

I wished I had a cigarette. They are awful things and will kill you as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow and they disgust me, but there is nothing else I know of that you can do at a time like this that makes any sense.

A cigarette is a way of relating to a random universe, a wild and sickening cosmos that never seems logical and always attacks from odd angles in strange but very personal ways. Because smoking doesn’t make any sense at all, somehow it’s the only rational response to events that don’t make sense, that sneak in under the belt and floor you, leaving you stunned and breathless.

I have never smoked and I hope I never will but when I heard Ed tell me Roscoe was dead, and thought of him sitting there with his Kool, I wished I had one, too.

“How did it happen?”

Down the long-distance line I could hear Ed blow out a cloud of mentholated smoke. “It’s a funny thing, Billy. Roscoe was down in Hollywood. It’s like two-thirty A.M., and he’s crawling around in that shit. No place for a desk jockey like that. Nobody knows what he was doing there. So he’s down on Cahuenga, near that twenty-four-hour newsstand.”

I could see the place in my mind as clearly as if I stood there. “The World News.”

“Right. And he comes stumbling out the alley, blood pumping out like from a fire hydrant. Somebody cut his throat, just about took his damn head off. He was holding it on with both hands when he hit the street. He died pretty quick. For a chairwarmer he musta been in pretty good shape, or he wouldn’t of made it out the alley cut bad like that.”

I took a deep breath. Behind the cold cop description Ed gave me I could sense his shock. We know it’s wrong, but we think it anyway; cops are supposed to be immune. A stray bullet, sure. Going down in a face-to-face fight with the cocaine cowboys, or having a massive coronary just before retirement, we expect that. Cops are more aware of being mortal than most people. They expect to die more than most other people do.

But cops aren’t supposed to have their heads hacked off in alleys. Especially a command cop like Roscoe. I knew the kind of shock waves Roscoe’s brutal murder would be sending through the force. It might not seem fair, but a cop-killing gets a little extra effort, and a cop like Roscoe would get a little more than that.

“What have you got?”