I was watching a leathery old woman in a tank top and khaki shorts lead the way off the boat when Roscoe’s soft cough yanked me back.
“I know why you left, Billy,” he said in that gentle voice. “Why do you think I came all this way?”
I turned on him. I was mad. “You don’t know jack shit about anything, except what’s in GQ and whose butt to kiss and I don’t give a good goddamn why you came all this way, I just want to see you and your goddamned suit on the next flight out of here.”
“Billy—” he started, but I wasn’t done yet.
“No, goddamn it, I am all the way out of it, out of anything you could possibly know about, care about or understand. Now why don’t you get out of here and find an air-conditioned waiting room somewhere before your two-hundred-dollar-an-ounce cologne sweats off and you smell like a cop again.”
I turned away. He had taken it pretty well, but I guess I should have expected that. He was a determined guy and would be willing to wait me out. Well, I was pretty determined nowadays, too. At least as far as forgetting Los Angeles was concerned.
Down the dock the leathery broad waved off the young mate and started fileting a big pile of grunts and lane snappers all by herself. The mate looked like the kind of eager idiot who thinks getting a job on a head boat is a legitimate way to make a living. Probably thought it would be a big help in picking up girls. I didn’t blame the old woman for trying to get rid of the mate. I was sixty-five feet away and the way he hovered and oozed his cheap, tip-hungry smile still made me want to brush my teeth.
“I’m sorry about your loss, Billy. You know that.” He said it with a funny twist to the words I couldn’t quite figure out. “But I’d like to tell you a little story.” Roscoe was still standing in the shade behind me, still using his soft, sad voice, like I had just asked after his mother’s health instead of telling him to go to hell. He didn’t wait for me to encourage him; like I said, Roscoe was smart.
“I guess you heard about the riots we had back in May,” he started off. “You musta been pretty glad you weren’t still out there in harness.” He chuckled, just a half a laugh that might have been a cough. “They even had me in blues, out on the street. It was very bad, Billy. Mostly because we didn’t have any idea about what was happening, or—” He paused a little too long and I heard him take a ragged breath. “Anyway, there was this kid.”
He stopped talking and concentrated on breathing for a minute. I sipped my water. I was pretty sure this was one of his management seminar techniques for making me feel involved in the conversation. It’s like the way CHiPs always call you by your first name when they’re writing you up. I guess they want you to feel involved in your speeding ticket.
I played along. “What kid, Roscoe?”
He still didn’t answer. I turned and looked at him. He gave me a goofy half-smile and a half-shake of the head. “Just a kid,” he said. “Sixteen years old. Still dumb enough to think people are basically good. Dumb enough to think he could make a difference, you know? A lot like you, Billy.”
“Suck my butt, Roscoe.”
“I mean it, Billy. Your biggest problem as a cop was, you still felt for people. Tried to really help ’em instead of just doing your job as a cop.” He gave another of his asthmatic half-chuckles. “Seven years on the force and you still a rookie in your heart.”
“Guess I learned better, Roscoe.”
I could hear him sigh. “Guess you did. But you didn’t learn enough, Billy. Not if you think you can run away from it like this.”
Down at the head boat the leathery old gal put her filets into a couple of those thin plastic bags they hand out and then just marched away. The smarmy mate watched her go and said something close to the ear of a stocky blonde girl standing by the ramp. She smiled politely. A dark-haired guy came off the boat and put an arm around the blonde and they walked off together. The mate watched, then went back on the boat. There was nothing left to look at down the dock, not even that damned geeky mate. I turned to Roscoe.
“Is that what this is about, Roscoe? That why you came all this way? To tell me about myself?”
I could see real rage in those soft brown eyes and just for a second I thought he might let all the years of smooth control drop away and hit me, call me motherfucker—just for a second. Then he gave me a little smile. “No, Billy. That ain’t what this is about. My nickel running out?”
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s running out. I got a three-pound mutton snapper I have to take home and eat before it turns to bait from sitting in the sun. I’ve been in the sun and salt water all day myself and I need a shower. I have two ice-cold bottles of St. Pauli waiting in the fridge and a ballgame coming on in two hours. I got a life, Roscoe. It might not be much, but it’s got nothing to do with you, or L.A., or cops anywhere. I don’t care about any of that shit. I don’t care if the Dodgers never win the pennant again, and I don’t care about you, except I got to get rid of you. So if I have to hear your story to do that, give me the story. Then just get out of here.”
He cocked his head at me, eyes gleaming, for all the world like a very dangerous robin. Then,
head still tilted to the side, he shook his head slowly in wonder. “You never used to be mean like this, Billy. You letting two bottles of beer waiting turn you mean?”
“No,” I said, “it’s the shower. If I don’t get my shower soon I’m going to burst into tears.”
“Well, then,” he said, with that strange half-smile he’d picked up since the last time I saw him, “can’t keep a man from his shower.” Roscoe took a deep breath and looked away, over to the parking lot. He blew out his breath and shook his head again.
“There was this kid,” he said finally. “And he thought he could make a difference.” He stopped talking again, but not for as long this time. “You got to understand how this went down, Billy. First off, we knew something might be coming and we were as ready as we could get. But we weren’t ready for this. We weren’t allowed to be ready. Deep in their honky Presbyterian hearts, the commissioner and the chief and all senior staff were thinking it couldn’t happen like this ever again. Because all that terrible shit with the Nee-grows is twenty-five years ago. Why, they even got some very promising Nee-grows moving up on their own staff.”
“I heard,” I said. “Congratulations.”
He let it slide. “’Sides, the black community hasn’t been able to get all together on something in almost as long. So what we were ready for and what we got were not even in the same ballpark.”
He sighed heavily. “It was just so fast. They announced the King verdict and suddenly the town was on fire. There was no sense to it. Far as I know, there were no Koreans on the jury, but suddenly it was the Korean shopkeepers were getting it the hardest.
“So the Koreans are on their roofs with all these automatic weapons ready to pop the first black face they see, even if it has a badge.”
He spent some time breathing again, looking down and trying to figure out if there was something he could do with his hands. There wasn’t; he shook his head and went on.