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51

Sanchez and I were across the street froton Beach Brew Pub

"Why a out to OC to meet you?" he asked

"Because I&039;ht?"

"She&039;s taking a class Going back to school to get a degree in finance She&039;s hit a ceiling at work, needs the degree"

"It&039;s about ti"

"Hey, I&039; the blond house draft, a light, sweet beer

Sanchez said, "Why is it the blond beer is the lighter beer, and the darker beer gets you drunk faster? Thought blonds havethat one up?"

"Just came to me I am, after all, a UCLA-educated Latino"

Our food came And lots of it I had ordered froht down the list and rattling off anything that sounded good And it all sounded good Now, plates of nachos, chicken wings, calarolls and even an artichoke were arriving steadily at our table

"Someone in the kitchen reen flower"

"It&039;s called an artichoke, you oaf"

"Well, your arteries are going to be choking after you eat all that shit"

Despite hed

"What can I say?" Sanchez said "I&039;m on a roll Can I have any of that shit?"

"Get your own food"

"Can&039;t; you cleaned out the kitchen"

We drank fro the Jazz Shaq was unloading on theot news on Pencil Dick"

"Who&039;s Pencil Dick?"

"Your teacher friend, Bryan Dawson Anyone poking high school students is called a pencil dick"

"I see; what&039;s the news?"

Sanchez leaned forward on his elbows "Pencil Dick was involved in another murder up north In a city called Half Moon Bay"

"So tell me"

"A student of his, a band student, disappeared They found her floating in the San Francisco bay Pencil Dick was a suspect, but they couldn&039;t pin anything on him He quit his job and came down here"

"Well, then, what do you think we should do?" I asked

"We tail hi for new blood"

52

I found the allegedly green Taurus parked in front of a small woodframe house in Santa Ana It was 9:00 pm, and the Taurus still looked blue to me

Santa Ana is mostly Hispanic and its residents are perhaps the poorest in Orange County In fact, don Santa Ana looks as if it had been lifted whole froht, as a Caucasian, would stick out in Santa Ana like a sore white thuuy who took a potshot at ed to a friend In that case I would follow the friend Either ith a paid killer on my ass, I preferred to be proactive in my involvement with him

I waited in ht&039;s front porch My own vehicle had nicely tinted s, and froh-powered binoculars I didn&039;t have many tools of the trade, but this was one of the to Will Durant&039;s Story of Philosophy on tape The 5 Freeway arched above the housing tract Freeway noises, especially the ruh the drone of the tape I was on h Voltaire and the French Enlighten and looked it over, not realizing I was inside I rolled down myand reached under e

Another one ofthe badge

The first one, a skinny kid with a black bandana tied around his head, shot his hands up as if I had pointed a gun at hi Hispanic accent, punctuated by jerky hand movements

"Don&039;t shoot me, officer, I didn&039;t mean to look at your killer set of wheels"

"You can look but don&039;t touch"

"Waddya doin&039; here?" asked the kid, their obvious leader

"Watching you boys"

"Are you gay, too?"

His buddies slapped each other high fives

Behind theht&039;s house, but I couldn&039;t see because the gangopen and slap shut

"Beat it," I said

The three of them waited for their leader The leader squinted at et this kind of partial recognition a lot Probably because at one point in their lives they had seen azines But this kid was young, perhaps too young to know of me But you never knew

He jerked his head "Let&039;s roll," he told the others

They sauntered off One calledThey would be potential witnesses; that is, if the police tried very hard to investigate the ht

Across the street, Fuck Nut, with his slicked-back graying hair visible froot in

53

We drove through Santa Ana I tailed hiht, I even turned into a liquor store parking lot When the light turned green again, I pulled out of the parking lot and continued tailing hi myself

He pulled into a Taco Bell, and I waited across the street He went through the drive-thru, and when he exited I followed him back to his house

Across the street, I waited for him to finish his tacos, since it was his lastofthe silence now that the book on tape had been turned off The thudding filled my ears, and I focused on that rather than as about to come What had to come I didn&039;t think of myself as a killer, but souy off my ass and away from Cindy