L.A. Requiem
Chapter One
Uniformed LAPD Officer Joe Pike could hear the banda music even with
the engine idling, the a.c. jacked to meat locker, and the two-way
crackling callout codes to other units.
The covey of Latina street kids clumped outside the arcade giggled
at him, whispering things to each other that made them flush. Squat
brown men come up through the fence from Zacatecas milled on the
sidewalk, shielding their eyes from the sun as veteranos told them
about Sawtelle over on the Westside where they could find day labor
jobs, thirty dollars cash, no papers required. Here in Rampart
Division south of Sunset, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans simmered with
Salvadorans and Mexican nationals in a sidewalk machaca that left
the air flavored with epizote, even here within the sour cage of the
radio car.
Pike watched the street kids part like water when his partner
hurried out of the arcade. Abel Wozniak was a thick man with a
square head and cloudy, slate eyes. Wozniak was twenty years older
than Pike and had been on the street twenty years longer. Once the
best cop that Pike had then met, Wozniak's eyes were now strained.
They'd been riding together for two years, and the eyes hadn't
always been that way. Pike regretted that, but there wasn't anyt ... read full excerpt from: L.A. Requiem ebook
