Milo eyed him for a long moment, then turned back to the clerk.
“Yeah, police work’s strenuous,” he said in a loud voice. “Got to shovel in those calories in order to catch the bad guys.”
He laughed even louder. It sounded almost mad.
The man at the dairy case twitched and half turned. He glared at us for a second, then returned to studying the cream.
He was gaunt and hairy, wearing a dirt-blackened army jacket, jeans, and beach sandals. His hands shook and one clouded eye had to be blind.
Another member of Dorsey Hewitt’s extended family.
He slapped the back of his neck with one hand, turned again, tried to match Milo’s stare.
Milo gave a salute. “Evening, pal.”
The man didn’t move for a second. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and left the store, sandals slapping the vinyl floor.
The clerk watched him go. The cash register gave a computer burp and expelled a receipt. The clerk tore off the tape and dropped it into one of the half-dozen bags we’d filled.
“Got a box for all this?” said Milo.
“No, sir,” said the clerk.
“What about in back?”
Shrug.
We carried the food out. The gaunt man was at the far end of the lot, kicking asphalt and walking from store to store, staring at black glass.
“Hey,” Milo called out. No response. He repeated it, pulled a cereal variety pack out of one of the bags and waved it over his head.
The man straightened, looked toward us, but didn’t approach. Milo walked ten feet from him and underhanded the cereal.
The man shot his arms out, missed the catch, sank to his knees, and retrieved it. Milo was heading back to the car and didn’t see the look on the man’s face. Confusion, distrust, then a spark of gratitude that fizzled just short of ignition.
The gaunt man hobbled off into the darkness, fingers ripping at the plastic wrapping, sprinkling cereal onto the pavement.
Milo said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” We got into the Fiat and he drove around toward the back of the mall where three dumpsters sat.
Several empty cartons were piled up loosely against the bins, most of them torn beyond utility. We finally found a couple that looked and smelled relatively clean, put the bags in them, and stashed the food in back of the car, next to Myra Paprock’s homicide file.
A sliver of moon was barely visible behind a cloud-veil, and the sky looked dirty. The freeway was a stain topped with light and noise.
After we rounded Exposition, Little Calcutta continued to elude us–the darkness and the plywood barrier concealed the lot totally. But the place on the sidewalk where I’d talked to Terminator Three was just within the light of an ailing street lamp and I was able to point it out to Milo.
We got out and found gaps in the plywood. Through them, blue tongues quivered-thin, gaseous alcohol flames.
“Sterno,” I said.
Milo said, “Frugal gourmets.”
I took him to the spot along the fence where I’d unhinged the makeshift hatch a few hours before. Extra wires had been added since then, rusty and rough, wound too tightly to unravel by hand.
Milo took a Swiss army knife out of his trouser pocket and flipped out a tiny pliers-like tool. Twisting and snilin. he managed to free the hatch.
We went back to the car, took out the boxes of groceries, and stepped through.
Blue lights began extinguishing, as if we’d brought a hard wind.
Milo reached into his trousers again and pulled out the penlight I’d used in the car. I’d replaced it in the glove compartment and hadn’t seen him pocket it.
He removed something from one of the grocery bags and shined the light on it.
Plastic-wrapped bologna slices.
He held it up and shouted, “Food!”
Barely audible over the freeway. Fires continued to go out.
Training his beam more directly on the bologna, he waved the meat back and forth. The package and the hand that held it seemed suspended in midair, a special effect.
When nothing happened for several more seconds, he placed the meat on the ground, making sure to keep the penlight trained on it, then removed more groceries from his bag and spread them out on the dirt.