I looked down. Lee Blanchard was standing at the foot of the steps. His eyebrows were laced with stitches and his nose was flattened and purple. I laughed and said, “Getting there.”
Blanchard hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Wanta work Warrants with me?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Captain Harwell’s been calling to tell you, only you were fucking hibernating.”
I was tingling. “But I lost. Ellis Loew said–”
“Fuck what Ellis Loew said. Don’t you read the papers? The bond issue passed yesterday, probably because we gave the voters such a good show. Horrall told Loew that Johnny Vogel was out, that you were his man. You want the job?”
I walked down the steps and stuck out my hand. Blanchard shook it and winked.
So the partnership began.
CHAPTER FIVE
Central Division Warrants was on the sixth floor of City Hall, situated between the LAPD’s Homicide Bureau and the Criminal Division of the DA’s Office–a partitioned-off space with two desks facing each other, two file cabinets spilling folders and a map of the County of Los Angeles covering the window. There was a pebbled glass door lettered with DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY ELLIS LOEW separating the cubicle from the Warrants boss and DA Buron Fitts–his boss–and nothing separating it from the Homicide dicks’ bullpen, a huge room with rows of desks and corkboard walls hung with crime reports, wanted posters and miscellaneous memoranda. The more battered of the two desks in Warrants had a plate reading SERGEANT L.C. BLANCHARD. The desk facing it had to be mine, and I slumped into the chair picturing OFFICER D.W. BLEICHERT etched on wood next to the phone.
I was alone, the only one on the sixth floor. It was just after 7:00 A.M., and I had driven to my first day’s duty early, in order to savor my plainclothes debut. Captain Harwell had called to say that I was to report to my new assignment on Monday morning, November 17, at 8:00, and that the day would begin with attending the reading of the felony summary for the previous week, which was mandatory for all LAPD personnel and Criminal Division DA’s. Lee Blanchard and Ellis Loew would be briefing me on the job itself later, and after that it would be the pursuit of fugitive warrantees.
The sixth floor housed the Department’s elite divisions: Homicide, Administrative Vice, Robbery and Bunco, along with Central Warrants and the Central Detective Squad. It was the domain of specialist cops, cops with political juice and up-and-comers, and it was my home now. I was wearing my best sports jacket and slacks combo, my service revolver hung from a brand-new shoulder rig. Every man on the Force owed me for the 8 per cent pay raise that came with the passage of Proposition 5. My departmental juice was just starting. I felt ready for anything.
Except rehashing the fight. At 7:40 the bullpen started filling up with officers grumbling about hangovers, Monday mornings in general and Bucky Bleichert, dancemaster turned puncher, the new kid on the block. I stayed out of sight in the cubicle until I heard them filing into the hall. When the pen fell silent, I walked down to a door marked DETECTIVES’ MUSTER ROOM. Opening it, I got a standing ovation.
It was applause military style, the forty or so plainclothesmen standing by their chairs, clapping in unison. Looking toward the front of the room, I saw a blackboard with “8%!!!” chalked on it. Lee Blanchard was next to the board, standing beside a pale fat man with the air of high brass. I sighted in on Mr. Fire. He grinned, the fat man moved to a lectern and banged on it with his knuckles. The claps trailed off; the men sat down. I found a chair at the back of the room and settled into it; the fat man rapped the lectern a last time.
“Officer Bleichert, the men of Central Dicks, Homicide, Ad Vice, Bunco, et cetera,” he said. “You already know Sergeant Blanchard and Mr. Loew, and I’m Captain Jack Tierney. You and Lee are the white men of the hour, so I hope you enjoyed your ovation, because you won’t get another one until you retire.”