Shattered Glass(20)

“How’s that working out?” I hadn’t taken my eyes off Luis, though he was watching the now-empty alley. Peter and Alvarado had gone inside, or maybe for a walk. I had been too riveted by Luis to notice.

He rubbed his fingers over the stubble on his chin and finally shook his head at me. “I think I was wrong. Some men will always be boys.”

“Interesting,” I replied, twisting to stare out the front window. Apparently I disappointed father figures as well as fathers. At least I was consistent.

“But sometimes my partner is already a better cop than I am.”

I showed none of the elation or surprise I was feeling. Instead I fell back on what was natural for me when shown affection. Quiet.

My silence lasted about five minutes.

“I can’t believe you’re still whining about getting shot.”

Luis nodded slowly and settled back, flipping the car on. “I was in the hospital.”

“It was fourteen stitches and a tetanus shot. Your arm wasn’t even in a sling. I’m the one who had to go to the department shrink for shooting the guy.”

“You still got that shrink’s number?”

Ignoring the insinuation that I needed to go back to therapy, I jerked my head to the restaurant. “What did you mean by 'go with' the gay, anyway?”

“It means, I’m going to drop you at your car and then go talk to Gaines and find out if he really was working for Alvarado. And you’re going to go talk to the whore.” He gave me a meaningful snort before adding, “And remember: he’s a witness and possible person of interest.”





Chapter Four





How to Interrogate A Prostitute. Or Not

Luis once told me I was an idiot for getting my degree in accounting when clearly I should have majored in psychology. He said this after a twenty minute interrogation led to a man’s confession to selling his thirteen-year-old son in order to pay off a gambling debt. It had been the sixth time in four months that I had wrung a confession from a suspect after the other detectives’ efforts had produced nada. My father called this ability “juvenile charm”. Luis apparently agreed with that assessment. I called it the Bro Effect.

The trick was to know your audience. Read the jacket, find out the suspect’s background, and lastly, from the second you enter an interrogation, you adopt the correct persona. Because of my easy smile, and casual attitude, I was nonthreatening. “The bro”. The kind of guy who didn’t think too hard or judge anyone too harshly. The kind of guy everyone can relate to.

Unless you were a red-haired hustler with mesmerizing freckles.

Peter had met the tripping-over-his-own-tongue, panic-stricken, flustered Austin. Entering the diner, I was acutely aware of that disadvantage, among others. Getting the upper hand was going to prove difficult. I had no idea how I was going to approach questioning him.

Peter had no arrest record to study. Given his profession, that was astonishing. Astonishing in the Joe-the-ex-cop-must-have-pulled-some-strings way. From Joe’s ex-partner, Ron, I’d managed to glean some information about the guy. His name was Peter Martin Cotton. Peter Cotton. The bunny slippers finally made sense.

Joe had picked him, and two other kids, off the streets four years ago and illegally fostered them. According to Ron, the kid was dealing for Prisc Alvarado. Alvarado, it turned out, had been Joe’s first failed attempt to rehabilitate a street kid. At the time of his death, and after eighteen years, Joe was apparently still trying with Alvarado. Which should have been an lesson to me about obsession. It wasn’t.

To everyone’s surprise, the diner had been left to Peter, not Alvarado, when Joe died, which explained Peter’s constant presence there these days.

Ron had also informed me that Peter was devoted to the other two ‘foster’ kids Joe had taken in; Darryl and Nicolas, both around Peter’s age, though Ron couldn’t be sure about their ages or names. After retirement, Joe had severed most ties with his former partner.

Other than that information, I only had what I had gathered myself: He was a whore, he disliked me, he had six freckles over his upper lip that begged to be….

Okay, maybe I had enough to work with. Devoted to the other kids. That was a vulnerability I could exploit, if necessary.





How to Date a Prostitute

In a booth at the back of the restaurant, close to the kitchen doors, Peter’s grey slipper dangled enticingly from the edge of his seat. From the way it hung suspended off his toe, I could tell his foot was crossed over his knee under the table. Though his back was to me, I imagined he was laughing with the youth across from him.

The black-haired boy, and, yes, this time I meant boy—he had to be sixteen, max—was blushing as they laughed and using an ink pen to scribble on a drawing pad. He raised his head as I came near, frowning only slightly, but his grey eyes were bright and warm and his smile remained in place. Was I about to intrude on a date?