Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,16
not as a boss.”
For years, Sinclair had butted heads with Maloney, but their relationship changed after the Bus Bench killings when Sinclair came to realize that Maloney had never been the enemy. “I’m still going to meetings and still have a sponsor.”
“If there’s anything, you know you can talk to me.”
“I know,” Sinclair said.
*
Sinclair swung his car into the Palms Motel parking lot and accelerated toward a mixed-race man standing out of the rain under the second-floor landing. The man was in his midthirties, five-foot-eight, and wore dirty black jeans and a black canvas jacket. Sinclair and Braddock jumped out of the car and triangulated on him.
“Hands behind your back!” Sinclair shouted.
The man complied. Sinclair handcuffed him, patted him down, and stuffed him in the backseat of his car. Sinclair turned the car around and sped out of the parking lot onto West MacArthur Boulevard.
The man grinned from the backseat. “Thanks for the Starsky and Hutch move, Sinclair. Don’t want folks to think I’m snitching.”
“How’ve you been, Jimmy?” Sinclair asked.
“You know. Just trying to make a living. Who’s the lady, Sinclair?”
“Jimmy, meet my partner, Sergeant Braddock.”
“Nice to make your acquaintance, Braddock. You look like that lady detective on Castle. You watch that show?”
“Hi, Jimmy,” she said. “No, I don’t watch cop shows.”
Sinclair bought three coffees at the McDonald’s at Forty-Fifth and Telegraph, drove a block down Forty-Fifth, and parked under the 24 Freeway to get out of the rain. He pulled Jimmy out of the car, removed the handcuffs, and handed him a coffee. Sinclair watched as Jimmy emptied eight sugar packets into his cup—classic junkie.
“Do you want to sit back in the car where it’s warm?” Sinclair asked.
Jimmy bounced from one foot to the other, stopping only long enough to take small gulps of his coffee. “Been sitting too much. Can we talk out here?”
Sinclair pulled up the collar of his raincoat. It was still in the low forties, and as long as the rain continued, they’d be lucky if it topped fifty today. Braddock buttoned her coat to her throat and thrust her hands into her pockets.
“I guess you wanna know about Blondie.” Jimmy pulled a pack of Kools from his pocket and lit one with a plastic lighter.
Sinclair set his coffee on the hood of the car, clipped the end of a small cigar, and lit it with his Zippo. “You heard what happened?”
“It’s in the paper and all over the street.”
“You know who did it?”
“Shit, Sinclair. You get right to the point, don’t you?”
Sinclair puffed on his cigar. Jimmy looked healthier and probably twenty pounds heavier than the last time Sinclair saw him, but three squares a day in the county jail and no drugs will do that for a man. Braddock picked her coffee up from the hood of the car, took a sip, and wrapped both hands around the paper cup.
“I’m gonna find out for ya,” Jimmy said.
“I’m sure you will, but in the meantime I need to know where she was living and who she was hanging with.”
“She was private.”
“She have an old man?” Sinclair asked.
“Old man, as in pimp? Come on, Sinclair, you know girls out here don’t really have no pimps. You don’t see no Cadillacs with fancy-dressed assholes driving around Oaktown, do ya?”
“How’s Shelia and the kids, Jimmy?”
“Doing good. That apartment is sweet. She really appreciate you pulling strings to get her Section Eight.”
“And how was her Thanksgiving?” Sinclair sipped his coffee and stared at Jimmy.
“I should’ve told you I was out.” Jimmy looked at his brown sneakers. “What you did was real nice.”
Sheila had four kids, and although Sinclair had never asked, he assumed Jimmy was the father of at least a few of them. Sheila had worked the streets off and on ever since she was sixteen. When Sinclair found out Jimmy was in jail last Christmas, he submitted Sheila’s name with the ages of her kids to the police officer’s association to have a food basket and toys delivered to her a few days before Christmas. He did the same for Thanksgiving two weeks ago, so Sheila received a turkey and all the other trimmings, more than enough for a family twice the size of hers.
“I help Sheila because I feel sorry for her,” Sinclair said. “And because she deserves a man who takes care of her and the kids. I don’t do it in exchange for your information. So I don’t like you talking to me like I’m a chump.”