Grist 06 - The Bone Polisher Read Online Free Page B

love,” it began before getting down to business. “In California, the land of community property…” Beneath that, on a loftier plane, was a fanfold with an idealized drawing of a lamb on it, exhorting me to bring Christ into my new home: MAKE YOUR RELATIONSHIP COMPLETE.
    Beneath the brochures was what I’d been looking for, my one and only tie, fresh from the cleaner. The last time I’d seen it, it had looked like the entire Mafia had used it for a tablecloth. When I unwrapped it and put it on, sweating uselessly against the dry heat, I was pleased to note that most of the spaghetti stains had vanished. Blooming yellow in the rearview mirror and knotted in a single Windsor, it almost made me look respectable.
    Okay, I thought, starting the car, I’d done what I was asked. It had turned out exactly as I’d thought it would, and I was pleased that I hadn’t taken any of Nordine’s money. Max Grover’s house had been on my way to the real business of the day.
    Max had been a surprise, though. From Christy’s description, I’d expected a gay version of the pathetic sixty-five-year-old movie executives who rent themselves a new eighteen-year-old every week. Instead, Max had revealed himself to be much more complicated. Cheerful, confident, and manipulative, he lived more dangerously than his insurance company probably would have liked, but he seemed to do it because he actually believed he could help people. I had once believed the same thing.
    Both Max and the junk-mail hucksters had seen a wedding in my future, but I was certain none of them had seen anything even remotely resembling the wedding I was going to.
    I parked in a public lot downtown, near Parker Center, and hiked to the lobby, where I was issued the standard crack-and-peel badge, the kind that leaves stickum on your lapel. Since I could wash my face more easily than I could wash my lapel, I stuck the badge on my forehead. I thought it made me look festive.
    “You must be for the wedding,” said the weary-looking female cop at the desk.
    “I’m the best man,” I said proudly.
    “Yeah?” she asked. “In what group?” She made a note and waved me past. “Elevator to your left, down three stories, get off at
P
.”
    A pistol range was an odd place for a pair of cops to get married, but Al Hammond and Sonia de Anza were an odd pair of cops, and the LAPD pistol range was where they’d met. He was the cop I’d picked for a friend when I decided to ignore my various postgraduate degrees and become a private detective, and she was a distractingly beautiful Hispanic whom Al had discovered while his divorce from wife number one, Hazel, was cranking its way slowly through the courts, a marital version of
Jarndyce
v.
Jarndyce
. Hazel had taken everything, including their child, Al, Jr., but Al had gotten Sonia. I’d met Al, Jr., the kind of child anti-abortion activists never mention, and I thought Hammond had gotten the better deal.
    The elevator doors opened onto a wave of noise and a sea of LAPD blue. Across the room was a tight huddle of Latinos in civilian clothes, whom I recognized as the bride’s family. They looked as abandoned as the Last Platoon, surrounded by Saracens. The sea parted before my brown suit as though the color might be contagious, and I saw the groom sweating aggressively in my direction.
    “Get
over
here,” he bellowed, waving a Gold’s Gym arm.
    I did as I was told, proud of not breaking into a laugh. Hammond, now a lieutenant of detectives, hadn’t been in uniform for years, and he obviously didn’t have a tailor. The blues fit him like a sausage skin, just before it splits in the frying pan. Hammond was big in a way that turned defendants’ best friends into prosecution witnesses in moments, but I’d never realized that he had love handles. Now I saw that he had love handles so pronounced that they formed blue parentheses around his middle.
    He followed my gaze down to his midsection and turned even redder.