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fore he joined the Sheriff’s Department. Also, this is a busy time for safetybox transactions—people withdrawing jewelry for Christmas parties and cashing in bonds. If Meyers was very careful, he would have had ample opportunity to pilfer.”

“Have you told any of the other investigating officers this?”

“No. It didn’t seem germane to the issue.”

Lloyd stood up and shook hands with the bank manager. “Thank you, Mr. Tyrell. I like your style.”

“I work at it,” Tyrell said.

*

*

*

Driving away from the bank, recent memories tumbled in Lloyd’s mind. During the pandemonium following the Pico-Westholme bloodbath, he had heard one young patrolman tell another: “The security guy was a real wacko. He used to talk this weird shit to me.” The cops had backed away when he noticed them, but their faces were still in his memory vault, now part of the blurred, but clearing focus of the Gaffaney offshoot of the case. Checking his dashboard clock, he saw that it was 3:40, twenty minutes until daywatch ended. Focusing only on those faces, he drove to the West L.A. Station to make them talk.

His timing was perfect.

The station parking lot was a flurry of activity, black-and-whites going in and out, patrolmen walking back and forth, carrying report notebooks and standard-issue shotguns. Standing by the locker room door, Lloyd scanned faces, drawing puzzled return looks from the incoming officers. The flurry was dying out when he saw the two from the bank approach with their gear. Lloyd walked over to them, making a snap decision to play it straight but hard. When they saw him, the patrolmen averted their eyes almost in unison and continued on toward the locker room door. Lloyd cleared his throat as they passed him, then called out, “Come here, Officers.”

The two young men turned around. Lloyd matched their faces to their name tags. The tall redheaded cop named Corcoran was the one who had made the remark at the bank; the other, a youth with glasses named Thompson, was the one he’d been talking to. Nodding at them, Lloyd said,

“I’m on the bank homicides, gentlemen. Corcoran, you said, quote, ‘The security guy was a real wacko. He used to talk this weird shit to me.’ You told that to Thompson here. You can elaborate on the statement to me, or a team of I.A.D. bulls. Which would you prefer?”

Corcoran flushed, then answered, “No contest, Sergeant. I was gonna tell 576

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the squad room dicks, but it slipped my mind.” He looked at Thompson.

“Wasn’t I, Tommy? You remember me telling you?”

“Th-that’s right,” Thompson stammered. “R-really, Sarge.”

Lloyd said, “Talk. Omit nothing pertaining to the security man.”

Corcoran spoke. “Tommy and I sort of had lunch with him twice, last week. He came over to our table, flashed his retirement badge from the Sheriff’s and sat down, sort of uninvited. He started asking these weird questions. Should prostitution and weed be legalized? Didn’t we think cops made the best whoremasters, because they knew the whore psyche so good?

Didn’t we think that the county could cut costs by legalizing weed and getting inmates up at Wayside to harvest it? Stone wacko. I th—”

Thompson cut in. “I couldn’t believe this clown made twenty years as a cop. He came on like he was from outer space. But I knew he was leading up to something. Anyway, the second time he crashes our lunch, he tries to act real cool and asks us if we know any fences ‘who work good with us.’

Unbelievable! Like he thinks policemen and fences are good buddies.”

Feeling his blurred focus gain another notch of clarity, Lloyd said, “Tell me about Steven Gaffaney. Don’t be afraid to be candid.”

A look passed between the partners, then Corcoran said, “Nobody on the daywatch could stand him. He was a religious crackpot and a freebie scrounger, always hitting the halfer restaurants and pocketing the check, leaving a quarter tip. I heard rumors that he stole stuff from the station and that his old man, some heavy-hitter captain, bribed instructors at the Academy to pass him through. Wh—”

Lloyd interrupted. “What’s the source of that last rumor?”

Corcoran stared at the ground. “I heard the squad room lieutenant talking to Captain Stevenson. The skipper shushed him.”

“How did Gaffaney and his partner get along?” Lloyd asked.

“Paul Loweth couldn’t stand him,” Thompson said. “When they got assigned together, Paul requested another partner, you know, because of a personality conflict. They even took separate code sevens, because Paul couldn’t stand eating with Gaffaney.”

Lloyd said, “Here’s the crunch question. Did you ever see Gordon Meyers and Gaffaney together?”

Both officers nodded their heads affirmatively, and Corcoran said,

“About four or five days before the killings I saw Meyers and Gaffaney at the coffee shop next to the bank, talking like old buddies. I didn’t hear what