The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online Page B

what happens in Manhattan Beach.”
    Carver shook his head emphatically.
    “You can put the files right back. We just burned L.A. for at least three years. I don’t care who you find or how safe you think it is. I am not deviating from the protocol. And another thing. My name is Wesley, not Wes, and certainly not Dub.”
    Stone looked down at the glass tabletop and seemed crushed.
    “Tell you what,” Carver said. “I’ll go to work on it and I’ll find us someone. You wait and see and you’ll be very happy. I guarantee it.”
    “But it was going to be my turn.”
    Now Stone was pouting.
    “You had your turn and you blew it,” Carver said. “Now it goes to me. So why don’t you go back out there and get to work. You still owe me status reports on towers eighty through eighty-five. I want them by the end of the day.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Go. And cheer up, Freddy. We’ll be on the hunt again before the end of the week.”
    Stone stood up and turned toward the door. Carver watched him go, wondering how long it would be before he had to get rid of him. Permanently. Working with a partner was always preferable. But eventually all partners got too close and assumed too much. They started calling you by a name no one has ever used. They started thinking it was an equal partnership with equal voting rights. That was unacceptable and dangerous. One person called the shots. Himself.
    “Close the door, please,” Carver said.
    Stone did as instructed. Carver went back to the cameras. He quickly pulled up the camera over the reception area and saw Yolanda sitting behind the counter. Geneva was gone. Jumping from camera to camera he started searching for her.

 
    B y the time Sonny Lester and I left the apartment where Wanda Sessums lived, the projects were alive and busy. School was out and the drug dealers and their customers were up. The parking lots, playgrounds and burned-out lawns between the apartment buildings were becoming crowded with children and adults. The drug business here was a drive-through operation with an elaborate setup involving lookouts and handlers of all ages who would direct buyers through the maze of streets in the projects to a buy location that was continuously changed throughout the day. The government planners who designed and built the place had no idea they were creating a perfect environment for the cancer that would in one way or another destroy most of its inhabitants.
    I knew all of this because I had ridden with South Bureau narcotics teams on more than one occasion while writing my semiannual updates on the local drug war.
    As we crossed a lawn and approached Lester’s company car we moved with a heads-down-minding-our-own-business purpose. We just wanted to get out of Dodge. It wasn’t until we were almost right to the car that I saw the young man leaning against the driver’s door. He was wearing untied work boots, blue jeans dropped halfway down his blue-patterned boxer shorts and a spotless white T-shirt that almost glowed in the afternoon sun. It was the uniform of the Crips set, which ruled the projects. They were known as the BH set, which alternately meant Bounty Hunters or Blood Hunters, depending on who was spraying the paint.
    “How y’all doin’?” he said.
    “We’re fine,” Lester said. “Just going back to work.”
    “You the po-po now?”
    Lester laughed like that was the biggest joke he’d heard in a week.
    “Nah, man, we’re with the paper.”
    Lester nonchalantly put his camera bag in the trunk and then came around to the door where the young man was leaning. He didn’t move.
    “Gotta go, bro. Can I get by you there?”
    I was on the other side of the car by my door. I felt my insides tighten. If there was going to be a problem, it was going to happen right now. I could see others in the same gang uniform standing back on the shaded side of the parking lot, ready to be called in if needed. I had no doubt that they all had weapons either on their