Kill the Messenger by Tami Hoag Page B

must have told him a hundred and ten times since the murder. Somehow the mere mention of Cole’s name shut down her short-term memory.
    “He hit on you.”
    “He told me he was trying to put together a new series and maybe I could help him out with the research. The main character was going to be a coroner’s-investigator-slash-private-eye. What crap.”
    “He just wanted to get in your pants,” Parker said.
    “With his wife standing not ten feet away,” she said with disgust. “He’s only got eyes for me. He’s the bad boy. He’s all charm. He’s the big white grin.”
    “He’s the guy all the guys want to be and all the women want to go home with,” Parker said.
    “He’s a jerk.”
    “I guess you still haven’t signed on to the ‘Free Rob Cole’ Web site,” Parker said, bringing his hand up to massage the back of her neck. The muscles were as taut as guy wires.
    She scowled. “People are idiots.”
    Parker slid his arm around her. She sighed softly as she let her head fall against his shoulder.
    “No argument there,” he murmured. “No matter how rotten, how guilty a criminal may be, there are always people who don’t want to hear it.”
    “Like I said. And these are the same people who can’t get out of jury duty. Cole will end up being the new millennium’s Ted Bundy and have some dumb-as-dirt woman marry him from the witness box in the middle of his murder trial.”
    Parker didn’t give a shit about Rob Cole. LA was a “what have you done for me lately” kind of town, and aside from being accused of murder, Cole hadn’t done anything noteworthy in a decade. One production deal after another had gone down the drain. Starring roles had tapered off to guest roles of diminishing importance on episodic television, and a slew of forgettable movies of the week for those powerhouse networks: Lifetime and USA.
    Parker’s attention was on the file footage of Cole being brought into Parker Center by a posse of Robbery-Homicide hotshots, Bradley Kyle and his pal Moose among the pack. Cole, red-faced and bug-eyed with anger, a drastic contrast in mood to his corny trademark fifties vintage bowling shirt; the Robbery-Homicide boys stone-faced in sharp suits and ties, mirrored shades hiding their eyes. Everyone costumed and playing their parts to the hilt.
    “Why were Kyle and the Hulk there tonight?” Diane asked.
    Parker shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him. “I don’t know. I didn’t invite them.”
    “You think the dead guy was connected to something big and juicy?”
    “The Lenny Lowells of the world are the Lenny Lowells of the world because they can’t hook on to something big and juicy even if they trip and fall in it.”
    “He tripped and fell in something. And it killed him. Something smelly enough for the Parker Center boys to come sniffing.”
    “It’s my case until my captain tells me it’s not,” Parker said. “Then I’ll walk away.”
    Diane laughed, a throaty, sexy sound that moved her shoulders on its way out. “You liar. You wanted to run Bradley out of there like a tiger protecting its kill.”
    “Well, I
do
hate the guy.”
    “You’re entitled. He’s a prick. I hate the guy too. Everybody hates the guy. I’ll bet his mother hated him in utero,” she said. “But that’s all beside the point. I just don’t get what RHD would want with the murder of a bottom-feeder like that lawyer.”
    “I don’t know,” Parker said as the
Headline News
anchor jumped from the Cole story to a story about the sudden surge in sales of vintage bowling shirts in Los Angeles. “But I’ll find out. Crack of dawn, I’m finding that bike messenger.”

                             8
    T he Chinatown of LA is not the Chinatown of San Francisco. There are no pretty cable cars. Shops selling cheap souvenirs and knockoff designer handbags are fewer, and far from being the largest part of the economy.
    The Chinatown of LA was the first modern American