Kind of Blue by Miles Corwin

the forlorn air of a windswept football stadium an hour after the game ended. The room would not begin filling up, I knew, until dark.
    I was reaching for a phone, when Randy Walker, a rangy sergeant with a crew cut and jug ears, who headed the division’s buy team, hustledtoward me. “Accident on the freeway. I was stuck in traffic. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
    “I just got here.”
    “Good. What’ve you got for me?”
    I told him that I believed the killer had parked on the flats, climbed the hill, shot Relovich, returned to his car, and sped off. Fortunately, Walker was friendlier than Savich and Montez and too polite to bring up the Patton case.
    “We spotted some brisk business on two street corners,” I said.
    “That’s becoming a hot spot for the Rancho Thirteen Boyz—the gang from the projects that controls the tar trade,” Walker said. “We don’t have enough people to shut these mutts down. You know how it is. It’s like pushing down on a balloon. We stop ’em in one area and they just pop up in another.”
    “How about blitzing the area during the next few nights,” I said. “Can you get your undercover buy team to haul in sellers and buyers?”
    Walker grinned. “I was informed the chief is personally interested in this case. So you name it, you got it.”
    “What I want to do is shake the tree and see if any fruit falls to the ground. So I’d appreciate it if you’d ask every collar if they’ve heard anything about the murder up on the hill Friday night. Or if they saw anything unusual on the street late Friday night. Let ’em know that for the right information we might be ready to deal. If you get any interesting responses, call me. Anytime. Day or night.”
    I pulled out a clump of cards that had been stuck in the back of my wallet for the past year, handed Walker the frayed one on top, and asked if I could use a desk for a few minutes.
    “Take your pick,” Walker said, pointing to the empty unit.
    I called Relovich’s ex-wife and set up an appointment for the late afternoon. Fortunately, I also caught the uncle at home. He said he would be heading down to Berth 73 in an hour to work on his boat. I knew the spot was near Canetti’s Seafood Grotto, a small restaurant on the docks. I could eat a quick lunch and walk over to Relovich’s boat.
    When I was a rookie patrol officer, my first training officer gave me some valuable advice, which I always tried to follow: “When you’re on the job, never get wet and never go hungry.”
    • • •
    I drove from the station to the waterfront and pulled up in front of Canetti’s, a low-slung building that looked like a warehouse, and sat by the window next to a table of fishermen grumbling about the week’s catch. I deboned the grilled rex sole and ate my fish and fried potatoes while I watched the bulky refrigerated trucks rumble to the loading docks at the wholesale seafood market. Brazen seagulls circled overhead, swooping for scraps.
    After lunch, I walked down the cracked asphalt dock speckled with bird droppings, past the long-liners that hauled in the big swordfish and the smaller purse seiners and draggers. The breeze carried the ripe smell of gutted fish. I stopped in front of the
Anna Marie
, a rusty, fifty-foot gill-netter with peeling white paint and chipped blue trim. A huge pile of nets and orange buoys was piled up on the dock, covered by a green tarpaulin.
    “In those nice, shiny shoes, you gotta watch the bird shit,” Goran Relovich shouted, motioning for me to come aboard. He grabbed two deck chairs, unfolded them, and as he climbed down to the galley, said in a gravelly voice, “I’ll get us some coffee.”
    I lugged my briefcase aboard, sat down, and looked off into the distance. Tugs and Coast Guard skiffs chugged past, leaving frothy wakes in the gray water. Across the channel, I could see the sprawl of shipyards on Terminal Island, ringed by tatters of fog.
    Relovich emerged from the galley carrying