Free White Sister by Stephen J. Cannell Page B

that anger down there is up to you. As of now, you and I are done, friend."
    He wouldn't move, so I grabbed his skinny arm Rafie-style, and hustled him out of the house. Ten minutes later we were in the Acura heading east on the 10 Freeway.
    "Can't go to the Nickel. Ain't got no friends on the Row."
    "Okay, I'll drop you in Hollywood then." I wasn't paying much attention to him anymore. I was trying to get my thoughts sorted out, make a list of investigative priorities. The order of my next few moves could mean everything.
    "Hollywood is like Tibet on acid," Bodine whined. "It's all prayer rugs and hoop earrings down there. Buncha crackheads and trapdoor Johnnies. My voices be tellin' me Hollywood ain't no place for a straight Christian man to be."
    "Come on, John. I'm through. I told ya I got my own problems."
    "Hey, who run me over, huh? Was it you? I fuckin' think it was."
    We exited the freeway at Main, heading toward Parker Center.
    "This ain't where I want to be at," Bodine whined.
    I had stopped answering him. I finally pulled up across the street from where I first hit him. "Door-to-door service. Doesn't get much better than that."
    I set the brake, got out, and pulled his shopping cart out from the back of the SUV. I heard the sound of leather ripping as it snagged the upholstery. I jerked it out angrily. Pissed me off, but a torn backseat was way down on tonight's list of problems. As I started to load Bodine's junk back into the cart I could see him in the front seat. He wasn't about to move. He just sat there, rocking back and forth, moaning slightly.
    When I finished with the cart I went around to the passenger side, opened the door and glared down at him. "Let's go."
    "Half-steppers at the sperm clinic won't even take my jizz anymore," he said, looking up. His desperate eyes blazed. "Mutha - fuckas won't even pay me to jerk off into a bottle. Say my count is low. I tole 'em you eat outta garbage cans your sperm goes all . T a hell. No vitamins in a grapefruit rind, know what I'm sayin'?"
    "Get out."
    "Can't sell my blood, can't sell my jizz, what am I supposed to do?"
    "I gave you four hundred. Don't make me drag you outta there."
    He sat still and looked up at me. "Officer Scully, I'm kinda at my wit's end right now. I ain't brilliant or even that smart really, but you know what I am?"
    "Stubborn."
    "I'm worthwhile. Underneath all these problems is a very worthwhile person."
    "John . . . please." I reached in and pulled him out of the car.
    "I could be dead in the morning," he said.
    "Me too."
    We stood looking at each other in the dim light of the street lamp.
    "No man is an island," Bodine finally said. "Some people help me along, but some, like you, just push me away. Ain't easy being an African prince in a cold-ass place like L . A . I keep sending out my resume, but I'm not hearing back."
    I got behind the wheel. As I pulled out, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him standing on the curb with his shopping cart full of junk. There was a moment, sucker that I am, when I almost went back and got him.
    As things turned out, I would have been way ahead if I had.

    Chapter 13.
    THERE ARE MORE videotapes running in Parker Center than at NBC Burbank. Five security cameras photograph the lobby and multiple cameras cover all the main hallways of each floor. Everything is fed down to a tape room in the sub-basement. I knew that there was very little I could do to defeat all that high tech security. After what happened up on Mulholland, the Deputy Chief wouldn't have to think very hard to figure out what I was doing in my wife's office on the command floor at three a . M . I was disobeying direct orders and the tapes would confirm it.
    I didn't care.
    I pulled out Alexa's spare office key and used it to open the door, moving through Ellen's neat outer office, past a stack of crime manuals and new forensic journals that the chief made mandatory reading for all command rank officers.
    I sat behind Alexa's desk and