Free Lion Plays Rough by Lachlan Smith Page B

attorney, to enter police headquarters without official business. I told myself that I was on public property, that as a citizen I had the right, but I still felt as if I were walking into enemy territory when I arrived just after eleven.
    Lavinia was probably young enough to have become a cop during the last ten years. Two academy classes per year, about two dozen portraits to check, each showing between thirty and fifty new cops all dressed in identical uniforms. My job was made easier by the fact that there weren’t many women, and few of them were as tall as Lavinia.
    I was contemplating the portrait of the second academy class of 1994 when a voice close to my ear whispered, “Lost?”
    I turned, bumping into someone, stepped back, and met Campbell’s stare. He was dressed in a patrol uniform with his uniform hat under his arm. It looked wrong on him, clownish, making me wonder how long it had been since he’d worn anything but a suit. He seemed perfectly calm until I noticed the vein at his throat pulsing. Then his gaze shifted from my face to the picture I’d been studying. The caption beneath the photo listed her name as Lavinia Perry. She’d told me her real first name.
    Campbell studied it for several moments, then with a kindly smile turned his gaze on me. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were like pieces of glass underwater. “You know me,” he said, not a question but a statement of fact. “I know you, too,” he continued. “The dude with the camera. Leo.” His eyes moved to the class portrait. “Nineteen ninety-four. Seems like yesterday, doesn’t it?”
    He began to whistle as he walked off, his hat still under his arm.
    ~ ~ ~
    Back at the office, I was aware something was coming to a boil inside me. There was no question in Campbell’s mind that Lavinia Perry had been the one to hire me, and he knew where to find her, too.
    She owed me an explanation, and perhaps she deserved a warning. Maybe while Campbell remained under the microscope of a departmental investigation he’d try to keep her out of it. She obviously knew more than she’d told me. No doubt her career would be hurt if it came out that she’d blown the whistle on her fellow officer. But if she were forced to tell everything she knew, Campbell would be the one hurt more.
    A second call to the public defender’s office produced better results. When I mentioned the name, my friend Henry put the phone down and came back ten minutes later with a full report gathered from his colleagues, several of whom knew her as one of the most prolific earners of overtime for the OaklandVice Squad. Another thing: she was an officer with a reputation for stretching the truth.
    At 10:00 pm that evening I was sitting in my car down on International Boulevard, keeping an eye on Lavinia Perry. I’d followed her as she left the station garage in an undercover vehicle. She was dressed in high heels, fishnets, a short skirt, and a flimsy top, undoubtedly wearing a wire as she set off to work the corners of East Oakland. Her partners in the unmarked car were never far away. I’d watched them snag three johns in the last hour. At the moment of agreement, the lights and siren would swoop down.
    According to Henry, during the last twelve months, Lavinia Perry had earned something close to seventy grand in overtime with her hooker act. One of the misdemeanor attorneys in the office had gotten the number out of her when he was grilling her on the stand, trying to make her look like someone who’d say anything for money. She was a good actress. I knew that. And she looked the part. In the streetlight, her halter top sliding down, her hair pulled back, she was the very ideal of what a lonely guy might be dreaming of, too good to pass up even if somewhere deep down a voice he didn’t want to listen to were telling him a real whore on these streets would never look so