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if the auto-club cop who comes to help has perfect dark eyes and the buffest bod?” He smiled, and then I made him take down the number.

    The tape was still up at the front door of the store. The lock was thrown, and no one was around. I saw Joe’s blue Chevy parked way at the end on the right side of the building, under a tall eucalyptus.
    Svoboda caught up to me. Svoboda can be an ass, but a harmless one.
    â€œGary, what are you doing here?”
    â€œThis is a little strip of county area people don’t know about. There’s a Costa Mesa patrol officer here. He was first on the scene.”
    Several cities in the county contract with the sheriff’s department for law-enforcement services, but Costa Mesa wasn’t one. The scene officer does the call-ins, the preliminary investigation, and the safeguarding of the area, but as soon as the sheriff’s guys get there, activity is supervised by them if it’s in county area. Bud Peterson, who got out of the car with Gary, was from our lab, the print section called CAL-ID I wasn’t thrilled to see him.
    Svoboda said, “This should bring the number of two-eleven’s right up to around nine hundred for the year, don’t you think?” I could hear him panting up the slight incline of the driveway. He’s not that fat—he just pants. He said, “But robbery-homicides, maybe, what, twenty-five?”
    â€œYou keeping track, Sergeant?” I said. “Is there a pool? I want in, if so.”
    Bud Peterson was behind us a few yards, not panting.
    â€œNo. No pool. Nine hundred so far. And that’s your dopers doing our job for us,” he went on. “Two tacos blew away two more tacos Saturday come to collect a buzz right out therenear Burger King.” Svoboda doesn’t hear himself. Someday somebody else is going to, though, and there’ll be a flurry of public apologies. Some cops who use racist language mean it; Svoboda doesn’t.
    When Svoboda was talking statistics he was talking Santa Ana only, not Costa Mesa, where we were standing. I reminded him of that. I can be an ass too. If this were school, let’s say Svoboda’d be a C, C+ student. Costa Mesa abuts Santa Ana, but it’s got a much lower crime rate, maybe one to ten. His eyes were scouting as we walked, like all good cops. C+ doesn’t meant not good, exactly.
    I asked him if he’d talked to the people at the taco stand yesterday, or at the florist’s in the next lot. The two stores nearest Dwyer’s had been empty a few months now, the recession taking its toll. One was a tanning salon and the other a fake-nail place. I guess fast food and fake nails don’t make the best business bedfellows.
    â€œWe got something from El Cochino, matter of fact.”
    I held the back door open for him, glancing into the storeroom toward the cooler. Joe was there, his evidence kit resting on a fold-up field table. The cooler door was still open, the blotches on it brown now. Ordinarily you come to a crime scene once; you do your job and get out. But we’d all worked together before, knew it would be okay. Gary made me sign in, of course, before we stepped in.
    Svoboda said, “You know El Cochino? It means pig .” proud of himself for that.
    â€œI know, Gary.”
    You couldn’t miss it. There’s a happy pig you talk into at the drive-through. Pigs are on the paperware.
    â€œSomebody over El Cochino’s saw a pickup. Sort of a light green. Older, maybe fifteen years. Driver had a ponytail, he saw that. Another guy had a baseball cap, red or orange. The manager over there heard several pops—that woulda been the double deuce in the front there—but didn’t connect it with anything. Only reason the little Mexican guy saw anything—not the manager, now—he’s taking the garbage out. He hears the truck leaving rubber. No shots, though, just the truck peeling out.”
    â€œGreen