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alternative, right?”
    “Trust me,” I said, “those guys at the courthouse are always looking for an excuse. They get one inkling that it’s my birthday, and my office will be plastered with birthday cards featuring five-by-seven glossies of naked geriatrics.”
    “Hmmm,” he said sheepishly. “I may need to run out and get you another card.”
    “Funny. Hey,” I said, changing the subject, “you weren’t kidding about your buddies having a bee in their bonnet over the Tompkins shooting.” I glanced toward the door Mike had just used. “What’s up with him? Are he and Hamilton tight?”
    “Not that I know of.” He pulled a PPDS report across the table toward him.
    “So what’s his deal?”
    “He’s a cop. Hamilton’s a cop. Delores Tompkins was not a cop. That’s enough for some people.”
    “Some cops, maybe.”
    “Are you trying to start a fight with me? I told you last night, people are getting pissed that your office is even looking into this. They expected Griffith to have issued a statement by now saying the shooting was good.”
    “With what’s been going on in the streets? You have to know that’s ridiculous.”
    “I see both sides. I just told Mike that, right?”
    “Not really. You said we should agree to disagree.”
    “And I also said we have work to do. I’m still going over the PPDS entries from last night.” He waved the green printout at me.
    He was right. The two of us weren’t going to settle the question of whether Officer Hamilton should be prosecuted for shooting Delores Tompkins. Better to focus on Crenshaw.
    “Anything interesting?” I asked, sitting on the tabletop to get a better view of the printout. “Johnson said something about a few stops near the condo.”
    “Maybe. It’s been slower going than usual, though. Take a look at how thick this thing is from just one night. Fucking protesters.”
    “Tell me about it. Until I got called up to Crenshaw’s, I was stuck at intake dealing with the custodies.”
    “So you understand what a cluster fuck it is. When I restricted the search to just a few blocks around Crenshaw’s up on Hillside, I only got a few hits.” He pulled a different, thinner printout toward him. “Nothing obvious, but I circled a few worth looking into. Best one’s probably a traffic stop on a guy with a couple UUV pops.”
    “Johnson mentioned that one.” Given the carjacking-gone-bad scenario, the proximity of a defendant twice convicted of Unlawful Use of a Vehicle was at least interesting.
    “I don’t have high hopes, though,” Chuck said. “The guy was stopped heading east, which would put him on his way to Crenshaw’s place. Possible a guy would try to pull something off right after being stopped by a cop, but—”
    “Not likely,” I agreed.
    “Right. So then I expanded the search to include a mile around the vic’s place. That’s when I got this massive thing,” he said, holding up the thicker report again. “We wind up hitting downtown and all the crap from last night. It’s taking me awhile to get through it all.”
    “You going out on the warrants?”
    “You bet. Ray and Jack will take the car and the condo, but Mike and I are doing the office.”
    “Call me if you find anything?”
    “But of course, madame.”
    “And make sure the other boys keep me in the loop too?”
    “No one’s out to get you, Sam.”
    “Just make sure they don’t shut me out.”
    “Consider it a birthday present.”
     
    Chuck was right. Even for cops like Calabrese, the ribbing I was getting was just collateral damage from bombs directed at the man who walked into my office a couple of hours later.
    Russ Frist is best pictured as a young Kirk Douglas in a Brooks Brothers suit, if Kirk had been built like a side-by-side Sub-Zero. I told him the other day that any more time on the weights and his seams were going to burst open à la Dr. David Banner, but without all the incredible green hulkiness.
    Frist rapped his knuckles against