Read Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) for Free Online

the hall. There were a few doors around, but it wasn’t like they wouldn’t see me go in one of them.
    “Nicholas Zorotovich?” one of the guards said, using the name I employed in my association with the Russian Mob.
    And that’s when my reflexes screwed me over. “Huh?” I answered.

 
     
     
[3]
     
     
     
     
     
    THEY CLOSED IN LIKE A RUGBY SCRUM.
    “Nicholas Zorotovich? You’re under arrest for bookmaking and racketeering,” said the lead one, who looked a little like what would happen if Patrick Wilson really got into steroids and angrily denying homoerotic impulses. He had a hand on my shoulder and was already turning me to kiss the wall. I had the feeling that if they slapped the cuffs on, I was going to have much more trouble talking myself out of them. I didn’t think the whole “I’m retired” thing would fly here.
    So I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “How the hell do you know my CI?”
    CI meant Confidential Informant, which is a nice way of saying rat, snitch, or stool pigeon if you find yourself stuck in a Raymond Chandler novel. They’re low-level crooks who stay on the streets doing their relatively harmless criminal activities while feeding information on the big fish to the police. Nicky Zorotovich didn’t have a snitch jacket, but he was exactly the kind of guy who would have one. When I created the alias to go work for the Kosher Nostra, I had to make sure he looked legit, and that meant giving him a record. Nothing too bad, but I implied worse by including a couple arrests for code-type offenses, where cops book you on something unrelated that won’t stick, but that will get you off the streets for a night. I managed it through a combination of my police identity and Joel Hernandez, an acquaintance who worked in the evidence room at Hollywood Division.
    On the upside, it meant I had a workable identity as exactly the kind of scumbag Vassily “the Whale” Zhukovsky was comfortable enough in trusting with the bullshit that kept the Russian Mob shaking down hockey players. On the downside, there was a hypothetical asshole running around Los Angeles with my face doing just enough to ensure a short stay in San Quentin should any cop actually have that name and face at his fingertips.
    “CI?” asked Not Patrick Wilson.
    I shook the man off and turned my back to the wall, affecting a calm I didn’t feel. “Nicky Zorotovich is my CI. Why’d you grab me?”
    They looked at each other, momentarily unsure. I jumped on that, knowing if I could keep talking, I could keep them from thinking, which was the key to making it out of this situation intact.
    “Eh, it’s okay. We look a little alike, I guess. Well, apart from the nose.” I laughed, gesturing at the big bandage that was keeping the middle third of my face from being seen. Never felt so lucky about getting hit in the face with an ancient book of devil magic. “And the hair. I mean, you’ve read the descriptions. Do I look like Bob’s Big Boy to you?”
    “Uh... can we see some identification, officer...”
    “Detective,” I snapped. “Detective Art Saroyan. I have my badge right here.”
    A badge that would say I had abandoned my job at Hollywood Division a year ago, if they bothered to check it. I flipped it open and showed it to Not Patrick Wilson.
    I saw him reading my badge number, mostly because he had to move his lips to do so. No matter how much I wanted to mock him, there were still three more uniforms all around me. Granted, they were confused for the time being, but nothing clears the cobwebs in a cop’s head like getting to hit something with a nightstick.
    “I’m going to call this in,” Not Patrick Wilson told me.
    “You do that. And make sure you mention how you wasted my goddamn time while thinking I was my own fucking snitch.” I shook my head like it was really an imposition.
    The guards had a bit of a confab and two returned to their posts, leaving me with a young guy whose