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them both in half. I knew, of course, that he would just run it again, but he'd have to reprint the body first. That would buy me at least a ten-minute head start.
    "I'm reporting this, Shane."
    "I know." I turned and ran out the door, taking the stairs two at a time, exploding back into the rear lobby. The security guard had returned from the toilet, or wherever he'd been when I first arrived, but they aren't there to stop you from leaving, only from getting in.
    "Have a good night," the guard called, as I speed-walked past him out the door and into the parking lot. I pushed the button to open the parking gate from the inside, then sprinted out of the lot and across the street to my car. I jumped in and powered away.
    I still hadn't looked at the printout. My heart was slamming inside my chest. My hands were shaking as I gripped the wheel tightly with sweating palms. When I was ten blocks away and felt safe, I pulled over, turned on the dome light, and unfolded the AFIS printout.
    The DMV photo I was looking at was of a clean-cut man with short hair. But despite the different haircut, I recognized him as the dead guy from Alexa's car. He was handsome in a rakish way. A slightly skewed smile said he knew he was hot. His driver's license identified him as David Morris Slade, six-one, one hundred ninety - five pounds. He lived at 420 Cypress Street, Compton. Following that, the AFIS printout had added other pertinent information, and that was the surprise.
    There was a police identification number, with a notation. David M. Slade was a member of the LAPD Academy class of 1982. He was currently a sergeant assigned to a special gang intel unit. I folded the paper and looked at the empty street in front of me while I tried to process all this. Of course, it was the missing piece.
    The reason he was in Alexa's car.

    Chapter 7.
    COMPTON is BORDERED on the south by Long Beach and on the north by Watts. The city has a bloody gang history.
    In the late sixties a new form of Jamaican music caught hold in New York, then quickly spread to Compton. Rap music was fueled by rock cocaine and violent street gangs. In the late eighties, N . W. A cut their first incendiary rap album, titled Straight Outta Compton, which featured the hit single "F Tha Police." With that album, gangsta rap was born. While Crips and Bloods competed for drug turf around Piru Street in Compton, rap impresarios with serious gang affiliations were recording street artists and making millions. But there were downsides. The average lifespan of a Compton drug dealer was twenty-five years and gang violence at hip-hop awards shows had become common.
    Rappers like Easy-E, Dr. Dre, and DJ Quik were just kids growing up in Compton in the eighties. Snoop Dogg was a few miles away in Long Beach. Rap and crack made stars and millionaires out of some and corpses out of others. In recent years the blac k g angs in Compton were in a struggle to control their turf, losing street corners one by one to the new, violent Hispanic gangs like the Ninos Surenos and Mara Salvatruchas.
    As I made my way down toward the Long Beach Freeway, I tried to fit David Slade into the equation. Slade had that big ABC on his arm, and I knew you didn't put Crip ink on yourself unless you were in the gang. There was only one way I could reconcile a cop with that tattoo. After the Watts Riots, the LAPD was having trouble recruiting minorities. In a desperate attempt to get more "color" on the job, some nitwit in administration had suggested we drop the juvenile felony restriction, opening the department up to people who had committed serious crimes as long as they'd done them under the age of eighteen. The result of this change allowed ex-gang-bangers of all ethnic backgrounds onto the police force. Cops like Raphael Perez had joined up, later becoming involved in the Rampart scandal and disgracing the department. Was David Slade just another example of this failed policy? Once you were jumped into a set,