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the Batmobile, unlocked the door, and got in.
    Zimmer pulled himself off the ground and pressed his face against the passenger window. "You'd feel a whole lot better if you talked with me, Macklin."
    The car roared to life. Macklin shifted into drive, pressed the pedal to the floor, and left Zimmer to interview exhaust fumes.

CHAPTER THREE
    The TV Guide crossword puzzle was only half-finished. It lay there beside JD's recliner, still missing 14 across (David Banner's 5-letter problem), 23 down (Book 'em, __________ ), 51 across (Napoleon Solo's boss), 3 down (Where Batman lived on his day off), and the corker, 27 across (It was Don Rickles last series).
    Macklin picked it up and dropped it gently on the chair. The warm, three-room apartment still felt and smelled like his father. The nightly cigar. The leaking, whining, busted old Mr. Coffee. Cold Schlitz. The radio tuned to KNXT News radio. Georgia Montgomery's gourmet frozen dinners, the 11:45 p.m. fart (JD called it "The Big Gasser"), his buddy Jimbo and his Marlboros, Mennen antiperspirant.
    The pain Macklin felt as he looked around his father's apartment was tangible, a dull, throbbing ache in his stomach and sickly, foul taste in his mouth.
    Dad is dead.
    Pictures of Macklin, his mother, Corinne, and JD crowded the dusty TV top. Macklin fingered them. There was the twelve-year-old picture of Macklin in his graduation attire, one of those self-assured jock smiles on his tan face. There was Corinne, sitting in JD's lap with a big grin on her face, wearing his LAPD hat and nearly disappearing inside of it. There was an old black-and-white shot of his mother, slender, pale, bright brown eyes flashing. She died slowly of bone cancer between Macklin's fifth and sixth birthdays.
    There was a picture of Brett and Shaw in Macklin's shiny new Corvair. It was the summer before Brett headed to UCLA on a track scholarship. Both Shaw and Brett had been tall, gangly, and thin. Awkward and horny and ready to conquer the world.
    Macklin remembered the picture well. That night Shaw and his girlfriend, Georgette, who was trying hard to be Diana Ross, and Brett and his girlfriend, Stacy, a dentist's daughter with the world's straightest teeth, went to the drive-in to see a horror double feature.
    Shaw and Georgette left to get popcorn at intermission and never came back. Macklin and Stacy left in the middle of the second show. Driving up to Mulholland Drive to fog up the windows. Macklin desperately hoped to celebrate getting his new car by convincing Stacy to let their hands wander below the belt. He kissed her with big expectations.
    When Stacy, in the midst of their fervent groping, unzipped his pants without coercion and dropped her head between his legs, Macklin almost fainted with surprise and anxiety. He had never expected her to do that , not in his wildest fantasies. When he opened his eyes afterwards, he expected to see powder burns on Stacy's face, a hole in the Corvair's ceiling, and a contrail in the night sky.
    Brett Macklin grinned at the memory. Stacy now weighed 347 pounds and was married to a guy with a chain of Culver City Laundromats. Georgette, last he heard, was a backup singer for Diana Ross. Then suddenly his grin disappeared. His father was dead and all his mind wanted to do was think of almost anything else in the world. It made him feel guilty.
    Macklin put the picture down and walked into JD's bedroom. The bed was neatly made, the sheets tucked in tight. Everything was crisp and clean, like a bunk at Camp Pendleton. Brett resisted the urge to toss a quarter on the cover to see how high it would bounce. Macklin never understood his father's compulsion for orderly, clean bedrooms and his tolerance of casually sloppy kitchens and living rooms. It was strange. But then, so was being a cop, so was being JD Macklin.
    There were two pictures on the nightstand beside JD's bed. One was a picture of JD and his wife with their newborn son. JD was a big man even then, but