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said to Duffy, “He’s out on another scene tonight. He’s meeting me here tomorrow at eight.”
    “Won’t the scent be cold by then?”
    “Those dogs can pick up a scent weeks, even months, later. I want to get an early start tomorrow. Can you have the local detectives who caught this case meet me tomorrow morning at nine at the Harbor Division station? I want them to brief me, and I want to get the murder book from them.”
    “They won’t be happy coming in on Saturday morning. But I’ll talk to their lieutenant and make sure he drags their asses in there.”
    “When’s the autopsy?” I asked.
    “Sunday at ten. You want anyone with you for a second set of eyes?”
    “Not necessary.”
    “Listen, Grazzo brought you back on temporary, but there’s some administrative crap you’ve got to take care of on Monday so you’re fulltime again. You’ve got to take a physical from the city doctor, meet briefly with a background investigator, and write a letter to the chief about why you’re coming back. Typical bullshit. Then you got to see a department shrink next week. I’ll make you an appointment.”
    “Christ,” I mumbled.
    “You know the department. Gotta jump through the hoops if you want to come back.”
    We walked back to Duffy’s car and he drove down a narrow, winding street to the bottom of the hill. He was about to pull onto a shabby thoroughfare that led toward the freeway, but before he could turn left I said, “Cut the engine and lights.”
    I scanned the pawnshop, grimy taco stand, shuttered liquor store, and then pointed at a Hispanic teenager on the corner, across the street, wearing a black raincoat, standing under a streetlight, his head swiveling from side to side. Grabbing a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, I focused on the corner and noticed the kid had a crude spider-web tattoo on his neck.
    “Jailhouse tattoo,” I told Duffy. “Probably one of the gangbangers from the projects.”
    A few minutes later, a black man driving a dusty Honda pulled over at the corner. The gangbanger reached in the window, nonchalantlygrabbed a few bills, and dropped a Baggie onto the passenger seat. After the driver sped off, a Hispanic couple who looked like street people walked up; the man slipped the seller a bill, and stuffed the Baggie down the front of his pants.
    “Probably slanging tar heroin,” I said. “Probably selling rock, too. A full-service operation.”
    Across the street, a few blocks away, I spotted another sidewalk entrepreneur pacing on a corner. I handed Duffy the binoculars.
    “I didn’t see these clowns when we drove up the hill,” Duffy said.
    “Probably came out here a while after we arrived,” I said.
    “Around the time Relovich was killed,” Duffy said.
    “Right. His street’s a dead end. There’s only one way down the hill and out of the neighborhood.” I rapped my knuckles on the dashboard. “And that’s through here.”
    “These characters might have seen the knucklehead,” Duffy said.
    “Can you get somebody from Harbor vice down at the station tomorrow morning? Maybe the sergeant of the buy team?”
    Duffy nodded.
    “I’ll meet with him after I talk to the homicide dicks. I’ll make sure he floods this street during the next few days and busts sellers
and
buyers. These guys are good repeat customers. You never know who saw what. When they’re looking at some time in the joint, they might suddenly become talkative. And let’s see if we can get the City Council to pony up a reward.”
    “I’ll talk to Grazzo. He can get it done.”
    Duffy circled around to the freeway and then sped north at well over ninety miles an hour—a perquisite of the badge—and reached downtown in less than fifteen minutes. He exited at 4th Street and drove east, then south, through a derelict neighborhood at the outer edge of a district known as the Historic Core. Commercial buildings in various states of disrepair, most constructed in the early twentieth