The Man With the Iron-On Badge Read Online Free PDF Page B

flames and covering the freeway with bits of charred hamster.
    All in all, my first day doing detective work wasn’t quite what I’d hoped it would be. There was no glamour. There was no action. And the only nipples I saw were from a distance. It was a complete disaster. Even so, I was exhilarated in way I hadn’t been since, well, since ever.
    I knew I wasn’t going to have time to go home before starting my shift, so I stopped at Target and reluctantly parted with fifty bucks. I bought a fresh shirt and pants, a battery-operated alarm clock, a bunch of snack food, and some personal hygiene stuff.
    I stopped at a Chevron station and cleaned myself in the restroom. I shaved, brushed my teeth, and washed my hair in the corroded sink. I slathered Arid Extra Dry Ultra Fresh Gel under my arms, shook the broken glass off my uniform, and put it on, hoping no one would notice in the dark just how wrinkled and dirty it was.
    Exuding ultra-freshness, I got back in my car and drove to Spanish Hills, parking down the block from Bel Vista Estates. I set the alarm clock for eleven fifty, put it on the dash, and closed my eyes.
    The alarm rang on time. I swiped it off the dash and stuck it in the glove box, which I discovered was roomier than the trunk. I made a mental note to myself to scratch the Kia Sephia off my list of possible new cars.
    Every part of my body ached from the accident and within seconds of waking up, my stomach started cramping with anxiety. I still had no idea what I was going to tell Cyril Parkus. I didn’t want him to find out I was incompetent, at least not until I got more of his money, which I needed more now than ever.
    I got out of the car, told myself I was as ultra-fresh as I smelled, and walked up to the shack to relieve Clay Denbo, sort of a younger version of me, only black and two hundred pounds heavier. I weight one ninety, so you get the picture.
    Clay worked part-time while going to community college in Moorpark, the way I did, only I went to Cal State Northridge, which is a better school.
    He was thinking of either becoming a radio psychologist or a parking concepts engineer. Redesigning the layout of parking lots to add more spaces was kind of his hobby. He had a whole sketchpad of ideas he carried around with him and was always asking me to keep my eyes open for problem parking areas he could visit.
    Clay was packing up his textbooks and sketchpad as I walked up. One of the books was called
History of Vehicle Parking in the Urban Landscape
, a real grabber. He took one look at me and his mouth kind of hung open.
    “Jesus Christ, Harvey, what happened to you?” he asked.
    “A woman,” I replied. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but the implication was certainly dishonest.
    Clay broke out in a big grin, and I realized he’d make a terrific black Santa Claus and, with the political correctness and diversity thing being trendy at the time, I thought it might even be a money-making idea for him. But I kept the idea to myself, not sure if it’d be taken as some kind of racist jab. You can’t be too sure these days.
    “Hot damn,” Clay said. “Looks like she crawled all over you.”
    “She really likes a man in uniform.” I smiled.
    “Think she’d go for a lot more man in a lot more uniform?”
    “I hope not.”
    Clay gave me a jolly slap on the back as he stepped out of the shack. “See you tomorrow, stud.”
    As soon as he was gone, the first thing I did was rewind the tapes from the gate’s surveillance cameras until I came across Lauren Parkus returning home.
    I froze the tape on her Range Rover going through the gate. According to the time code, she drove in at four seventeen, not even an hour after I last saw her.
    That meant she drove straight home. She couldn’t have stopped anywhere between Santa Barbara and the gate in that amount of time.
    I fell into the chair and nearly cried with relief.
    I had a second chance.
    Cyril Parkus drove out of the community and up to the shack