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the beach cops are left to clean up the mess.
    My call found Walker at his desk. His voice seemed friendly enough until I identified myself as a reporter with the Times . Then it went cold. That happened often. I had spent seven years on the beat and had many cops in many departments that I counted as sources and even friends. In a jam, I could reach out. But sometimes you don’t get to pick who you have to reach out to. The bottom line is you can never get them all in your corner. The media and the police have never been on comfortable terms. The media views itself as the public watchdog. And nobody, the police included, likes having somebody looking over their shoulder. There was a chasm between the two institutions into which trust had fallen long before I was ever around. Consequently, it made things tough for the lowly beat reporter who just needs a few facts to fill out a story.
    “What can I do for you?” Walker said in a clipped tone.
    “I’m trying to reach Alonzo Winslow’s mother and I was wondering if you might be able to help.”
    “And who is Alonzo Winslow?”
    I was about to say, Come on, Detective, when I realized I wasn’t supposed to know the suspect’s name. There were laws about releasing the names of juveniles charged with crimes.
    “Your suspect in the Babbit case.”
    “How do you know that name? I’m not confirming that name.”
    “I understand that, Detective. I’m not asking you to confirm the name. I know the name. His mother called me on Friday and gave me the name. Trouble is, she didn’t give me her phone number and I’m just trying to get back in—”
    “Have a nice day,” Walker said, interrupting and then hanging up the phone.
    I leaned back in my desk chair, noting to myself that I needed to tell Angela Cook that the nobility I mentioned earlier did not reside in all cops.
    “Asshole,” I said out loud.
    I drummed my fingers on the desk until I came up with a new plan—the one I should have employed in the first place.
    I opened a line and called a detective who was a source in the South Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department and who I knew had been involved in the Winslow arrest. The case had originated in the city of Santa Monica because the victim had been found in the trunk of her car in a parking lot near the pier. But the LAPD became involved when evidence from the murder scene led to Alonzo Winslow, a resident of South L.A.
    Following established protocol, Santa Monica contacted Los Angeles, and a team of South Bureau detectives intimately familiar with the turf were used to locate Winslow, take him into custody and then turn him over to Santa Monica. Napoleon Braselton was one of those South Bureau guys. I called him now and was flat-out honest with him. Well, almost.
    “Remember the bust two weeks ago for the girl in the trunk?” I asked.
    “Yeah, that’s Santa Monica,” he said. “We just helped out.”
    “Yeah, I know. You guys took Winslow down for them. That’s what I’m calling about.”
    “It’s still their case, man.”
    “I know but I can’t get a hold of Walker over there and I don’t know anybody else in that department. But I know you. And I want to ask about the arrest, not the case.”
    “What, is there a beef? We didn’t touch that kid.”
    “No, Detective, no beef. Far as I know, it was a righteous bust. I’m just trying to find the kid’s house. I want to go see where he was living, maybe talk to his mother.”
    “That’s fine but he was living with his grandmother.”
    “You sure?”
    “The information we got in the briefing was that he was with the grandmother. We were the big bad wolves hitting grandma’s house. There was no father in the picture and the mother was in and out, living on the street. Drugs.”
    “Okay, then I’ll talk to the grandmother. Where’s the place?”
    “You’re just cruising on down to say hello?”
    He said it in a disbelieving tone and I knew that was because I was white and would