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Ricardo Montalban impersonation that would over the years grow more refined.
    â€œYou’ve come to take revenge?”
    â€œPlease. Forgive me,” Hector producing from an inside pocket, access to which now also afforded a leisurely view of a service .38 in an armpit rig, his federal commission in a fancy tooled flip-open leather case.
    â€œNobody here’s into nothing federal,” Zoyd didn’t think.
    Van Meter, back in those days sporting a profile that mandated at least a stop-and-frisk, ran in frowning. “What’s wrong with Scott? he just split out the back.”
    â€œWhat I’m really here about,” Hector had been explaining, “is the matter of drugs.”
    â€œThank God!” screamed Van Meter, “it’s been weeks, we thought we’d never score again! oh yes, it’s a miracle—” Zoyd kicking him frantically—“who sent you, are you the dude that knows Leon?”
    The federale showed his teeth, amused. “Subject you refer to is temporarily in custody, though sure to be back before very long in his accustomed spot beneath the Gordita Pier.”
    â€œAaaaaa . . . ,” went Van Meter.
    â€œNo, no my man but that is precisely the sort of corroborating detail that we value so highly,” snapping, like a magician, a crisp five-dollar bill, half a lid of Mexican commercial in those days, from behind Van Meter’s ear. Zoyd rolled his eyes as the bass player grabbed at the money. “And there’s always plenty more in our imprest fund for good-quality product. For make-believe bullshit, of course, we pay nothing, and in time we grow annoyed.”
    That fatal five-spot was not the last Purchase-of-Information disbursement in the neighborhood. In those years there were so many federal narcs in the area that if you were busted in the South Bay you actually stood less chance of its being the local Man than some fed. All the beach towns, plus Torrance, Hawthorne, and greater Walteria, were in on some grandiose pilot project bankrolled with inexhaustible taxpayer millions, appropriate chunks of which were finding their way to antidrug entities up and down every level of governance. Zoyd, to be sure, made a point of never pocketing any of Hector’s PI money personally, though he was content to go on eating the groceries, burning the gas, and smoking the pot others obtained with it. Now and then he would get fooled on some minor dope purchase, sweet basil in a heat-sealed bag, a small vial of Bisquick (yep, he’d murmur, still making stupid mistakes and how about yourself?) and he’d feel really tempted, sometimes for days, to turn the dealer in to Hector. But there were always good reasons not to—it would happen that one was a cool person who needed the money, another a distant cousin from the Middle West, or a homicidal maniac who would take revenge, so forth. Each time Zoyd failed to inform on these people, Hector grew furious. “You think you’re protectín them? They just gonna fuck you over again.” The edge in his voice was frustration, everything about this Gordita assignment was just really fucking frustrating, all these identical-looking beach pads beginning to blend together, resulting in more than enough mistaken addresses, early-morning raids upon the innocent, failures to apprehend fugitives who might have only fled across an alley or down a flight of public steps. The arrangements of hillside levels, alleyways, corners, and rooftops created a Casbah topography that was easy to get lost in quickly, terrain where the skills of the bushwhacker became worth more than any resoluteness of character, an architectural version of the uncertainty, the illusion, that must have overtaken his career for him ever to’ve been assigned there in the first place.
    â€œSituations back then,” Zoyd hammered it on in, these many years later, “relationships, sure got tangled up in that