Hire a Hangman by Collin Wilcox Page B

of those—you know—natural beauties.”
    “So what’s her story?”
    “Well …” Canelli took out his notebook, thumbed the pages back and forth, frowned, riffled the pages again. Finally finding his place, he began again: “Well, she lives in one of those old loading sheds down at the piers that’s been converted into apartments. Nice place. Far out, but nice. You know—trendy. Funky, I’d call it. But anyhow, I got there a little after two, I guess. And, Jesus, it looked like she and some big black guy were just getting out of the sack.”
    Friedman laid the reports aside, took off his glasses, and studied Canelli as he continued. “The black guy took off, though. I mean, he took one look at the badge and he split. But the lady—Paula Gregg—it didn’t faze her. She’s like, you know, one of those real wild-looking types you see in the TV ads for perfume or something. Real long and lanky, with this real thick hair that’s all over the place. You know, ‘Jungle Passion,’ like that. And, in fact, it turns out that’s what she does. Models, I mean. She’s got big blowups of herself on her walls, from magazine ads.”
    Marveling, Friedman shook his head. “You’ve got a gift, Canelli. A real flair.”
    Canelli’s reaction was speculative. For as long as he’d been in Homicide, he’d never quite been able to divine Friedman’s true motives.
    “So what’d she say about Hanchett?” Hastings asked. “You did mention the murder, didn’t you?”
    “Yeah. And, boy, she didn’t make any bones about it. She hated him. She’s only twenty years old, but she’s already been on her own for three years. As soon as she could get out of the house, she split. And before that—she doesn’t make any bones about this, either—she was a ward of the juvenile court, and spent some time at that place in Idaho. That custody farm for rich kids, I forget the name.”
    “It’s Orchard Lake.” Friedman spoke quietly, thoughtfully. A suspect with a record—any record—was always taken seriously.
    “What about last night?” Hastings asked. “An alibi?”
    Canelli shrugged. “She was with that black guy, she says. I’ve got his name, but I haven’t checked him out yet.”
    “Well”—Friedman gestured to the lab reports—“there’s a little nugget here for us.”
    Canelli’s reaction was an expression of hope; Hastings simply waited through the pause that always preceded something of substance from Friedman.
    “It turns out,” Friedman said, gesturing to the printouts he’d just scanned, “that the gun the kid found was the gun that did the job, no question. I had C. J. check the gun through Sacramento, and it was registered to a guy in Los Angeles. Then C. J. ran the guy.” Friedman consulted one of the printouts. “His name is Foster Crowe, and he lives in Beverly Hills. A high roller, apparently, very big in Dun & Bradstreet. So I decided, what the hell, I’d give Foster Crowe a call. And it turns out that the gun was part of his gun collection. Which figures. I forgot to mention that the gun is a Llama, which is a Spanish automatic. Actually, I happen to know that, as a gun, the Llama is the shits. But this one is engraved, has carved grips, the whole thing. It turns out that part of the collection was ripped off a year ago. So I called old John Farrell, down at LAPD. John, it happens, owes me at least three favors, from that Custance homicide a few months ago. So he’s going to see what he can do about tracking down the gun after it was stolen.”
    “What about the rest of it?” Hastings pointed to the other reports.
    Friedman shrugged. “Not much we don’t already know. There were two shots that did the damage. Your reports say three shots were fired, so one went wild. One bullet severed the aorta, which was fatal. That one went right through. The second shot punctured the lower abdomen and lodged in the buttocks. It’s a seven-millimeter bullet, incidentally.”
    “So.” Hastings