JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps by phuc Page B

I have tailing us are on their lunch hour and they're doing this as a favor to me. We only have thirty minutes or so to talk to these guys, then we get the hell out of there."
    “And the cops that are with us aren't supposed to do anything, right?” Lance asked from the backseat. “I mean, they aren't going to be assholes and try to bust somebody or something."
    “No,” Daryl said. He gripped the wheel tightly. “I hand picked these guys myself.
    I know them all very well, and ... well, some of them owe me favors. I'll owe some of them favors when this is over. I explained the situation to them, and they know that if Rachael gets this story it may be a way to bring whoever is responsible for these murders out in the open. They also know that we have an agreement not to talk to anybody else in the press. Rachael is the only one they talk to, and even then, after this is over and they go on their own ways, they are to forget this ever happened."
    Rachael and Lance let this sink in as Daryl steered the car down a side street toward the Eight-First Street bridge. Rachael checked her gear. In the backseat, Lance checked his equipment. Rachael stared out ahead through the dirty windshield of the sedan as they approached the arches of the bridge. The area they were entering was almost barren, desolate. The dirt floor was dry, small tufts of weeds sticking out here and there, small buildings and factories standing like lonely sentries in the desert. Daryl steered the car down another side street, down an alley where crackerbox houses were piled one on top of the other, white faded picket fences kept in children and animals ranging from dogs to chickens. It was an area that fostered fear, bred despair, and harbored criminals. Rachael clutched the strap that held her tape recorder to her hip, her stomach rumbling with a nervous twinge. Today she was venturing where most normal folks would never dare enter.
    Here there be Tygers .
    She glanced in the rearview mirror as they drew up to the bridge, noting two of the patrol cars following them. She turned to Daryl as he stopped the car and let it idle, noticing for the first time half a dozen men dressed in gang attire; baggy tan slacks, baggy white t-shirts and plaid shirts, shaved heads, attitude turned up to eleven. “Where are the other patrol cars?"
    “They're approaching the scene from a different route,” Daryl said, his hands tapping the steering wheel, watching the gang members approach the car cautiously. “I've also got a couple of plainclothes cops nearby and a few more salted in the area keeping watch. Everything's cool."
    “If you say so, man,” Lance said, his voice squeaking like a pre-pubescent boy.
    Rachael had never heard him sound so nervous before in all the years they'd worked together.
    The gang members were drawing up to the car and two of them broke away from the others and approached them. One of them, tall, good looking, wearing a white tank top that exposed his muscular tattooed arms nodded. “Officer Garcia, que paso ?"
    “How are you doing, Victor?” Daryl said. He held his hand out and Victor grasped it in a power shake.
    “Okay, man.” He motioned toward Rachael. “That her?"
    “Yep.” Daryl turned toward Rachael. “You ready?"
    Rachael took a deep breath, her heart pounding in her chest. She had thought Daryl and some of the backup officers would frisk the gang members for weapons, but they made no attempt to do that. Surely they knew the gang members were armed! She supposed with the eight cops that had come along as backup, and the plainclothes detectives watching the area they were pretty safe, but she didn't feel it. She felt both scared and excited; she could feel the adrenaline pouring through her veins. She took a deep breath. “Ready as I'll ever be."
    Daryl turned to Victor. “Everything cool?"
    “Everything's cool, homes,” Victor said. He stepped away from the car. His partner remained at sentry duty, chest thrown forward,