Southland by Nina Revoyr Page A

killed in Vietnam. It haunted him, too. I’ve always meant to do something, but I’ve just kept putting it off, you know. Didn’t know how to start. But when I ran into Loda this morning and she said that Frank Sakai had died and that his granddaughter was looking for Curtis, I knew it was finally time.”
    “You said people didn’t know about it, right? So how are you going to build a case?”
    “Oh, they knew the boys were murdered—they just didn’t know how . There were all kinds of rumors—that they’d been shot, or lynched, or burned up in a fire.”
    Jackie rocked back and forth, thinking. “But what do I have to do with all this?”
    Lanier looked at her and shrugged. “I don’t know. As much as you want.”
    But then doubt settled over him, heavy and uncomfortable as a wet quilt. What the hell was he doing? For one thing, how was he supposed to get information on a cop? He thought of Allen Cooke, the cop from the Southwest Station who volunteered for his fathers group. Southwest was the natural place to ask questions, since that was where Lawson had worked, but it was a tricky thing, he knew, to look for dirt on another cop. The department, when you poked it, tended to close in on itself, and he didn’t know if Allen would be willing.
    For another, he wasn’t sure he’d made the right move by enlisting Frank’s granddaughter. Her knowledge of the law—Loda had said she was in law school—might help with legal matters, if they ever got to that point. And someone in her family had to know something —maybe they’d even seen Lawson lurking around the store on the day of the murders. But Jackie Ishida was not the same kind of person as her grandfather. Frank was a down-to-earth, blue-collar man. Jackie, on the other hand, had clearly been coddled. She had the air of someone who never questioned her right to anything. Her hands were soft and unlined, her fingernails even and clean; those hands had never seen a day of real labor. Her clothes, though casual—jeans, blouse, light leather jacket—were elegant, cut well, expensive. She was attractive enough—nice face, straight shoulder-length hair, thin athletic figure—but there was something too prim about her, fastidious, as if she didn’t swear or sweat. She was a package wrapped tightly with a bright and colorful bow; all the edges of the paper lined up perfectly. Frank Sakai’s family, clearly, had moved up in the world—but maybe they’d moved so far that they no longer had use for Frank. Lanier wondered if he should leave Jackie alone and pursue Lawson by himself. But she had been the one to call Loda Thomas; she’d started this entire thing. He believed in omens, and this one was undeniable.
    Jackie, sitting across from him, believed in omens too. She knew that her family was touched by what had happened. Their flight after the murders might have implied something at the time—even if, as she realized, most of her grandfather’s old acquaintances had liked him, there would always be that shadow of a question. And Frank would have wanted her to pursue this; he had practically willed it. She looked at Lanier, his probing eyes, his intense and handsome face.
    “So what do we do now?” she asked.

CHAPTER SIX
    JIMMY, 1962
    H E WAS wearing a suit for the first time, skipping south along Westside Avenue, heading toward the church on Santa Barbara. The suit was one of Cory’s, fully half of his supply, but his cousin had been happy to wear the other one and lend the scratchy new brown one to Jimmy. Curtis was in a suit too, and suspenders and a hat. Curtis and Cory’s mother, Alma, wore a dark flower-print dress that swished and furled around her fast-moving legs. She was a little ahead of them, not looking back, forcing her three ducklings to swim after her quickly, and Jimmy wondered if God always expected his children to come calling in such a hurry.
    It was almost nine when they arrived at the church, a plain square building a little