Lieutenant Job Rickey, still wearing tweeds, sat behind his desk in the La Verde courthouse and explained the slashing of the upholstery in Monterey’s rented Ford in one flat, unimaginative word. The word would look fine on an insurance claim, but Simon wasn’t an insurance agent in La Verde; he was a hard-nosed lawyer who wanted to know how a car could be vandalized while locked in a police garage. “We found the rear door with a busted lock,” Rickey said. “The punks do it for kicks. They get high on goof balls and acid. Inhibitions go—then bedlam. Big fun. Big thrill humiliating the fuzz.” Rickey wasn’t smiling. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and leaned back in his swivel chair, and the snub-nosed off-duty gun strapped to his waist looked natural there. Rickey didn’t enjoy being made a fool of by a gang of punks. “The interior of the Ford wasn’t slashed the first time I visited the garage,” Simon said. “I opened the door and looked inside. The interior was clean except for a freeway map stamped by the Palms Hotel in Santa Monica.”
