Before he gets here, there’s a couple of things I want to get straight.” The lieutenant stood in the doorway, filling it so completely that Danny Romero and I faced him from his shadow. He’d already expressed his surprise upon seeing me, and chewed me out for hanging up on him that morning. In the process, he slipped in a dire warning about meddling reporters interfering with police investigations, which failed to leave me quaking with trepidation. “Mr. JaFari is grieving badly,” DeWinter said. “He doesn’t know that his kid was sick with the AIDS virus. He doesn’t even know his kid was gay or bisexual or whatever the fuck he was.” “And you’d like us to keep it to ourselves,” I said. DeWinter’s hard manner lost some of its edge. “He’ll find out soon enough, one way or another. All I’m asking is, give him a little time. Either of you got a problem with that?” Neither of us did, and we said so. “Remember, his kid lived in this place, too. Hosain JaFari has a right to come here, look around.
