Detective Hansen and I were sitting in his squad car, parked in the handicapped section near the Huntington Beach Pier. It was early morning so the babes weren’t out in full swing yet. A few of the joggers showed promise, but it was hard to tell with the baggy windbreakers and workout pants.
“ Next time we meet at the beach,” said Hansen, “let’s do it when the sun’s out.”
“ Because you like the sunshine?”
“ Because I like the babes.”
I nodded. Good point. There had been a box of assorted donuts sitting on the console between us. Now there was just a few cinnamon cakes and a maple bar that had seen better days. We were both sipping coffee.
“ You want the maple bar?” asked Hansen.
“ It’s all yours.”
A slender woman with a great white sheepdog jogged past us on PCH, then angled down toward the boardwalk, where the bulk of the joggers were. The sun was higher up on the horizon than when we had first started on the donuts. Hansen was a tan guy. He was wearing tan slacks, loafers and no socks. His ankles were also tan and I suspected there was a tanning bed somewhere with his ass prints all over it.
“ I take it Heidi Mann swung by your office,” said Hansen. “If you want to call it that.”
“ It’s a nice office.”
“ It’s a Jim Knighthorse football shrine.”
“ Like I said, it’s a nice office.”
“ Sprinkled with bullet holes,” he said.
“ The bullet holes give it character.”
He shook his head and licked his fingers. When it comes to donuts and frosting, every man reverts to his inner ten-year-old. After some minor debate, I went ahead and fished out one of the cinnamon cakes. I took a healthy bite. It tasted better than it looked.
I said, “You have anything on her boyfriend?”
He shook his head. There was some chocolate frosting in his thick cop mustache. With the frosting, Hansen didn’t look nearly as cool as he thought he looked.
He said, “No. And it’s not as clean and clear-cut as she probably made it out to be.”
I nodded. Few things were. I waited.
“ Her boyfriend might have been a small-time drug dealer. We’re thinking he might have run into some trouble down that road.”
“ It’s a hell of a road,” I said. I had eaten six donuts. Dammit, I wanted another. What the hell was wrong with me? “You look into the shark hunters?”
“ No reason to.”
“ They threatened them, according to Heidi.”
“ They’re just fishermen, Knighthorse. And these…activists get threatened all the time. Heidi and Mitch and others like them, get under people’s skin for a living. They shut down honest businesses for a living. To most people, they’re a pain in the ass. Come to think of it, they kind of sound like you.”
“ My kind of people,” I said. “What do you know of the shark hunters?”
“ They hunt sharks. Some of them, apparently, just for the fins.”
“ What do you think of that?”
“ I think it has nothing to do with my job, so I could give a shit.”
“ That’s what I thought. And the story about the dogs?”
“ Using dogs for bait?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that.”
“ Sounds shitty.”
“ That’s all you have to say?”
“ That’s all I can say. I can’t save the world, Knighthorse. That’s your job.”
We were both silent, and as the sun rose a little higher, we spotted our first bikini walking across the sand. Hansen smiled. I might have smiled, too, if I felt like it.
I didn’t.