His fellow bangers over in the shade whooped it up as he approached.

I didn’t feel the tension in my neck start to dissolve until we got back to the 110 and headed north. Then I put the fifty bucks out of my mind and started to feel good as I reviewed what had been accomplished during the trip. Wanda Sessums had agreed to cooperate fully in the investigation of the Denise Babbit–Alonzo Winslow case. Using my cell phone, she had called Winslow’s public defender, Jacob Meyer, and told him that, as the defendant’s guardian, she was authorizing my total access to all documents and evidence relating to the case. Meyer reluctantly agreed to meet with me the next morning between hearings in the downtown juvenile hall. He didn’t really have a choice. I had told Wanda that if Meyer didn’t cooperate, there were plenty of private attorneys who would handle the case for free once they knew there were headlines coming. Meyer’s choice was either to work with me and get some media attention for himself or give the case up.

Wanda Sessums had also agreed to get me into Sylmar Juvenile Hall so that I could interview her grandson. My plan was to use the public defender’s case file to become familiar with the case before I sat down to talk to Winslow. It would be the key interview of the piece I would write. I wanted to know all there was to know before I talked to him.

All in all, it had been a good trip—the fifty-dollar tariff notwithstanding—and I was thinking about how I was going to present my plan to Prendergast. Then Lester interrupted my thoughts.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said.

“What am I doing?” I said.

“That washerwoman might be too dumb and the lawyer too worried about headlines to see it but I’m not.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re comin’ on like you’re the white knight that’s gonna prove the kid innocent and set him free. But you’re going to do the exact opposite of that, man. You’re going to use them to get inside the case to get all the juicy details, then you’re going to write a story about how a sixteen-year-old kid becomes a stone-cold killer. Hell, getting an innocent man free is a damn newspaper cliché nowadays. But gettin’ inside the mind of a young killer like that? Tellin’ how society lets that kind of thing happen? That’s Pulitzer territory, bro.”

I didn’t say anything at first. Lester had me cold. I put together a defense and then responded.

“All I promised her was that I would investigate the case. Where it goes it goes, that’s all.”

“Bullshit. You’re using her because she’s too ignorant to know it. The kid will probably be just as stupid and go along, too. And we all know the lawyer will trade the kid for headlines. You really think you’re going to win the big one with this, don’t you?”

I shook my head and didn’t respond.