Three hours of report writing followed. I wrote the arresting officer’s summary longhand; Lee typed it up, omitting mention of our break-in at Coleman Maynard’s apartment. Ellis Loew hovered around the cubicle as we worked, muttering, “Great collar” and “I’ll kill them in court with the kid angle.”

We finished our paperwork at 7:00. Lee made a check mark in the air and said, “Chalk another one up for Laurie Blanchard. You hungry, partner?”

I stood up and stretched, food suddenly a great idea. Then I saw Fritz Vogel and Bill Koenig approaching the cubicle. Lee whispered, “Make nice, they’ve got juice with Loew.”

Up close, the two resembled gone-to-seed refugees from the LA Rams’ middle line. Vogel was tall and fat, with a huge flat head that grew straight out of his shirt collar and the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen; Koenig was plain huge, topping my six foot three by a couple of inches, his linebacker’s body just starting to go soft. He had a broad, flattened nose, jug ears, a crooked jaw and tiny chipped teeth. He looked stupid, Vogel looked shrewd, they both looked mean.

Koenig giggled. “He confessed. The kiddie porks and the burglaries. Fritzie says we’re all gonna get commendations.” He stuck out his hand. “Good fight you gave blondie.”

I shook the big fist, noticing fresh blood on Koenig’s right shirt cuff. I said, “Thanks, Sarge,” then extended my hand to Fritz Vogel. He took it for a split second, bored into me with coldly furious eyes and dropped it like it was a hot turd.

Lee slapped my back. “Bucky’s aces. Smarts and cojones. You talked to Ellis about the confession?”

Vogel said, “He’s Ellis to lieutenants and up.”

Lee laughed. “I’m a privileged character. Besides, you call him kike and Jewboy behind his back, so what do you care?”

Vogel flushed; Koenig looked around with his mouth open. When he turned, I saw blood spatters on his shirtfront. Vogel said, “Come on Billy”; Koenig dutifully followed him back to the squadroom.

“Make nice, huh?”

Lee shrugged. “Shitbirds. If they weren’t cops they’d be in Atascadero. Do as I say, not as I do, partner. They’re afraid of me, and you’re just a rookie here.”

I racked my brain for a snappy reply. Then Harry Sears, looking twice as sloppy as he did in the morning, poked his head in the doorway. “I heard something I thought you should know, Lee.” The words were spoken without a trace of a stutter; I smelled liquor on the man’s breath.

Lee said, “Shoot”; Sears said, “I was over at County Parole, and the supervisor told me Bobby De Witt just got an ‘A’ number. He’ll be paroled to LA around the middle of January. Just thought you should know.”

Sears nodded at me and took off. I looked at Lee, who was twitching like he did up in room 803 of the Versailles. I said, “Partner—”

Lee managed a smile. “Let’s get ourselves some chow. Kay’s making pot roast, and she said I should bring you home.”

I tagged along for the woman and was astounded by the pad: a beige Deco-streamline house a quarter mile north of the Sunset Strip. Going in the door, Lee said, “Don’t mention De Witt; it’ll upset Kay.” I nodded and took in a living room straight out of a movie set.

The wainscoting was polished mahogany, the furniture was Danish Modern—gleaming blond wood in a half dozen shades. There were wall prints representing hotshot twentieth-century artists, and carpets embroidered with modernistic designs, mist-hung skyscrapers or tall trees in a forest or the spires of some German Expressionist factory. A dining area adjoined the living room, and the table held fresh flowers and chafing dishes leaking the aroma of good eats. I said, “Not bad on a cop’s pay. You taking a few bribes, partner?”

Lee laughed. “My fight stash. Hey babe, you here?”

Kay Lake walked in from the kitchen, wearing a floral dress that matched the tulips on the table. She took my hand and said, “Hello, Dwight.” I felt like a punk kid crashing the junior prom.

“Hello, Kay.”

With a squeeze she dropped my hand, ending the longest shake in history. “You and Leland partners. It makes you want to believe in fairy tales, doesn’t it?”

I looked around for Lee, and saw that he’d disappeared. “No. I’m the realistic type.”

“I’m not.”

“I can tell.”

“I’ve had enough reality to last me a lifetime.”

“I know.”

“Who told you?”

“The LA Herald Express.”

Kay laughed. “Then you did read my press clippings. Come to any conclusions?”

“Yeah. Fairy tales don’t work out.”

Kay winked like Lee; I got the feeling that she was the one who taught him. “That’s why you have to turn them into reality. Leland! Dinnertime!”

Lee reappeared, and we sat down to eat; Kay cracked a bottle of champagne and poured. When our glasses were full, she said, “To fairy tales.” We drank, Kay refilled, Lee said, “To Bond Issue B.” The second dose of bubbly tickled my nose and made me laugh; I proposed, “To the Bleichert-Blanchard rematch at the Polo Grounds, a bigger gate than Louis and Schmeling.”

Lee said, “To the second Blanchard victory”; Kay said, “To a draw and no gore.” We drank, and killed the bottle, and Kay retrieved another from the kitchen, popping the cork and hitting Lee in the chest. When our goblets were full, I caught my first blast of the juice and blurted, “To us.” Lee and Kay looked at me in something like slow motion, and I saw that our free hands were all resting a few inches apart on the tabletop. Kay noticed me notice and winked; Lee said, “That’s where I learned how.” Our hands moved together into a sort of triad, and we toasted “To us” in unison.

Opponents, then partners, then friends. And with the friendship came Kay, never getting between us, but always filling in our lives outside the job with style and grace.

That fall of ‘46, we went everywhere together. When we went to the movies, Kay took the middle seat and grabbed both our hands during the scary parts; when we spent big band Friday evenings at the Malibu Rendezvous, she alternated dances with the two of us and always tossed a coin to see who got the last slow number. Lee never expressed an ounce of jealously, and Kay’s come-on subsided into a low simmer. It was there every time our shoulders brushed, every time a radio jingle or a funny billboard or a word from Lee hit us the same way and our eyes met instantaneously. The quieter it got, the more available I knew Kay was—and the more I wanted her. But I let it all ride, not because it would have destroyed my partnership with Lee, but because it would have upset the perfection of the three of us.

After tours of duty, Lee and I would go to the house and find Kay reading, underlining passages in books with a yellow crayon. She’d cook dinner for the three of us, and sometimes Lee would take off to run Mulholland on his motorcycle. Then we talked.

We always spoke around Lee, as if discussing the brute center of the three of us without him present was a cheat. Kay talked about the six years of college and two master’s degrees that Lee had bankrolled with his fight stash and how her work as a substitute teacher was perfect for the “overeducated dilettante” she’d become; I talked about growing up Kraut in Lincoln Heights. We never spoke of my snitching for the Alien Squad or her life with Bobby De Witt. We both sensed the other’s general story, but neither of us wanted details. I had the upper hand there: the Ashida brothers and Sam Murakami were long gone and dead, but Bobby De Witt was a month away from LA parole—and I could tell Kay was afraid of his return.

If Lee was frightened, he never showed it past that moment when Harry Sears gave him the word, and it never hindered him during our best hours together—the ones spent working Warrants. That fall I learned what police work really was, and Lee was my teacher.