“If this guy’s the killer, I’m a theoretical physicist,” I said. “I don’t care whether you trust the LAPD or not. This is their gig, Marvis, not yours.”

He glared, nostrils flaring, like he was about to lay hands on me — or try. “I already told you. Fuck the LAPD. Don’t you get it? This is my ticket to ride, man.”

Rambo was scratching at the bathroom door, whining and yapping like he was trapped in there with Freddy Krueger. Woodley yelled at him to shut up. Rambo whined only louder.

“My old lady’s dog,” he said apologetically. “Left him with me when she split for good.”

He opened the bathroom door and released him. Rambo padded over to the front door and lay down, panting in relief at having been sprung from solitary.

“OK, here’s the situation,” Marvis said. He was looking at me not in anger this time, but with resignation. “The truth is…” He licked his lips nervously.

“SEAL Team Six didn’t come along until after Vietnam,” I said, finishing his words for him. “The truth is, you were never a SEAL, were you?”

He steepled his fingers prayerfully, rubbing his palms together slowly, ashamed to meet my eyes, and shook his head no.

Only a wannabe ever brags to a stranger about being a member of the Navy’s premier counterterrorist unit. Those of us in Alpha, of course, knew who they were. The community wasn’t that big. We referred to SEALs as the “junior varsity.” Not that they were in any way deficient at what they did. They were quite good, actually. It’s just that we were better.

Savannah eyed Woodley with a puzzled expression, then me. “Somebody want to tell me what this has to do with Arlo?”

Woodley sank into a blue velvet La-Z-Boy recliner, his favorite chair, given the well-worn cushions. “Me and Arlo was battle buddies,” he said. “Maybe we never served together, but we was battle buddies just the same.”

Marvis Woodley may never have been a Navy commando, but he was a Vietnam War-era veteran, he said. He’d toiled for a year below decks in the post office of an aircraft carrier patrolling Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin, sorting the mail, rarely seeing the sun, both relieved and disappointed at having avoided combat. The life that followed had devolved into an unfulfilling career as a letter carrier and a series of failed, childless marriages. Many nights after work, he would pound down a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English and fantasize about running a garden hose from the tailpipe of his Monte Carlo, sliding in his favorite Aaron Neville CD, and going to sleep forever. But he never had the stones for that. Then Echevarria moved in next door and everything changed, Marvis said. The two men started hanging out. Sometimes, they’d order in Chinese food and watch baseball on Echevarria’s big screen plasma. But mostly they just drank. The booze loosened Echevarria’s tongue and he would let slip stories — incredible stories about a group of elite shadow warriors that no one had ever heard about.

“I couldn’t sit there and bore the man about being some lameass clerk on some lame-ass ship, watching movies and eating ice cream and shit, not after all he done,” Marvis said, “so I start telling my own stories. Being a SEAL, zapping gooks, all that. Arlo, he was just a kid when Vietnam was going down. The hell he gonna do, call me a liar? I ain’t saying what I did was right, but…”

Savannah covered her mouth as she listened. Everything Marvis said confirmed what she’d long suspected but could never get Echevarria or me to admit. The lives we hid from her.

“Truth is,” Marvis said, drawing a deep breath and letting it go, “I ain’t never done anything my whole life. This is my one chance.”

“Take down the bad guy mano a mano,” I said, “be the hero you never were.”

Marvis shrugged like a little kid caught in a lie. I pitied him.

“You’re certain this guy’s the shooter?”

“No doubt in my military mind.”

“What’s the address?”

Marvis recited it by memory. The house was four doors down and across the street, south toward the Ventura Freeway. I got out my phone and called Czarnek.

“Who you calling?” Marvis said.

“LAPD.”

“You can’t do that!” He sprang to his feet. Rambo, startled, began running around and yapping like the place was on fire. “You can’t, man,” Marvis pleaded. “Let me do this. For Arlo. For all the lies I told him. Please.”

I glanced over at Savannah. Her eyes were filled with tears.

“If Arlo were here today,” I said, “I know what he’d say: ‘Never send a man where you can send a grenade.’ You’re a good man, Marvis, but you’re no grenade. You did your job. It’s time to let others do theirs.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, staring up at the ceiling, then disappeared into his kitchen. His dog padded after him. The house was quiet.

“Detective Czarnek.”

He apologized for not returning my earlier call. The turf war had escalated between the Paxton Street Locos and Pacoima Flats, he said, and was monopolizing his time.

I walked outside, far enough away from Savannah that she couldn’t overhear my conversation, and briefed Czarnek on what I’d learned on my trip to Phoenix regarding Robbie Emerson and the possible Russian connection to the death of Echevarria. I told him about the mysterious man who’d bought a Sawzall from the Home Depot where Emerson worked, using a stolen American Express card issued to one Richard Smith, no middle initial, address unknown.

“A Sawzall?” Czarnek sounded distracted.

“Reciprocating saw,” I reminded him, “like the kind that took off Bondarenko’s hands?”

“A Sawzall. I remember. Right.”

“If I was a big deal LAPD detective, I might stiff in a call to American Express, get the billing address, and go ring Richard Smith’s doorbell. You never know. He might have some ideas as to who made off with his card.”

“If you were a big deal LAPD detective,” Czarnek said, “you’d be too busy dealing with little shitheads in the projects killing each other. I’ll get to it when I can.”

I told him about Marvis Woodley’s claim that Echevarria’s murderer had moved in down the street.

“That would be a first,” Czarnek said. Then again, he conceded, he’d seen weirder occurrences in nearly thirty years protecting and serving the good citizens of Los Angeles. Way weirder.

I agreed that Woodley’s tip defied plausibility. But under the circumstances, I said, the LAPD was compelled to check it out. “Somebody calls up to report they know where a murder suspect is holed up, the police department ignores it and he kills somebody else, that’s not gonna go over too big with John Q. Public or city hall.”

“Must be hard being right all the time,” Czarnek said.

“You have no idea.”

If Buddhists are correct that less is more, then clearly there were no Buddhists among the LAPD tacticians who planned the raid that afternoon on the house where Marvis Woodley asserted that Arlo Echevarria’s killer had taken refuge. Six uniformed officers in helmets and tactical vests covered two others who snuck through the alley and into the backyard. Glass shattered as the pair in back smashed windows to distract the suspect inside. This was followed immediately by more than a dozen other officers armed with pistols, shotguns and assault rifles who breeched the door with a handheld battering ram and rushed in shouting the usual cop stuff. At Alpha, we would’ve made entry with four operators, max. And without all the annoying yelling.

Savannah, Marvis Woodley, and I looked on with Czarnek and his partner, Windhauser, from behind the detectives’ unmarked Crown Victoria, which was parked in front of Marvis’s house. Others in the neighbors watched, too, people of color, mostly, standing on their porches with their arms folded.

Czarnek pressed his cell phone to his ear, waiting for word that the suspect had been taken in custody. His forehead and armpits were wet even though it wasn’t hot outside and he was in shirtsleeves. He was giving his anti-smoking gum a workout. His partner gnawed on a toothpick.