One Loved a Soldier: Another, a Sailor, a Third, a Marine: Seventh in the Zuma Mystery Series

By Jerome Rabow

After a white female and black male couple are found murdered in Santa Monica and a series of robberies has been committed by an interracial gang, Captain Joe Zuma seeks a possible connection. The infiltration of the gang and their efforts to rob stores and recruit further gang member and their holding the police infiltrator hostage leads to a set of negotiated demands between the gang and the police department. The gang continues to recruit and plan robberies and three of the recruits are caught by the police. Upon their release on bail all three are murdered by older gang members. When the parents of the couple that were murdered are also murdered Zuma has 11 deaths that he must account for with the black and brown communities of color protesting the lack of arrests. A homeless person who witnessed the shootings provides Zuma with his first clue which leads him to three white women who are sisters, and who've been involved with nefarious criminal activity. Their efforts to cover for each other are broken by a brilliant ploy by Zuma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663234889

Jerome Rabow

JEROME RABOW has been a professor of social psychology at UCLA for thirty years and lectures at California State University Northridge. He has written nine books and over one hundred articles on sociology, social psychology, education, and racism. He is cofounder and president of the Center for the Celebration of Diversity through Education. He and his wife, Roslyn, have five children and four grandchildren and live in Los Angeles. He is the author of “Oceans Apart”, the first in the series of murder mysteries following Detective Joe Zuma and his sidekick Detective Pat Vasquez.

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Copyright © 2022 Jerome Rabow.

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3468-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3488-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022900943

iUniverse rev. date:  01/12/2022

CONTENTS

Chapter 1     The Tides

Chapter 2     Interracial Dating

Chapter 3     Propinquity And Robberies

Chapter 4     The Media And Music

Chapter 5     Blondes And Fords

Chapter 6     Ford Sisters And Andrews Sisters

Chapter 7     Race Doesn’t Seem To Matter

Chapter 8     After The Rain, The Fires Ain’t Out

CHAPTER 1

THE TIDES

Detective Joe Zuma loved getting up with the sunrise and reflecting on the pacific shores of Santa Monica. As he walked at the edge of the gentle waves that lapped his feet, he compared himself to the tides. If it was low tide, the ocean washed up debris, and if it was high, it was cleaned away. It would never stop … and he thought his work in cleaning the city of crime also would never stop. It was low tide, and the sun had cleared the bluffs of the palisades so that the ocean now was light gray instead of the dark blue that he had started his walk with.

He had been gazing toward the west when he stumbled upon two corpses that had washed up. They were not badly decayed so he could see that one male was Black and the other Latino. Bullets had entered the backs of their heads. He immediately called the coroner’s office to have the bodies picked up, and while waiting, he checked to see if there were any identifications. He found none. He told the ambulance personnel to call him as soon as they got an ID; then he resumed his walk.

A tin can was in front of his right foot, and he kicked it and thought of Randy Newman’s lyrics:

Tin can at my feet,

Kick it down the street

That’s no way to treat a friend.

Zuma thought, Indeed, that’s no way to treat a friend.

He headed home, took a shower, and saw that his wife, Claudia, was still asleep. She had set the alarm for 8:30 so he set the coffee machine to start its drip process at that time. He kissed her gently on the cheek and left for the office. He felt blessed to have Claudia. He had met her four years ago when he was vacationing in Truro, Massachusetts. Now, their relationship was not so much one of passion as it was the amalgamating of two different metals to make something more brilliant. She was a landscape painter, and her vistas of Cape Cod, with their space and quiet, readily