Croaker: Grave Sins (Fey Croaker Book 2)

by Paul Bishop

  Alphabet knew that, in actuality, the deputy was probably right – they were spitting into the wind trying to get a lead on their John Doe by talking to the street kids. But there was always a chance he and Brindle could get lucky.

  Hogan and the other vice deputies gave Brindle and Alphabet a rundown on the local club scene and the most active areas for chickens and rabbits – juvenile male prostitutes. Armed with this information and their photos, the two LAPD detectives hit the streets.

  They started at the One On One Club on Santa Monica Boulevard, and then made their way through the maze of gay discos, leather bars, and more upscale watering holes that populated the area. It was boring, tiring, unforgiving work. They talked to bartenders, bouncers, and patrons, all without success. They didn’t try to hide the fact that they were cops, and as such they were strangers, outsiders to this closed world.

  “We should have brought Fegerson with us,” Brindle said, referring to one of several known gay LAPD officers who worked out of West LA. “He might have been able to give us an in with some of these people.”

  Alphabet shook his head. “Fegerson may be gay, but he’s still The Man as far as the people we’re talking to are concerned. He’d get the same stonewall.”

  In front of the clubs, they watched as the mostly male prostitutes plied their trade along the boulevard. Transvestites, in outfits that left little to the imagination, added a sleazy splash of color to the scene. The youngsters, mostly runaways, hung back, lining the outside walls of the clubs, kept in check by the older pros who didn’t need the competition.

  After a couple of hours on the street, Alphabet was not just tired from the long day, he was weary from the sleaze of the cesspool around them. West Hollywood was actually a nice upscale town, but the despair on the faces of the street people was made even more poignant with the specter of AIDs lurking around every corner – an unspoken threat more deadly than any human killer.

  AIDs not only scared Alphabet, but also touched something inside of him. He wasn’t gay, but neither was he a gay basher. He also knew that the gay community as a whole was not represented by what he and Brindle saw around them on the street. However, he still found it hard to imagine living in a world where so many of your friends were dying around you at an age when life should be just beginning for them.

  “Why did you come on this job?” he asked Brindle. It was more for something to say than anything else.

  “Why did you?” she countered.

  “The department offered excitement and security. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “I rest my case,” said Brindle.

  Alphabet turned toward her. Even dressed in jeans, hiking boots, a plaid lumberjack shirt, and bomber jacket hiding the gun at her waist, Brindle looked like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine. “There has to be something more?”

  Brindle bent over and rubbed the backs of her legs. “I don’t know. I guess I had something to prove. I’ve got three older brothers. One went to ‘Nam and became some big deal hero. He’s now an Army colonel bucking for general. One became a priest, and thinks he’s on the fast track to becoming a bishop. The other started out with IBM and now runs his own corporation making advanced computer gear for wireheads.” She straightened up and leaned back against the Doppelganger’s wall again. “They have all given me crap over the years about how easy things must be for me because I’m a good-looking woman. I became a cop because I thought it was a job where being a woman didn’t matter ...” She trailed off.

  “And?” Alphabet prompted.

  Brindle’s shoulders rose and fell. “And I was wrong. Any time a woman gets ahead on this job, everyone says it’s not because she’s good, but because she has two lumps of fat on her chest and doesn’t have an appendage between her legs.”

  “So since everyone was ready to accuse you of using those factors to get ahead, you might as well use them?”

  “If men only knew how pathetic they act when a woman bats her eyelashes or rubs against you.”

  “You better be careful,” Alphabet said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a big axe you’re wielding. If you’re not careful, you might cut yourself off at the grindstone.”

  Outside of the Doppelganger, a young boy, no older than thirteen hopped out of a black Mercedes that had pulled over to the curb. One eye was swelling and there was blood flowing from his nose. Brindle and Alphabet exchanged glances.

  The kid looked back into the car and gave the occupant the finger. “Eat me,” the kid yelled as the car drove away.

  “I hope he got his money up front,” Alphabet said.

  Brindle made a mental note of the car license plate. “What a hell of a way to make a living,” she said. Somewhere down the line she’d get a print out on the registered owner of the vehicle and see if she could make his life miserable in some way.

  A little farther down the wall from where Brindle was leaning, two large shapes peeled themselves out of the shadows and it was clear the kid’s problems weren’t over. One of the shapes was tall and slender, a ballet dancer wrapped in denim and attitude. The other shape was a muscular fireplug. Point and counter point. Either one could have eaten the kid for an hors d’oeuvre and not even noticed.

  The ballet dancer grabbed the kid by the right ear and twisted hard. The kid screamed.

  “Shut it!” the ballet dancer screamed back into the kid’s face. He dragged the kid away from the curb and toward an alley entrance. Fireplug had taken up the position of rear guard, defying anybody to object to ballet dancer’s treatment of the kid. He followed into the shadows of the alley.

  The sound of a sharp slap and another yelp from the kid reached back to the street. The other prostitutes and club patrons continued about their business as if everything was normal.

  “You guys are cops. Can’t you do something?” a voice next to Alphabet spoke up. “They’re gonna kill him.”

  Alphabet turned around to see the eyes of a young girl staring at him out of a dirty heart-shaped face. Long strands of unwashed blond hair flopped everywhere.

  Alphabet had shown her the pictures of Ricky Long and the John Doe a few minutes earlier. She’d barely looked at both photos before saying she didn’t know anything.

  “Who’s he to you?” Alphabet asked.

  The gamin squirmed inside her oversized Army fatigue jacket. “He’s just another rabbit who’s gonna get gutted if you don’t stop Bomber.”

  “Bomber?”

  “Yeah. The tall guy.”

  “Who’s the muscle?”

  “Mace. He likes to hit people.”

  “Bomber a pimp?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You and your rabbit boyfriend been holding out on him?”

  The gamin fidgeted with her hair and continued squirming as if she had to go to the bathroom real bad. Another yelp reached the street from the alley mouth. She looked over that way. “Come on, man. Do something. Please.” Her voice was pleading.

  “You got somewhere to go?”

  “Yeah. There’s a shelter.”

  Brindle had walked over to stand next to Alphabet. “What about our photos?” she asked, shoving the two glossies under the gamin’s nose.

  The girl was silent.

  Brindle waited a few beats. “Your choice,” she said to the girl.

  More silence.

  Brindle took Alphabet’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said.

  The girl’s squirming increased. “Ain’t nothing free?”

  “Not in this life,” Brindle said.

  “I suppose you want a free blow job,” the gamin said to Alphabet.

  “I want you to tell me about the photos,” he said, feeling a flush of embarrassment.

  The girl grabbed the photos from Brindle and stared at them. “Never seen this guy,” she said, handing back the photo of Ricky Long. She looked at the photo of the John Doe then turned to Alphabet. “This guy calls himself Rush. He’s a raver. Makes all the re
gular scenes. Haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks.”

  “Real name?”

  “Down here nobody has a real name.”

  “Was he a rabbit?”

  “Everybody on the street does sex for money.” She looked back at the alley mouth, grabbed Alphabet’s sleeve and began tugging him toward it. “That’s all I know, man. Now, you gotta do something.”

  Alphabet shrugged off the girl’s hand as he sensed Brindle moving up beside him. Together they entered the alley. Mace had the kid by the arms, bending him backward over a trash can. Bomber, the ballet dancer, was standing in front of the kid. He had a knife out and was tearing open the pockets of the kid’s thin jacket. A wad of money fell out. None of the three noticed Brindle and Alphabet enter the alley.

  When Bomber bent down to pick up the kid’s stash, Alphabet took advantage of the appealing target that was presented. With purposeful accuracy, he drove the toe of his cowboy boot deep into Bomber’s groin. An explosion of breath and a high pitched scream preceded Bomber dropping to the ground. Alphabet put his right boot down on Bomber’s neck.

  “Who the hell are you?” Mace asked.

  “Avon lady,” Alphabet said.

  Mace pulled the kid across the trash can and whipped out a knife of his own. He held the point of the knife to the kid’s throat.

  Brindle drew her nine millimeter and aimed it at Mace’s head. “How very melodramatic.” She took a step forward. “Go ahead,” she told Mace. “Slice him open. Give me the excuse I need to justify splattering your brains all over the wall behind you.”

  “What do you want?” Mace asked. His voice was raspy with fear. He was a coward in the face of resistance.

  “I want to kill you,” Brindle said. “I don’t think you deserve to live. You’ve got one chance. Throw the knife down, let the kid go, and get the hell out of here.”

  “What about him?” Mace gestured toward Bomber with his chin.

  “What do you care?” Brindle asked.

  Mace looked down the barrel of Brindle’s unwavering pistol and made up his mind. He pushed the kid hard toward Brindle, turned and ran for the other end of the alley.

  “He didn’t drop the knife,” Alphabet said.

  “So we’ll give him an F in following instructions.”

  “He doesn’t play well with others either.”

  The kid had staggered forward and then dropped to his knees. With speed born of desperation he grabbed the wad of notes on the ground and blasted past Alphabet like a sprinter coming out of the blocks.

  “You’re welcome,” Brindle called after him.

  Alphabet reached down and grabbed a healthy wad of Bomber’s greasy hair. He pulled back and dragged Bomber over to a sitting position against the alley wall. The pimp still had his hands between his legs and was whimpering.

  Alphabet crouched down in front of his captive and used the curve between his left thumb and index finger to C-clamp Bomber’s neck back against the wall. He figured they’d gone this far so he may as well take advantage of the situation. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “If you ever want your balls to drop back down to their normal position,” he said, taking out his photos of Ricky and Rush, “You’re going to tell me everything you know about these two kids.”

  Chapter 22

  Rhonda Lawless ran the flat of her hand slowly and caressingly across Arch Hammersmith’s bare chest. Even in sleep Hammersmith was catlike – appearing to be fully relaxed, yet with a constant tension of wariness. It seemed as if at any second, he could instantly leap from the bed and into action. It was a trait that fascinated Rhonda as much if not more than the curves and knots of the corded musculature she was touching.

  In his younger days Hammersmith had been a world class swimmer. He’d gone to the 1976 Olympics in the 1,500 meter freestyle and missed a medal by two tenths of a second. His shoulders, already broad genetically from the Welsh mining stock on his father’s side, had been enlarged by the years of pool workouts. They still maintained an impressive breadth and tapered down to a thirty-two inch waist. Rhonda had once teased him about his lack of a butt by making out a theft report for it and processing it through the station’s record unit.

  It had been a long day. Knowing that Fey was tied up with the new homicide, the duo had handled the brunt of the day’s new MAC reports with their usual quick efficiency. There had also been four bodies taken into custody during the course of the day. Two had been spousal abuse arrest, another for ADW, and the last for indecent exposure – all crimes covered by the newly formed MAC unit. The processing of the bodies had been fairly straight forward, but was still time-consuming.

  They had also read through Darcy Wyatt’s rape arrest report and seen the need for somebody to jump on the follow-up immediately. With the more pressing homicide case taking precedent, it would be easy for the rape case to possibly fall through the cracks. With Hop-A-Long away on vacation, there was no sex crimes specialist to assign to the case, so they had decided to tell Fey they would handle it.

  Taking another crack at Devon Wyatt also appealed to them. Darcy Wyatt’s lawyer father had once put Hammer and Nails through the ringer while they were working Internal Affairs. Devon Wyatt had been representing a police officer accused of molesting a child, and the possibility of conviction had been touch and go for a while before finally dropping down in Hammer and Nails favor. Neither one had forgotten what a tough opponent Wyatt could be, and they were positive Wyatt hadn’t forgotten them. He was a man who carried a long grudge.

  The work had stretched into a couple hours of overtime before they were able to get to the gym for one of their four weekly workouts. Afterwards, they had grabbed a quick Caesar salad at a small restaurant in Santa Monica and then had driven to Rhonda’s for the evening and eventually bed.

  Rhonda loved watching Hammersmith sleep. It was the one time when she felt completely in charge of his well-being. They had been partners for three years and emotionally attached from the very beginning. It had been a year, however, before they had physically consummated their relationship. This was not from lack of desire, but due to an intense, teasing courtship they had developed that had been too much fun to rush through.

  From their first day assigned together at Internal Affairs they both knew it was a foregone conclusion that they would end up in bed together, so there was no rush to get there. Sex was only sex, after all, and there were far more fascinating aspects of their relationship to explore first.

  There were times, however, before their relationship had become physical, that Rhonda had lay alone in bed with a stone-ache of desire for the man who was her partner.

  The beginnings of their lovemaking provided all of the electricity and fire that their relationship had promised. It bothered Rhonda a lot, however, that Hammersmith would never spend the complete night in bed with her – never sleep. But she was smart enough to give him time and space, and now, occasionally, he would allow himself to fall asleep in her arms. The first time he did this, she knew that at last his trust in her was as complete as hers was in him.

  Rhonda’s initial contact with Hammersmith had been ten years earlier. She’d been fresh out of the academy working morning watch patrol in Shootin’ Newton, one of the hottest areas in the south end of the city. Even back then, Newton Division was a war zone – a jungle of crime, vice, and violence – that earned its nickname by consistently having the highest rate of officer-involved shootings in the city.

  Rhonda had been working with Murray Olbretch, a grizzled veteran training officer who had grown to despise working with rookies and hated working with women even more. Murray’s idea of class was farting after a meal instead of burping, and chain smoking dog turd cigars instead of cigarettes. He was crass, lazy, hyena-sly, and brutal. It was the last of these attributes, however, that led to his biggest problem.

  Olbretch was hated by the citizens who populated the Newton area. He was quick with his nightstick, and even quicker to apply the bar arm – the inf
amous choke hold employed as the standard method to render uncooperative suspects unconscious. It was officers such as Olbretch, whose idea of uncooperative extended to somebody looking at them funny, that eventually caused the Department to outlaw the bar-arm. The Department also moved all other ‘upper body control holds’ up the ‘Escalation of Force’ scale to the same step as using a gun – deadly force.

  Olbretch certainly wasn’t afraid of using his gun either. In his time in Newton Division, he’d been part of five Officer Involved Shooting situations. Three of those situations had resulted in the deaths of the suspects. All of the situations were reviewed by a police shooting board and found to be officially In Policy. Unofficially, everyone knew that Olbretch had stretched circumstances to the point of provoking the shootings.

  Olbretch didn’t care. He liked to brag about his ‘kills’ and had even gone as far as to notch his gun butt as if he was a western gunslinger. There was no doubting Olbretch had watermelon-size balls, but he was also a sadistic bastard.

  All of this made Olbretch a target with an underground price on his head. He’d laughed when a snitch told him about the street contract. However, he wasn’t laughing when he and Rhonda rolled on an Unknown Trouble call in the projects and found themselves in the middle of a deadly ambush.

  Olbretch hadn’t even let Rhonda answer the call when it came in over the radio. Olbretch was driving, but he still snaked out a hand to beat Rhonda to the radio microphone.

  “14A21, roger,” Olbretch said, pressing the send button and verbally acknowledging receipt of the call. He hung the mike back on its hook.

  As far as he was concerned, Rhonda was simply there to keep the log and take reports like a good little secretary. Anything else resembling police work was to be left to him.