by Paul Bishop
“Shut up.”
“But –”
Wyatt turned an angry expression on her. Deep in his eyes she could see the danger that rested there. “If you don’t shut up, I will kick your ass out of here and you can go suck off some other sugar daddy to get your nose candy.”
The woman immediately went silent and subservient. Grabbing a thin robe, she slipped as quietly as possible out of the room.
Wyatt didn’t see her go. He was glued to the local newscast. It was a stand-up filmed earlier at the beach parking lot at Sunset and PCH. Fey had agreed to make a quick statement regarding the arrest in order to get the press off her back.
She’d known she had to give the press something. If you ignored them, there were so many ways that reporters could make life miserable. They had a job to do and were under many of the same kind of pressures that cops were. Cops had to solve the case – reporters had to bring back a story. Fey had learned a long time ago that if you didn’t work with the press, then the press would turn on you like a pack of wild dogs.
Somebody from the press corps had seen the crashed Jeep and used connections to find out it belonged to JoJo Cullen. Fey knew she couldn’t lie about the situation. If she did, the press would crucify her later, so she made a brief statement regarding the body discovered on the beach and the fact of JoJo Cullen being taken into custody for further investigation.
“What’s JoJo’s current physical condition,” one of the reporters asked. There were three local news teams that had found their way to the beach.
“Mr. Cullen is currently being held at County USC jail ward. There is no further comment on his condition.”
Another voice, “Did he resist arrest?”
“Yes.”
“Were the arresting officers injured?”
“They sustained minor bruises and abrasions.”
“Were shots fired?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“That has yet to be determined.”
“Was JoJo hit?”
“There is no current comment on Mr. Cullen’s condition.”
“Did he have a weapon?”
“I think we can consider the Jeep to be a weapon.” Fey waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the crashed vehicles.
“What charge is JoJo being held on?”
“Currently, Mr. Cullen is being treated for injuries sustained during the arrest. There have been no formal charges made at this time.”
“Are you going to charge him?”
Fey smiled slightly. “That’s all I have for you right now. You’ll be told more when I know more. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an investigation to run.”
The camera cut to an in-studio talking head explaining that the interview with Detective Croaker had been taped in the early hours of the morning and that no further developments had been forthcoming.
Devon Wyatt hit the mute button on the remote control. He rolled back over the bed and picked up the ornate phone receiver from its cradle resting on the bedside cabinet. He quickly dialed a number, cursing the delay as the phone rang on the other end.
“Hello,” a female voice answered.
“Mary, the cops have arrested JoJo Cullen –”
“The basketball player?” Mary Tolliver was Wyatt’s personal assistant. She was used to his brusque manner and also to jumping when Wyatt said jump. She couldn’t say she liked her boss, even though she’d been with him for over eight years because the pay was good, but she did admire him.
“Of course the basketball player. Peter Rayne is his agent. Get a number for Rayne and get me through to him as soon as possible. Also, find out who owns the San Diego Sails and set up a conference call ASAP.” Wyatt hung up without saying goodbye.
He turned his attention back to the television screen, but the story had changed to shots of an earthquake in Columbia.
He felt a smug satisfaction. “Look out, Croaker. Here I come,” he said.
There was nobody in the room to hear him.
Chapter 29
The Westside YMCA’s hardwood basketball floor had recently been replaced. It was so full of spring that Kenny imagined he could feel the energy from the floor flowing through his legs. It was as if the court was a living entity and Kenny an integral part of the whole. He was in the zone – a state of mind where an athlete feels completely at one with his chosen game; he is unbeatable, unstoppable, and completely alive.
It was only a morning pickup game – a motley crew of locals against a solid team of off-duty cops from the West LA station. Normally, Kenny wouldn’t have anything to do with a game that didn’t have money on the line. His normal day consisted of hustling hundred dollar one-on-one games across the inner city. But he liked playing against the cops. It gave him an edge, a thrill.
He only worked at places like Fratelli Pizza just so he could have something to put down on a tax form. He’d learned early in life that you had to make the straights think you were one of them. If you paid your taxes, filled out paperwork – even if it was phony information – it kept the government and the world of the straights from paying attention to you. Of course, every once in a while he’d hook up with somebody like Darcy Wyatt and have fun pushing their buttons. He figured the bonus kicks were his due.
Kenny snaked out a plate-sized hand on the end of an orangutan arm and slapped the basketball away from a tall black cop. Kenny picked up the free ball on the second bounce and flew down the court. All his joints were sweat oiled, and he was flowing like lightning. Five long strides and he launched himself into the air and jammed the ball through the hoop.
“Whoooo-wheeee!” he yelled when he touched down. “I coulda’ been a contender!” It was his usually rallying cry after a great play. He’d never made the NBA – blamed it on them already having their quota of white boys.
His mission in life some days appeared to be trying to beat every black court hustler in the inner-city at their own game – Kenny called it mind-sucking them – and still get out of the ghetto alive. It was a game within a game for Kenny. Blast them, snatch their money, run for his blue van, and blow before they could recover enough to organize a threat to him.
Whenever he burned one section of town, he’d move on to another. Hustling with the b-ball. Pushing his luck. Practice. Practice. Practice. Livin’ the life.
Sometimes, he had to take jobs like the one at Fratelli Pizza to make ends meet. He was a pretty good short-order cook and bartender. If he had a bad day and got burned on an unfamiliar court, he could use those mainstream skills to build up his poke again and get back on the jam.
Every once in a while he came into contact with somebody like Darcy Wyatt. Somebody with whom he could share a portion of his personal perversions – not the whole plan, mind you, but enough to put an edge to the whole thing. It was a way of teasing himself, keeping things interesting. How far could he push them before they caught on to him and he had to kill them too?
Darcy had been fun. Getting him tied up with the cops had been a blast. In a small corner of Kenny’s mind, though, there was the thought that maybe Darcy knew too much, but then again he couldn’t say anything without implicating himself. Kenny reassured himself it would be okay. After all, he was smarter than the cops. He knew they’d never catch him.
Time was called on the pickup game after Kenny’s spectacular play. A couple of the cops came over and gave him a high-five. They were a pretty friendly group. They didn’t like losing, but they took it well. The other guys on Kenny’s team weren’t as enthusiastic. They figured him for a ball hog and a one-man show. Kenny figured they could go screw themselves. If they couldn’t take the heat, then they should get off the court. He didn’t need them.
“Hey, you hear what happened to JoJo Cullen?” one of the cops asked as they all walked toward the showers.
“Nope,” said Kenny, his heart rate skyrocketing.
“He was arrested for killing some street kid. Picked him up, butt plugged him, and then buried
him alive down on the beach. Kinky stuff, man,” the cop said. “Apparently, it may be tied in to two other similar murders.”
“No way,” Kenny said.
“Don’t you listen to the radio or watch TV?”
“Maybe you should hustle your butt down the San Diego Sails head office,” another of the cops said to Kenny. “It looks like they’re gonna be needing a new star forward. You just might fill the bill.”
Kenny smiled at the thought. Yeah, that would be sweet. He laughed inside at the thought of it. Hell, he’d never even thought of about that scenario. He knew it would never happen, though. They’d never let a white boy replace JoJo Jammer Cullen, the Great Black Hope, but it would be the icing on the cake.
“I ain’t heard nothing about it. What’s the story, man?” Kenny asked. He already knew all about it, but he wanted to hear all the details again. He needed the inside scoop from the cops, needed to see what they had right and what they had wrong.
Chapter 30
Pacific Palisades was the most upscale of all the upscale areas in West LA. Brentwood and Westwood each housed their share of actors, musicians, doctors, lawyers, prominent businessmen, and the ilk, but they all would have traded their eye teeth for a Palisades address.
The most prestigious addresses in the Palisades were those that overlooked the ocean from atop cliffs that wouldn’t disintegrate in bad weather or earthquakes. The Malibu area, a few miles further north, was perhaps better known, but didn’t provide the security against nature that the Palisades enjoyed. The biggest annoyance attached to living in the Palisades was that the slightest amount of rain had neighboring Malibu sliding down to the sea and blocking the Pacific Coast Highway. That made it difficult to get out to the espresso bars and boutiques.
Pacific Palisades blessed the northwestern tip of the West LA area. Residences in the Palisades spoke the language of old money, new money, and laundered money, and still dirty money. But even ‘Palisades hovels,’ such as Cullen’s million dollar townhouse, had very little in common with the true hovels that occupied the hood in the eastern tip of West LA.
In the hood, apartments were crammed together like impacted teeth. A patch of grass in the hood was as rare as a whore with a heart of gold. In the hood, you knew your neighbors well. You knew when they flushed the toilet, watched television, argued, hit their kids, made love, burped and farted.
By contrast, the complex that included Cullen’s Palisades townhouse was Nirvana – as remote from the hood as heaven was from earth. The Palisades Cliffs townhouse complex was a collection of miniature mansions surrounded by greenbelts in a gated and patrolled environment. Each townhouse had four or five bedrooms and a view – either of the ocean or the golf course. Each grouping of three townhouses within the complex was separated from neighbors by manicured trees and cultivated gardens. There were two-car garages for the Mercedes and the Volvos, and extra parking for gauche RV’s and de rigueur speedboats was provided in another, hidden, portion of the complex.
Unlike in the hood, evenings in the Palisades were not spent out on the stoop buying drugs or drinking beer, scamming food stamps, or worrying where your next meal was coming from. Evenings in the Palisades were spent on private nine-hole golf courses, or at the clubhouse with wine and cheese, or scamming tax shelters and junk bonds.
Fey believed, however, that the biggest difference between the Palisades and the hood was that the Palisades had more criminals. The crimes of the Palisades crooks may be as white collar as their jobs – but money didn’t make a person good, just as lack of money didn’t make a person bad.
If confronted, Fey would never deny that she was prejudiced. Her prejudices, though, were determined by a person’s actions, not their skin color or religion. If you were a scumbag who preyed on those weaker than you, Fey didn’t care about anything else. If you were a predator, you deserved to be put in jail. If JoJo Cullen was indeed the murderer they sought, then it didn’t matter to Fey who he was, where he lived, or whether he was black, white, or purple. If JoJo Cullen had done the dirty deeds, then he deserved to rot in hell, and Fey would do everything she could to help him on his way.
The security guards at the gated front entrance to the Palisades Cliffs complex attempted a token resistance to admitting Fey and her crew. Their objections were quickly overridden, though, when Fey marched into the tiny security office and pushed the open button for the gates herself.
“You boys want to go for your guns?” she asked. Her command presence filled the small hut like a positive energy that radiated from inside of her. Her control of the situation was unquestionable. It wasn’t a matter of force, but of attitude.
The two private security guards had started out full of their own importance, but quickly backed down. Fey figured their combined IQ was somewhere about two above a Nerf ball. One of them reached for the cellular phone on his belt.
“What are you going to do?” Fey asked. “Call the police?” She gave the guard a hard stare. “Why don’t you just turn on the Bat Signal instead?” She winked and walked out of the office. Ash drove Fey’s detective sedan through the gates, then stopped. Fey got back in on the passenger side.
“You’ve got style,” Winston Groom said from the back seat.
“Not style, chutzpa,” Fey said.
Groom and Ash both snickered.
“Drive on, Jeeves,” Fey commanded, and Ash put the car in gear.
“Yes, ‘m, Miss Daisy,” he said.
Groom had obtained a judge’s telephonic approval for the warrant to search Cullen’s townhouse. He was also pleased to be included in the search. He didn’t often get out into the field, and he already had visions of what this case could do for his career. If things were as dead-bang as they looked, nailing JoJo Cullen could put him at the front of the fast track.
He was, however, somewhat daunted by the opulence of the complex they were driving through. Doubts began to niggle at his mind. Doubts that whispered to him that maybe he was getting himself out on a very long limb. He tried to push the quiet voices aside, but he couldn’t ignore them completely.
Cullen’s townhouse was like a page out of California Living magazine. The exterior was designed to resemble a miniature hacienda with inlaid mosaic tiles, sand-colored stucco walls, carved oak doors, and mission roof tiles. Black wrought-iron added highlights along with terracotta wall sconces.
After receiving no response to his knock and bell ringing, Ash used his elbow to smash a small window next to the front door to gain entrance. Fey took Polaroid photos to record the damage. She also planned to take photos before the search and after the search as a nod to civil liability.
As the trio entered the townhouse, they quickly saw that the interior reflected the same precise taste and decorating as the exterior.
“Does anybody really live here?” Fey asked, turning on lights as she moved through the residence. “Everything looks too perfect.”
“Maids?” queried Groom.
Fey turned on her heels to face him. “Probably, but come on, everything here has been shipped in wholesale. There’s nothing that jumps out at you and says ‘JoJo Cullen lives here!’“ Fey remembered another investigation that had started out in a house with a similar feel – nothing personal in the rooms, nothing to give personality to the owner.
“Here’s a room that screams, ‘somebody lives here!’“ Ash said, his voice coming from down a narrow hallway.
Fey and Groom moved down to meet him. The room he was looking in was a den. A big picture window was open to a million-dollar view of the ocean that was barely visible in the false dawn. The room was filled with leather couches, modern lamps, stereo equipment, and a huge console television.
“I bet the maid has orders to stay clear of here,” Groom said.
“No kidding,” Fey agreed, moving into the room.
Every surface in the room was covered with beer cans, dirty glasses, and the detritus of fast-food restaurants and junk food junkies. Partially eaten Twinkies sat o
n top of cold pizza in an open box. Containers of Chinese food lay open near bowls of peanuts and Cheerios.
The walls displayed hundreds of photos of Cullen in action. Some were framed posters; others were simply torn from magazines and newspapers and pinned up at random.
“Not too impressed with yourself, are we?” Fey’s question was rhetorical.
“When you’re good…” said Groom. He looked closely at several of the pictures.
“Are you a fan?” Fey asked.
“Boy and man,” Groom told her. “Been playing roundball since I could crawl.”
“College?”
“Absolutely. University of Las Vegas, Nevada, Running Rebels. Full scholarship.”
“I’m impressed. What about the pros?”
“It was always the dream.”
“So what happened?”
“Bad knees.”
“Really?”
Groom didn’t answer for a second. “You knew I was lying?”
Fey shrugged.
“Truth is,” Groom admitted, “I was too slow and not aggressive enough for the pros. I got cut in camp. Twice. Decided I better try another line of work.”
Ash called their attention to the smeared remains of cocaine lines on the glass-top coffee table. In an ash tray was a pile of marijuana debris. A small refrigerator held more beer and wine. Behind the bottle and cans was a collection of vials.
“Steroids?” Groom inquired, looking over Ash’s shoulder.
“Cullen may be at the top of his game, but he’s hardly the All-American boy.” Ash commented.
“In this day and age,” Groom corrected him, “he probably is. However, does eating Twinkies, snorting coke, and popping steroids make him a killer?”
“Hard to tell,” Ash said.
Moving through the townhouse, not yet overturning everything in sight, not yet starting a methodical search of every nook and cranny, the three investigators found a bedroom that was obviously used by Cullen. The bed was unmade and the room unkempt, but there was no sign of struggle or murder being done.