Sins As Scarlet

by Nicolas Obregon

  ‘It’s no play. Meredith’s mother came to my office earlier and asked me to look into it.’

  ‘Mama Bear had concerns, I see.’ Silke popped open another Red Bull. ‘Do you see a sticker on this desk that says “How’s My Investigating?” Every single vic’s family doesn’t think I’m doing enough. They think it until I clear the case. Or not. That’s just how it is. But then again, I do this for a living; they don’t. And you don’t neither.’

  The two men considered one another. Iwata stood. A dead end was a dead end. Silke opened a PayDay bar and bit half off. When Iwata was ten paces away he shouted after him with a full mouth. ‘Hey, papa-san!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry for your loss.’

  The Records and Identification Division offered support and information to LAPD investigators 24/7. It was responsible for compiling and maintaining records – everything from runaways to stolen boats and pawned shotguns. Positive identification was carried out here, and the automated fingerprint identification system was also monitored by the division.

  Earnell McCrae was a bison of a man – in his early forties, black, crew cut and bright brown eyes. His hands barely fitted in his pockets and his lavender shirt was tight around his chest, his cornsilk tie nowhere near his belt. McCrae had been one of the most prominent and respected men in the force, but an exchange of gunfire in a parking lot six years ago had resulted in substantial nerve damage and a change of department. Some strings had been pulled and a good position in R&I had been found.

  Though the shooting manifested itself outwardly only in odd blinking, almost everybody saw the change in McCrae. He still smiled and cracked jokes, but his poise was gone. Every day he longed for the street, the freedom of unpredictability, but he knew those days were over. He was left with a desk, underneath which he kept his resentment. McCrae had also, for the first time in his life, started to fear things. He flinched at loud noises. He avoided steep staircases. The future filled him with a quiet, unspecified dread.

  It was when his eldest daughter started seeing someone at college and using the L-word that McCrae came to Iwata out of the blue. There were slapped biceps and talk of old times at the LAPD academy before McCrae lumberingly arrived at the point: I need you to look into him, Kos. It’s my little girl, I can’t take any chances. It wasn’t the sort of the undertaking that Iwata habitually accepted, but McCrae was an old friend. He agreed, refusing any payment. And now, a year later, as Iwata stood before him, McCrae realized the private eye had come to collect.

  ‘I need to ask you a favour,’ was all he said.

  McCrae searched his old friend’s face for a moment.

  Iwata wondered what he read there. An angle? Loneliness? Desperation? He didn’t suppose he could argue with any of them.

  Less than a mile from LAPD HQ, Iwata and McCrae were drinking coffee in a twenty-four-hour donut shop in Chinatown. There was a detective show on the TV, Magnum, P.I., or maybe it was Moonlighting. Nobody was watching. The polystyrene coffee cups carried a slogan in a jaunty font:

  DONUTS MAKE KIDS SMILE AND ADULTS KIDS AGAIN

  They discussed families and careers, though, in Iwata’s case, he left out much regarding the former. He tried to enquire after academy acquaintances but those he could recall had quit long ago, or died. They soon hit a silence, a small boat running into predictable bad weather.

  ‘Sorry about this place,’ Iwata offered.

  ‘Nah, I like it. We go back. Years ago, I busted a guy here in front of my little girl. Been looking for him for months and then just bumped into the asshole. He tells her, “Kid, your dad’s a worker, he’ll die with his boots on.” And she adopted it. To this day, she gives me a hard time with that – “Daddy, you’ll die with your boots on.” ’

  Iwata smiled. ‘Not any time soon, from the looks of you.’

  ‘It’s the diet my wife has me on. I shit infrequently and, when I do, it’s green.’

  They laughed and raised their cups. ‘To shitting green.’

  McCrae’s donuts arrived and he tossed his tie over his shoulder. The tiny pink sprinkles sparked a memory in him. ‘Hey, you remember –? Never mind.’

  ‘What?’

  McCrae looked around, then leaned forward in conspiracy. ‘You remember the graduation prank you got me with?’

  Bemused, Iwata shook his head.

  ‘Seriously? Come on, man. Graduation day? Hottest day of the year, and I’m a bag of nerves. You filled my car’s air-con fans with glitter. Of course, I crank it up and kaboom. Half an hour later I’m shaking hands with the chief of police looking like a fucking drag queen. For years people called me Glitter McCrae.’

  Iwata laughed now, a long-forgotten life suddenly resurrected. He wondered who he was back then. Someone who played jokes, someone who had friends.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘I remember.’

  McCrae shook his head with a grin, then wiped it off along with the sugar. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you left, Kos.’

  Iwata simply nodded.

  ‘So where’d you go?’

  ‘Back to Japan. Ended up in Homicide. First out in the sticks then, later, Tokyo. My wife and I figured more money, better healthcare for our kid, less chance of me getting a bullet in the …’ He trailed off.

  McCrae nodded. In his line of work offence wasn’t a package he would sign for unless it was marked ‘priority’. ‘So why’d you come back to California? Your wife missed home?’

  Iwata tried to find an abridged answer but fell short. He didn’t feel like telling this man his story, his truth. He was barely comfortable telling himself.

  ‘My marriage … didn’t work out. I ended up here.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ His tired eyes drifted up to the screen. Tom Selleck was radioing for a helicopter. McCrae had read Iwata’s pain and his heart was big enough to offer a defeat of his own. ‘I love Loraine, I love the kids, it’s me I’m sick of. Or of me like this. Every day I wake up thinking today should be my last day. Thinking I should just leave. Old Homicide buddies come looking for records, guys who were half of what I was. Worst thing is, they feel sorry for me. I can see it in their eyes.’

  ‘So what keeps you?’

  ‘I don’t know, man,’ McCrae laughed the way he would at a child’s question – simple and yet impossible all at once. ‘Some people are just born to be insect-killer. Even if I’m not out there, at least I’m part of it. And yeah, I’m not what I used to be, but I guess that’s life.’ McCrae looked down at his empty plate now, embarrassed by the admission.

  ‘Maybe it’s better this way, Mac. Maybe what you’re cut out for isn’t necessarily what you should be surrounded by every day.’

  ‘Is that what you tell yourself?’

  ‘I don’t tell myself much.’

  Irritated, McCrae took a sip of coffee, as if the scalding might mollify his tone. ‘Kos, you were the biggest brain in the room back in the academy. You had the eyes, you had the ears, your questions sliced through. And you’re gonna sit here and tell me that you’re not cut out to be a detective? That’s horse shit, whichever way you pile it up. Okay, you’re not with your wife anymore, I get that, but for you to just quit? And I’m stuck filing god damn cabinets for the rest of my life.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but you’re a born cop. And what are you doing with it? Following cheaters with your binoculars.’

  Another man’s pride might have stung. ‘I understand your point, but you’re wrong, Mac. I’m not who I was. Not anymore.’

  They both looked out of the window for a while. Chinese lanterns swayed in the breeze kicked up by a trundling orange bus. Lines formed outside banks with stone dragon ornaments, money flowing out to Asia, money flowing back in again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kos. I shouldn’t have …’

  ‘Don’t be.’ Iwata knew it was easier for most men to trail off than it was to complete phrases – of love, of apology, of contrition. ‘You know what my mother tells me? Don’t ask for pears
from an elm.’

  McCrae smiled. They looked at the sticky surface of the table between them, sugar granules constellating on the pink Formica.

  ‘Mac, I know you don’t have much time. And you already figured I didn’t ask you here for the coffee, so I’ll just say it. Meredith Nichol. Murder victim a few weeks back.’

  ‘Yeah, trans woman living on Skid Row. She was strangled out by the train tracks. But what’s any of that to you?’

  ‘Meredith was my wife’s sister. Her mother asked me to look into it.’

  Iwata watched McCrae putting the pieces together to form a disagreeable jigsaw. It was true that Iwata had helped him all those years ago in the academy, and again, recently, in the matter relating to his daughter. But now Iwata was pointing to an open murder case.

  ‘What exactly are you asking for?’

  ‘A copy of Meredith’s case file.’

  McCrae puffed out his cheeks and looked up at the TV. Iwata guessed he was balancing accounts – an old friend that had done him favours versus protocol and the risks of defying it. In this city, like most, that meant not hanging your balls out the window. Especially not for nostalgia.

  McCrae sighed. ‘I have a pension, man. If I get found out passing you files …’

  ‘Just the officer’s initial report, then. A few photographs. It’d never get back to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kos. I can’t –’

  Iwata wanted to leave it at that but he knew he was going to have to be honest. ‘Mac, listen to me. My wife killed herself. I failed her. Meredith was her sister. The mother came to me and told me I owed it to her. And I can’t say no, Mac. Not after Cleo. You told me I belong in Homicide, and I’m asking you to let me back in.’ Iwata stopped himself from saying anything more. On the screen Tom Selleck was smiling, hands behind his head, feet up on his desk – another case closed.

  McCrae looked at his plate. He crushed a sprinkle with his enormous little finger and then considered its guts. ‘I didn’t know that … I’ll have to think about it.’

  Earnell McCrae stood, hesitated for a moment then patted Iwata on the shoulder. Then he was gone, striding back towards 1st Street. On the TV the narrator was bringing down the curtain on the episode: ‘Every day we make thirty-five thousand choices. And every single one of them we expect to walk away from.’

  *

  LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT

  CENTRAL COMMUNITY POLICE 251 E 6TH ST

  INCIDENT REPORT #900691Q2 | OFFENCE: HOMICIDE

  REPORTING OFFICER: Bergin, James.

  APPROVING OFFICER: Lauber, Joel C.

  NAME: Julian Nichol (alias: Meredith) | AGE AT TIME OF DEATH: 29 | PLACE OF BIRTH: Kennewick, WA | PHYSICAL: Male, 5 ft 8, 140lbs, hair dark, eyes blue. DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Deceased had undergone plastic surgery for breasts. ADDRESS: Boarding house on E 6th / Ceres Ave. INVESTIGATING DETECTIVE: Silke, Joseph A.

  Body was found at 4 a.m. on the morning of 24 February near the train tracks running alongside N Myers St – approx. 100 yards from E 1st St Bridge. Victim was discovered by a homeless man named Joseph Clemente residing under said bridge. Clemente claims he witnessed an unidentified male in the immediate vicinity. Clemente observed this unidentified male ‘messing around with a body until the train came along and he ran away’. Witness can only describe the suspect as ‘male, around five nine, wearing a hooded sweatshirt’.

  Additional notes: Relatives identified the deceased as Julian Nichol, a white transgender individual and a known prostitute and drug-user. Nichol was widely recognized in certain exotic dancing clubs and Latino bars in the Santa Monica Boulevard / Lexington Avenue area. No motive is as yet established. The victim had $62 on their person at the time of discovery. One possibility is a violent reaction to the discovery of the individual’s genitalia. Forensic analysis of the crime scene and the victim’s body have so far failed to yield results. No tire tracks were found in the immediate vicinity. Cause of death is strangulation with an as yet unidentified wire, cord or rope. No traces of sexual assault, though victim does appear to have sustained damage to the anus from prior sexual encounters.

  Iwata put down the copy of the file McCrae had couriered over. Attached to it were three photographs scanned on to paper.

  The first was of a starkly lit body near some train tracks. Meredith had died wearing jeans with a diamante star pattern and a yellow tri-cities charity-run T-shirt. In death, her body had lost its humanity, like a cheap mannequin. Whoever had killed her had kicked away their shoe prints in the dust.

  The second photograph was an extreme close-up of her throttled neck, the ligature marks clear in the shredded, mangled flesh.

  The last photograph was of Meredith looking to camera, the same one he had seen before. She was out somewhere, with friends most likely. She wore a vintage black dress with a red floral print. This Meredith, out in the world and happy, or in love, perhaps, had been recorded eighteen months ago. Yet the face in the previous photograph was gaunt, the ageing in the skin far exceeding the normal effects of such a quantity of time. Something had happened to her.

  Rereading her last known address, Iwata picked up his sunglasses and left.

  5. The Shrimp that Sleeps

  On the eastern fringes of Skid Row, Iwata parked in front of Meredith’s apartment block. The Wanderlust was a shabby four-storey flophouse with dirty white stucco walls and mint-green trim. On one side there was an abandoned factory; on the other a preschool for low-income parents to get free daycare, a place for the children of those who broke concrete, tended lonely parking lots and cleaned toilets.

  Iwata got out of the Bronco and took off his sunglasses. It had been cloudy recently, an oppressive heat that sat jealously over the city, but this afternoon the sky was a clear, scorching blue.

  He entered the building. The corridor was gloomy and hot, leading to a metal security door. He pressed the buzzer.

  ‘Yeah?’ The man on the intercom had a foreign accent but it dripped with the mistrust of a born-and-bred Angeleno.

  ‘LAPD business,’ Iwata replied tersely.

  ‘Business?’

  ‘I need you to open the door, sir.’

  It buzzed open. Iwata knew America was a country where immigrants tended to relent in face of a certain autocratic tone of voice. He had seen it many times, not least in his own mother. Often Gerry had reminded her: ‘You’re American now, Nozomi. Don’t let anybody give you shit.’

  The sorry little lobby smelled of vomit and sandalwood incense. There was a repining female voice on the radio, accompanied by the beat of a dhol. The man behind the counter was short with a neatly trimmed moustache. He twirled a small banana leaf cigar between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Business?’

  Iwata held up his investigator’s licence. ‘Are you the owner?’

  He shook his head.

  Iwata took out the photograph of Meredith Nichol. ‘Recognize her?’

  He shook his head again.

  ‘Show me your guest register, please.’

  The man took a long drag and watched Iwata through the thick smoke. Then he placed the register on the counter and Iwata flipped back to 23 February, the day before Meredith Nichol’s body had been found.

  ‘Here she is. Room 12. Was her rent paid?’

  The man checked a booklet in his breast pocket. ‘Until end of month.’

  ‘The rent here, is it monthly?’

  ‘Most pay week to week. Most late.’

  ‘I’m going up to look.’

  He shrugged, and Iwata stepped into a dim, tilted stairway. The vomit stench had a more acrid quality here. The stairs had been painted red and the walls were the same mint green as the exterior. Up on the second floor a TV documentary about the universe was blaring through a thin wall. There were occasional high-pitched chirps of a lovebird somewhere nearby.

  At the end of the corridor, next to the fire escape, Meredith’s room was small, the wingspan of three children. The cheap, peeling wallpaper was a faded green. Two plywoo
d cabinets took up one corner, one on top of the other, above which an old family photograph was framed. Iwata was shocked to see a young Cleo looking back at him.

  He composed himself and put it in his pocket.

  The broken sink was surrounded by mangy make-up products and knock-off celebrity-endorsed perfume. A microwave sat on top of a mini fridge, both of them plugged into a fizzing wall socket. The single bed was made. In a box in the corner there were clothes, a counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbag containing a Washington driver’s licence, Big Red chewing gum and two clean syringes.

  Iwata spent an hour in the room but found nothing beyond tokens of a simple, squalid existence. What he learned was that Meredith was not one for schedules or personal items beyond the sole family photograph.

  Iwata left the room and knocked on the door opposite. A short Bolivian woman answered. Iwata handed her a twenty and she told him she hardly knew Meredith except for the fact that she was a working girl too. The woman didn’t know of any boyfriends or regulars and she rarely heard Meredith come or go. Iwata gave her his business card and she promised she would call if anyone came looking for Meredith.

  He left by the fire escape and hopped down into the alleyway, wall to wall with garbage. An old piano had been shunted into the corner, its sostenuto pedal broken off, the fallboard left open. On a whim, Iwata ran his finger down the keys. The sound was discordant, something missing in the sour notes.

  A mile south-west of the Wanderlust, Iwata turned off Maple and parked behind a slaughterhouse. The main road was mobbed, the whole neighbourhood turned into one teeming flea market, a circus without the roof. The Spanish language, in all its variegation, could be heard – haggling, joking, promising. These exchanges competed with car horns, electronic toy dogs yapping and a blind man playing De Colores on his keyboard.

  Santee Alley catered to any low-cost whim: novelty contact lenses, plastic aquariums containing hatchling turtles, baby onesies with madcap slogans:

  MY MOM IS TAKEN BUT MY AUNTIE IS HOT AND SINGLE

  Iwata made his way through the bustle, soapy bubbles swirling through the air around him. Men with flags coaxed cars into overpriced valet lots. On every other street corner hucksters carrying more balloons than seemed possible resembled giant multicoloured raspberries. Ground-floor living rooms had been turned into makeshift taquerias with cubbyhole toilets that charged seventy-five cents to shit. A fast-food truck doled out huaraches, quesadillas and tlacoyos, dishes that pre-dated Christopher Columbus. On the other hand, portable grills sizzled with avocado hot dogs.