Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  “Tampax must have put a crimp in Ginger’s act,” she says.

  “Junk mail, coat hanger, dry-cleaner bag, buckie-note pad, gray with purple type, nineteen left.”

  “What’s a buckie-note pad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She grabs the phone and punches an extension. “What’s a buckie-note pad?”

  I can hear Dump’s gruff voice coming through the receiver, but I can’t make out his words.

  “I know it’s a pad of buckie notes,” she says. “What the fuck’s a buckie note?”

  After a moment she hangs up. “It’s like a memo pad with her name on every sheet, only the paper’s stiffer, like thin cardboard.”

  “How the hell did Dumphy know that?”

  She shrugs.

  “You know what else bugs me?” I say. “That pendant Lana was wearing when she died. Ginger had one, too.”

  “So? They come in matched sets. Maybe it was the mate.”

  “That was my first thought. But this one was exactly like Lana’s, with an outie in the center. The mate would have an innie there.”

  “Since when do you even notice women’s jewelry?”

  “I always admire your handcuffs, don’t I?”

  “So they both had the same necklace. Maybe it was a party favor at a family wedding.”

  A civie volunteer pokes his head in the door. “Your witness is here, Lieutenant.”

  Gloria drops her glasses and her letter opener on the desk, grabs a case file, and nods for me to follow her down the hall to interview room A. At least that’s what the cops call it. The interviewees usually call it an interrogation room.

  “If she says anything that contradicts something you’ve learned, text me,” she says.

  “I can’t,” I reply.

  “Why not?”

  “The keys on my phone are too small to see the letters.”

  She sighs. “Then just call me.”

  I step into an observation room about the size of a closet to watch a video feed as Gloria enters room A to question Sophia.

  “I don’t understand why I have to go through this again,” says Sophia with a glitch of panic in her voice.

  “I’d like to hear your story myself,” says Gloria. “A few things have cropped up since you spoke to Detective Dumphy.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  “A few questions I hope you can answer. Is that okay?” Gloria speaks gently, comfortingly. An assassin impersonating a nursery school teacher.

  Sophia nods unsurely.

  “Do you mind if we tape this? I take lousy notes.” Gloria indicates the video camera hanging from the ceiling in the corner.

  Sophia probably knows that Gloria will replay her answers and find little bits and pieces—a stammered word, a misspoken thought—to dissect. Maybe run it through some piece of software that can analyze her voice modulations and pinpoint her lies. But she nods her assent as they always do.

  “You okay? Want some water?” asks Gloria. She likes to butter up her victims before eating them alive.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Okay. Tell me about your sister. It must have been a shock to find her body.”

  “Yes.” Sophia looks down as if to rein in her grief, but it’s a bad acting job.

  “Can you tell me what happened, Ms. Kidd?” Gloria asks.

  “Call me Sophia. ‘Ms. Kidd’ makes me feel like I’m in the principal’s office.”

  “Why the principal’s office? Did you do something wrong?” Gloria’s voice turns chastening. She doesn’t expect an answer. She just wants to shake Sophia up.

  Gloria leans back in her chair, tipping back on two legs to appear more informal. She smiles and softens her voice. “Just kidding. Tell me what happened.”

  Gloria likes to conduct interviews this way, pushing then letting up. Like reeling in a big fish. Over and over. Never establishing a consistent rhythm or tone. Always keeping the interviewee off balance, nervous. Sophia was a witness when she walked in, but now, without any accusations, Gloria has her wondering if she’s a suspect.

  “I…I was knocking on the door,” says Sophia, “and I thought I smelled gas. This man came to help, and we went around the side and saw her through the window. We broke in, but it was too late.”

  “Was this man someone you knew?”

  “No. He was just walking by.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  Sophia winces as if struck by a pang of grief. “She was my baby sister.”

  “I thought the two of you were estranged,” says Gloria. “Hadn’t spoken in twenty years.”

  “That’s why I went over there. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to fix it between us.”

  “Sophia.” Gloria looks hurt, insulted that Sophia might think she would believe such an unlikely story. “This will go a lot faster if you’ll just tell the truth.”

  “I am telling the truth.”

  Gloria sits silently, letting Sophia stew in her own anxiety.

  “Look,” says Sophia. “I got a call from Nob Brown wanting to talk about my mother. He said he’s spoken to Ginger and wanted to talk to me, too. It got me thinking about Ginger and how much I missed her. We used to be so close, I just thought…I don’t know, maybe if we patched things up, we could get that back. Be sisters again. Be tight.”

  I wonder if my interview request really started this ball rolling.

  “Okay,” says Gloria. “So you just happened to go over there to talk to her for the first time in two decades on the day she just happened to decide to kill herself. And you just happened to be living with your ex-psychiatrist who just happened to be your sister’s psychiatrist, too.”

  Sophia flares with indignation. “Ginger stopped seeing Karl years ago.”

  “Is that what Dr. Lynch told you?”

  “It’s true!”

  “She was seeing him every Wednesday,” says Gloria. “They had a session the day she died.”

  Sophia stares at Gloria, dumbstruck. After a moment a silent tear rolls down her face. Gloria pulls a Kleenex from the box on the table and offers it to her.

  “How do you know?”

  “We have both their appointment books and canceled checks.”

  Sophia wipes her eyes.

  “Why would Dr. Lynch lie to you about seeing her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gloria makes a big show of appearing sympathetic. “Did he know you were going to her house?”

  “Why are you asking me all this?” The indignant victim confronts the bully. “I mean, she killed herself; I happened to find her. What does my relationship with Karl have to do with anything?”

  Sophia’s exasperation is like blood in the water to Gloria. Emotional reactions breed thoughtless revelations.

  “You’re living with your sister’s shrink. That’s irregular. He’s also your ex-shrink. Strike two. He lies to you about the fact that he’s still treating her. Strike three. You find her body after not having seen her in two decades. We’re into a whole new inning. A whole new ball game.”

  Sophia glares at Gloria with those gold-flecked eyes. “Look, am I under suspicion of something? Because it feels like you’re accusing me of something. Maybe I should have a lawyer here.”

  Her words make Gloria smile gently. I can see Gloria’s wheels turning. She needs to sweet-talk Sophia now, cool her down, do whatever it takes to avoid the intrusion of meddling legal counsel.

  “You’re not under suspicion of anything,” she says. “I’m just trying to understand the big picture. You have to admit your story raises more questions than it answers. I need you to help me reconstruct what happened to your sister.”

  Now it’s Sophia whose wheels I see turning. She’s weighing pros and cons about admitting something, and I’m rooting for the pro side.

  “You can start,” says Gloria, “by telling me why Karl would lie to you about Ginger.”

  “When I was his patient I was dealing with jealousy issues
, paranoid thoughts, things like that. Maybe he was trying to avoid putting me through that again. He’s a very protective, intuitive man.”

  “If you thought he hadn’t treated her in years, why not tell him you’d decided to see her again?”

  Sophia lowers her head as if the answer to her dilemma is written on the edge of the table. They both sit still for a moment. I’m thirsty for a drink of water, but the tension’s too tight to get it, even though there’s a cooler just behind me. I don’t want to turn away, even for a moment.

  Sophia finally speaks. “I saw Ginger’s name in his appointment book. She’d stopped seeing him a long time ago. She must have started again and he didn’t tell me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it; it just ate away at me.”

  “So you went over there to confront her.”

  “Not confront her, just talk to her. Stick my toe in the water and see how it felt. The thing that drove us apart, it seemed so long ago, so irrelevant now. The last thing I expected was it would turn into something like this.”

  Gloria goes back on the offensive. “So you thought there was some kind of hanky-panky going on between your boyfriend and your sister.”

  “I didn’t say that! You don’t even know him! Karl is meticulous about his ethics. He would never do anything like that with a client. Never!”

  “And yet here you are, a former patient, living with him.”

  “You know something? Our personal life is none of your goddamn business. I didn’t commit any crime. In fact, I didn’t even witness a crime.” She closes her eyes and exhales slowly, taking a moment to calm down. “I’d like to go home now.”

  Gloria stares at her for a moment then waves resignedly toward the door. I leave the viewing room and close the door behind me then pretend to be wandering down the hall when Gloria and Sophia exit the interrogation room.

  “Sophia!” I feign surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “Why don’t you ask your friend?” she says bitterly. She follows Gloria through the bullpen toward the exit. I tag along.

  Dumphy is at his desk, taking a statement from the infamous Dr. Karl Lynch. Lynch looks our way, surprised to see Sophia.

  “I didn’t know you were going to be here,” he says.

  “I didn’t know you were seeing her again,” Sophia replies.

  His face contorts into taut furrows of concern that connect his eyebrows as if someone had raked his forehead with a fork. “This is no place for a private conversation.”

  Sophia starts to answer, but Gloria cuts her off. “You must be Karl.”

  Lynch eyes Gloria warily. His anger is visceral. “It’s ‘Dr. Lynch.’ Who are you?”

  “Lieutenant Gloria Lopes. Robbery Homicide.”

  “Ginger committed suicide,” says Lynch.

  “Not until I say so. We still have a few loose ends to tie up.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as why your girlfriend went over there,” says Dumphy.

  “It’s strictly verboten for a shrink to have any kind of relationship at all with a client outside of therapy, isn’t that right, Karl?”

  Lynch winces at the sound of his first name, having already upbraided her for using it. He’s one of those long-torsoed guys who seem tall even when he’s sitting. His waist is narrow, but his shoulders are huge and his neck is thick. Far from your head-doctor stereotype. This guy pumps some serious iron, and at the moment he looks like he wants to use some of that muscle to snap Gloria’s neck.

  “If you’ve got an accusation to make, just make it…Gloria.”

  Now it’s Gloria’s turn to bristle at the name game. “I’m assuming you weren’t having a sexual relationship with the victim. Is that a safe assumption, Doctor?”

  “I’m not going to sit here and let you insult me with your sordid insinuations.”

  “I’m just doing my job; I’ve got a dead woman on my hands. Any idea what she might have been depressed about?”

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

  “She’s dead, remember?”

  “She still has a right to privacy.”

  “That’s really just a formality, isn’t it?

  “Is that how you treat your own professional ethics, Lieutenant?”

  Gloria gives the shrink an ironic smile.

  Karl Lynch looks at Sophia. “Let’s go home.” To Gloria, “Unless you have some objection.”

  Gloria just glares as he stands. Lynch has to brush past her in the narrow aisle on their way out. While he tries to pivot to minimize contact, Gloria purposely braces her back foot and leans in, ensuring a solid bump. Real mature.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Boyle Heights isn’t the nicest neighborhood in LA, and El Tepeyac isn’t the most romantic restaurant in town, but I eat there with Gloria Lopes at least once a month, because Manuel’s, as the regulars call it, has been serving the best burritos around for at least forty years. If we can’t find a table we take lunch back to her place, which is fifteen minutes away if the freeway’s moving. Once behind closed doors, Gloria loves to explore the erotic potential of guacamole.

  The lot is full, so I park across the street and reach into the back seat to grab a couple Negra Modelos from my Styrofoam cooler. Manuel doesn’t have a license.

  Speeding cars and low visibility from the hill make it tight to cross Evergreen. Gloria and I have to trot. The line for indoor seating snakes down the sidewalk, so we head for the takeout window. There’s a line there too, but it moves fast.

  I order a machaca burrito slathered with a huge side of guacamole, a chili relleno burrito for Gloria, and some taquitos to share. Enough to clog the arteries of a family of six.

  A few minutes later, our forearms bulging from the weight of our food, we find an empty table on the long narrow patio.

  She crunches into a taquito and moans.

  “You ever hear Billy Kidd in concert?” As I say it, I feel guacamole on my lip and grab it with my tongue like a frog snatching a fly.

  She shakes her head. “The Brothers were before my time.”

  Gloria’s only a year younger than I am, so she’s handing me a straight line. I resist the invitation. Gotta love her for it, though.

  “He had monster chops until Lana kicked him out of the band.”

  “And the house,” says Gloria. “In one fell swoop she took his marriage, his family, his house, and his job.”

  I empathize with Billy as I imagine losing my own house to Holly.

  “Then two weeks later she’s dead,” I say. “Billy moves back into the house with his girls and gets his old job back. From the gutter to the spotlight in one easy step.”

  There’s a thin line of sweat on Gloria’s upper lip, like a clear pencil mustache. The chili relleno is beginning to get to her. Gloria wipes her lips with a paper napkin that shrinks into a sodden lump of sauce and sweat. She drops it on her tray and takes another to lay across her lap. I swallow some beer.

  “You think he did it?” she asks.

  “Maybe. But there’s no evidence.”

  “What about powder burns?” She cracks into another taquito. A piece of shell falls on her lap. She retrieves it and sticks her tongue out to lick at the salt before eating it. I stare at her tongue with a pang of regret that we’d found a table instead of going back to her place.

  “He tested negative, but he could have been wearing gloves.”

  “Alibi?”

  “Home alone. Watching soap operas with the sound off and practicing his scales.”

  She cuts into her burrito and eats the filling without the tortilla.

  “Any neighbors hear him practicing?”

  “It was the middle of the afternoon. They were all at work.”

  “Good motive, no alibi,” she says.

  “You can’t convict him with that.”

  “Nope.” She pokes her fork around in the flaccid carcass of her chili relleno, looking for something to spear.

  “Sophia thinks Ginger killed Lana,” I say.
>
  “Sibling rivalry?”

  “Ginger liked Nathaniel Strain for it.”

  “The slut fingered her own grandfather?”

  “She wasn’t a slut, she was an exhibitionist,” I reply, intending to defend her but not quite pulling it off.

  “I stand corrected. You know what happens to boys who try to correct me, don’t you?”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  She takes a sip of beer then looks me in the eye and licks foam off her lips. Nice and slow. I actually salivate. We men are such simple creatures.

  “These chilies are making me hot. Do we have time for a quickie at my place?” She does that lip-curl smile.

  “We have to be out in Chatsworth in an hour,” I say, reminding her that she’d agreed to let me go with her since it was my lead she was following up.

  Her smile fades. Gloria does not handle disappointment well, especially when she’s horny and there’s guacamole to be had.

  “Look on the bright side,” I say. “We’re going to a porn studio. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  She looks half-black, half-Chinese, close to seven feet tall, hands bound behind her back by a red rope that’s wrapped around her twiggy limbs and naked torso like a boa constrictor then tied in a spiderweb configuration around her head, securing a rubber ball in her mouth. The end of the rope is hooked taut to the ceiling, forcing her to stand in what must be painful patent-leather boots, a bizarre cross between toe shoes and spike heels. The boots have eight-inch heels running parallel to their toes, so she’s virtually standing on pointe.

  They’re called ballet boots and are designed to limit mobility for bondage and discipline submissives, or “subs.” I know this because Gloria once shopped for a pair and took me along. Not that she spent the two hundred clams to buy them, or that she’d ever suffer to wear them, but she made me take a cell-phone picture to send to her dentist friend, suggesting he might buy a pair for himself.

  The dominatrix is about half as tall as the black Chinese sub and thrice her girth. The dom’s body is stuffed and cinched into a red latex corset like a lumpy knockwurst, her pendulous breasts hanging loose past her navel with silver studs shaped like Milk-Bones piercing her nipples. She’s swinging a whip across her sub’s reddened ass. I fail to see what’s arousing about this, but that’s just me.