“My pleasure, Detective. Good luck on your case.”
I phoned my partner while driving north on Alvarado Street from the crime lab. He answered in a snarky tone, like the one he had used earlier in the morning.
“You want to say hello to my friend again? I’ll be passing Wayne’s World here in just a couple minutes.”
“I think you ought to bring him in, tell the captain you found a new partner.”
“Probably get me in less trouble,” I said. “He’d definitely be better backup, especially during shootouts. He is a vet, you know.”
“So is Fudd. Speaking of, are you headed to the hospital?”
I passed under the Hollywood Freeway and noted Wayne had abandoned his post. The crate and sign were there, but Wayne was nowhere to be found. Maybe he had taken the five bucks and headed to town for a lunch break, or more likely a drink.
“I’m on my way there now,” I said, “just getting ready to hop on the freeway. You get the file?”
“Yep. Picked it up and figured I’d drive by the club while waiting for you to finish up at the lab. You were right, it was Club Cabo.”
I scanned the surrounding area, almost concerned now about Wayne’s whereabouts. I was preoccupied, and it took a minute for Floyd’s words to sink in, his saying he had the file and decided to drive by the nightclub.
Refocused on the conversation, I asked, “Wait, you went to Cabo?”
“I’m here now, sitting in the parking lot. Having a look at these crime scene photos and comparing them to the actual location, getting a feel for this place. Doesn’t look like much has changed, other than maybe the graffiti on the walls.”
“You want me to meet you there, have a look around? Then we can head to Cedars from there.”
“You going to buy me lunch?” he asked.
“I might do that.”
“Well then, get crackin’, Dickie. I’ll be the straight guy in the Taurus, in case you have any trouble spotting me. The only white guy not wearing a dress.”
“At least not at the moment.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Now get your ass up here.”
I arrived in the parking lot of Club Cabo, steering with one hand while turning my sleeves up with the other, the unseasonable weather taking its toll. I unbuttoned my collar and loosened my tie.
Floyd nodded as I swung the Crown Vic in front of his car and backed in alongside him, taking in the view of the building as I shifted into Park. The bright blue paint with Club Cabo across the top in yellow letters with red shadowing spoke to the bold nature of the establishment. An adult book store with blackened windows sat to one side, a Hollywood souvenir shop to the other. Club Cabo had no reason to be ashamed in this neighborhood.
I stepped out, leaving the car running with the air-conditioner set at the highest level, and greeted my partner. “What’s up, asshole?”
“Well, I don’t think the murder Jenkins had up here has anything to do with ours,” he said, looking up through his open window, Ray-Bans concealing his eyes. “I’ve been reading the file while you’re out screwing around.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it was solved. A lover dispute, nothing else to it.”
“Okay, it was a long shot anyway. So, it looks like your buddy buff-puff stepped on his dick, giving our girl them smokes.”
Floyd stepped out and closed his door, meeting me between the two unmarked sedans. Two guys in shirts and ties conducting business in the parking lot of a transvestite bar in Hollywood over sputtering exhaust and the smell of urine, hip-hop music in the background. Just another day behind the badge in Los Angeles.
“They were laced?”
I leaned against the side of my car and pushed the straw dress hat up a bit in front, giving my forehead a little relief. “Ketamine Hydrochloride—”
“G.H.B., huh?”
“How’d you know that?” I asked.
“How would you not know that, Dickie? It’s the date-rape drug. When’d you switch to straws?”
“When the weatherman said it would hit eighty today.” I pulled it off my head and held it out for display. “It’s new. What do you think?”
“I like the felts better. You think it was an accident, the drug thing?”
That it was anything other than a major screw up had not occurred to me. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe that’s his style, buff-puff.”
My brows furrowed. “Jesus, you think?”
“Never know,” Floyd said. He pivoted to face the building. “You’ve got to see the freaks inside this place, Dickie, you want to talk about weird shit. C’mon, turn off your car, I’ll introduce you to Madam Marquis.”
30
WEREN’T YOU GOING to buy me lunch?” Floyd asked as we stood next to our vehicles outside the Emergency Room entrance of Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
With the sign Emergency Vehicles Only as a backdrop, I pulled my suit jacket from its hanger and closed the rear door. I looked over at Floyd and said, “I figured we’d grab something here, in the cafeteria.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No,” I said, pushing the knot of my tie up, but not too much, just enough to hide the opened collar, “the food here’s good.”
“You dine here often?” He was looking at his reflection in his window as he shrugged into a beige-colored Hickey Freeman suit jacket.
We turned as if on cue and stepped over the red curb in unison. Walking on the sidewalk toward two sets of sliding glass doors for emergency patients, we passed a man and lady in blue coveralls and black boots wheeling an empty gurney our way. There were courtesy greetings and smiles as we passed.
“You remember my buddy from high school, Lance?” I asked, glancing back at the paramedics. “I’ve told you about him.”
“Yeah, I think you’ve mentioned him. The guy’s an attorney now?”
“That’s the one. Does divorce cases. His mom had brain surgery here a few years back. I ate in the cafeteria once or twice when I visited. It really isn’t bad, you might be surprised. I mean, it’s not King Taco, or Manny’s, but it’s better than Denny’s.”
“Maybe they could do a brain surgery on you,” Floyd said, pushing his Ray-Bans up into thick brown hair as we stepped through the automatic doors, “as long as we’re here.”
Over the sounds of clanging dishes, cash registers, and idle chatter, I told Floyd the details of my visit to the crime lab, including my analysis of Karen Provost, the sexy doctor with restrained appeal. Floyd said, “No shit, Dickie, where the hell have you been? You mean you’d never met Doc Provost? She is smoking hot. Plus, she loves me.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Not all of them, Dickie. But most; I’ll give you that.”
I said, “Maybe you were right about that jailer. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Makes me wonder.”
“I knew buff-puff was an asshole, soon as I saw him drink that brown shit. Nothing would surprise me about him.”
Then I told Floyd about the conversation I had had with Lt. Jordan on the way here, surmising that Internal Affairs would probably rake the kid over the coals, even if he had no knowledge of those cigarettes being laced.
Floyd said, “I.A.? Those guys are assholes too.”
Then I told him I was taking Thursday and Friday off this week, but I’d be back for our on-call rotation which starts Saturday night at ten. He paused with a tuna-melt suspended beneath a gaping mouth and gave me the look.
I said, “I know, I’m an asshole too, right?”
“Right,” he said, “and I’ll tell you something else—”
I waited as he chewed just enough to allow him to continue.
“If they’re still splitting us up next month—which is what, two weeks away?—I’m protesting being in the rotation with your dumb ass.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s bullshit. We’ve got plenty of active cases to divide up; we don’t need any more. And if you’re taking time off—”
I leaned back and
grinned, breaking his train of thought.
Floyd took a swig from his Diet Coke, watching me over a semi-translucent red cup. Then he set it down and said, “What? What are you up to now, Dickie?”
I enjoyed the moment, taking advantage of his appetite for immediate satisfaction, knowing he realized I knew something he didn’t. I sipped my soda and took my time, glanced around the cafeteria noticing the colorful scrubs: green, blue, and floral-patterns too. A pair with bicycles without riders, and another with fish: seahorses, puffers, and clowns, a great white pursuing an otter—predator versus prey. Life in Los Diablos.
“Dickhead?”
“I must’ve forgot to tell you.”
“Yeah, you must have, asshole. Now get to it.”
“Captain’s not splitting us up now.”
“What?”
“Well, I talked to Jordan on the way here—”
“Yeah?”
“—turns out the Honorable Judge Nessbaum, the guy on the freeway you wanted me to shoot, called the sheriff to thank him for two of his finest deputies saving his life.”
“We are a good bunch of men.”
“I guess he even apologized for wrecking our car.”
“Well that will make your captain feel better.”
“Apparently,” I continued, “the judge and your sheriff know each other, have some type of association. Probably golf together. So the sheriff turned around and called Stover and said he was putting us in for medals of valor. He said he looked forward to personally recognizing our heroism. You believe that shit?”
Lifting his sandwich again, he said, “Jesus.”
“Jordan said no way was that asshole going to split us up now, take a chance of me mentioning it to the sheriff as he’s draping medals around my neck. Can you see it? ‘Thanks, Sheriff. By the way, did you know that prick Stover’s trying to split me and my partner up?’”
Floyd said around another bite, “You can’t split up Dickie Floyd. We’re a dynamic duo, like Batman and Robin, the Lone Ranger and that Indian.”
“Cagney and Lacey.”
“He knows you’d do it, too,” Floyd said, “front him off like that in front of the sheriff.”
“Hell yes, I would.” I watched as Floyd shoved the last bite of tuna-melt into his mouth. “You ready?”
He pushed his chair back and stood quickly, dropping a napkin onto his empty plate. “Born ready, dickhead. Let’s get at it.”
A heavyset man in green scrubs stood at the fifth-floor nurse’s station pointing to his right, nodding that way, saying, “You can take him with you when you leave, far as I’m concerned.”
Floyd said, “You don’t like our buddy, Elmer Fudd?”
“Whatever you call him,” said the nurse, “no.”
I chuckled and said, “That’s odd, we just love that guy.”
“First day he’s on the floor,” the nurse says, “the guy asks if I’m the doctor who cut his chest open with a chainsaw. I said, ‘No, but I’ll be your nurse for the next twelve hours and the rest of the week on day shift. Is there anything you need?’ The jerk asks if I’m gay.”
“He’s not real sensitive to others’ feelings,” Floyd said, “not what you’d call a people person.”
“We won’t be long,” I said, smiling politely.
Floyd and I turned and headed to Room 502.
As we stepped inside, I noticed the pasty-white complexion of our boy, Fudd, and smiled at the sight of the clear fluid dripping from a bag above his head, most likely filled with morphine. His droopy eyelids fluttered before settling half-open, his dull, hazel eyes peering our way. He lifted an arm covered with tubes and tape, offering a lazy wave with two fingers. Then he said through a dry and crusty mouth, “Howdy, boys. C’mon in.”
Floyd and I looked at each other and I beat him to the nod, a traditional passing of the torch in these situations. He frowned at me, then stepped closer to the bed.
“Mr. Scott,” he said in a serious but affable tone, “I’m Detective—”
“You’re the guys was across the road there, looking for that little colored girl. You ever find her?”
“Yes sir,” Floyd answered, “we did. Listen, we have some questions for you about your place over there—”
“My brother’s house,” Elmer said, a clear tube bouncing over his upper lip. “I been looking in on it for a couple months now since he’s been in Arizona, on account of them people across the way there, dealing drugs and running whores. You know, someone broke into the house when my brother first left, him and his ol’ lady, and I bet it was them people over there—”
“We had a little trouble out there, Mr. Scott, a few days back. Someone shot at us from your brother’s place, and to be real honest, we thought it was you until we found out you’ve been here.”
“You thought it was me? Why the hell would you think that? I’m a law-abiding citizen—a veteran too, damn it. You want my opinion,” he said and paused to cough and hack for a moment, “I’d say that nig—sorry, that black girl—and her friends had something to do with it. Did you know they got one of my rifles last time they broke in? Remington 700 in three-oh-eight, had a four by twelve variable scope. Son-of-a-bitch was a shooter too, sub-MOA for sure, it’d group five in a half-inch at a hundred yards if you knew anything at all about shooting. I’ve got night vision on another rifle, but they didn’t get that one. What’d they shoot at you boys with?”
“Not too sure,” Floyd said, “some type of high-powered rifle. But you’re saying they broke in, again?”
“Well hell yeah they did . . . who the hell else would’ve done it? The whole neighborhood’s gone to shit lately.”
“Your neighbors might agree,” Floyd said, “after the big shootout.”
“Big shootout?”
“Yeah, it’s what I just told you, someone shot at us from your brother’s house.”
Randy Scott, the man we had called Elmer Fudd, the one we believed had tried to gun us down in front of his brother’s house, smiled and rubbed the salt and pepper stubble on his chin. “See there,” he said, “had to be that girl or one of them Mexicans she runs with. Anyone using a rifle, and you two lived to tell about it, ain’t never shot one before. There’s your proof it wasn’t me.”
“We were told you were a sniper,” Floyd said.
“Damn right, boy.”
The veteran sniper then looked out the window and gazed into the distance, likely beyond the view of Hollywood below. In almost a whisper, he said, “Yes sir.”
I stepped forward to the foot of the bed. “Mr. Scott, when they searched your brother’s house, they came up with some photographs. They were taken by someone at your brother’s house, all of them toward the neighbor’s place across the road. Most of them were pictures of Ms. Edwards and her friends, but there were others too, some that we found very interesting.”
“You talking about them ones of you boys?”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s been bothering us quite a bit, to be honest. Why would you take pictures of us, out there doing our job?”
“I remember thinking you fellas looked kinda good out there. You with the hats,” he said, and then he nodded toward Floyd, “and him with that Hollywood cop look, those shades and his pretty hair. You know, like that young fella on Law and Order?”
Floyd grinned.
Fudd smiled back at him, likely enjoying the company. He said, “Hell, you boys gave me something to do, once them others disappeared.”
“There were some pictures of a couple black girls too,” I said.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. They been running whores out of that place, have been for months, long as I been staying there anyway. You’re talking about them black hookers, right?”
“How do you know they’re hookers?”
“Because I’ve been paying attention, boy, and that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I’ve been taking pictures. I told the Downey cops about the whole deal, but they di
dn’t care. All they’re interested in is harassing law-abiding Americans like myself. So, to hell with them. I started my own little investigation, did a little reconnaissance, you might say. I started keeping track of who’s who in the zoo, if you get my drift. Hell, I even followed them around a little bit too, once I started figuring out what they were up to.”
“You followed them?” Floyd asked.
“That’s what I just said, junior. Hell yeah, you bet I did. I can show you where they do their tricks. It’s a sleazy little motel down there in the ghetto on Long Beach Boulevard. I used to drive a wrecker down there, know the area well. Nothing but a bunch of animals ‘round there. Reminds me—”
“You’ve been there, the motel on Long Beach Boulevard?”
“One night,” he said, “them two whores in those pictures came out of that nigger girl’s house—sorry ‘bout that—along with that dirty little Mexican dude with all them tattoos. They all got to fussin’ in the front yard, cussing one another and carrying on. You know how them people are. The Mexican mostly just watched, but the one that lives there was mad as hell at them two whores. I started snapping pictures with a zoom lens, black and whites, like we used to do on recon missions.
“Then when them two in their little whore outfits left, that Mexican and the black girl got to fussin’. She was yelling at him for a couple minutes, waving her arms around, then the two of them got in her car and drove off. That’s the night I followed them down there to that motel.”
“Did you happen to get any pictures at the motel?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said, raising the bed with a remote control, taking a minute to hack and then spit into a pan on the table hanging over his bed. “Well, first, they stopped over there in East L.A.—beaner town—and the Mexican went into a house. He came out with another greaser, an older one. Then, the three of them went to Hollywood, some fag club, and the colored girl went inside. The two Mexicans left, so I followed them, figuring they were the ones that looked like trouble. They went to some shit-hole motel down in the ghetto, went into a room up on the second floor, and stayed in there about twenty minutes. Came back out, but didn’t go anywhere.”
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 27