“What do you mean?”
He looked around the side of his bed and mumbled, “I need that queer nurse in here.”
“What do you mean, they didn’t go anywhere, Mr. Scott?” I asked, bringing him back to the conversation.
He stared for a minute, a blank stare as if he had lost his train of thought. Then he said, “The beaners. Well, yeah, they drove around, but they didn’t leave the area. They went around the block, through the alley, up and down the street a few times, like they was looking for someone. I followed them around a bit but decided I’d better leave before I got robbed. Damn savages were everywhere. Place is more dangerous than ‘Nam.”
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” I said. “The black girl, Donna, and the Mexican with the tattoos, they went to a house in East L.A.?”
“That’s what I just told you. Are you paying attention?”
“Then they picked up another male Hispanic, an older guy, and went to a club in Hollywood.”
“Hispanic or Mexican, one of the two. He was one of them cholo types, a tattooed wetback looks like he just got out of the joint. And yeah, the three of them all went to some fag joint right over here,” he said, pointing out the window.
“Then the two men left, the girl stayed there, and you followed those two men to a motel on Long Beach Boulevard where they went into a room on the second floor?”
“Ain’t that what I just got done telling you, boy?”
“You have those pictures?” Floyd asked.
“I gave ‘em to the Downey cops, told ‘em this’s what’s going on around here, them there whores and drug dealers ruining the neighborhood. They didn’t care, the dumb bastards. They’re too damn busy harassing veterans, writing chicken-shit tickets and whatnot. You guys want those pictures, you’re gonna have to get ‘em from them. Check with that weasel, Sergeant Ely, sawed-off little shit college boy who could stand to have a little respect for his elders. That’s who’s got most of ‘em. Negatives too. I wasn’t going to give him the negatives, but he insisted, took them away from me along with the pictures, the bastard. And that’s why nobody helps the cops anymore, and for that matter, it’s why nobody likes any of ya, neither. You guys are a bunch of assholes. ‘Cept maybe you two. You two ol’ boys are okay by me.”
I looked over to see Floyd grinning. I thanked Mr. Scott for his time and wished him a speedy recovery. Floyd thanked him for his service to our country.
He held up a hand to stop our exit, and we waited while he coughed and spit mucus into the tray. He said, “You know, you boys need any help watching them folks, getting some pictures and whatnot, I’ll be out of here in a couple days. I did three tours in Vietnam, sixty-seven through sixty-nine, worked around some of them spooks in the agency, operating up near the border of Cambodia. I still got a few tricks up my sleeve, and I ain’t afraid to drop the hammer when it’s time, neither.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Floyd said, and we headed for the door.
He called out to our backs: “You see that queer nurse out there, send him in here, would ya?”
31
SERGEANT ELY OF the Downey Police Department handed me an envelope as he stepped into the lobby of the station, choosing to meet with us amongst the public rather than inviting us into his office for a cup of coffee.
The envelope revealed photos of Donna Edwards and Gilbert Regalado in front of Donna’s house, Donna with an angry expression, her lips pursed. Next, they were in front of a rundown house. It could have been East L.A., as Fudd had described. The other male Hispanic joined them there, the one who looked like he was fresh out of the joint according to Fudd. I would agree with that assessment, from the photographs. The next photos showed the three of them at the Club Cabo in Hollywood, then Donna out of the car, walking toward the club, and the two gangsters leaving without her. The last photos showed the two men, Gilbert Regalado and the unidentified vato at the Regal Inn on Long Beach Boulevard. There were pictures of the two men starting up the stairs to the second floor, but only a view from behind, and then others showing the same two waiting outside the scene of the crime, Room 217. One photo showed Gilbert looking this way through dark sunglasses, a positive identification of him. The older man with him stood sideways, offering only a side profile. He was a thick-chested man, heavily tattooed—even more so than Gilbert—with a black mustache that covered his mouth and half his chin. The last photo showed a woman in the open doorway as Gilbert was stepping into the scene, the mustached Mexican looking back. But the picture caught him with his left hand reaching toward his head, blocking much of his face.
Returning the photographs to their envelope, I looked at the man to my right, the detective wearing short sleeves and a wide, red- and gray-striped necktie, a black belt contrasting his brown pants and loafers. His pale blue eyes darted from me to the photos while he fidgeted with a wiry red mustache over what I figured to be a permanent smirk.
I held the envelope up and said, “We’re going to need these, Sergeant.”
“Let me check with my lieutenant,” he said. Then he turned and disappeared into the hallway behind him.
“What a punk,” Floyd said.
“Let me check with my lieutenant,” I scoffed.
Floyd turned to a display on the counter and began thumbing through pamphlets: Drug Abuse Resistance Education, Family Violence Prevention, Gang Intervention . . . pamphlets in English and Spanish, colorful photos of men, women and children, all colors, shapes, and sizes on the front. Picking them up one at a time, perusing them while speaking to Ely in his absence. “You do that, Sergeant . . . go check with your mommy, see if it’s okay if these homicide detectives take your pictures.” He turned to me. “What’s he going to do if we just walk out? I’ll seize this shit as evidence right now.”
“Easy, buddy,” I said. “We’ll get the photos and be out of here in a few. We don’t need any international incidents.”
“It’s just, some people . . .”
“Yeah, I hear ya. But hey,” I said, glancing at my watch, “on the bright side, we should be able to make it to the lab before Gentry’s gone for the day.”
“What’re we doing at the lab? Wasn’t this going to be our last stop, then beers?”
“I’d like to get these photos enhanced,” I said, “the sooner the better. Especially the one where our friends are standing up there at the opened door. Aren’t you dying to see who it is standing inside?” I pulled the photos back out of the envelope and began thumbing through them a second time. “My guess,” I said, showing a black and white photo to Floyd who was now leaning into me, “that’s going to be the hooker from the motel right there. What’s his name, Stephanie?”
“Stephen Dubois,” Floyd said.
I paused as a dispatcher in uniform, a light blue blouse with shoulder patches over a dark blue skirt, passed through the lobby and disappeared into a room constructed of mirrored glass to our left. The sounds of police radio traffic faded as the door closed behind her but the scent of her perfume lingered in the lobby. I looked back at Floyd. “How is it you always remember the weird shit?”
Floyd shrugged as he stuffed two or three of each pamphlet in his jacket pocket.
I continued, “If we can prove that asshole boyfriend of Donna’s—”
“Gilbert.”
“—and this vato with the ‘stache were the last visitors of a dead hooker.”
“That’d be good for Sandy’s case for sure. Probably ours too,” he said. “But traffic’s going to suck if we go to the lab this time of day.”
“You remember Elmer saying these two assholes cruised around for a while after they left the motel. What the hell were they doing, cruising around Lynwood? Or should I say, who were they looking for?”
“Susie.”
“It’s what I’m thinking,” I told him.
“So, what’s our motive? If we think Donna wanted them whacked, sent the Mexicans to do the manual labor—no pun intended—we’re going to nee
d a motive, something that can stand up against the defense saying Susie’s her best friend, the other was an associate. They will also point out that if she is actually pimping them out, they’re a source of income to her.”
“So is cocaine,” I said, looking past Floyd at the mirrored glass. Picturing the dispatcher on the other side. She was probably watching us. Maybe talking about us with another dispatcher, wondering who are the two guys in suits, this one with a fedora?
Floyd nodded to signal the return of Sergeant Ely, the little man coming up behind me.
The detective handed me a form and said, “My lieutenant said no problem, but you’ll need to fill out this form, Evidence Disposition.”
Floyd stepped away from the counter and positioned himself near the glass doors, DOWNEY POLICE DEPARTMENT in white lettering behind him, backwards from inside. He stood with his arms folded across his suit jacket in silent protest. I scribbled our names and contact information across the top of the white paper with green and pink duplicates beneath. The sergeant licked his thumb and separated the pink copy from the bottom, handing it to me with his smirk in place.
I forced a smile. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, Detective. We’re here to please.”
Floyd pulled a can of Copenhagen from his pocket when he stopped at the passenger’s door of my Crown Vic parked out front. He scooped two-fingers and a thumb full of tobacco into his lower lip, pocketed the can, and began brushing his hands together in front of him. Then he spit into the gutter and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand.
“Do we hate Sergeant Ely, the South Pole elf?”
“That shit’s gonna kill you,” I said.
Floyd appeared thoughtful for a moment, his tongue fiddling with the tobacco behind his lip.
“I’ve been hooked up with you for the better part of eighteen years,” he said, pausing as he retrieved a pair of Ray-Bans from his inside jacket pocket, “and that ain’t killed me.”
I turned to walk around the car.
Floyd staying with it: “You’ve dragged my ass into half-a-dozen shootouts, a couple dozen donnybrooks, two full-blown riots, and one church social. And you say this is gonna kill me.”
“It could happen,” I said over my shoulder.
“I’m popping pills for blood pressure,” he continued, pushing the shades over his eyes, “trying to drop twenty pounds without giving up booze. You feed me fast food twice a day, and I can’t remember the last time I popped a vitamin or choked down a vegetable.”
I paused at my door, looking at him over the top of the car with a big grin.
He chuckled and continued: “My liver probably looks like an old wino’s, the ones you see at the coroner’s office, gray and black and full of holes, look like recycled sponges from the Compton Carwash.
“My brother-in-law,” he said and paused as we ducked into the car, “says he’s going to stick a shank up my ass when he gets out of the joint, and he’s one of the few who’s said it, might actually have the balls to try.”
“Not sure I’d blame him,” I said. “If my brother-in-law beat my ass and sent me to prison, I’d consider shanking him when I got out too.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Then we’ve got the dozen or so assholes sitting on death row, courtesy of Dickie Floyd, and that’s a lot of homeboys and family members that’ve got our number too. So, I have to pack a gun everywhere I go nowadays, taking the kids to school, sports, church—”
“Wait a minute, partner; when’s the last time you went to church, there wasn’t a dead guy somewhere?” I pulled into traffic, adjusting the air-conditioner.
Floyd paused, thinking for a minute. He said, “That’s not the point. What I’m trying to say here, Dickie, is if this Copenhagen’s what finally kills me, that’d be an ironic son-of-a-bitch. Where did you say we’re headed?”
“The crime lab.”
“Well get crackin’, dickhead,” he said, and glanced at his watch, “I’m thirsty.”
After ten minutes of driving in silence, Floyd asked, “Sex or murders?”
Our short list of preferred topics.
“Your choice.”
“I’m gonna kill my wife if she doesn’t figure out a way to get to bed before midnight, pay a little attention to the man of the house.”
“So, we’re doing both?”
“Huh?”
I checked the mirrors, giving him time. Still with that lost stare on his face. I said, “Sex and murders.”
“Oh,” he said, “yeah.”
“What’s she doing, keeps her up so late?”
“Ebay.”
“Buying or selling?”
Floyd had sprawled out in the front seat, his left arm stretched behind my seat and his right arm resting on the door, one leg crossed over the other. “Oh, she’s spending. Spending like we grow it on trees. Remember that fight we had about garage sales, couple weeks back? She cleaned the garage one weekend while you and I were working. The next weekend, she sold everything we haven’t used for more than six months. All the camping gear, clothes, toys—everything.”
“Yeah?”
“Ever since,” he said, “she’s been busy buying it all back. Swear to God. Half the shit she’s buying, she sold for a buck at that stupid garage sale. What’re you looking for?”
I glanced over to see Floyd watching me. “Over there,” I said, nodding toward the left side of the underpass almost behind us now, “is where Wayne lives.”
“The bum you had on the phone this morning?”
“Vietnam vet.”
“He told you that?” Floyd asked.
“It’s what his sign said, Hungry and Homeless Vet.”
“I think you’re going soft on me, Dickie.”
I parked along the red curb in front of the crime lab and stepped out of the car, calling back to Floyd, “Bring the photos, asshole.”
“Don’t you start bossing me, Dickie,” he said, getting out of the car with the photos in his hand. “I’m the one person you don’t boss.”
“You just keep reminding me that, partner.”
32
STEPHEN DUBOIS WAS a relatively attractive man with delicate features, light brown skin, and sparkling eyes. He was what cops and men in the joint call soft, very feminine in many ways.
As a woman, he was a knockout. Stephanie. There in the photo with his short skirt and pumps, bare legs, long black hair falling over the side of his face.
Jesus, to think it, let alone say it.
“Seriously,” Floyd said, holding the photo in front of Phil Gentry, “he really was pretty hot, for a dude.”
Phil shook his head, appalled.
We stood viewing the enhanced photos of the young man in pumps, there in the doorway of Room 217, The Regal Inn in Lynwood. Wearing the same outfit he wore when we found him strangled under the bed, not twelve hours after these pictures were taken by our boy, Elmer Fudd.
Floyd said, “You know, if a guy had too many beers—”
“My God,” Phil said.
Maybe we really weren’t normal, the thought occurred to me, now and other times too. Maybe too often.
We thanked Phil for staying over for us, getting the photos enhanced while we waited. He told us no problem, asked if he could see us out, as if in a hurry for us to leave. He appeared a bit flushed in the face.
Floyd and I stepped off the front steps of the red brick building tucked into the century-old neighborhood of Los Angeles, not far from Hollywood or downtown, just around the corner from the famous Tommy’s Burgers, and a short drive to Dodger Stadium. We walked to the Crown Vic under a sky showing its last light of the day, with Floyd saying behind me, “I’m starving. Plus I still need a beer, and you are pissing me off, again. You think Phil thinks we’re nuts?”
“It’s very likely; he’s no dummy. You know, I worry sometimes that people take us serious.”
Floyd looked over and said, “We are serious, Dickie. This police shit is nothing to joke around about.”
Floyd said, “It’s just as easy to head straight, this time of evening. Take surface streets rather than mess with the Hollywood. Less traffic, plus there’s places to eat along the way: the Thai place, that barbecue joint, Philippe’s downtown . . . what else?”
I turned right on Alvarado and he said, “Jesus. You’re still looking for Wayne, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said, wondering what it was that bothered me about him not being under the bridge. “Hadn’t even thought about it, to be honest.”
The effects of the G.H.B. would be dissipated by now, we figured, two days past the overdose. Unfortunately, Floyd and I agreed, we couldn’t interview Donna Edwards even if she were sober as a judge, now that we had to seriously consider her a suspect in the murders of Shane Wright and Stephen Dubois. Not after she had invoked her right to counsel the last time we tried to interview her.
Having heard the traffic report every ten minutes for the last half hour, I turned the radio off. I needed to focus only on my thoughts and use the time alone in the car to sort things out, come up with a plan.
The photos, Floyd and I had agreed over Thai food and beer last night, weren’t enough to get the case filed. They were good pictures; there was no doubt about that. We had the one showing Donna Edwards and Gilbert Regalado arguing with the victims in front of Donna’s house the evening of the murders. Then there was Donna and Gilbert picking up the older gangster at the house that was probably in East L.A., before dropping Donna off at the club. Then, within a few hours after the big argument in front of Donna’s house, the two gangsters were at the scene of the crime, placed there by photographic evidence. The two of them with Stephen Dubois opening the door in his skirt, the last time—as far as we knew—anyone had seen him alive. Then the duo left the motel a short time later, and there was no sign of Stephen from that time on.
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 28