Hard-Boiled- Box Set

by Danny R. Smith

  Ray shook his head. “You’re right about him being an asshole, partner.”

  Ray Cortez called all other cops “partner” as a manner of speech. Still, it sounded funny for some reason. I hadn’t had anyone other than Floyd as a partner for five years. He had been my partner until the day I was shot, which had caused me to be off work for a year. Now it almost felt like I was cheating on him, being teamed up with someone new. Of course, that sonofabitch was cheating first, him and his boy, Mongo. I saw Mongo in my head, looking at me when I approached Floyd’s desk yesterday morning, watching me like I was going to steal his donut. There was no way I’d get between that man and his food.

  I pictured the two of them in the car, Mongo taking up two-thirds of the front seat and Floyd leaned up against the passenger door, no doubt making Mongo drive everywhere they went. It had always been one of our ongoing arguments, whose turn it was to drive. Whose turn it was to drive and whose turn it was to buy. Those were the arguments we most often had. He always won the driving argument, insisting each time it was my turn behind the wheel, usually heading straight to my car as if there was no need for further discussion. But I usually conned him into picking up the meal tabs, so it all equalled out.

  I wondered if Floyd was talking about me or had been. My ears were burning. It was my second day back, and I was teamed up with Ray Cortez working what might be the most interesting murder of the year. Who knows, it could turn out to be the most interesting of the decade, maybe since the Night Stalker case. The gossip in the bureau was not unlike that in a hair salon, and I was certain Floyd already knew about my assignment. I’d missed lunch with him yesterday and he had texted me and asked where the hell I was. I didn’t reply, because I didn’t want to, and I was never afraid to deny receiving the message. It was one of my tactics that I used on the wife, playing dumb to technology. But I don’t think she ever believed it. Floyd wouldn’t either.

  The wife. Jesus, I had forgotten to call and check on her, see if she had heard about the murder in Santa Clarita, not far from her new place. Maybe she even knew the missing person. Most of the realtors in Santa Clarita would likely know one another.

  Ray was saying, “We’re going to the house first. The husband’s expecting us and mentioned his daughter might be there too.”

  I pictured my soon-to-be ex as the headless woman in the car, and tried to drive the image out of my mind. This was something I still hadn’t mentioned to the shrink. I feared the revelation of such horrible thoughts would make me look less stable. What would she—or anyone else—think about a man who saw his wife in murder scenes? How would anyone understand it? This wasn’t something new; it had been the case for years, and it had always bothered me. It wasn’t only the wife I would see at crime scenes, it was friends, coworkers, colleagues . . . I wondered if others had this happen, but didn’t dare to ask.

  “Depending on how it goes, we may want to figure a way to get hubby down to the station, have a chat with him outside the daughter’s presence,” Ray had continued, taking his eyes off the road several times to glance over at me.

  But my mind was still on the soon-to-be ex. I hadn’t heard from her for a few weeks. I tried calling a couple times, but she never answered. I finally left a voicemail letting her know I was cleared to return to work, given the okay by my doc and would be coming back this week, just wanted her to know. But still I hadn’t heard a thing. I felt my temperature rise as my mind went back to Val as the headless woman.

  “Thoughts?”

  What had he said? “Yeah, Ray, whatever sounds good, buddy.”

  There was no way. She lived and worked in Santa Clarita, but there was no way it could have been her. It was the missing woman, no doubt. It was her car at the scene and the recovered body fit the general description of her. This isn’t rocket science.

  Jesus.

  This was just my twisted brain tormenting me. Demons had taken refuge in my mind years ago, playing tricks on me so that I constantly question my sanity. The shrink understood and explained it, once I stopped lying to her. She had said it was part of the psychological trauma that I had encountered on a regular basis for so many years, though she stopped shy of calling it PTSD. She knows the rules, and she knows I would be out of the bureau for sure—maybe the department—if she diagnosed me with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. But we both knew I had it, and we both knew that we both knew. It was like our dirty little secret.

  That was when I started to feel fondly toward her, this shrink who used to give me nothing but headaches and stress. Sometime over the past year, since I’d been shot, she seemed to warm up to me. She seemed to be an advocate for me, not the adversary I had always seen her as before. Was it that she was sympathetic after I had been shot, or was it something else?

  “You okay, partner?”

  I forced it closed, the door to a dark room where the bodies were stored, their souls turned to demons that refused to leave me. The same demons that mixed it all up for me, putting loved ones’ faces on corpses and causing my imagination to run wild when the wife—the soon-to-be ex-wife—didn’t answer her phone. This reaction, in part, is likely part of the reason she would soon be the ex. Ex number two.

  I hated that room in the corner of my head, and sometimes I would wonder if cops who ate their guns did so trying to kill their own demons. Cops were known to eat their guns when choosing to check out early. Maybe this was a factor. Perhaps they were trying to silence the voices. I couldn’t be the only one who suffered this.

  “I’m good, Ray, just thinking about some things.”

  “What about? If we’re going to be partners, we have to talk.”

  I waited, thinking about what I could say. Wondering how much I would reveal to him. I had known him a long time, but we’d never worked together. It’s the difference of intimacy. And I wasn’t sure I was ready to hop in the sack.

  We were now northbound on the Golden State Freeway toward Santa Clarita. We would be going through Burbank soon, my new hometown. I looked over and forced a smile. “I was just thinking about this case, partner, prepping for the interviews. It’s sure an interesting one, and I’m glad I get to tag along with you on it.”

  He returned the smile. “You’re more than tagging along, partner; it’s your case now too.”

  7

  THE BOX WAS in Sylmar, a forty-minute drive north from downtown Los Angeles on the Golden State or Hollywood Freeway, either one. Or he could take the Glendale to the Foothill, which would take a little longer unless the others were clogged with traffic. He learned to use the names of the freeways rather than the numbers. It was different here than on the east coast.

  Sylmar is a community within the City of Los Angeles. A predominately Hispanic community, it is the type of place where a thin, wiry white boy like Leonard might find trouble if he hadn’t spent twenty-five years in Raiford learning how to posture. Convicts carry themselves differently than those who have never been inside, and they recognize it in one another. Unfortunately, Leonard knew, the cops would also spot a convict in a crowd. Convicts, like cops, are aware of their surroundings and they protect their backsides. They know to show confidence, each trying to avoid being the bitch. Gangsters on the street also recognize the confidence and poise of a convict, even those gangsters who had not yet been inside. For the most part, the gangsters would give any such person their due respect and avoid confrontation. There were plenty of weak ones on the street; it made no sense to mess with someone who’s done time and is not likely a punk. Especially when it was a white boy who showed no fear in barrios and ghettos. That sends a message that is generally heard loud and clear.

  Leonard showed no fear because he had grown to understand himself and his capabilities once he entered prison. Up until then, he had been bullied at school and in the neighborhood. Even though he had already killed, he had no confidence to stand up to the so-called tough kids on the block or campus. He hated confrontation and avoided it at all expense, though he did keep a mental
list of his offenders and planned to someday exact revenge upon them.

  Shortly after he went to prison, he realized he must utilize his propensity for violence in order to survive. He learned that not everyone was so capable, even in the joint. It was one thing to fight, and quite another to dismember someone during the course of a fight. Not that he hadn’t suffered a few beatings and survived being stabbed once; he had. However, after the first couple of beatings had been dealt, Leonard decided he would no longer allow others to view him as an easy target. He would deter them with a message silently delivered through acts of extreme violence.

  The opportunity came one afternoon at the weight pile on Raiford’s Medium Security yard. Leonard saw the man making his approach and immediately knew his intent. He had seen it before and recognized the situation as a predator circling his prey. This would be the day he would send the message that he was not to be considered prey. When the man made his move, Leonard was ready. He stepped out of the striking zone as the man lunged at him with a shank in his hand, a prison knife made from a small piece of scrap metal. He used the man’s momentum to drive him into the ground, and then Leonard came down on top of him and shoved his thumb into his aggressor’s skull through his eye socket. There was no further fight in the now one-eyed convict who lay screaming and blindly reaching to find his eyeball that dangled from a single tendon. The message was yet to be made clear, in Leonard’s opinion. So Leonard grabbed a 10 pound steel weight and beat the man until the guards arrived to take him away. The would-be attacker lay unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

  Sylmar was Disneyland compared to Raiford.

  He stepped out of the gray Ford Taurus and ran his hand through his thick blond hair while taking in his surroundings. It was a habit he’d learned over the years, one that he would never change. Satisfied, he closed the door and walked into the post office and directly to Box 1196 where he retrieved an envelope addressed to L.F. Hammer. He rolled his eyes. Whitey must have mentioned the story Leonard had told his cellmate about killing a man with a hammer. Leonard Freeman Hammer. There was no return address.

  Leonard lit a cigarette as he departed, again watching his tail while traveling from the Sylmar post office to the San Fernando post office a few miles away. When he arrived, he retrieved from his trunk a shoebox wrapped in brown paper, addressed to M. Feldman at a box in Boston. He entered the post office but never removed his shades. He barely spoke to the clerk—which seemed to be fine with her—only enough to answer the few questions she had: “Are there any perishable items in the package, any explosives or hazardous materials of any kind?”

  Behind the mirrored sunglasses and stoic face, he smiled at the thought of the frozen contents, but simply shook his head. He paid in cash and left without accepting the receipt.

  As he started his car, he pictured the boss’s boy, the bug-eyed, lanky, wannabe wop, gathering the package and seeing it addressed to M. Feldman. He chuckled to himself and wondered if the dummy would get the joke. Then he pictured the two of them from that day in the boss’s office, Feldman with his tough guy posture, and he remembered picturing the man on fire. The burning bush with buggy eyes. Shit, he thought, he should have addressed the package to Moses.

  Leonard departed and drove east on Brand and then turned right onto a nearby side street looking for a quiet place to stop. He pulled over beneath a shade tree in a residential area and killed the ignition. He started to open the envelope he had picked up from his box when he noticed a steady stream of children filling the streets. Most were walking though some rode bicycles or skateboards, filling the sidewalks on both sides of the street and darting into traffic at will. Leonard was drawn to them, watching and listening as the kids approached in a wave of plaid skirts and khaki pants or shorts, and white button-up blouses or polos. The last time he was among a group of kids this age, he was their age. Now they seemed so young.

  And vulnerable . . .

  Leonard drifted back to his childhood and remembered watching a neighbor girl about the age of these children who would undress with the blinds partially open. She lived behind him, and her activities became his passion. He had a place to sit where he could see into her room, and sometimes he would wait for hours just to see the show. On a rare occasion, the drunk bitch—his mother—would yell for him to return. He didn’t care, she had nothing to offer. It wouldn’t be as if she had prepared supper. No, she was likely in need of someone to beat on, or maybe fool around with sexually. He hated her, and was glad the bitch was dead.

  As the children passed Leonard’s car, some glanced toward him, and when they did, they instinctively stopped smiling or giggling or talking. It seemed each suddenly lost their elation. It angered him. They likely thought him a creep, or worse, maybe a weirdo. He watched in the mirror as they continued past and he noticed several of them looking over their shoulders at him. One in particular, a little Asian girl with pigtails who appeared much younger than the others. She seemed to be interested in him.

  Leonard turned in his seat to have a good look as the Asian girl broke away from the others, turning onto a walkway that led to the front door of a modest home. She used a key to open the door and disappeared inside, but not before glancing back at him once more.

  Leonard smiled at the closed door and then settled back into his seat. He watched his image in the mirror while running his hand around on the seat next to him searching for his packet of cigarettes. He pulled a Camel from the pack, put it to his lips, and picked up the envelope that sat beside his leg. He looked around once more while bringing a lighter up to his face. Most of the children were now gone. There were no more distractions and fewer vehicles driving past him. No cops anywhere that he could see. He opened the envelope to find a photograph. It was a man of about his own age, maybe older, it was hard to tell. The angle from which the photo had been taken rendered the subject’s features unclear, and the hat he wore further obscured his face. It was an old man’s hat, or the type of hat men wore several decades earlier and now you only saw them on the occasional east coaster or rock star. There was a folded piece of paper behind it that bore a name and an address. Richard Jones. Leonard grinned through a cloud of exhaled smoke. Dick Jones. What a name. Then he saw two more notations that erased his grin: “cop,” and “30 days.” The last line read, “No preferences, no souvenirs.”

  He dropped the items to his lap and said, “Fucking cop?”

  Leonard shook his head. He never expected this type of an assignment. What the hell were they thinking, killing a cop? Were they crazy? You didn’t whack a cop without really bringing the heat. They should know that. Then he thought about the cops at Raiford, the only cops he really had ever known. Dirty sonsabitches each and every one. He hated cops, and the more he pondered it, the more he relished the thought of seeing one beg for his life. Leonard knew most of them were pussies when they didn’t have that gun and badge, or the upper hand.

  With a chuckle, he placed the two items back in their envelope. He looked behind him once more at the house with the closed front door and blinds covering the windows. There was a little girl inside, likely home alone. He tossed his cigarette out the window and scanned his surroundings once more.

  8

  DAVEY LOPES WAS comfortable walking the drab halls of Pelican Bay. He had been there dozens of times before, there and many others: Tehachapi, Solano, Folsom, Salinas, Kern, and half a dozen others. The former Marine and veteran cop lumbered through the halls of these fortresses without any fear. Anyone who looked into his permanently squinting eyes could see that Lopes was not the type to be trifled with.

  He had been flown in on the department’s fixed-wing plane and had grabbed a rental car. He would stay overnight and head back the next day.

  His escort through the prison was a Hispanic female who was close to twenty years younger than he. She was petite and had a nice smile but spoke the language of her clientele. “The fuck you want with Lil’ Spooky, anyway? He catching another case? Seems like the
longer he’s here, the more cases he picks up. Motherfuckers must be giving his shit up on the streets.”

  Lopes grinned slightly as he appraised her profile, her ponytail dancing side to side as they continued walking through the slate-gray hallway. He could smell a fresh, flowery scent of shampoo, and for a moment he pictured her just out of the shower.

  “Where’re you from, anyway?”

  She stopped and looked him in the eye. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean, where am I from? As in, where am I from, where am I from? Or just, where am I from?”

  He chuckled. “You know what I mean.”

  “I grew up in The Avenues, you know—”

  “Yes, I’m very familiar with The Avenues.”

  “I’m first generation. My parents are from Nicaragua, and they’re here illegal as fuck, I guess, but I’m not sure ‘cause they made a few anchor babies, yours truly included. Didn’t Obama make that shit legal?”

  Lopes just shrugged.

  “Well, anyway, that’s my story. I lived in a little apartment with my parents, six siblings, and every so often various aunts and uncles and cousins and shit. So, yes, to answer your question, I’m from the hood. No, I didn’t bang. Yes, I have kids—two—and no, I can’t make tamales, so don’t be picturing this little muchacha naked in your kitchen. I’m single but I also don’t need no goddamn man, especially if you’re married.”

  He smiled, thinking he hadn’t thought of her naked in the kitchen, only the bathroom. Though, since she suggested it, he went ahead and conjured that image as well.

  “You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you?”

  “And don’t ever call me little.”