So, when Lopez with a Z had escorted Davey Lopes—whose family had apparently changed the spelling of their name to deny their race, according to Z—out of the prison, she asked where he was staying, and if he planned on getting a drink later. He smiled his cocky smile, just a hint of one corner of his mouth turning up and the corresponding eye squinting while the other seemed to sparkle. He had practiced it and knew how it looked in the mirror. The two were facing each other, standing near the gun lockers outside of security at the notorious Pelican Bay prison. Lopes had finished holstering his pistol while looking into her mischievous brown eyes. He snapped his holster closed and pulled a pen from behind his ear and steadied it over the palm of his left hand.
He had said, “You want to give me your number?”
Lopes waited while she looked around the small, enclosed concrete room with walls of lockers and a bank of reinforced, bulletproof mirrored windows that sat above their heads. He figured they were being watched and were probably the topic of conversation on the other side of the glass. He also knew she would realize it too. But the gate was opening to the free world and he was about to disappear. She would have no business-related reason to follow him beyond the sally port, and he knew it. It was now or never.
She had glanced up at the mirrored windows and back to Lopes. “Okay, tell me where you’re staying, I don’t want you writing something down. They’ll know what that means in there.”
He stuck the pen back behind his ear with a precise, practiced motion. “Best Western, up the highway. I don’t stay local, where all the assholes’ baby mamas stay while they’re here smuggling drugs into your prison.”
“Ah, Brookings,” she had said with a nod, “up in Oregon. Good choice.”
He turned toward the opened gate as others were coming in from outside. Before he broke eye contact, he said, “Well, you know where to find me. I’m sure I’ll be at the hotel’s bar most of the evening.”
Now he was driving his rental car south to Del Norte where he would be picked up by a private plane and flown back to Long Beach, all on the county dime and time. An old radio car partner was one of the pilots assigned to the sheriff’s fixed-wing plane at the Aero Bureau, and he was more than happy to fly homicide guys around for their various investigative needs. But only if the sheriff didn’t have something else scheduled for his plane. The drive and coastal scenery did little to remove his thoughts of Officer Lopez with a Z.
He thought about her one last time as he pulled into the rental return lane of the quaint coastal airport, and then his mind went back to the business at hand. He had mafia members making moves that would likely impact his county—and already had. He thought about the double murder in El Monte and how Spooky seemed to want to dismiss the notion that it was a mafia hit. There had been another murder in Long Beach he had meant to bring up, and forgot. He would ask him about it on the next visit.
But what bothered him most was when—off the cuff and out of the blue—Lopes had asked him, “What do you know about a bitch losing her head and hands?” and Spooky blinked. It was similar to playing poker, and Lopes was a better player than most. Spooky had lied to him when he said he didn’t know anything about it; Lopes was certain of it.
What did it mean? He didn’t know. Maybe Spooky had heard about it, or maybe it was in fact related to mafia work and Spooky withheld that information too, for some reason. He made a mental note to get with Ray and Dickie back at the bureau to talk with them about their case, just in the unlikely event it too was mob related.
Lopes regretted not pressing Spooky more about these cases. But he didn’t want to get off in the weeds, either. The double murder in El Monte was what he primarily wanted to ask about. That was a case which had the markings of a mob hit, but nobody had been able to say for certain that it was. Lopes hadn’t picked up anything on the wire, and none of his informants had revealed any information to indicate it was. The victims—two Mexican gang members from El Monte Flores—weren’t known to have a green light on them, a term used by Mexican gang members to describe someone who had made the hit list. La lista.
Lopes had talked to investigators from his previous assignment at Prison Gangs, an LASD Detective Division specialized unit, as well as his own department’s OSJ—Operations Safe Jails, and OSS—Operations Safe Streets. He had spoken with a contact at LAPD’s CRASH—Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, who usually had good information on the mafia, as well as a couple of his other informants. Nobody knew of the gangsters from El Monte being on the list, or those murders being mob related.
Their gang, El Monte Flores, wasn’t on the list either. Lopes had checked. He was well aware that the two gang members could have been killed just for their gang affiliation, if others in that gang had violated any of the Eme rules. But as far as he could tell, EMF was in good standing with the mafia.
His next option would be his best informant, Spooky, but Spooky said he didn’t know. Lopes still felt the gangster was holding something back. Lopes had the feeling a lot of shit was going on that nobody was talking about, and it was starting to piss him off.
He stopped the rental in a vehicle return line and grabbed his overnight bag from the back seat. An attendant came toward him, a Hispanic man with tattoos showing on his hands and neck from beneath his long-sleeved shirt.
The attendant said, “Returning the car, sir?”
Lopes smiled widely. “Yeah, homes, just came from the joint. What about you?”
The attendant broke a big smile and accepted the ten-dollar bill Lopes offered. “Nah, man,” he said, still grinning, “I don’t fuck around no more, ese.”
Leonard circled the block once, saw the numbers on the front of the house and double-checked the letter he had received with the name, address, and a photograph of his next job.
That’s what he called them, jobs. The fun of it had left once it became work. It became work when Moses began pushing him around, talking down to him and stressing him with schedules and deadlines, this pockmarked Marty Feldman-looking asshole who seemed to take pleasure in breathing down Leonard’s neck. He couldn’t think about it without seeing himself drive a screwdriver into the man’s throat. Someday.
He glanced from the letter to the house, twice, idling out front and wanting to get away from there before drawing attention. The numbers were a match, but the plaque on the wall had a last name of Lewis; he was looking for Jones. He wondered if the idiot Moses got it wrong, sent him to the wrong place.
He decided he would watch from down the street for a while to see who came and went. He glanced at the time displayed on the radio and thought he’d give it a couple of hours. It was nearly five, the time of night people would start coming home from work.
The house was on a corner. It fronted Sixth Street, but the detached garage and driveway were around the corner on University, close to Bel Aire Drive. Leonard figured that anyone coming or going would park in the garage or driveway, so he parked up the street where he could easily see the garage.
This was better than sitting in front of the house. He was already nervous enough about the job being a cop. How was he going to do it? He didn’t know. Maybe run him down in the street, hit and run. He thought the way to do it with this job would be from a distance. But Leonard had no clue how that could work. He didn’t know explosives and he didn’t know how to shoot a gun. He had never shot one in his life.
Leonard knew how to choke the life out of people. The key was you never let go too soon. You stayed with it while they flailed and flopped and grabbed at your arms and stared into your eyes with fear and hate and disbelief. You waited until they were limp and no longer twitching and then you waited just a little while longer to be certain. He had experienced one girl coming back to life. That was when he was young and inexperienced, and he had to kill the bitch twice. Leonard also knew how to cut them and drain their lifeblood while watching their skin turn blue and their eyes a dull gray. But he didn’t see being able to do any of these things
to this cop. Cops had guns, for Christ’s sake, and he wasn’t looking to get killed trying to kill someone.
Thinking of young girls, he again thought of his lighter. He hadn’t found it in the car, and he kept thinking he somehow left it at the Asian girl’s home. He tried to not think about it.
Nearly two hours later, a sedan pulled to the curb and parked near the driveway. Leonard didn’t know why the man wouldn’t pull into the garage. Maybe it wasn’t the resident. But it was a cop car, the detective type, there was no doubt about that. Leonard sat up and shifted in his seat as he felt his adrenaline rush through him and his heart start to pound in his chest. The man who stepped out of the car was dressed in slacks and a shirt and tie, and he was wearing a hat. Leonard was too far away to see if the man wore a gun, but he knew this was him, there was no doubt. This was the job.
The cop walked through a gate into the backyard. Leonard frowned through the windshield. He continued to watch beyond the garage, looking toward the house and waiting to see lights come on as darkness settled over the city. But as he did, he was surprised to see lights go on over the garage. He hadn’t even noticed, but now he saw the apartment. A few minutes later the cop walked out and stood on the balcony over the garage, looking beyond him toward the mountains while sipping a can of beer.
Leonard smiled. This fucking loser cop lives on top of a garage. Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard of a job after all. He began to light a cigarette but thought better of it while the man was standing there staring off in his general direction. Instead, he carefully slouched lower into his seat to make himself invisible.
I was still getting used to my apartment in Burbank where the streets were congested and confusing and there was no easy access to the freeways. The cops here said it was great because gangsters would come up from the hood—South Los Angeles—to pull some robberies or burglaries or just generally terrorize the working class, and then they’d get lost at least half the time trying to get back to the freeway. The crime rate was low compared to the rest of the San Fernando Valley.
Burbank seemed to be a safe little community and it wasn’t far from downtown Los Angeles, the hub of all our activity. Also, there was an In-N-Out between my new apartment and the onramp to the southbound Golden State.
There may have been a lesser motivation to live proximate to Santa Clarita. I held onto a sliver of hope that there was still a chance of reconciling with Valerie, so I didn’t want to be too far from her. Though I also didn’t want to be too close; I might be tempted to check to make sure she was safe. And alone. She had bought a townhouse after we sold our home and divided up the money. The divorce wasn’t final yet, but we had both acted as reasonable adults thus far through the process.
Thinking of Val only darkened my already bleak mood, so I pulled a cold beer out of the fridge and walked out onto the balcony that offered a beautiful view of the Verdugo mountains to the east. Lights twinkled throughout the foothills as the sun set to the west, casting long shadows over the valley. It was a view most would enjoy, but truthfully, I couldn’t have cared less. It was a lonely goddamned place and it didn’t feel like home.
A steady flow of traffic went across Bel Aire Drive, which was a short distance east of my new apartment. There was less traffic directly below me on University Avenue, though at this time of evening residents were coming home from their jobs and from school.
I stood leaning on the rail, feeling sorry for myself while at the same time trying to appreciate having a nice apartment that wasn’t in a complex full of other people. I couldn’t have afforded anything nice while going through a divorce. It was a mother-in-law type apartment, a one bedroom, one bath job built on top of a detached garage at the rear of a three-thousand square foot home. The homeowners—my landlords—were a pair of retired sergeants from the department who married and bought the place on two cops’ salaries when Burbank was affordable to the working class. They were friends of mine from many years prior, and when a mutual friend who knew of the apartment had learned of my predicament, he suggested I give them a call. Chuck and Patti were more than happy to have me take the vacant apartment as long as I was able to make friends with their bulldog, Elvis. The backyard was his turf, and the path to my doorstep lay therein. It was a deal. I loved dogs, and four hundred a month was a steal. I promised to keep an eye on the place while they traveled, which they often did, the three of them together.
I turned the can up and drained the final contents of my beer. As I started for the fridge, a car turned onto University from Bel Aire Drive, its headlights washing across a line of parked cars to the east of where I stood. My attention was drawn to the silhouette of a man sitting alone in one of the cars. I stopped and watched, but the lights were now gone and it appeared as just another sedan parked along a row of others on the side of a busy street.
I turned the empty can up to my mouth so it would be obvious to anyone watching that I had finished my beer. My thought was that it would give me time to get downstairs and out onto the street while someone might believe I had only gone to the fridge. I walked inside. Once I was beyond the view from the street, I hurried into the bedroom, grabbed my gun and a flashlight, and went out the door and down the steps into the backyard.
Once I had exited the backyard through the gate and came out next to my county car, I paused for a moment to look up the street and see if I could identify which vehicle it was that had drawn my attention. I couldn’t tell from the street level and hadn’t thought to get a count of parked cars before leaving the balcony. It seemed to me the car in question had been about five or six cars from the corner.
I briefly debated walking up to the man in his car, or driving my own car to him. But this internal conflict only lasted a brief moment before I followed my first instinct. I slid into my car and peeled away from the curb.
I turned my headlights on, hit the high beams, and veered toward the opposite side of the road where the man had sat in one of a line of parked cars. There was an empty spot, and right away I knew that was where the car had been. Stopped in the middle of the street, I visually checked each of the other cars to be certain. There were no occupants and nothing about the other cars that seemed suspicious.
It was probably just somebody leaving, I told myself. I was being paranoid, the way I always had. The way most cops are. I began to turn around and head back to my apartment, but then I stopped. I threw the car in park and left it running with the door open and headlights shining high as I stepped out and picked up two cigarette butts from the pavement where the car had sat.
Just because I was paranoid didn’t mean I was wrong.
Back in my apartment, I made a note on an envelope of the date, time, and a few details of what I had observed, and placed the two cigarette butts inside. They were Camel or Pall Malls, some type of non-filtered cigarette, the type preferred by convicts. There probably weren’t many Burbank residents who smoked non-filtered cigarettes.
I went back onto the porch with two beers in hand and a Glock in my waistband to sit in the darkness and watch the street. Traffic was light and activity was sparse. My mind wandered back to Val and I thought of calling her but fought against the urge. I thought of calling Floyd, but I wasn’t sure I was speaking to him. He seemed to be pissing me off, though I didn’t know why.
My cell vibrated on the small table that stood next to my patio chair. It was Floyd.
“What’s up, asshole?”
“I was wondering why you’re pissing me off,” he said, “thought I’d go right to the source.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same.”
“You’re pissing yourself off?”
I chuckled. “Actually, yeah, I am. What are you doing?”
“On my way into the office. Me and Mongo have barrel duty tonight, thought I’d call and see what the hell you’ve been up to. How’s that case, the hot broad with no head?”
“How do you know she’s hot?”
“I saw the pictures, remember? You had t
hem spread out there on Ray’s desk.”
“Okay, but she didn’t have a head.”
“Never mind, Dickie, you’re already back to taking this shit serious.”
I was staring at the street where a space between two cars still sat empty, wondering if there was anything to it. The cigarettes concerned me; they were a sure sign of trouble in my opinion. Nobody sat smoking cigarettes in a car in a place like that unless they were watching someone, or waiting for someone. And not many smoked non-filters, period. I thought I’d run it by my partner—my ex-partner—and see what he thought. I had nobody else to tell; even Elvis the bulldog was gone with Chuck and Patti.
When I finished telling him the story, Floyd said, “That ain’t good, Dickie.”
“You think?”
“I don’t like the cigarettes.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“Chuck around, or are they out of town?”
“Gone to Havasu, Patti and Elvis too.”
He made a hmmm sound. I waited while he was likely thinking it through. He was good at this type of thing, and he would have a plan. Floyd always needed a plan.
“How about if I have Mongo man the phones, and I’ll come out there and drink your beer. That way, if you have to kill someone, you’ll have a witness, and someone there to hold your beer for you.”
“That’s your plan?”
“It’s a start. Seriously though, it’s not a bad idea. I can respond from your place in Burbank if anything jumps off. Mongo can handle the phones—he always falls asleep at the desk anyway and it pisses me off. The bastard falls asleep during the middle of a sentence. He’ll be telling you about something and all of a sudden, I’m like, ‘Hey, man, you’re snoring.’ I could come keep you company and Mongo can sleep on the desk and answer calls.”
“You’re welcome to come out for a visit if you’d like, but I don’t think there’s any point. I mostly wanted to see if you have the same concerns that I do. I hate being paranoid, but this seems strange. I mean, the cigarettes, plus the fact the guy split in those few minutes that I was out of his view between the balcony and the street. He probably realized I saw him in the headlights and panicked.”
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 40