Hard-Boiled- Box Set

by Danny R. Smith

  By afternoon I was sipping iced tea and reviewing the case file on Jane Doe, looking at crime scene photos again and reviewing my notes while glancing up at the sound of any vehicle. The review gave me something to do and helped take my mind off of the situation at hand. The truth is, if it weren’t for the potential stalker or surveillance or whatever it was I had going on, I likely would have spent my Saturday in the office alongside other detectives who were without spouses and those who had spouses they couldn’t stand.

  A light rain began falling in the early evening and forced my retreat inside. By nine I was asleep on the couch, and at four in the morning, wide awake. By dinner time Sunday evening I was exhausted and was again questioning whether there actually was a threat or concern. I had diligently watched the street and surrounding area for the entire weekend and hadn’t seen anything suspicious. I hadn’t slept well in the process, and my sleeping pattern was now a mess.

  I went to bed early with the intent of being at the office by six or seven Monday morning to get a jump on what would be a very busy week.

  My plans were disrupted when I found myself wide awake again at midnight, having slept only a couple of hours. I had managed to convince myself there was one suspicious noise outside after another. I got up and checked the street from the balcony half a dozen times. The last time I remember looking at the clock, it was nearly five. And finally, I drifted off to sleep.

  16

  AGAIN, I SLEPT until nearly eleven but this time it was a weekday, a regular day at the office. A day I should have been at it for at least four hours by now. I jumped out of bed and started the coffee without even thinking about checking the street. As I prepared to shower and shave, I started running through my mind all that was planned for the day, and it occurred to me I had missed my appointment with the shrink.

  Shit!

  Well, another week wouldn’t kill me. I needed from her a full release, as described by my captain during his pleasant little welcome back speech. It wasn’t good enough for him that she had released me to return to work, he wanted her to specifically state in writing that I could return to field duty and be back in the rotation for murders.

  I pictured her with her new hairdo and softened demeanor, even showing a smile for the first time in the last few sessions. The truth is, I now enjoyed meeting with her. Katherine James, M.D.—Doc J., Doctor James, Big Red. Or simply, the shrink. Big Red only lasted for a few months before she returned to blonde, which I found more attractive but less seductive.

  I had seen her off and on over the years, the first being a mandatory shrink appointment following my involvement in a shooting. I viewed it—her—as a complete waste of my time, and I only answered what I thought she wanted to hear, assuming it would all be reported back to the department. Later, there was an incident in which I lost my temper with a commander at a crime scene. It was apparently inappropriate for me to explain to the commander just how anatomically incorrect was his positioning at the time. In other words, I told the ranking officer he had his head up his ass, in front of other supervisors and peers. That had set me up for serious discipline, and it was suggested that I use the semi-legitimate excuse of being stressed in a high-pressure environment to lessen the blow. So it was back to see the lovely Doc J., though at that time she did not seem so lovely.

  After being shot, my sessions were ramped up, and somehow I began feeling differently about her. Now I looked forward to my appointments and our time together seemed to pass quickly. Too quickly. Maybe going through another divorce played a part in that, or maybe it was just my need for female companionship, which I certainly lacked. Previously, I had always considered her the enemy, my foe, or in the best-case scenario, an unnecessary evil. When she changed from red back to blonde, I began calling her Blondezilla, but only behind her back of course. There had been no warmth between us then, but now it seemed different; something had changed. Which left me even more conflicted.

  After showering, I poured a cup for the road. Coat and hat in hand, I cautiously made my way to the county car. Before keying it open, I inspected it for damage or signs of foul play. I wondered if I should look underneath, but I didn’t want to get on my hands and knees in a suit.

  I pulled from the curb and drove up the street to where the car had been parked a few evenings before, scanning each parked car I passed. Nothing looked suspicious, but I was now determined to know which cars belonged in the neighborhood and which did not. A couple more days of paying attention, and anything that didn’t belong would stand out to me immediately. I drove around the block twice before departing the area, and then I employed counter-surveillance tactics all the way to the freeway and for the remainder of my drive to the office.

  During the midday commute, I called to reschedule with Doc J., but only reached a voicemail. I left a message apologizing for missing my appointment, and lied that I had been out all night on a case.

  Ray was waiting when I walked through the back door. “Hey partner, d’you have court this morning?”

  “No. It’s a long story, but I didn’t sleep last night. I must have fallen asleep just before dawn and slept solid once I did. Sorry, man, I hope I didn’t keep you from anything.”

  “Not at all, partner. I just walked in myself. I had to handle an evidence hearing in Compton. I guess my old partner was scheduled to appear, but he didn’t show. They called me last minute.”

  I sat down and pulled my hat off. “What’s the deal with him, anyway?”

  “Lewandowski?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s just done, partner. I think he only had another year or so before retirement anyway, so when they came down on him for that deuce, he went off on stress and filed for retirement. Now he won’t come in for hearings or anything, says it raises his blood pressure.”

  “What happened on the deuce?”

  “It’s not resolved yet, but I hear they’re going to plea him to a wet reckless and hit him with some heavy fines. Department can’t really do much if he isn’t coming back anyway.”

  “That’s too bad; he’s a good guy. I mean, I don’t think I could work with him, but I’ve always respected him.”

  Ray presented me with that friendly smile and said, “Well, partner, the way I see it, I’ve traded up.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It seemed Ray was hinting he would be interested in permanently hooking up as partners. The thought of it made me smile.

  My smile faded when Davey Lopes came through the back door and announced, “Cortez, Jones, don’t go anywhere. I need to talk to you both. Let me hit the head and grab a cup, and I’ll be right back.” He was now pointing a finger at us to make his point as he passed by. “Right back.”

  Ray and I looked at each other and both of us shrugged.

  Ray then chuckled and said, “I guess Lopes needs to talk to us, partner.”

  Lopes sat near Ray’s desk and I leaned against an unoccupied one nearby. Ray had turned his chair around to face each of us.

  Lopes said, “I need to know everything you’ve got going on with that murder up in the valley, the dead bitch.” He was snapping his fingers as if trying to remember a name.

  “Jane Doe,” I said, smiling smugly.

  “Right. Fuck you, Jones, you smartass.”

  Ray began filling him in with the details of our case. He told him about the crime scene in the industrial area of Santa Clarita. He explained how she had been discovered and by whom. He told Lopes about the missing person report and how the two cases are linked by the vehicle. Ray described how the victim’s head and her hands had been cut off and were yet to be recovered. Then he nodded to me and said, “And Dickie figured out she couldn’t have driven herself to the crime scene, though it was clearly staged to appear she had.”

  Lopes looked at me. “How’d you figure that, seat position?”

  I nodded. Then I picked up where Ray had left off. “Interesting thing on this one, Lopes, is the husband of the missing person. This guy says he
knows we consider him a suspect in his wife’s death, even though we haven’t positively identified her. Says he has retained a lawyer who advised him not to speak with us.”

  “But he did.”

  “Exactly. It seemed rehearsed though, to be honest. I also thought it strange he remembered our names without having been provided with cards. The whole thing seems strange.”

  “Then,” Ray said, “we’re leaving, and two suits show up.”

  “Feds?”

  “That’s what we don’t know. They looked like feds, and their car looked like something a fed would drive, but the plates come back with no record on file.”

  I pulled my notebook out and jotted a reminder to follow up on the license number of that car.

  Lopes sat silent for a minute, his eyes fixed on something past Ray, probably just the wall. He appeared to be thinking.

  I said, “Why are you asking about it, anyway? This have something to do with the mob?”

  Lopes drained his coffee and then sucked in a mouthful of air, filling his cheeks. He blew out a prolonged, exaggerated breath and then looked from me to Ray and back. “There’s some bizarre shit going on with the Mexican mafia, brother. So who knows?”

  Lopes told us about his visit with Spooky from Big Hazard, and how Spooky described that the Eme was not only ramping up their extortion game, but they were moving into the business communities, leaning on legitimate business owners for protection money. He explained what we already knew, that to sell protection, there needed to be fear, so the mob was on a terror spree. He said they were raping, robbing, and pillaging, though I didn’t think he meant it in the literal sense.

  “What are they moving in on?” I asked.

  “He didn’t say. He’s holding back on me, which also has me puzzled. I own that little bastard. He’s a snitch. He’s a walking dead man if I don’t protect him. Sooner or later, he’ll testify to keep from being part of the RICO. You’d think I’d be the last person he’d start lying to.”

  “You think he knows something about our case? Ray asked.

  Lopes hesitated a moment. “I just didn’t like his reaction. I asked him about it on the fly. I was literally walking out of the room and it hit me, I don’t know why. It popped into my head, so I just blurted out, ‘Hey, what do you know about a bitch getting her head cut off?’ He said he didn’t know anything about it. But he blinked when I asked him, and he looked away when he answered.

  “I should have gone at him on it, but I let it go. I was on my way out and the interview hadn’t gone well anyway. I about choked him out at one point, lost my temper in there and was about to throttle him. It wasn’t good.”

  He pulled the pen from behind his ear and started tapping it on the desk. “The main thing is, he says they’re farming out work.”

  “Farming out? . . . Who’s farming out to whom?”

  “Mexican mafia’s farming out some of their work. But he wouldn’t say to whom. He claimed he didn’t know, but said he’ll find out. I mean, it’s got to be the brand, they’re the only ones who get along with Eme.”

  “What would be in it for the Aryan Brotherhood?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, man . . . maybe it’s just a business deal. Who else would work for the Mexican mafia? I mean, other than all the cholos on the street, but I didn’t get the impression that’s what he meant.”

  Ray said, “What about other mafia? Like Italian?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. I can’t see it,” Lopes said. “But what the fuck do I know?”

  A few moments of silence told me we’d covered the topic at hand. I said, “Hey, Lopes, speaking of the mob, do you know if a dude named Jorge Regalado is hooked up?”

  Lopes squinted and said, “That’s the dude you killed.”

  I nodded, wondering how he knew, or why he remembered.

  “What the hell does he have to do with anything? Why are you digging up old shit?”

  “Just asking. I just kind of wanted to know. I also wouldn’t mind finding out about his nephew, Gilbert. They were both involved in that tranny murder Floyd and I handled last year. I was just curious as to whether either of them had any juice with Eme.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lopes said, letting me know he didn’t believe me.

  “Look,” I pleaded, “I never heard much about those two. I guess maybe I didn’t care, or just didn’t want to know. Now that I’m back on the job, I’m just curious.”

  Lopes looked at me without responding. His stare had me squirming inside, but I tried not to let it show. I wouldn’t want to be interrogated by him; it seemed he could see right through me. I wondered if I had that effect on others, and briefly considered the times I’d been told I do.

  I broke the silence. “I don’t know what either of them are called, to be honest, or what gangs they were from. I know they both lived in East L.A.,” I said, nodding the direction of the city. “That’s about all I know.”

  “Yeah, Dickie, I know where they fucking lived. I spent two days in that shithole house helping process the shooting scene. Shit, me and Lee and what’s his face—cornbread over there—on Team Two—”

  “Blankenship?”

  “Yeah, cornbread . . . Lee wrote the paper on the place and the three of us oversaw the crime scene investigation. They sucked me in primarily for that purpose, to see if those little assholes were mobbed up. I went through everything in the pad: photographs, letters from the pen, clothing—you name it.”

  I was shaking my head. “I didn’t know anything about that. I’m sorry, man, I didn’t realize—”

  “Their names were Spider and Shady. Both were from White Fence. Spider’s the one you killed, Jorge. Shady, Gilbert Regalado, is up in Tehachapi now doing life without. What else do you want to know?”

  Lopes had a flawless memory when it came to the gangsters.

  “Do either of them have juice?” I asked.

  “The short answer is no, neither were mobbed up. Having said that, White Fence puts in a lot of work for the mob, so they could have been considered associates. I would say they were at least in good standing, neither of them came up on the lista. What’s this all about, Dickie? And don’t tell me you’re just curious. I might be stupid, but I’m not crackhead stupid.”

  I looked away, deep in thought for a moment. I decided it would be good to tell a few people. Floyd knew, my partner and Lopes should know too. Especially Lopes; if anyone would hear something about it from the streets or prisons, it would be Lopes. “It’s probably nothing, but I thought someone might have been watching me the other night. There was a car up the street from my place. When another car came around the corner and its headlights hit it, I saw a guy sitting there in the dark. I was out on the balcony.”

  “Ah, that’s why you haven’t been sleeping, huh, partner?”

  I nodded to answer Ray, and then looked at Lopes to see what he thought. “Well?”

  “Aren’t you going through a divorce?”

  I chuckled. “Same thing Floyd thought, a P.I.”

  “Well, it’s one of the first things you think of when you’ve been through a couple of them, like me and your girlfriend, Floyd.”

  “Val’s got nothing to gain by having me tailed,” I told him. “That’s not what this is, if it’s anything at all. I’m certain of it.”

  Ray said, “Maybe just some dude making a call, or waiting for someone to show up.”

  “That’s what I had hoped. But when I went out, he was gone.”

  Lopes said, “So how do you know he’d been watching? How do you know he hadn’t just got in the car when you saw him?”

  “I’d been sitting out on the balcony looking up the street for fifteen, twenty minutes, just kind of enjoying a beer and the scenery. He had to have been sitting there the whole time. Plus, I picked up a couple cigarette butts where the guy had parked, which tells me he was there for a little while, smoking. Also, those cigarettes were non-filtered.”

  Lopes looked at Ray. They both then
looked at me. Everyone seemed to be on the same page. None of us liked that the cigarettes were non-filtered. Everyone silently confirmed that I wasn’t being paranoid. Only assholes smoked non-filtered cigarettes.

  I had ignored three phone calls during our meeting, none of which were from Valerie. One was from the shrink’s office, a secretary telling me I’ve been rescheduled for Wednesday morning as the good doctor would be out of town Thursday and Friday. It was the only slot they had open until the following week. The message said I only needed to call back if that didn’t work for me. Sure, I thought, I’d make it work. I needed the clearance for full duty.

  The next message was from county counsel letting me know they intended to represent me in a case filed against the sheriff’s department for the wrongful death of Jorge Regalado. Me and Floyd were named as defendants. I rolled my eyes at the news and shook my head. I should have seen it coming, but I hadn’t. Nearly every instance of deadly force by a cop results in civil action. There were attorneys who specialized in suing law enforcement and who were elated every time we dumped someone. It had been just over a year since my shooting, so they most likely filed the case just within the one-year statute of limitations. I would have expected to find out another way, and before being blindsided by county counsel.

  The third call had been a hang up, but the person didn’t disconnect in time to avoid leaving a messageless voicemail. The number was private, so I had no idea where the call had originated. In this business, lots of calls were private, and I didn’t give it a second thought. If it were important, they would have left a message. Or they would call back.

  After I finished checking messages, I tried calling Val. The call went straight to voicemail. I glanced at my watch, but it held no answers to the questions in my head, such as why was she so intensely avoiding me, and what did I do to deserve excommunication? I had no way to explain or understand her behavior lately.