Hard-Boiled- Box Set

by Danny R. Smith

  “Have you figured anything out on that?”

  Floyd walked out of the back door. “Well, there you two assholes are.”

  I smiled at my old partner and answered Ray. “No, but I found out yesterday morning I’m being sued over that shooting. I hadn’t given any thought about that being related to someone watching me until driving in this morning. I don’t know though, it’s probably a stretch.”

  “You heard the good news, huh?” Floyd said, now standing next to us by the two Crown Vics that sat ticking and hissing from under their hoods. “Did they serve you at home?”

  “No, were you served?”

  “Yep. There was a subpoena for a deposition in my mailbox here at the office. That’s as good as served, since some dumbass at the desk obviously accepted it. I thought I told you about it.”

  I frowned. “No, you didn’t. This is the first I’ve heard of anything. County Counsel called to let me know they’ll be representing us, so we have that going for us. A free legal team, the best of the best, probably led by Darden and Clark.”

  “So, you think that has something to do with someone watching you, you say?” Ray asked.

  “What, your stalker?” Floyd asked.

  “I don’t know, to be honest. But it did cross my mind. Maybe the plaintiff’s attorney has hired a PI to watch me, see what kind of dirt he can pick up.”

  Floyd was shaking his head. “That doesn’t make sense for two reasons: the non-filtered cigarettes, and anyone who knows you, knows you’re the most boring person on earth. They aren’t going to waste time watching you.”

  “There could be some crusty old asshole PI who works for sleazy lawyers downtown and smokes Camel non-filtereds.”

  Floyd rolled his eyes at me. Ray said, “I could see it, partner.”

  “I don’t know, you guys, but it’s bothering me a lot. He was out there again last night.”

  “You saw him?” Floyd asked.

  “No,” I said, and then I reached into my briefcase and pulled out an envelope. “I picked up more butts this morning. I didn’t see anyone out there when I got home last night—rather, this morning—but I might have missed him too, I don’t know.”

  “It’s time to report it, buddy. You need to let the captain know and give Burbank a heads up.”

  I knew Floyd was right, but I was reluctant to cry wolf. It could still be a strange coincidence; I had no solid proof that anyone was watching me. It also made no sense to me as there really was no motive that matched up.

  Ray said, “You asked Lopes about Eme. Do you think someone put a hit on you?”

  I dismissed the thought of it. “No, Ray, I don’t think so. I don’t think Eme would be sloppy about it. It would just happen, no reason to sit and watch. Besides, Lopes said those guys—Jorge and Gilbert Regalado—aren’t connected with the mob.”

  Floyd was shaking his head as I finished the sentence. He spat tobacco onto the asphalt. “No, that’s not what Lopes told you. He said he didn’t have information that they were connected to the mob, but he also said that White Fence puts in a lot of work for Eme, so they could be in good graces, maybe associates.”

  Floyd was right, and I knew it but didn’t want to admit it.

  We all stood silent under the midday sun as two secretaries exited the building for their lunchtime walk.

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled, don’t worry about me.”

  Floyd turned to walk inside while saying, “You watch your ass, Dickie.”

  Just then Mongo walked out, the door nearly catching Floyd as he reached for it. Mongo nodded, sign language that Floyd clearly interpreted to mean what’s up.

  “Just finished talking about Dickie’s love life, what’s going on?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, then let’s get crackin’,” Floyd said to Mongo. Then he turned to us. “About seven, eight tonight, you think?”

  “Yeah, sounds good, partner,” Ray answered. “We’ll meet you back here. Hopefully we’ll have some direction on this thing.”

  As I walked into the bureau I made my decision. Ray and I planned to check in at the crime lab to confirm the DNA results on the Santa Clarita case. I would submit the butts under that case number and take my chances. There was too much risk now, and for some reason the talk about Eme had me nervous. Old man or not, I wasn’t ready to die.

  The squad room is an expansive open floor covered by stained blue carpet and bathed in fluorescent lighting. It holds six columns of metal office desks. Each column comprises thirteen desks, two rows of six butted against each other and side by side, capped by one desk that sits perpendicular to all the others at the end. Those are the lieutenants’ desks. Their job is to support the investigators assigned to their teams. Most actually try to do that. Sometimes a new one will think his job is to lead an investigation. That thought never lasts long, even in the thickest of skulls. Team Five was led by Lt. Joe Black, arguably the nicest man ever hired by the sheriff’s department, and certainly the nicest one to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

  As we walked in, Joe asked if I had a minute. He was sitting at his desk with mounds of typed investigative reports he was presumably reading for approval. The job of a lieutenant at Homicide is one that requires an enthusiastic reader. I pulled an empty chair next to his desk.

  “What’s up, Joe?”

  In his soft-spoken manner he said, “Well, I wanted to welcome you to my team, for one.”

  I smiled. “Oh? Am I officially here now?”

  “Well, not officially, but we have an opening coming up,” he said, and nodded toward the unoccupied desk across from Ray’s. “There’s no reason you can’t have it, if you don’t mind working for an old stickler like me.” He lifted a stack of papers. “I’m a little tough on the reports. I love reading to the point it’s almost a sickness that makes me want to devour every word on a page.”

  “Joe, I would be honored to work for you.”

  “Ray says he would really like to team up with you on a permanent basis. He said you’re great to work with, and a good investigator. I don’t know if you want to partner with Ray and work for me, or if you’re set on going back to Two with your old partner.”

  “You know, Joe, I think I’d like to work with Ray, and for you. It seems like a good change of pace for me and to be honest, I’m having a good time with Ray. The guy’s one of the nicest guys in the bureau, easy to work with.”

  I almost compared Ray to Joe Black when I mentioned how nice he was, but that seemed it would be over the top, dangerously close to the category of sucking ass. It was true, but to say it didn’t seem appropriate. I hadn’t considered a change, but something told me when Joe asked that this could be just what I needed. Plus, I was a little desperate, to be honest.

  “Good, Richard, I had hoped you would be interested. Listen, I spoke with Lewandowski earlier, and he has no intention of coming back. We all knew that would be the case. So, I told him I’d like to have him clean out his desk so we can fill his spot. He said he’d do it one night this week, or this weekend at the latest. As soon as you notice it’s empty, why don’t you go ahead and move in there.”

  “Do we have the boss’s approval?”

  Joe’s wide smile and soft, warm eyes were comforting and welcoming. He was like the bureau’s designated grandfather and it wouldn’t have felt any different if there were warm cookies and milk served during our meeting. “You let me worry about Captain Stover,” he said. “He’s so easy to get along with, he’ll be fine with it.”

  Easy to get along with. Captain Stover. I almost choked when he said it, but quickly realized this was exactly why I needed to work for Lt. Joe Black. He had the ability to get along with anyone. That would be a nice balance to my dickheadedness.

  I walked away feeling welcomed and grateful and as if my luck had changed. This could be the new me. I had a fresh start coming my way and I needed to let the two nice guys, Joe and Ray, rub off on me so I could stop being so eager to fight with
my peers and supervisors. His last words really resonated with me, and it drove home the fact that Joe was the type of guy who got along with everyone. If he thinks Stover is an easygoing guy, Joe Black could find redemptive qualities in a third-world dictator. I admired that, and at times I was envious of those with that type of personality. We are the way we’re born, for good or bad, better or worse. It wasn’t easy being me.

  I hadn’t made it halfway down the hall for a cup of coffee when the idea of submitting the cigarette butts as evidence came back to me like acid reflux. Thirty seconds hadn’t passed since I was embraced by big, huggable Joe Black and now I had a dilemma. It was a huge risk to submit that evidence to the lab under false pretenses, and now more than ever I worried about the potential consequences. It occurred to me I didn’t want to let Joe down. Not after his warm welcome to his team, and after the nice things he had said to me. It occurred to me this was a mark of a great leader, to have such a rapport with your subordinates that they wouldn’t want to disappoint you.

  I poured a cup and decided I wouldn’t submit the cigarette butts. At least not today. I’d think about it. Which meant I needed to seriously consider reporting the potential problem of the watcher. But to whom? The last thing I wanted to do now was to go back to Joe and let him know he just invited a man to join his team who has all sorts of baggage and drama in his life. No, I needed to keep this quiet for now. I would ask the few who knew about it—Floyd, Ray, and Lopes—to keep a lid on it for now. And hope that they would.

  The four of us once again gathered in the Homicide Bureau conference room late in the evening, nearly eight o’clock. Lt. Joe Black asked if he could join us and listen in on our meeting so that he could come up to speed on our investigation. “Of course you can join us, Joe,” Ray said.

  Ray looked at Floyd and Mongo sitting at the far side of the table in the same seats they had occupied the night before. “Well, how’d you guys do today, partner?”

  Mongo reached into a thick file and began pulling papers out as Floyd gave us a rundown: “So, Lisa Renee Williams, a thirty-four-year-old Caucasian woman who we all now know worked as a high-priced call girl, lived at the Esprit apartments in the Marina paying five grand a month for a room with a view. Single, lived alone, no children, been at the apartment for two years and from what we can tell, she didn’t bring clients to her home. No legal source of income, hasn’t paid taxes in a decade, and she drove a Porsche crossover that she bought new two years ago, paying nearly a hundred-thou cash.”

  “The hell’s a Porsche crossover?” I asked.

  “SUV for rich people, Dickie. Anyway, where was I . . . Oh, yeah, so, Ms. Williams was a mystery to her neighbors so nothing much to gain there. We’ve slapped a seal on the apartment and Mongo started paper this afternoon. Our plan is to get a Mincey warrant signed tomorrow and take the lab out there to process the apartment and the car. Yes, the car is there, parked in its assigned spot. That makes us think Williams left the apartment with the killer, or killers, willingly or otherwise—”

  “Dead or alive,” I said.

  “—which gives us pause at searching the place without the warrant. Just in case her killer had legal standing at her residence, we’re playing it safe. There’s too much we don’t know about her. Maybe she has a roommate and he’s our killer.”

  “Good plan, partner,” Ray said. “Do you have anything else?”

  “That’s it for now I think,” Floyd said.

  I said, “Mongo, did you get a chance to check with your connection over at the FBI?”

  “I put a call in, haven’t heard back.”

  Ray looked at the lieutenant. “He has a cousin who’s a feebie. We’re hoping to find out if the FBI is investigating something that involves Marilynn Chaney, the missing person we thought was our victim until yesterday. When Dickie and I were leaving their home the other day, two suits who looked like feds showed up. We ran their vehicle, no record on the plates. Something is up with that whole deal—that whole family, actually.”

  Joe nodded. Ray turned his attention back to Mongo. “Let us know.”

  He nodded.

  Ray looked to me. “Partner, do you want to brief everyone on the Chaney background stuff? Then I’ll fill everyone in on the ID and lab info.”

  “So, Chaney is an interesting guy in that, according to his tax filings, he’s pulling in a cool mill a year, give or take. We mentioned that million-dollar policy on Mrs. Chaney, and there is a five-million on him. So, given their income, none of that is too strange. Do you have your wife whacked for a year’s salary? I wouldn’t think so, unless the bitch drove you crazy anyway, or maybe you had something better on the side.

  “Interestingly, we can’t find much on her. Originally, we were under the impression she had a daughter from another marriage, but apparently, she had no kids. Ray and I plan to revisit Mr. Chaney once we get some more information on the mystery visitors. We have quite a few follow-up questions for him.

  “I think that’s about it. No criminal history or civil actions on either one. Mr. Chaney is from Indiana, went to school in New York, has a degree in business and appears to be an investor, working as an independent but with a corporate clientele. Oh, it seems maybe the Chaneys met in New York, maybe while dipshit was in college. I think that about covers it. Any questions?”

  Floyd asked, “Any indication this guy’s a gambler?”

  “Interesting question, why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. Seems the type, from what I’m hearing, what I’m seeing, maybe just a picture I’m getting of the guy and concerns I have about the two idiots in suits. If they aren’t feds, I still like the idea of mafiosos.”

  “Well, he has books on gambling in his library, but that’s all we have. Maybe we’ll have to ask him.”

  Ray looked around the room. Everyone seemed content, ready to move on. “Well, the DNA is an absolute, so in that regard we are where we started yesterday morning. There are partial prints that have been lifted from the victim’s car, but nothing that hits a match in the system. At least we have something to compare if we come up with a suspect. There are some fibers and other trace evidence in the car and on the body, so maybe something will come of that. Of course, they’re going through it carefully, looking for a DNA source and analyzing each and every piece of evidence.

  “There’s still no word on Mrs. Chaney or her whereabouts. We’ve checked cell phone records and there hasn’t been any activity since the day she went missing, and nothing interesting on that day. Any questions?”

  Floyd said, “What about a warrant on Chaney?”

  “I don’t think we have enough at this time, to be honest with you, partner. Dickie and I had discussed maybe getting a warrant for his phone records but we don’t think there’s enough there.”

  Lt. Black asked, “Have you asked him for the phone records?”

  Ray and I looked at each other. Ray shook his head. “Not a bad idea, boss. We’ll hit him up. See if he has anything to hide.”

  “That reminds me, do we have a phone for our hooker?” Ray asked, looking across the table at Floyd who was packing Copenhagen in his mouth.

  He shook his head. “Not yet, but we figure we’ll come up with something when we search her pad. Then we can just piggyback the Mincey for a phone warrant, get all the records from that.”

  The room fell silent. I looked up from having jotted a few notes and saw that the lieutenant and Ray were both doing the same. Floyd had his notebook closed and sitting neatly on the table in front of him next to two cups and a can of Copenhagen. Mongo was packing up his files.

  I stood and said, “Well, I guess we all know what we’re doing for the next day or two. Shall we meet again tomorrow night?”

  Floyd was nodding. Ray said, “Yeah, why not, partner.”

  Lt. Black said, “I think it’s a good idea, and I’ll plan on attending. My goal on this is to stay informed so I can keep the captain up to speed and you guys don’t have to worry with it.”r />
  “Thanks, LT,” Ray said.

  As we began filing out of the room, I halted Lt. Black and said, “Hey boss, just so you know, I won’t be at the bureau meeting in the morning.”

  “No problem, Richard. You guys are real busy.”

  I had never worried about keeping lieutenants informed of my schedule, or whether or not I’d miss a meeting. There was something about Joe that made me want to have a better working relationship with him than I had had with other team lieutenants. That would be my responsibility; I would be the one who had to change my approach and practices in dealing with supervisors. I said, “Actually, Joe, I have a mandatory with the shrink.”

  He smiled. “Ah, Doctor James.”

  I nodded.

  “She is such a wonderful lady, and a really great counselor.”

  21

  KATHERINE JAMES LET herself into her apartment and tossed her keys in the direction of the small table by the door. She missed, and the keys clunked onto the carpet. Fine, they could stay there; she’d get them later. She ran her hand wearily through her blonde hair—formerly very big and very “done” looking, but now it curled softly at her shoulders. Her new hair, she called it. Easing first one foot, then the other, out of her work shoes—these high heels were killing her feet—she sighed in relief and curled her toes into the thick, plush carpet. Ah, life’s little luxuries. The shoes, like the keys, could stay where they were for the time being. It was all about unwinding right now.

  A quick survey of the contents of the refrigerator yielded two of her favorite “unwinders” as she thought of them. The chardonnay or the pinot noir, which one would it be? Did she feel like red or white this evening?

  The red won, and she poured a generous amount into one of her new wine glasses, part of a set recently purchased. She opened the French door that led to the balcony and settled herself on one of her new chairs, lightweight metal with a floral cushion. “Here’s to me and to all the new, here’s to the red, the white, and the blue,” she said aloud. She raised the glass and took a long drink, and added, “And fuck you, Steve Silverman.”