In the living room, Maria’s grandmother sat in a straight-backed, wooden chair with a blanket over her lap. Folded tortillas and a serving each of beans and rice steamed from a plate on the TV tray next to her. There were no utensils, because grandma—“Nana”—would fold the tortillas into triangles and scoop the rice and beans. On the wall behind her hung a large Jesus hologram with eyes that glare back at you and a stare that no one can escape.
A proud and strong woman, Nana (who, like her granddaughter, is named Maria Lopez—Maria Guadalupe Lopez Sanchez), wore a thrifty but clean dress with a wooden rosary necklace, although she had no place to be and was in for the evening. She wore her hair pulled tight to the scalp with braids held together by silk ribbons. She was knitting and didn’t seem to notice the sights or sounds of the nearby television as Jeopardy played beneath a shrine of flickering rosary candles: Lady of Guadalupe, Sacred Heart, and Jesus, alongside candles to assure health and prosperity. Maria didn’t know if Nana paid any mind to the program on TV, or if she used it to fill a void, a way to not feel alone in the quiet home.
Maria passed through the living room, saying, “I fucking love that show.”
Her grandmother didn’t like her using that word. “Mija!”
When she returned from the kitchen, having sneaked a shot of Patron to calm her nerves, Maria listened as Alex Trebek announced the next category: “Gangsters.”
“Check it out, Nana, fucking ‘Gangsters’ right now on the show.” She stepped back and lowered herself to the edge of the couch, watching with anticipation. She laughed, and silently played with the theme, imagining Trebek giving the questions: This vato was killed at the county jail after he ratted on La Eme . . . Who was Flaco from Tiny Winos? Or, In order to raise money for a vato’s funeral, the homies gather on a Saturday to do this . . . What is a carwash? She would totally nail the Gangster Jeopardy.
Her grandmother began to speak, looking up from her work and saying “Mija—”
Maria shushed her, holding up a hand while focusing on the TV. “Nana, esperate! (Wait a moment.)”
Trebek read the first question as a graphic displayed it across the screen: “This good-looking gangster was named the Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills.”
“Fuck, that’s easy—”
“Mija, por favor . . .”
The choices were: Who is Machine Gun Kelly? Who is Baby Face Nelson? And who is Pretty Boy Floyd?
Maria jumped up from the couch. “Who is Pretty Boy Floyd!”
The contestant answered, “Who is Pretty Boy Floyd?” and Alex Trebek affirmed it.
Her grandmother smiled and shook her head while Maria danced around the living room, pumping her fist and exclaiming, “Te dije, te dije! (I told you, I told you!)”
Grandma was no fan of this “Yepordy” show. “Mija, I hope dis cho end soon, es me novela come on right now.”
Still giddy, Maria handed her grandmother the remote as she leaned in to kiss her on the forehead. “Adios, Nana, te quiero mucho.”
Her grandmother reached for Maria with frail, shaky hands, arthritic from a lifetime of chores and cooking. “Cuidate, Mija.”
“I’m always careful, Nana,” she said as she stepped away. She blew her a kiss and turned to the door.
Maria stepped outside to wait for Lopes. Davey. She wanted a cigarette, and Nana didn’t allow it in her home. She knew Lopes didn’t smoke and probably wouldn’t allow it in his car. She sat on the front steps and lit a cigarette using a knockoff Zippo with a picture of the Virgin Mary, as if that would lessen her grandmother’s disapproval of the filthy habit. As Maria sucked on the cigarette and filled her lungs with smoke, she looked past the glow of its cherry and silently questioned the identity and purpose of two boys walking toward her. They were the gangster types, each dressed in dark, baggy clothing with hoodies worn over their heads. It was no surprise to her, not in this neighborhood. Not in any neighborhood where she had lived until a few years ago when she settled into the small community of Crescent City, not far from the prison where she worked. There she lived with the father of her children though they seldom slept together. Maria preferred sleeping in the second room of the small rented home with their two children, Rafael and Rosalva, ages three and five. Someday she would leave him. She would take her kids and start over, leaving all of these gangsters and their insane lives behind.
The boys drew nearer.
Maria noticed they were coming toward her, purposefully it seemed.
She had started to say, “What’s up,” but the words were stuck in her mouth as the two boys stopped just feet from where she sat.
Silently, each raised an arm and pointed at her.
She saw the pistols.
Grabbing the banister rail, she tried to stand, her first step to escape the nightmare unfolding before her.
“NO!” she yelled. But the word stuck in her head and hadn’t come out. She would try again. She needed to tell them to stop, that she was not from around here, that she didn’t fuck around, she didn’t bang. “I’m from nowhere!”
It was too late.
Brilliant flashes of light shattered the darkness, bursting from one boy’s hand and then the other’s, like two sets of fireworks dancing in the sky, competing against one another.
Maria fell back. A burning sensation consumed her, but only for a moment. Her pain subsided and she felt nothing at all as she slumped onto the cool, concrete steps.
As darkness closed around her, Maria pictured her two children and then her grandmother, the only ones she truly loved. She saw Nana in the chair where she had left her, and in her mind, Maria saw her grandmother looking up from her work, gazing toward the front door with sadness filling her eyes. She would know what had happened outside; their family was accustomed to premature, violent death.
Maria silently said, Que Dios te cuide (God be with you), and fixed her stare against the darkness that befell her.
Rich Farris was working the phones behind the counter of the front desk. I passed through on my way to the kitchen. “Mr. Farris, what is happening, my friend?”
He lowered a newspaper and smiled at me. “What’s up, Dickie? Working late, I see.”
“Yes sir. And I’m going to brew a fresh pot for the occasion. Can I bring you a cup?”
“Sounds good, man. Black. Like my women.”
I smiled and turned into the hall, thinking Rich Farris probably had an assortment of women, all colors. He was a handsome black man, a sharp dresser, a smooth talker, and he drove a black convertible Corvette when not in his county-issued Crown Vic. He had been through at least one divorce and the last I knew, he was single. Though, around here, marital statuses were changed more often than neckties.
I returned with two cups of hot, black coffee and handed him one. “Your night in the barrel, huh?”
“Every rotation, it seems. No matter how long I’ve been around here, no matter how many kids come in behind me, I still get the shit end of the stick.”
“Where’s your partner?”
Rich Farris was sitting up straight now, the paper folded on the desk. He spun his chair to look through the window area that offers a view of the squad room. He came back with a questioning look on his face. “I don’t know. Probably on her way. She’s actually got a life, unlike you and me.”
I glanced at my watch. 8:45 p.m. He was working the desk on the early morning shift. Which was the 10 p.m. – 6 a.m. shift that became the 9:30 p.m. – 5:30 a.m. shift that became the 9:00 p.m. – 5:00 a.m. shift, all without a spoken or written word on the matter. It happened by detectives being friendly and relieving one another earlier and earlier over the years. When Floyd and I were partners, he was trying to take it back to 8:30 p.m., showing up earlier each time we worked the desk. The problem was nobody wanted to make the dayshift relief at 4:30 in the morning, so me and that dummy would end up putting in at least an extra half hour. It appeared Floyd had recruited Rich into his push for 8:30.
“How’s she doing, anywa
y?”
“Lizzy? She’s good, man. She’s a cool chick with a good attitude, just needs some seasoning is all. She maybe could’ve had a little more experience when she came here.”
“She’s okay though, huh?”
He nodded. “I like her. A guy could do a lot worse around here, if you know what I mean.”
I agreed. “Hey, what’s up with that case you guys caught out in the valley? I wanted to ask you about that.”
“The Asian girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you here for the meeting yesterday?”
“No, but Ray was, and he gave me the Reader’s Digest version. I was at my mandatory shrink meeting.”
“Who do you see, Dr. James?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled. “Now, she is a sexy thing, you ask me. I hook up again, that’s the way I’m going, get me a professional woman, someone makes a little bank and doesn’t break yours and rob you of your retirement when she leaves.”
“You know, you might be onto something, Rich. Now, tell me about the Asian girl.”
The phone rang. “Homicide, Farris . . . yeah, what’s up Lopes? Yep, hang on.” He tucked the phone beneath his chin and said to me, “Lopes needs me to run something in CalGangs. Give me a second here, Dickie.”
“I thought he had a date tonight. The hell’s wrong with that guy?”
Rich started laughing. “Lopes heard you man, said tell Dickie shut the fuck up.”
I smiled.
“Okay, Lopes, go . . . uh-huh . . . Lopez, with a Z . . . hang on . . .” Rich Farris was typing and glancing back and forth from the screen to the keyboard, pecking one letter at a time. “Okay, first? . . . Maria . . . M-A-R-I-A. You running your girlfriends again, Lopes?”
I could hear his voice on the other end but couldn’t understand the words. At least not most of them. Farris was laughing, and then he said, “Okay, hold on . . . Jesus Christ, man, the hell? Okay, address, go . . .”
Rich Farris repeated the address as he typed it into the CalGangs program, a law enforcement database with a collection of data related to more than 150,000 gang members and their associates. The data was mostly compiled through arrest bookings and intelligence gathered by gang investigators. A name inquiry could provide a photo, moniker, vehicles, associates, and more. An address search would provide records of any gang activity attributed to a particular location, including the names of any gang members who have listed the address as a residence, or were contacted at the address by law enforcement. Any crime reports with the address listed in any manner—location of the crime, or the residence of someone involved, whether it be a victim or suspect—would be revealed in an address search. The information could range from warnings for law enforcement to general information and intelligence associated with the address.
As I waited, I grew more intrigued. Ten minutes earlier Lopes was headed out the door to pick up a woman he had met at Pelican Bay, a corrections officer who by description was Latina and hot. Now he’s calling in to check a name and address of a Maria Lopez. There was no doubt in my mind it was related to his planned date. But why? Lopes had good instinct. What was it that had him decide now, on his way to pick her up, that he’d better check her out? Maybe just applying additional caution. Maybe a gut feeling.
“Nothing, man . . . no hits on either one,” Farris said into the phone. “You bet, brother, anytime.”
He hung up the phone and said, “The Asian . . .”
Lizzy walked in, squeezed behind Rich’s chair and sat in an adjacent chair, offering only a smile to each of us. Rich was telling me that the case didn’t appear to be a sexually motivated murder, unless something went wrong. There hadn’t been any penetration and the medical examination determined the victim was still a virgin. Rich also told me what I had previously heard, that she was found by her mother strangled to death in an upstairs bedroom. She wasn’t wearing panties. She didn’t have a boyfriend. There were no brothers or cousins and nobody else should have been at the home. There was no evidence of forced entry, so she must have let him in. Which, Rich said, caused him to think the killer was someone she knew, or at least someone she trusted.
Lizzy said, “Like a cop, or mailman.”
Rich Farris glanced over and nodded. “The thing about it is, we’ve got nothing to work on. And brother, I mean nothing. No DNA, no prints. There was a lighter found in the pad, on the floor in her room. Nobody in the family smokes, so we think it’s likely our killer’s. But, as luck would have it, no identifiable prints on it.”
“Did you run the dogs?”
He paused a moment, apparently in thought. “No. What are you thinking, Dickie?”
“I’d have Ted collect scent off that lighter and run his dogs out there, see what you pick up. Might take you right next door, some fifteen-year-old doper with a hard-on for Asian girls. Maybe Ted’s coonhound would ID the mailman, if you timed it right. Who knows, maybe he’ll follow a trail to the local high school and jump in the janitor’s lap. Those dogs are awesome.”
“Coonhound? What the hell, man?” Rich said, chuckling.
“Basset hounds, bloodhounds, coonhounds, whatever the hell they are, big, droopy-eared sonsofbitches that look like they need a nap, like Floyd’s new partner.”
Lizzy laughed and we both glanced over at her.
Rich said to me, “It’s been damn near a week, man.”
“Call Ted. I think they can run those dogs for a couple weeks on a scent trail. It’s worth a try, especially if you have nothing else.”
Rich and Lizzy looked at one another and each shrugged, both with a what do we have to lose expression about them.
Farris said, “You got his number, Ted’s?”
I smiled and pointed at the list of frequently called numbers displayed in plain sight but often overlooked. Rich’s empty coffee cup sat near it. I said, “Hand me that mug and I’ll fill you up, I’m headed back there myself. Meanwhile, you can call Ted and get him scheduled for the morning. You don’t have anything else to do tomorrow, do you?”
“Not a thing, man . . . nothing other than sleep.”
Walking away, I suggested they could catch some sleep during their shift if the phones stayed as quiet as they had been the last few days.
Lopes had hung up after speaking with Farris at the desk and found himself in a somber mood, deep in thought. He still had a bad feeling about something. No hits in the CalGangs, but it seemed there was something more to this sexy little corrections officer. It was something he felt in his gut and couldn’t put a finger on. He thought about all of the conversations the two of them had had—they’d spoken on the phone half a dozen times since meeting a week earlier at Pelican Bay—and he realized there was one thing that had bothered him. It occurred to him she had asked more than once what the deal was with Spooky, why Lopes was going all the way up to Pelican Bay from Los Angeles to talk to a “poser” like Spooky.
Poser.
Why would she call him that? Just tough talk from a corrections officer, or did that come from the street side of her? More importantly, why had she been so interested in Lopes’s relationship with Spooky? Was she was trying to find out if Spooky was informing on the mob? He had to consider the possibility.
For only a moment, Lopes considered the possibility of something much more troubling about her inquiries, a relationship between guard and inmate. It happens, far too often. He pictured Spooky and then saw the pretty officer Maria Lopez and shook his head. There was no way she would have anything to do with that vato.
It occurred to Lopes he had slipped up at the prison. Actually, it was Spooky, but Lopes had failed to clean it up. In front of Maria, Spooky had reminded Lopes to put money on his books. Both were comfortable with Officer Maria Lopez to say such a thing in front of her. Lopes should have caught it, and told him, “Whatever, dipshit,” or something along those lines to play it off as a joke. But he hadn’t. And Maria Lopez may have considered the statement afterwards, and questioned why
a cop would be putting money on a convict’s books. There was only one reason. Lopes knew that had been a mistake.
Davey Lopes was startled from his thoughts and concerns about his date with the corrections officer when two cop cars sailed past him, lights and sirens in play. He hadn’t even seen them coming up behind him, and now they were flying by. It was as if he’d been in a trance. He watched the cars fade into the night ahead of him and turn right at a distant intersection. A minute later Lopes was turning onto the same street. He saw the two cop cars sitting in the street with open doors, their lights casting red and blue beams throughout the neighborhood. Cops were moving about with urgency near the front porch of a modest but tidy home on the south side of the street. One of them had a roll of yellow tape and he began stringing it across the front.
Lopes had stopped behind the cop cars and was looking at the numbers on the curb when he realized he had arrived at Maria’s grandmother’s home.
Two paramedics were hunched over a body near the front door. A cop stood watching, his flashlight adding light to the dimly illuminated porch. Another cop scanned the ground in the immediate vicinity, shining his light on the ground as if looking for something lost.
As Lopes walked briskly toward the scene he saw the body of a young woman curled up on the concrete steps, motionless. At that moment, he realized what his instinct had tried to warn him: there was more to his relationship with Maria Lopez than a chance encounter, a casual date. His gut had told him, but he ignored it. Now he knew what CalGangs hadn’t been able to reveal to him; there was more to Maria Lopez than dimples and a great ass.
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 53