Fully aware of my unpleasant disposition, I grabbed a cup of coffee and went into the men’s room with the travel bag that stays in my trunk. Ten minutes later I emerged freshly groomed and with the appearance of a living human. I drained the remainder of that first cup and cringed at the conflict it had with the fresh mint flavor occupying my mouth. After filling a second cup, I worked my way back to the front desk where the two dayshift detectives stood speaking to their lieutenant—my former lieutenant when I worked with Floyd on Team Two—Ed Jordan. The three stopped speaking as I walked in, and now they all seemed to be focused on me.
“Good morning.”
“Long night?” Lt. Jordan asked.
“Yeah, Lopes’s deal.”
“What’s the word on it, any idea?” he asked.
I sighed and set my coffee on the counter that separates the desk personnel from the lobby. “I don’t know a lot, boss. Lopes met this gal up at Pelican. She’s a corrections officer. I guess they hit it off, and she was down here visiting her family so they were going to hook up, go out. We had had a briefing last night on the Santa Clarita case—you’ve heard about the gal that had her head cut off, right?”
“Yeah, you and Cortez are working it, and you stole your old partner back to help with it,” he said and smiled.
“Yeah, so we’ve been having these nightly briefings, those of us working the case—me, Ray, Floyd, and Mongo—and then Lopes has been joining in, kind of just staying up on it with us, paying attention in case there’s something about the mafia that factors in.”
“You think the Mexican mafia was involved in it?”
“We’re not sure, boss. But in our briefing last night, Lopes seemed distracted—that’s the whole point. He kept checking his phone and he didn’t really participate. He was distant, I’d say. Then, after the briefing, he takes off. He said he was taking this gal out, this corrections officer. So, he splits. I’m hanging around here because I pretty much don’t have a life, and I was bullshitting with Farris and his new partner, Lizzy, up here at the desk when Lopes called in asking Farris to check this broad out on CalGangs—”
“Who? Check who out?”
“This corrections officer.”
He frowned.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. What the hell made him think to run her—and the address he was going to—through CalGangs? But I was standing right there when he did it. Farris checked it out, nothing came up on either one—the name or the address—but I really was puzzled by it. Lopes has good instinct. He was bothered by something during our briefing, and now, on his way to pick this lady up for a date, he decides to run her through the system.
“Anyway, I’m still here a half-hour later—no, it wasn’t even that, maybe fifteen minutes—when he calls back, asking for two teams and a lieutenant and a SWAT team and whatever the hell else he asked for—the world. I knew it was serious, so I grabbed the address and started rolling that way without knowing what had happened. I figured he might have dumped someone, to be honest. In my mind, I saw Lopes with a smoking gun in one hand and his phone in the other. I didn’t have any idea what the hell could have happened out there, but I knew it wasn’t good.”
All three were quiet, attentive, waiting for more. I swigged the remainder of my coffee and looked at the bottom of my cup as if it were another mystery to be solved.
“That’s about it, other than what you probably already know, that Lopes arrived to pick her up and saw what had happened. Someone had walked up and smoked her while she was having a smoke of her own. I stayed with Lopes while he talked to grandma for quite a while, waiting for the teams to show up. Stringer and Jackson showed up first—I guess they have the handle on it—and after Lopes gave them a brief statement, he headed to the hospital. I went with him. I didn’t want to leave him alone, especially not knowing what any of this is about. He doesn’t know either, boss. We talked a lot at the hospital. He’s dumbfounded. As far as the reason he ran her, she’s from The Avenues. Something about that bothered him. She’s from The Avenues but had him going to Whittier to pick her up. I guess that gave him pause. He also mentioned that she had asked a lot of questions—or seemed to anyway—about what he was doing up at Pelican, why he was talking to a gangster named Spooky, who is giving him information about the mob.”
Jordan was nodding. “Where is he now?”
“Spooky, or Lopes?”
“Yes.”
“Spooky’s in Pelican, Lopes stayed at the hospital. Said he was staying until she was able to talk. He’s dead set on it, wants to know what happened and he wants to be the first to hear it, directly from her if possible.”
There were more investigators filing in, though slowly and sporadically. Being a Friday, it would be a light day at the office. A third of the bureau would be starting a three-day weekend after working ten straight and covering the previous weekend on call. Teams Five and Six, now up for murders until Monday morning, were already scattered about the county; four investigators were in Whittier handling the shooting of Maria Lopez. Though it was not yet a murder, it would be handled as if it were, for three reasons: it could very well end up a murder, the victim is a corrections officer, and Lopes insisted on it. He carried considerable weight at the bureau and nobody would second-guess his concerns about the situation. It wasn’t about him and her, it was about much more than that. Lopes hadn’t yet laid it out—maybe he hadn’t yet entirely figured it out—but he instinctively knew there was more to this than a random walkup shooting. Two other teams had been sent out in the night, one for a gang murder in Compton (we could always count on Compton to keep the stats high) and another had been sent to my old stomping grounds, the Firestone District, now policed by deputies out of Century Station.
“They’ve sent her phone back from the lab already,” Jordan said. “It’s been printed and swabbed, blood samples taken, finished with the forensics. I’ve got it on my desk, if you want to start going through it. I doubt they’ll mind, the handling team.”
“Jackson and Stringer have the handle, right?”
He nodded.
“Who’s assisting?”
Jordan glanced over at the whiteboard that hung on the wall behind the front desk. It changed rapidly, nearly daily, and had all the information about which teams were up, who was handling which case, and the names of the recently departed. Jordan must have drawn a blank at the question because he had to have known who he had assigned to handle and assist on the Maria Lopez shooting case; the board was his reminder. “Martinez and Blair.”
“I’ll give one of them a call, just to make sure, boss. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but yeah, I’d like to have a look at that phone, maybe start writing paper on it.”
Jordan burrowed his brows. “If we have the phone, why would you need a search warrant?”
“We’re going to need a certified copy of the records, all her calls and texts for the billing period, maybe three billing periods back, just to be safe. Not everything is going to be on the phone, or, I should say, it might not be. Either way, if anything ever goes to court, we’ll need more than a report of what I find on the phone itself; we’ll need all of the records. Also, once we have a search warrant for the phone, it’s easy to piggyback that warrant for all the subscriber information and records of the numbers we find on there. I have a feeling a lot of this is going to be relevant.”
He sighed. “Yeah, Lopes’s number will be all over it too; that’s not going to look good.”
“She’s a corrections officer. She’s single—presumably—as is Lopes. It’s okay that they met and hooked up, boss. Even if she’s dirty, that’s not going to matter. He’s not. He had no idea she was. If she’s dirty; that’s just a possibility at this point.”
His eyes bugged out. “Wait, you think she’s a dirty cop? That’s what this is about?”
“I don’t know what it’s about, boss. I’m just saying, if that’s how it plays out. The only reason that even crosses my mind is that Lopes ha
d something bothering him about the whole thing. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“You don’t think he was walking into a setup, do you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know if he was walking into a setup, or if it’s all a big coincidence. Hell, for all I know, Lopes gunned her down himself when he got there and found some other vato with her.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jordan said.
I patted his shoulder and smiled. “Just kidding, boss. That’s the only thing I’m sure didn’t happen.”
Before walking away, I asked that the desk crew page one of the four detectives out on the Whittier case and transfer them to my desk when they called in. Being old-fashioned, I still trusted landlines more than cell phones at times like this.
Leonard arrived and parked up the street from the cop’s residence, the apartment over a garage in the backyard of a big yellow house with a manicured lawn and shade trees and shrubbery. Though he had been reluctant to watch again from his vehicle, he didn’t think hiding on the hillside would work during daylight hours. He’d have to take his chances in the car.
A man he’d never seen before was in the driveway of the detached garage beneath the apartment, washing a boat. He wore shorts and a tank-top, and his skin was tanned. Leonard could tell he was a cop. He was older, but as is the case with many cops and convicts, he appeared to be physically fit, stronger than many his age. The man in shorts, beach boy, Leonard thought, also had the watchful eyes of a cop, looking up when Leonard pulled over and parked, and looking up every few minutes since. It made Leonard uncomfortable.
After drying the boat, the man backed it into the garage beneath the apartment, unhooked it from his truck, and drove around to the front of the house, out of Leonard’s view. Two ladies jogged by and peered at him. The whole fucking neighborhood was on alert, it seemed, like these goddamn people didn’t have anything better to do with their lives than worry about people sitting in cars.
When a few minutes had passed, Leonard’s nerves got the best of him and he pulled away from the curb. But he didn’t turn around and leave the back way as he normally would; rather, he drove around the corner to see the front of the home. As he did, the tanned cop, beach boy, stepped out of another garage—one that was attached to the front of the home—and walked down the driveway alongside his shiny silver pickup toward the street. His eyes seemed to drill into Leonard behind his mirrored cop glasses.
Leonard panicked and floored it.
He heard the man yell, “Hey!” and Leonard glanced in his side-view mirror to see beach boy at a trot in his turquoise shorts and flip-flops. His arms were waving and Leonard could hear faint sounds of shouting as he pulled away.
Shit!
Leonard made his way back to the freeway as quickly as he could without drawing attention, and headed south to L.A.. Once he settled, Leonard came to the decision the job was off. He wasn’t going to do it. He’d call Moses later today and tell him so. Better yet, he’d say, Put the boss on the phone, douchebag, and tell old man McFarland himself. He didn’t need this shit, these fucking cops that seemed to pay attention to everything even while they’re drinking beer and washing boats.
But then he remembered he had no way to call them. That was part of the deal. They would contact him. Great.
Well, he could send a letter and split. They’d figure it out when they got it. Maybe put the letter in a box along with the phone with the dirty pictures of a dead gook, see how Mr. Fuckface liked that.
But that would likely result in a hit being put on him. Leonard wouldn’t even be able to return to prison and walk the yard, not with a mafia bounty on him. This made him think of Whitey, and he realized if he failed the family, their friendship would be over. What a pickle. He wished the goddamn judge would have sentenced him to life; he would be much better off in prison.
When he walked into his hotel room it was time for tequila. Still not yet noon, but he didn’t care. He was done for the day and he wouldn’t dare go outside again. He had even parked a few blocks further away in the event the buffed beach boy pig got his license and called it in. He didn’t want any cops sniffing around his room if they found the car nearby.
As Leonard loosened up with the medicinal aid of Mr. Cuervo, he considered his options: he could allow himself to be caught and go back to prison. No, not in California. He had heard tales of the prisons here. Ran by Mexicans, mostly, and overpopulated by blacks; he wanted no part of them. He needed to get back to Florida and commit a crime there that would secure his future incarceration. But no, not if he didn’t finish the job at hand. Again, the hit on him would then be on. Leonard took a long pull off the bottle and as the warmth rushed over him he came to terms with what he had to do: kill the damn cop as instructed and get the hell back to the east coast where he belonged. Simple enough. Just find the pig. Jesus.
As I sat at my desk staring at its blotter devoid of any evidence of life—no photographs of family or friends or hobbies of fishing or hunting or playing golf in funny outfits—I tried sorting it all out in my mind: the headless woman, the missing woman still unaccounted for, the watcher—someone seemingly stalking me—and now this, a corrections officer getting whacked. A female Hispanic corrections officer who grew up in The Avenues, arguably one of the most mafia friendly geographical regions of the southland, who is probably twenty years Lopes’s junior but moved in fast to be with him, and then she wanted to see him again a very short time later, a long way from her home. I thought about all of this and my conversations with Lopes about Jorge Regalado, the gangster I had shot and killed just over a year ago, and his nephew Gilbert who was facing a life behind bars for two murders, thanks in part to the efforts of Dickie and Floyd. Did it all connect somehow?
My cell phone vibrating on the desktop jarred me away from my reflection. It was a text message from Chuck, my landlord, asking that I call when convenient. My first thought was he was evicting me. Maybe the mother-in-law was moving in. Or I forgot to close the gate and Elvis escaped and Chuck had had it with me. Then I thought maybe something worse had happened, and my stalker came to mind. I regretted not informing Chuck and Patti of the suspicious person and activity, but I still had not completely accepted that it was a reality. I should have told him anyway.
When I called, Chuck described an incident that occurred a short time before. Someone had sat up the street from the residence, east of the detached garage and my apartment. Chuck had been washing the boat before putting it away when he noticed the man and thought him suspicious. Then, after putting the boat away, Chuck drove around to the front of the house and parked the truck in the driveway. He went into the garage, planning to go inside, and it occurred to him he needed to check the mail. As Chuck walked out to get the mail, the same vehicle drove past, and its occupant was eyeing him closely. He yelled at the guy who sped off. He was unable to get a tag, but it was a California license plate on a silver Ford Taurus.
I knew the car, I could see it in my mind parked up the street. My stomach suddenly felt queasy.
“I just thought you should know, in case you see that car around. Have you happened to notice anything strange around here while we were gone?”
“Chuck, I should have told you . . .”
I started filling him in, providing the details of the encounters with the watcher. Just as I did, Floyd and Mongo walked through the back door. They peeled apart, and Floyd came toward me while Mongo veered toward their desks on the other side of the squad room. Floyd pulled out a chair and waited, frowning as I finished with Chuck and awaited his reply.
Expecting anger from Chuck, I avoided eye contact with Floyd. He would no doubt be staring at me, wanting to figure out who I was talking to and wanting all the details. Having no patience, he would nod, and mouth the words “Who is that?” not willing to wait until the call ended. I couldn’t deal with him and take the ass-chewing I had coming from Chuck.
Chuck said, “Well, I’m glad you’re around here. I’d be af
raid to leave with this shit going on if you weren’t here.”
“But, it’s probably me that brought the trouble to you, Chuck. I’m really sorry. I’ll figure it out, and get it fixed.”
Chuck, in his deep voice, said, “Hey man, no worries. We see the little bastard around here again, we’ll kill him and call it in, let Burbank clean it up. They don’t like assholes in their town and they don’t mess around. The chief—who Patti and I happen to be friends with—would probably pin medals on our chests if we smoked some asshole in his city.”
I smiled and said, “Thanks, Chuck. I’ll keep a close eye when I’m there.”
“Sounds good, buddy. Hey, while I’ve got you on the line, Patti and I were going to ask if you could watch Elvis for a couple days. We have a wedding down in San Diego next Friday, leaving Wednesday. Apparently, the snooty assholes don’t allow bulldogs at the ceremony. Can we leave him with you?”
“You bet, Chuck. I’d be happy to have the company.”
I ended the call and looked to my old partner. He said, “Chuck?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s Ray?”
“I don’t know, haven’t heard from him. It’s been a crazy night.”
“Well, let’s hear it. Then, when Ray shows up, I want to bounce some thoughts off you guys about this piece of shit case that’s got me lying about overtime. What the hell happened last night?”
Ray walked in as I told Floyd everything I knew about the night before. When finished, I didn’t allow Ray to ask about the details he missed before joining us. I looked at him and said, “Apparently, Floyd wants to bounce some thoughts off us about the case. This should be good . . . good and demented.”
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 55