Floyd said, “Hung over?”
“Huh?”
“Are you hung over?”
“I don’t really think so. I mean, I had a few last night, but it’s not as if I was drunk. I did however make the mistake of switching to gin. I think Bombay gives me a headache; Hendricks doesn’t seem to do that.”
“It’s the quinine, Dickie, not the gin.”
“The what?”
“Quinine. Something derived from African tree bark, I think. That’s what gives you a headache. Don’t blame the gin.”
“How do you know this shit?”
“Make it up, mostly.” He turned to walk away. “Good luck with cha-cha.”
The killers sat concealed in the back of a panel van watching through the windshield as a Korean store owner unlocked the front doors of his market and propped them open. He seemed busy, in and out for several minutes, the little man wearing brown slacks, a green polo, and dress shoes. The pants were too short on the small storeowner, revealing red, white, and black Argyle socks.
The bigger of the two killers pulled a ski mask over his face, a final touch to the head-to-toe black dress. He looked through two holes and saw his partner was following suit. “Looks like it’s just him,” he said. “Are you ready?”
His partner nodded, two beady eyes looking back at him.
The big man flung the side door open and out they went, the big man leading the way with his AR-15 rifle. The smaller of the two sported a sawed-off shotgun. Nobody was in the parking lot. It was too early in the day for most of the people in Compton to be moving about, just as the big man had predicted.
They stepped through the door and stopped. Big man saw nobody behind the counter. He scanned the store but didn’t see the owner or anyone else. He walked further in, toward the counter, and as he glanced around the interior once more, the Korean walked out through a door at the back of the shop. They stood staring at one another, twenty feet apart. Big man raised the rifle to his shoulder. The Korean raised his hands and stepped back. Once, twice, and then the silence was shattered by automatic gunfire followed by two blasts of a shotgun. The big man looked over at his partner and smiled, though he realized the smile couldn’t be seen beneath his mask.
The big man emptied the register while the other moved quickly toward the man crumpled on the floor, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. The next time the big man saw his partner, they were both headed for the front door. “Did you find the safe?” He was shown a bag that appeared full but not too heavy. “Good job. I guess he had a key.” As the two crossed the parking lot, the big man stopped and leveled his AR-15 at an old black man with a gray beard who had a slow, unsteady way about him as he staggered toward the store. The old man didn’t look up as the sounds of automatic gunfire and a loud bang shattered the morning stillness; he just folded quietly to the asphalt below him.
The big man looked from the dead wino to his partner, and he laughed.
5
The squad room is configured in a manner which allows the front desk personnel to look through a window and clearly see Teams One and Two lined up directly behind their station. Teams Three and Four are mostly in view, but there would need to be a fair bit of moving around by desk personnel to view all of the fourteen members of each of those two teams. Teams Five and Six are around a corner and completely out of view, so the desk crew would have no idea who from those two teams was in the office and who wasn’t. I was sitting at my desk when my cell rang, and I saw that it was the front desk. My good friend Rich Farris was on the other end. “Dickie, where you at, my brother?”
“I’m sitting at my desk, Rich. And you’re sitting around the corner at the front desk.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, my turn in the barrel. You might as well come see me, we’ve got a murder for you down in Compton.”
I glanced at my watch. Not even ten yet. The crooks weren’t usually awake before noon. The desk next to me still sat empty and I hadn’t seen my new partner since we had been introduced a half hour earlier in the kitchen. Maybe Joe Black was giving her a tour of the bureau, or maybe the captain had her in his office warning her about what an asshole I am. Whatever. I might handle the case on my own just to piss everyone off.
I rounded the corner into the front desk lobby only to run into Lieutenant Black and my new partner, Josefina Sanchez. In our previous meeting at a table in the break room, I couldn’t help but notice her almond-shaped, light brown eyes. Outlaw eyes. She was sexy and dangerous, and her gaze dared you to further appraise her assets. But now as I saw her standing near the front desk, I couldn’t help but appreciate her lean and shapely physique, her soft brown skin, and silky black hair. She stood poised, exuding confidence. She glanced over her shoulder as I approached, and I looked away.
“What do we have, Rich?”
“Hey, Dickie, I just met your new partner, Josie.”
I glanced from Rich to the outlaw eyes and back. “Josie, huh?”
He chuckled. Chances are, he had already laid the smooth talk and charm on her before I walked up. Rich was a player, a lady’s man, though somewhat of a catch-and-release type. He had already divided his pension by three and hadn’t yet learned the skill of releasing sooner, or fishing in a different pond, or not fishing at all. He said, “Yeah, man, the outlaw Josie Wales. Or, in this case, Sanchez. I mean, look at those eyes, brother.”
I glanced back to see she was all business, having none of it. I tried to get us back on track, and quickly. “The case, Rich. What do you have for us?”
“Liquor store robbery in Compton. Two dead, the owner and an old grape who’s apparently part of the landscape there. He was going in for his breakfast bottle when the assholes were on their way out, from how it looks, according to the deputies on scene.”
Rich handed me a Dead Sheet with the basics: a case number, an address, and the times of various notifications thus far. The details of victim names, death notifications, coroner’s case numbers, et cetera, would be filled in later, once verified. The Dead Sheet is a form used by the desk to track assigned cases, by the lieutenants to complete their murder memos, and later, by the secretaries who enter all of the data into our computer system. I took the sheet and copied the location and file number onto the front cover of a fresh notebook, and then turned the notebook over to again write the file number and location, along with additional details: investigator names—me and my partner—the lieutenant, Joe Black, the time I received my notification and by whom, and where I would be responding from, the office.
Rich Farris spoke as I continued jotting notes: “You know the store, right, Dickie?”
Without looking up, I said, “Yes.”
“That’s the place used to be run by Ho and his brother. They always took care of the coppers. They were Vietnamese, as I recall. I wonder if they still run it, if that was Ho who got killed out there.”
“I know who you’re talking about.” I finished a note and looked up. “He was a good guy, I remember that. And nobody messed with him during the riots as I recall. In part, because he treated people with respect, and in part, because he popped for the cops and always had a steady stream of black and whites parked out front.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I hope it wasn’t Ho.”
“Me too, Rich. I’ll keep you posted.”
I handed the Dead Sheet back to Rich Farris, and turned to my new partner who stood quietly, waiting, Lieutenant Black standing behind her. “You ready?”
“Yes sir.”
Joe Black smiled and nodded at me, seemingly giving me his approval.
“I like each of us having a car in the event we need to split up during the investigation. Do you want to follow me, or do you know your way to Compton?”
She didn’t bat an eye. “I grew up in Compton, if you want to follow me.”
Ho’s Liquor is what we had always called the nondescript white building that sat on Compton Boulevard a block from Atlantic Avenue. Compton Boulevard is a four-lane major street that runs
east-west. Atlantic Avenue runs north-south. The two major east-west boulevards that run either direction from Compton are Rosecrans to the north, and Alondra to the south. Both have easy access to the Long Beach Freeway that also runs north and south, a short distance east of Ho’s Liquor. The name on the building said Easy Liquor, and the numbers were 14622. I made a note of both as I sat in my car just outside the yellow tape at the edge of the parking lot. Josefina pulled in behind me, and I met her at my trunk.
“We use fresh notebooks for every case, and never mix notes from one to another. It’s not like patrol or gangs.”
She plopped a blue notebook next to mine on the trunk of my car. I saw she already had the same information I had written in mine, other than the name of the business and the address. I wondered if she copied it quickly from the Dead Sheet before leaving the desk after I had walked away. I glanced at my watch and added the time of our arrival, and she followed suit. A uniformed deputy walked toward us with a clipboard in his hand.
“We’ll sign in, then find out who the handling patrol crew is and take their statement. Then we will probably have them give us a walkthrough before we start documenting the scene. When we start, we’ll come back here and begin with the overall scene description, and work our way in. I’ll dictate the first couple of scenes we process, and you’ll get the hang of it. In other words, you’ll write in your notebook what I say as I describe the scene for our report. Any questions?”
“No, I think I’m good.”
“Okay.” I turned to the deputy who now stood waiting, and he handed me the clipboard. I wrote Jones/Sanchez, Homicide, 1022 hours, I/O’s across the next available line. It was the crime scene log that would memorialize any and all persons who entered an established crime scene, without exception, and the reason for their entry. We were the investigating officers. The names ahead of us were sheriff’s deputies and fire/EMT personnel. All but the handling deputies already had times indicating their departure from the scene. I handed the clipboard back to the deputy and said to Josefina, “If we arrive together, one of us can sign us both in. Most of the time, we won’t be arriving at the same time, and you’ll sign yourself in.”
She nodded.
“Is this your handle?” I asked of the deputy.
“Yes sir. My training officer is inside.”
I offered my hand and he shook it. “Richard Jones, from Homicide, and this is my partner, Josefina Sanchez.”
“I go by Josie.”
I nodded, and the deputy reached over to shake her hand too. “Pleased to meet you both.”
“Are you going to run this by us, or do you need your training officer?”
“I can run it by you, sir. This is my ninth murder.”
“Ninth? How long have you been out here?”
“This is my sixth month, sir. I’m off training at the end of next week.” He smiled after he said it, as if the words sounded good to him as they crossed his lips. His smile was bright against dark skin and short-cropped hair. Trainees seldom wore mustaches, by tradition, but I didn’t think this young man could grow one if he tried. He looked familiar to me. He also looked like a Marine. There was always something about the deputies who had served in the military that made them stand out from the others, and usually it was their command presence. But especially those who were Marines.
“Where did you work custody? It seems I know you.”
“MCJ, sir.”
“Men’s Central Jail, huh? Did I meet you there, maybe on an inmate death case?”
“I don’t recall if we met there or not, sir, but we’ve met.”
“I think so too.”
“I know so.” He smiled again, knowingly.
I left that hanging because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I glanced at his name tag. Nelson. It didn’t ring any bells. There had been a few young deputies over the years who had known me from my patrol days, usually black or Hispanics that grew up in South Los Angeles where I spent a decade working patrol and station detectives. They were usually the kids who had been in a bit of trouble but somehow made it out okay and ended up in law enforcement. Sometimes they were explorers, and once they’d grown up, you didn’t recognize them. We had had quite a few black explorers when I worked Firestone Station, and I wondered if that was where I knew this kid from. But there was an equal chance I knew him from somewhere else, a situation that maybe wouldn’t be best to bring up. “Okay, Deputy Nelson, why don’t you run this by us.”
“Yes sir.”
Josie and I each wrote the time, Deputy Nelson’s name and employee number, his partner’s name and employee number—which the trainee knew from memory—and their station and unit designation in our notebooks. Once done, I nodded, and Deputy Nelson provided a summary, which I recorded in my notebook, and Josie did the same:
Deputy Nelson and his partner received a two-eleven, shots fired call at this location at 0905 hours. They arrived at approximately 0910 hours and found one victim (Victim #2) lying in the parking lot. (He pointed out the area adjacent to the building where paramedic debris was scattered.) Deputies cleared the interior and found the other victim (Victim #1) on the floor in a pool of blood near a door to the back room. Paramedics from Compton City Fire, Station #1, responded and treated Victim #2. He was transported to MLK via Adams Ambulance. Victim #1 was pronounced dead by Paramedic Lowe under the command of Chief Harvey.
The location was secured, and Homicide was notified at 0935 hours.
“Any witnesses?”
“None to the shooting itself, that we have been able to locate. We canvassed the neighborhood and found several people who heard the shooting. One lady reports seeing the suspects flee in a white van, west on Compton Boulevard. She didn’t see if they turned on Atlantic or not. We put out a broadcast and had units canvassing the area and watching the freeways, but nothing came of it. Lakewood Station set up to watch the ninety-one eastbound, and East L.A. was supposed to keep an eye on the Long Beach north. Long Beach PD was notified also. So far, there’s been nothing.”
I removed my fedora and wiped sweat from my forehead with a bare hand. Nelson smiled again and said, “Yes sir, now that I see you without the hat, I know for sure we’ve met.”
So it was before I worked homicide, I thought. I’d worn fedoras as long as I had been assigned to the bureau. Where did I know him from? His smile made me think it might not have been a good situation, like he was going to tell me he outran me one night or I arrested him or maybe worse yet I arrested his mama or something. “What’s your first name?”
“Roger.”
“You a Marine?”
“Yes sir.”
I remembered there had been several explorers from Firestone who had joined the Marines, blacks and Hispanics alike. There had been a female explorer who also joined up, and I heard she had made sergeant.
“Okay, Roger, what else do you have for us?”
“There are two-twenty-three casings inside the door and again out here in the parking lot.” He pointed toward the area where the second victim had been found, and said the casings were about halfway between him and where we stood. I could see yellow chalk on the asphalt, and an occasional reflection off of brass on the ground.
“Who chalked it?”
“I did, sir. In case the paramedics kicked them around. I don’t think they did though; it seemed they noticed the yellow circles and were careful to avoid the casings.”
I nodded. His partner, a thin, blonde-haired deputy named Johnson whom you might expect to find at the beach, but not in Compton, walked out of the liquor store and came to us. After introductions, he said, “There’s surveillance video equipment in the office, but it appears to be digital. I haven’t touched it and wouldn’t know how to review it if I wanted to.”
“Good deal,” I said. “We’ll probably have the Tech Crew come down and take care of that for us. I can’t get Netflix to work on my TV; I’m not messing around with technology on a murder scene. Anything else I need to know about
before we get started?”
“The victim inside is a friend to most of the deputies here. His name is Ho, and he always took good care of us.”
I nodded, somberly. “I wondered if it was still his place. I’ve been here a few times myself over the years. Didn’t it used to be called Ho’s?”
“No, it’s always been Easy Liquor.” Deputy Johnson smiled. “We used to call it Easy Ho’s.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“I’ve worked Compton Station six years, but I was at Lynwood before that.”
I frowned. “How have we never met?”
“We have, sir. Several times.”
I felt embarrassed and now I had to wonder if something was seriously wrong with my memory. I also realized that his partner, Nelson, who had handled nine murders in his six months of training, was just another deputy whose face seemed familiar, but the name and situation of our acquaintance escaped me. Maybe this is what happens when you get old. Though I was only 46, the odometer seemed to have rolled over once already, and they say it’s the miles that really count.
My partner had her notebook and pen ready, watching quietly and waiting attentively. Other than the fact she seemed to distract all the males in her presence, so far, she seemed okay. Paying attention and working quietly without any questions, she got it. All of it. This might not be so bad, if she didn’t go off half-cocked.
I thanked the deputies and told them we were going to start documenting the scene. “Crime lab should be here any minute. Depending on who they send us, we’ll either stop what we’re doing to get them going in the right direction, or let them go on autopilot. Hopefully we get Gentry, and then we just wave and say hello.”
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 69