For some reason, the wino, Frazier, who died violently and needlessly in the parking lot of Ho’s, had stuck with me more than others. It had been yet another senseless death of the weak and vulnerable. An undeserving, underprivileged man who already lived a hard life, had been gunned down like a rabid dog and left as discarded refuse by a pair of vicious sociopaths. Savages. It was these acts of violence that drove me, now, to solve the cases and send bad men to prison. When I was younger, that was all the motivation I needed to put on the gun and badge each night and put myself in harm’s way. Most cops I knew were the same. We lived—and sometimes died—to find brutal men and step between them and the weak, the innocent, the vulnerable. Look them in their eyes: Say when.
I drained the cold mug and placed it in the well before me, a signal that I would need another. My God, how I would need another. My pulse thumped against the walls of my neck as I glared at the wall in front of me but saw a liquor store and its parking lot and two dead men who never had a chance. At times, I believed I was capable of murder myself, in the name of vengeance. Or so I told myself.
I checked my phone. No messages. Katherine was also on my mind, thanks to Moby. Or maybe I was searching for something else to think about. Who was I kidding, she had been on my mind anyway, and likely would continue to be whenever I had time to think. The idea of calling her didn’t sit well with me, though I couldn’t understand why. Stubbornness? Fear? Fear of what? Relationships, a shrink might suggest. I chuckled at the irony. Moby had his eyes on me as he fished a frozen mug from the cooler. He probably questioned my sanity. He and some others: Floyd, Katherine, Captain Stover . . .
Another beer arrived and the U2 song faded, only to be replaced by Bon Jovi rocking “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Which took me back to the liquor store in Compton and a pair of ruthless killers. I silently vowed to see justice done. Resolved.
21
Tina and her little brother, Carlos, sat at the dining room table. McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches sat before them on opened wrappers, and each had a Coke to wash it down. Tina was nibbling at her sandwich and sipping her Coke, though her stomach was tied in knots. Carlos seemed to have lost his appetite also.
“What’s the matter, manito?”
He started to pick up the sandwich, but retreated. “I don’t know. Nothing. Everything. Where do I start?”
“Yesterday.”
“Okay, yesterday. Then what?”
“Carlos, I know you look up to Travis. I understand that, and I know you are upset about yesterday. But we have to move past it. There’s so much I need to tell you when the time is right. The time isn’t right yet, because, well, because yesterday didn’t go as I had planned.”
She saw the anger as she looked into his eyes. It seemed to grow as the two held their silent gazes. Tina remembered her anger, yesterday, last night, and again this morning as she saw her left eye black and purple and swollen shut.
Finally, he spoke, “I should’ve killed him.”
“Carlos . . .”
“No, don’t . . . just—”
“You’re just a kid. You did the best you could.”
But Carlos had been knocked out by one punch. It was something she had seen Travis do to others, on more than a couple of occasions. His fists were hard and fast. She was lucky to not have been hurt worse than she was. She hadn’t thought about Travis checking his weapon, but she should have known that he would. It had been her mistake, and it could have been a deadly one. Fortunately, Travis was too stupid to know why the round had been removed from the chamber of his gun. He assumed Carlos had been messing with it, and he had gotten in Carlos’s face about it. When Tina intervened, he backhanded her and knocked her down. She didn’t see what happened, but she looked in time to see Carlos on the ground, out cold. When Carlos came to, Travis made it clear to them both that nobody had better ever touch his guns again, without his permission.
The door flung open and there he stood. Carlos glanced over and then looked away. Tina watched him closely, and when she realized her jaw was tight and she was holding a breath, she let it out slowly and turned back to her meal.
“What’s everyone so down about around here?”
Neither answered.
Tina heard the door close. Moments later, she felt his presence. Still, she didn’t look up.
“When you two crybabies get over your damn selves, let me know. We have plans to make. I want to do that job tomorrow. We’re flat broke and the rent’s coming due. And we still need to find the boy, and finish with the gook.”
Tina heard his footsteps carry him down the hall, and she heard him using the restroom without closing the door. She pictured him standing at the toilet, peeing all over it, and walking away without flushing. She reached over and tapped her brother’s arm, and whispered, “Just be cool. It’s alright. Everything is going to be fine. I have something in mind for his big dumb ass. You wait and see.”
At the weekly office meeting, Josie briefed her first homicide case to a gathering of about fifty detectives and professional staff. Sixty percent of the bureau seemed about average as far as attendance of the mandatory Wednesday meetings. We were not an overly regimented lot. When finished, she fielded a few questions, ignored a few jeers, and walked back to her desk to the subtle applause that always followed briefings of murdered civilians.
As she settled into her seat next to mine, another detective began briefing a case involving Florencia Trese, a Hispanic street gang in South Los Angeles with hundreds of cliques and an allegiance to the Mexican mafia. Hence the trese, which represents the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, M. Or, Eme. Apparently, “Florence” was at war with 38th Street—again—and the bodies were stacking up.
I whispered to my partner, “Good job.”
She widened her eyes and drew a deep breath. “That’s scary up there.”
“It’s a tough crowd for sure.”
She nodded and turned back to face the front of the office where the detective who had briefed the gang war walked away to the sound of subdued applause.
The captain stepped up the microphone for his final lecture of the meeting. “You guys are killing me on the overtime,” he began.
I tapped Josie on the shoulder and nodded for her to follow me as I stood up and started for the back door. Outside, I put my shades on and lowered the brim of my hat against the late morning sun. Josie joined me but neither of us spoke as a train passed behind the office, the ground vibrating beneath our feet.
Once I could hear myself think, I said, “I did some thinking about this case last night, and about that Ortiz woman and the sergeant she went AWOL with.”
“You think they might be our suspects?”
“It’s a long shot, but worth consideration. My question though—one I haven’t been able to answer—is why? Why the killing? As I sat at my new watering hole last night, alone in my well-lubricated thoughts, I pondered that. This place has paintings of pirates with their loot and their wenches, and you know what? All of that makes sense to me. The reason for the pursuit, is the broads and the loot. How’s that for poetry? Oh, and the booze.”
A slight grin on her face, Josie rolled her eyes.
“To me, this seems like the robbery isn’t the driving factor of these cases. Like, they’re not in it for the money. Know what I mean?”
Josie’s head cocked slightly, a dark mass of hair flowing over her shoulder. “But they did take the money.”
“But why the grape outside? Why did they kill the wino? That was a thrill-kill, plain and simple. That old man wasn’t ever going to be a witness. Plus, Floyd’s case, the one with the little kid—”
She smiled. “Cedric.”
“—that one is so strange, the victims won’t even admit it happened. You know, like maybe it was a hit or something.”
“So, you don’t think they’re doing this for kicks, necessarily, but that maybe there’s even more to it than that? Contract murder?”
“That army guy yesterda
y, Chief Morgan, said the sergeant, whatever his name was—”
“Hollingsworth.”
“—played up his deployments like a war hero to the younger soldiers. That tells me something about the guy. Morgan also said they believe he did a murder right after the two of them went AWOL, killing a motel clerk for his car, presumably. Maybe the money in the till, too. But a guy like that, someone who boasts about valor, yet hasn’t seen action, might have a glitch in his psyche. Like a bully who only hits people who won’t fight back.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“I’m just saying, it’s something to think about. And I don’t know about the contract thing. That takes us way off in the weeds, but I guess it’s something we should keep in mind.”
“Okay, so where are we going?”
I didn’t know what she meant. “I give up.”
“I thought that’s why we left the meeting, that we had somewhere to be.”
I grinned. “I just get tired of listening to the captain. If we both walk out, they figure we have something important to do.”
“But we don’t?”
I glanced at my watch. “Not until lunchtime.”
Roland Youngblood had three years to go before retirement from his second career as an armored transport officer. He had retired after twenty-eight years of service as a police officer for the city of Inglewood, where he had spent his entire career on the streets. He had always worn a uniform and was comfortable doing so. When not in uniform, he wore shorts and some type of loose-fitting, button-up short-sleeved shirt, the louder the better. And sandals. It fit his laid-back personality, a characteristic that had allowed him to survive nearly three decades as a cop in a high-crime community, the same city where he had grown up and also raised his family.
Three years to go, he would tell people, speaking of ending the second career and spending his time fishing. Three more years because that’s when his youngest would be finished with college. She was currently enrolled in El Camino Community College, but she had hopes and plans to get into the nursing program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Roland feared it would break him, and he often joked that it was the reason he had decided to drive an armored car for a living. “Where else am I gonna get the kind of money it takes to get these young’uns through school?” Also, three more years because he had seven years with the company currently, and at ten he would earn a second retirement. Roland had done the math, and the two retirements meant he and his wife of thirty-eight years would be financially able to take vacations and enjoy their golden years.
He’d started his shift at seven o’clock this morning, as usual, to make the route he’d been driving for the past four years. It was a loop that took him south from the headquarters in downtown Los Angeles through Maywood, Bell, Cudahy, Lynwood, and Compton, before taking him north with stops in Willowbrook, South Los Angeles, and Vermont. Finally, he would pull back into the fortified headquarters of L.A. Armored. It was eleven a.m. when his courier went into a market in Compton—they were running ahead of schedule today—so Roland opened his lunchbox. The engine purred and the air-conditioning blew cold air at him as he waited behind the wheel. His partner’s name was Darnell, and as always, Roland had warned him to “Watch out for them niggas.” Both were black and had grown up in gang-infested neighborhoods, so although they were cautious, neither was frightened of the youngsters in their baggy pants and bandanas or sideways ball caps. It was an ongoing joke and both would laugh each time Roland said it.
After a few minutes, and just as Roland finished the last of his peanut-butter and banana sandwich, he looked up to see Darnell strolling out through the glass door with a money bag in his left hand, keeping his gun hand free. He had a big smile across his face. Roland chuckled, knowing Darnell had been messing with the little Korean woman inside. It seemed there was someone on every stop that Darnell would make friends with, and usually they were female. His stories would often take Roland back to his days of youth and he’d wonder where the years had gone.
Darnell’s free arm swung back and forth passing the pistol on his hip, and his head was on a swivel. Roland looked past his skinny partner as he neared their truck, watching Darnell’s back. Roland also checked all sides of their vehicle through the various mirrors, watching carefully for an ambush. After all of these years, Roland knew to never relax when the money was in play, his partner heading back to the truck. That’s when it was most likely to go down. They could laugh and joke all day inside the rig with the radio going and the air blowing, but when the money man made his way back to the truck, it was all business, all the time. This is when junkies and gangsters would watch closely and lick their lips while staring at the bag of money, no doubt wondering if they could pull off taking it from them.
Roland suddenly stopped chewing and moved quickly from the driver’s seat in a near panic. Twenty-eight years on the streets as a cop, another seven working in the security industry, and a lifetime spent surviving the streets of South Los Angeles, had honed Roland’s instincts. The man coming up in Darnell’s blind spot was an immediate threat.
I bumped into Lopes as I was coming out of the men’s room. “What’s up, Davey?”
He averted his eyes and continued past me with a nod and a “Hey, man,” as if that was all there was to say. It was out of character, and I still felt something was going on with him.
I turned and followed him into the restroom. “So, what’s going on, man?”
“Nothing.”
He was all business at the urinal.
“Dude, what’s going on with you?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Come on, man, you know what I mean. You’ve been weird around me all day, and coincidentally, Josie’s been acting strange too.”
He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “What’d she say?”
“She told me what happened.”
He looked back to his business at hand, zipped up, and brushed past me on his way out the door. “You’re so full of shit, Dickie. Nice try, though.”
I caught the door. “You didn’t wash your hands.”
22
The greatest weakness of armored transport services is that a courier must exit and enter the bank-on-wheels several dozen times each day in order to move the money from one place to another. The second vulnerability is the integrity of the men and women who are entrusted with large sums of cash. Most company owners worried most about the second.
L.A. Armored carefully screened each applicant. Several former law enforcement officers worked for the retired LAPD officer who started the company. Many of his employees had worked LAPD, others came from other departments throughout the southland and beyond. He paid them better than his competition paid their guards, and he had a unique offer that stood in spite of the controversy it had stirred: any of his officers who shot and killed a would-be robber would receive a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus. The boss was serious about his company not being robbed. In twenty-one years, he’d only paid it once, but he did so gladly.
Word of the bounty spread on the streets. Had that made a difference? It was hard to say. There had never been an attempted robbery of any of the L.A. Armored’s fleet, though in the seven years Roland had been driving, other companies had been robbed. One such occurrence had resulted in two guards being killed.
The policy for many companies was that in the event of a robbery attempt, the driver was to flee with the truck and money, leaving the guard outside to fend for himself. L.A. Armored didn’t operate that way. The owner, the former LAPD officer, had stated: “We don’t run, we gun. If someone tries to take our money, there’s going to be bloodshed.” Unlike other transports, L.A. Armored not only equipped their officers with sidearms, they also supplied each truck with a shotgun, and they trained and qualified their officers with both.
Roland had often thought the fifty-G would be a nice way to retire. He could hang up the gun belt for good and see the last of his kids through college. Sometimes he would si
t in the truck and watch Darnell wade through the onlookers and say to himself, “Come on, motherfucker, try it,” while caressing the grip of his Colt .45 that sat on his hip. Sometimes, when Darnell would return, Roland would joke with him. “You gots to quit scaring them niggas outta trying you. That one was looking at your money bag like a fat kid looks at cake. I was fittin’ to collect my fifty-G.” They’d both laugh and motor off to the next stop.
Roland eased his pistol back into its holster and fastened the thumb snap as he retreated to his seat behind the wheel.
Darnell locked the door and dropped his money bag on the floor of the truck and wiped at the beads of sweat on his forehead, turning the light-blue long-sleeved uniform shirt dark across the forearm. “Now, that was weird. I thought you was gonna finally get that bounty today, boss.”
Roland was checking his mirrors and merging into traffic. You didn’t want to be stationary any longer than necessary. He glanced over his shoulder. “What’d that asshole say?”
“Motherfucker axed me what time it was. I was like, ‘Get the fuck away from me, motherfucker, or the nigga in the truck gonna smoke us both.’ ” Darnell chuckled as he settled into his seat in the cargo area of the truck, sweat beading on his forehead. “He must’ve known we wasn’t playin’ around.”
“What do you think, was he gonna try you?”
“I don’t know,” Darnell said, “maybe. He might’ve just been stupid, too. Goddamn Mexicans.”
“Maybe,” Roland conceded. But in his mind, there was more to it. “Could have been a dry run. A test. We’d better pay close attention for a few days, closer than usual. Especially at this stop. Them Mexicans can be sneaky little shits, actin’ like they no habla till they have the drop on you.”
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