by Steve Gannon
“Back up the truck,” said Kane. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing here.”
“Believe it,” advised Captain Lincoln. “The chief’s been fielding questions from the press all morning, and the mayor’s getting nervous. Before things get out of control, we want a full statement from you, and we want it now.”
“You’ve already got my statement, sir. It’s in my arrest report.”
“That isn’t good enough,” said Snead.
“Talk to the hostage Escobar was holding,” Kane suggested. “A Hispanic girl living in the building. She was there and saw what happened.”
“Are you telling me how to run my investigation?”
“No, but—”
“We’ve already talked with the girl. Now we want to talk to you.”
“Everything I have to say is in my report.”
“IA’s going to need a lot more than that,” Snead warned. “A lot more. I would strongly advise you to cooperate.”
“Am I being charged?”
“Not at the present time.”
“Then I’ll tell you what, Lieutenant Snead,” said Kane. “Let me know when I am being charged, and I’ll come in with a city attorney and we’ll have a nice long chat. In the meantime, go pound sand.”
*
The morning passed quickly for Travis. As is typical on any construction site, the first twenty minutes had been spent in casual, unhurried preparation—rolling out power cords that had been daisy-chained at the end of the previous day to prevent tangles, setting up compressors and hoses for the nail guns, adjusting power tools, and drinking coffee. But once the day started in earnest, Tommy and Travis moved lumber—giant stacks of 2x4 and 2x6 wall studs, BCI joists and Glulam beams, ½-inch plywood sheathing, and ¾-inch particle board flooring—carrying the material to various sites as needed, hustling to stay ahead of the crews. They quickly learned the technique of working in unison—especially when handling the heavier beams, where a misstep by either could cause injury to both.
Throughout the morning they also good-naturedly accepted the ribbing traditionally leveled at any new worker. Travis spent fruitless minutes searching the tool shed for a left-handed hammer; Tommy likewise found himself unable to locate, among other things, a board stretcher requested by one of the framers. Nonetheless, by the time the lunch wagon rolled up the hill, Travis found himself actually enjoying the work. He liked the sweet pine smell of cut wood, the sounds of the saws and hammers, the rhythmic thunk of a nail gun, the steady beat of the compressor, the way the framing rose almost magically from the foundations. Most of all, he liked the easy camaraderie of the crew. To his surprise, although his shoulders ached and his arms felt leaden, he sensed a pang of regret when they broke for lunch.
Both Tommy and Travis had worked up a healthy appetite over the morning, and the food served by the lunch wagon proved to be hot, greasy, and delicious. Travis ordered two chili cheeseburgers, a large basket of fries, a Sprite, and a hunk of apple pie. Tommy opted for a giant chicken burrito, Spanish rice, refried beans, and a Coke. As they retired to a stack of lumber to eat, Travis noticed Junior Cobb and a few other men gathered around a metal trash drum across the street. Junior was laughing and poking into the barrel with a piece of scrap lumber.
“Hey, there’s your new pal,” said Tommy. “Why don’t you go over and say hi?”
“He’s not my pal,” said Travis. “He doesn’t seem too crazy about you, either.”
“I wonder what they’ve got in there,” mused Tommy. As he spoke, Junior again thrust his piece of wood into the trash container. A high-pitched squeal rose from the barrel. Junior laughed and poked into the container again.
“Sounds like they have something trapped in there, Tom.”
“They’re not going to hurt it,” said Tommy. “Even Junior’s not that big of a prick.”
Another squeal echoed from the barrel.
Tommy saw the expression change on his brother’s face. “Don’t go looking for trouble, Trav. Not on the first day.”
“I’m not looking for trouble. I just want to see what’s going on.” Travis set down his plate and crossed the street. Shouldering his way through Junior’s friends, he peered into the barrel. A squirrel that had apparently become trapped while scavenging for food cowered at the bottom. Junior stabbed again, narrowly missing the terrified animal. “Slippery little sucker,” he said, grinning.
“Come on, Junior,” said one of the men. “That’s enough.”
“Says who?” Junior drove the tip of his weapon deep into the trash in another attempt to pin the small rodent. “In my book a squirrel’s no better’n a rat.” As he spoke, the animal suddenly streaked up Junior’s piece of scrap wood, clawing Junior’s hand in a desperate effort to escape. Junior shook off the squirrel with a scream of surprise and pain, sending it tumbling back into the barrel.
“That little bastard bit me!” Junior yelled, clutching his bleeding hand.
“Hell, he only scratched you,” said another of Junior’s friends. “You’ll live.”
“Yeah, well that’s more’n that fuckin’ squirrel can say.” With an ominous smirk Junior pulled out a pack of matches from his pocket. One by one he began to light them, dropping them into the barrel. Travis could hear the frightened animal at the bottom chattering in terror.
“Hey, leave it alone,” said the first man who’d spoken, clearly too daunted by Junior’s size to intervene.
“Mind your own business,” Junior spat, continuing to drop lit matches into the barrel. The other men present shifted uneasily, but no one else dared to speak. Seconds later a wisp of smoke drifted up as the trash started to burn. The sound of the squirrel clawing at the side of the metal container became frantic. “Lookit that sucker go,” Junior crowed. “Anybody care for some fried squirrel?”
Travis, who had watched silently until then, shook his head in disgust and started back across the street. But as the animal began keening in panic, he stopped. Without thinking, he returned in several quick strides and kicked over the barrel. Burning rubbish spilled onto the dirt. Singed and smoking, the squirrel raced for the safety of the brush behind the houses.
Junior’s eyes glittered with rage. He grabbed Travis’s shirt. “What the hell you think you’re doin’?” he bellowed.
Travis swallowed, as surprised as anyone by what he’d done. “Must have been an accident,” he said.
“You’re about to have an accident of your own, pussy.” Junior doubled his fist. Before he could swing, someone grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. An instant later a red-haired forearm circled his neck. Tommy.
Choking, Junior released his grip on Travis’s shirt. He started to struggle, then abruptly stopped as the pressure on his windpipe increased. One of Junior’s friends moved to intervene. Travis cut him off.
“You’re pretty good at beating up squirrels, Junior,” said Tommy. “Ready to take on someone your own size?”
“You always fight your baby brother’s battles?” Junior gagged.
Tommy shoved him away. Junior stumbled, catching himself before he hit the ground. He whirled, ready to fight. Looking at Tommy, he thought better of it. Although Junior outweighed him, he recognized something in Tommy’s eyes that spelled trouble.
“Don’t want to fight?” said Tommy pleasantly. “Well, you’re free to tangle with my brother here anytime you want. Just so you know, though. When you get done, I’m gonna make you wish you hadn’t. You hit my brother once, I’m gonna hit you twice. You sprain his little finger, I’m gonna break your arm. Understand?”
Junior rubbed his throat. “You’re lucky there’s no fightin’ on the job,” he said. “I can’t afford to get fired.”
“You can’t afford having me ram your teeth down your throat.”
Smarting under the stares of his friends, Junior turned to leave. He paused before Travis on his way. Travis looked down, unable to meet his gaze. “I’ll see you sometime when your brother ain’t around,” Junior promise
d softly as he shoved past.
*
At Lieutenant Long’s request, before leaving on the homicide call received before the meeting, Kane returned to his commanding officer’s office after everyone else had left. He stood without speaking, shifting from foot to foot as Lieutenant Long glared at him from across his desk. Although Kane held little regard for the opinions of Mr. Jellup and the other members of the LAPD brass who had been present earlier, he did care what his lieutenant thought.
“Kane, you smooth-talking son of a bitch.”
“Lieutenant, I—”
“I think you’ve said quite enough, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you realize how much heat I just took because of you? After the way you handled yourself in the meeting, the captain wants your ass, Jellup’s going to tell the mayor he has a “Dirty Harry” on his hands, and worst of all, you made an enemy of Lieutenant Snead.”
“Screw Snead.”
“Wrong attitude. What’s your beef with him, anyway?”
“We had a scrap when we were both working patrol out in Van Nuys.”
“That long ago? What happened?”
Kane shrugged. “Snead was bringing in some old wino one night,” he answered. “The guy was so far gone he barely knew where he was. He decided to relieve himself right there in the booking area, and somehow he wound up pissing on Snead’s leg. Snead retaliated, only way out of proportion—using his baton, stomping the guy, really busting him up.”
“And you stopped him?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And Snead made the mistake of turning on me. I wouldn’t exactly call what happened next a fight, seeing as how I only got to hit him once. He was unconscious after that.”
“Only one punch? Too bad.”
“Yeah.”
Long sighed. “I’m afraid you have more trouble than you think, Dan. City Hall is afraid the media coverage on this could get ugly. They’re looking for a scapegoat. Right now Internal Affairs is going over your performance reports with a fine-tooth comb, starting from the day you joined the force. I had one hell of a time keeping you from getting suspended.”
“How’d you manage? After blowing my stack like that in the meeting, I figured the least I’d get was desk duty till things quieted down.”
“Let’s just say that Senator Bradley was extremely grateful for what you did. Some friends of Agents Tinley and Marcus from the Bureau put in a good word, too. Plus with our backlog of open cases, I convinced the captain that the unit can’t afford your absence. It took some doing, but he eventually saw the light. Incidentally, I just heard that Special Agent Tinley is going to pull through.”
“Good. Glad to hear it.”
“We all are.” Long paused. “You’re a good cop, Dan,” he said, studying Kane across folded hands. “One of the best. When are you going to wise up?”
“If you mean when am I going to start kissin’ ass every time some—”
“That’s not what I’m saying. There’s a big difference between kissing ass and not looking for trouble. Sometimes it seems like you go out of your way to antagonize people. Jesus, Dan, you have a family. It’s time you began thinking about them.”
Kane started to reply, then stopped.
“How is Kate?” asked Long, noticing a change in Kane’s manner.
“Fine,” said Kane, looking away.
“Say hi for me when you see her.”
“I will, if she ever starts talking to me again.”
“What’d you do this time?”
“We had a misunderstanding about the kids,” Kane answered, feeling a painful surge of regret as he recalled Sunday’s ugly scene with the boys on the beach. That, and the terrible argument with Catheryn that had followed. “I … I screwed up pretty bad with Tommy and Travis, to put it mildly. Anyway, I’m bunking at Arnie’s right now.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I’ll work it out,” Kane sighed. “Somehow.”
“You always do.” Long rocked back in his chair. “You ever been shot?” he asked pensively.
“Nope,” Kane answered, puzzled by Long’s apparent non sequitur. “Not that a few haven’t tried.”
“That slug I took in the chest last year got me thinking about what’s really important in life,” Long continued, referring to a wound he had received while investigating a homicide in Pacific Palisades. He’d been pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. Somehow the emergency team had managed to bring him back. “Just between us, I’m considering taking early retirement at the end of this year. What I’m saying is that maybe you ought to start thinking about what’s important to you, too. Your family, for instance. Start playing it smart. You’ve been tap-dancing on thin ice for quite a while. I may not be around to haul you out when it finally breaks.”
“I’m a good swimmer, Lieutenant.”
“You’d better be,” said Long.
“Yes sir,” said Kane uncomfortably, deciding to change the subject. “By the way, that case I just caught before the meeting? The patrol unit at the scene got an ID on the body. The victim’s name was Angelo Martin.”
Long’s eyes narrowed. “Martin? Any relation to the Bradleys’ maid, Sylvia Martin?”
“Her brother.”
“Damn. Has she rolled over on the third kidnapper yet?”
Kane shook his head. “That’s the first thing I checked. The Bureau guy I talked with said she clammed up right after conferring with her lawyer. Won’t say a word. Whatever her attorney told her, it apparently scared her shitless.”
“Think there’s a connection?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Me, either,” said Long. “Look, I conferred with the district attorney about the kidnapping case over the weekend. We’ve got Escobar for the death of a federal officer and the Chicano boy, but the kidnapping charges are shaky—mostly based on circumstantial evidence. We need Sylvia Martin’s testimony. That, and the third kidnapper, who was undoubtedly the guy who made the ransom call from Nevada.”
“No argument there.”
“Did you mention Sylvia’s dead brother when you talked to the feds?”
“No. I want to see where it goes first.”
Long considered for several moments. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll have to notify the Bureau about Sylvia Martin’s brother eventually, but at this point, unless something turns up, I can hold off—at least for now. Have you resumed your pending cases?”
“Not yet. I have court appearances next week, but—”
“Fine,” said Long, interrupting Kane with a wave of his hand. “I’m putting you on this full-time. See what you can come up with on Sylvia’s murdered brother and keep me informed. We’ll have to bring in the feds if you establish a definite link to the Bradley kidnapping—you know that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get busy. Oh, one more thing.”
“Sir?”
“About Friday. Good work.”
8
Twenty minutes after leaving Lieutenant Long’s office, Kane pulled up at the intersection of Pico and Centinela, just north of the Santa Monica Freeway. When he arrived, he found two LAPD patrol officers standing beside a black-and-white idling at the curb. Thirty feet in front of the squad car, enclosed within a perimeter of yellow crime-scene ribbon reading POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, lay the body of a young Hispanic male. He was curled on his side, his limbs oddly twisted, his eyes open in a look of confused, befuddled surprise often present in violent death. A wallet lay beside him near a small pool of brown that had congealed on the asphalt at his throat.
Kane approached the patrol officers with his ID out, although from their postures he knew they had already sized up his beige city car as one of the unmarked police vehicles assigned to the homicide unit. In the time it took him to reach the cruiser, his eyes quickly scanned the seedy neighborhood. Two hundred yards of chain-link fence ra
n south to the corner, apparently installed to protect the nonexistent contents of a trash-filled vacant lot paralleling Centinela. A clump of oleander bushes had sprung up in one corner, with a cardboard refrigerator box sporting a Westinghouse logo partially visible through the leaves. Gang writing covered the block walls of an auto repair shop on one side of the street; similar ghetto scrawl adorned a line of low-rent apartments backing up to the alley on the other.
Both officers had seen Kane on the weekend news and extended their congratulations. Kane accepted with a shrug, then conferred with them briefly, learning that at 8:55 that morning, after responding to a call at the beginning of their shift, they’d discovered the body sprawled on the street. The younger of the two officers, whose plate read Street, had approached and felt for a carotid pulse. Finding none, he’d attempted to lift the victim’s arm by his sleeve, determining by the stiffness present that rigor had already set in.
“Who pulled the wallet?” Kane asked sharply.
“It was lying on the ground when we got here,” answered Haggerty, the second officer. “No money in it, either.”
“You picked it up?”
Haggerty shrugged. “Yeah. Had on my gloves.”
“All right,” said Kane, deciding that the scene—with the possible exception of the wallet—was probably still clean. “Go ahead and get the crime-scene unit down here.”
“We already made the call,” said Street. “Do you want us to notify the medical examiner’s office, too?”
“Hold off till the SID unit gets here. The coroner’s investigator will have to wait till they’re done. No sense making him sit around.”
“Right.”
“Which one of you is going to be keeping the crime-scene log?” Kane asked, referring to a record that would contain the name, arrival and departure time, and serial number of every official to visit the scene.
“I guess I am,” answered Street, glancing over at his bored partner.
“All right, kid,” said Kane. “I want you to list everybody coming through here, and I mean everybody. No screwups.”
“No, sir.”
By now the sun had risen high enough to disperse a layer of marine fog that had rolled in overnight. Kane glanced across the alley, noticing faces staring with frank curiosity from a number of open apartment windows. Deciding to start canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses, he sent Haggerty across the street to talk to a crowd of onlookers gathered there, then returned to his car and radioed for a second patrol unit. That done, he moved to the perimeter of the crime scene and ducked under the ribbon. Careful not to disturb anything as he approached, he stopped three feet from the body, squatted, and remained motionless—not looking at anything in particular as his mind began to focus. Already he could detect a faint odor of death rising from the body.