Sunset Express

by Robert Crais

  Olympic Park is a downscale residential area just north of USC and Exposition Park and the Natural History Museum, not far from downtown L.A. The Coliseum is nearby, along with the L.A. Sports Arena, and on game nights the surrounding residential streets are jammed belly to butt with parked cars and pushcarts and hawkers selling souvenirs and iced drinks.

  Louise Earle lived in a stucco bungalow on Twenty-fifth Street, four blocks south of the freeway, within walking distance of USC. The houses and the yards are small and the drives are narrow, but the properties are neat and clean, and the Earle home was painted a happy yellow with about a million multicolored flowers blooming on her porch in about a million clay pots and wooden planters. Flowers hung from the eaves and filled the porch and two large wrought iron baker’s racks. There were so many flowers on the porch that you had to walk along a narrow path to make your way to the door. It probably took her two hours a day just to water the things.

  A six-year-old Buick Skylark was parked in the drive and an air conditioner was humming in a side window. I parked at the curb opposite her house, then went up the drive past the Buick and through the jungle of flowers to her door. The Buick’s engine was still ticking. Recent arrival. A little metal plaque under the doorbell said WELCOME. I rang the bell.

  The door opened and a thin woman in her early sixties looked at me. She was wearing a simple print dress in a flowered pattern and comfortable canvas shoes and her gray hair had been pulled into a bun. Neat. I said, “Mrs. Earle?”

  She smiled at me. “Yes?”

  I gave her my card. “Mrs. Earle, my name is Elvis Cole. I’m an investigator looking into your son’s arrest. May I ask you a few questions?”

  She frowned, but she might’ve been squinting at the sun. “Are you from the police?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m private.” I told her that I was working for an attorney named Jonathan Green, and though Green did not represent LeCedrick, the events of his arrest might have a bearing on another case.

  She shifted in the door, uncomfortable and unsure about what I might want. “LeCedrick is at Terminal Island.”

  “I know. I understand that you witnessed his arrest, and I have some questions about that.” Something moved in the house behind her.

  “Well, I guess it would be all right.” Reluctant. She glanced back into the house, then stepped aside and opened the door. “Why don’t you come in so we don’t let all the cool air out.”

  I stepped in and she closed the door.

  A short, slight gentleman was standing in the living room. He had wavy marcelled hair and he was wearing a brown summer-weight suit that had probably been new twenty years ago. His hair was more gray than not, and his skin was the color of fine cocoa parchment. He was holding a small bouquet of zinnias. I made him for his late sixties, but I could’ve been off five years either way.

  Louise Earle said, “This is my friend, Walter Lawrence. He just dropped in, and now he’ll have to be leaving. Won’t you, Mr. Lawrence?” She said it more to Mr. Lawrence than to me, and he didn’t seem to like it very much.

  Mr. Lawrence frowned, clearly disappointed. “I suppose I could come back later.”

  Louise Earle said, “And I suppose you could just phone later and see whether or not a person is busy before you drop around, now couldn’t you?”

  Mr. Lawrence ground about four inches of enamel off his teeth, but he managed a grim smile anyway. He wasn’t liking this one bit. “I suppose.”

  She nodded approvingly, then took the flowers. “Now you just let me get these lovely flowers in some water and we’ll speak later.” She cradled the flowers and encouraged him toward the door.

  Mr. Lawrence stood very straight when he walked, trying to get as much height as he could. He mumbled something to her that I couldn’t hear, frowned at me as he passed, and then Louise Earle shut the door. A couple of heartbeats later the Skylark backed out of the drive. I said, “Ah, romance.”

  Louise Earle laughed, and the laugh made her fifteen years younger. “May I offer you coffee, Mr. Cole, or something cool to drink?”

  “Coffee would be fine, Mrs. Earle. Thank you.”

  She took the flowers back to her kitchen, calling over her shoulder. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

  I sat on a well-worn cloth couch with a handmade slipcover and needlepoint throw pillows. An overstuffed chair made an L with the couch, and the couch and the chair were angled around an inexpensive coffee table, and all of it looked across the room at a cherrywood armoire. The armoire was open and its shelves were lined with tiny vases and knickknacks and family photographs, some of which were of LeCedrick. LeCedrick as a teenager. LeCedrick as a child. LeCedrick before choosing a life of crime. He seemed like a happy child with a bright smile. Her home was neat and cared for and smelled of the flowers.

  Mrs. Earle appeared a few moments later with two cups of coffee, walking carefully so as not to slosh. She said, “That business with LeCedrick was several years ago. Why are you interested in that now?”

  “I’m investigating the officer who arrested him.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember her.” She put the cups on the table, then offered one to me. “Would you care for milk or sugar?”

  “No, ma’am. Then you were present during the arrest?”

  She nodded again. “Oh, yes. The police came to see me about that. They came back three or four times. Those affairs people.”

  “Internal Affairs?”

  “Mm-hm.” She sipped at her coffee. It was so hot that swirls of steam followed the contours of her face and fogged her glasses.

  “You know LeCedrick is disputing the arrest.”

  “Of course, I know.”

  “LeCedrick claimed at the time of his arrest, and still claims, that Officer Rossi planted counterfeit bills in order to make the arrest.”

  Mrs. Earle nodded, but it was noncommittal, like she was waiting to hear more.

  “Is that what you told the Internal Affairs people?”

  Mrs. Louise Earle gave a deep sigh and the mask of noncommittal detachment melted away into eyes that were tired and pained. “I know he says that, and I’ll tell you just what I told those affairs people.”

  I leaned toward her.

  “You can’t believe a thing that child says.”

  I blinked at her.

  She put down the coffee and waved toward the armoire. “I was standing right there when LeCedrick and that officer came in. I saw every little thing that happened.” Louise Earle closed her tired eyes, as if by closing them she could see it all again, just like she’d told the affairs people. “The officer stood right there, holding her hat and telling me about her day. I remember that she was holding her hat because I thought how polite that was, to hold her hat like that. I didn’t know she’d come to arrest him.”

  “She didn’t go back to his room?” LeCedrick had said that Rossi had gone back to his room.

  “Oh, no. She just came in and stood there, talking with me the whole time. I was certainly angry when she arrested the boy, but she was very nice about it.” Very nice about it. I could see Jonathan Green when I related this. I could see his color drain, his eyes bulge. I wondered if he would pass out and Truly and I would have to administer CPR.

  “LeCedrick claims that she accompanied him to his room. He says that she had a bag under her jacket containing the counterfeit bills.”

  “It was summer. What would anyone be doing with a jacket in summer?” Louise Earle shook her head, and now there was a sadness to her. She crossed her hands in her lap. “Mr. Cole, you listen to LeCedrick and you’d think he was just the most innocent thing, but that just isn’t the way it is. LeCedrick will lie at the drop of a hat, and always has.”

  I sighed. So much for LeCedrick Earle.

  Louise Earle said, “Make no mistake about it. I love that child and it grieves me no end he’s in jail, but he’s said exactly the same thing every other time he’s been arrested. It’s always somebody else’s fault. It’s alwa
ys the police out to get him. Like that.”

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If you’re lookin’ for me to say that boy is innocent, I can’t. If you’re lookin’ for me to speak against that lady officer, I can’t do that, either.” She looked stern when she said it.

  “No, ma’am. I’m not looking for that.”

  “He wanted me to lie for him back then, and I wouldn’t. He wanted me to cover for him, and make excuses, and I said no. I said, LeCedrick, you have to learn to stop makin’ excuses, you have to learn to be a man.” Her voice wavered and she stopped. She picked up the coffee, sipped, then said, “It’s cost me greatly, but it’s for him. Something has to shock some sense into that boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He hasn’t spoken to me since the trial. He said he’d never speak to me again.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Earle.” I didn’t know what else to say. I felt awkward and ashamed that I’d come into her life and driven off Mr. Lawrence and made her relive something that was clearly so painful.

  “I tried to raise that boy right. I loved that boy as much as any mother could, and tried to show a good example, but he just went wrong.” Her eyes grew pink and a single tear worked its way down her cheek. “Maybe that was where I went wrong. Maybe I held him too close and excused too much. Is it possible to love someone too much?”

  I looked at her, and then I looked at the furniture and the pictures, and then back at her weary eyes and the weight they carried. “I don’t think there can ever be too much love, Mrs. Earle.”

  She seemed to consider that, and then she put her coffee down again. “Has this helped you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It has.” Jonathan Green wouldn’t think so, but there you go.

  She stood, and it was clear that she wanted me to leave. “If you don’t mind, then, I should clip those zinnias and get them in water.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry I interrupted you and Mr. Lawrence.”

  The tiny smile came back, thought it wasn’t as strong as before. “Yes, well, it’ll take more than a little interruption to discourage that man.”

  “Men are like that, Mrs. Earle. We find something worthwhile, we stay with it.”

  The tired eyes crinkled and suddenly the younger self was there again. “Oh, you get on with you, now.”

  She walked me to the door and I went out into the sun and got on with me.

  6

  The early afternoon heat shimmered off the sidewalks and cars and surrounding roofs in a kind of urban illusion of life’s silver lining. It was just before two on the second day of my investigation into Angela Rossi and the doors of investigative possibility were rapidly closing, and with every closed door Angela Rossi looked better and the people making claims against her looked worse. Louise Earle was credible, cogent, in full command of her faculties, and did not seem to be a person who would miss seeing a cop carrying a bag of funny money through her living room. Of course, maybe Angela Rossi was a master of misdirection and had secreted the money behind her back. She might’ve shouted, “Look over there!” and run to LeCedrick’s room and planted the cash when Louise turned to look. Perhaps my investigative task for the afternoon should be finding out whether or not Angela Rossi was an amateur magician.

  Or maybe not. Three teenaged girls with long skinny legs and halter tops came out of the house across the street and went to an ancient Volkswagen Beetle parked in their drive. They were lugging beach towels and bottles of Evian water, and everybody wore thongs. Off to the beach. Maybe I should offer to go with them and protect them from the thugs at the beach. Maybe we could discuss my findings. On the other hand, Lucy Chenier was arriving tomorrow, and maybe I should snap out of it before I found myself in really deep doo-doo. C’est la vie.

  When I reached the sidewalk a tall, muscular black guy appeared beside my car. As he reached the car a heavy white guy in his early fifties climbed out of a blue sedan parked across the street and started toward me. The black guy was in impeccably pressed designer jeans and a tight knit shirt that showed his muscles, and the white guy was in a rumpled light gray winter-weight suit. A million degrees, and he’s wearing winter weight. Cops. A woman’s voice said, “Excuse me, sir. May I have a word with you?” Polite, and kind of cheery.

  The cheery woman was coming toward me from the adjoining yard as if she had been standing at the corner of the house there, waiting. She was maybe five-eight, and dark the way you’re dark when you spend a lot of time in the sun running and working out and playing sports. I made her for her early- to mid-thirties, but the lines around her eyes and mouth were deep. Probably from all the sun. She was wearing designer jeans like the black guy and Reebok court shoes and a loose linen top that she would probably cover with a linen sport coat if it weren’t so hot. Stylish and attractive, even with the Browning 9mm clipped to her right hip. She badged me with an LAPD detective shield as she approached, still cheery with the smile, and I recognized her just before she said, “Mr. Cole, my name is Angela Rossi. The detective in the gray suit would like to ask you a few questions.”

  She glanced at the guy in the bad suit and I followed her look just as she knew I would, and when I did she stepped close and threw an overhand with a black leather sap, trying for the side of my head. Sucker shot. I picked up her move and tried to twist out of the way, but she was good and fast and I caught most of the sap on my right cheek with a blossom of pain. The guy in the suit yelled, “Hey!” and the black guy grunted, “Shit!” like they were surprised, too. Rossi followed the sap with a hard knee, but it caught me in the thigh instead of the groin, and then the older guy was there, wedging himself between us, forcing her away and saying, “Dammit, Rossi, you want another beef in your file? Is that what you want?”

  I wobbled, but kept my feet and let the older guy move her back.

  The black guy hustled up behind me and his hands went to my wrists, pulling my arms behind me. The three girls ran up onto their porch and watched from the door, one of them with her hand to her mouth. My right cheek felt like someone had popped a firecracker under the skin and my eyes were watering. I didn’t want to double over, but I couldn’t exactly stand up straight either. It’s hard to look tough when you’re thinking that maybe you’ll vomit. Especially when you’ve been suckered with an eye-fake. Maybe Rossi was a master of misdirection after all.

  Angela Rossi jabbed her finger at me, saying, “This shitbird came to my home! What were you doing at my home, you creep?” She wasn’t smiling, now. Her face was etched and drawn, and she looked as if she wanted to rip out my eyes.

  The older guy pushed her hand down and shoved her farther away. “Dammit, Rossi. Step back.”

  The black guy locked my right arm above the elbow, walked me to a white Cressida, and pushed me down across the trunk. The skin of the car was so hot from the sun it felt like a branding iron. I said, “Are you guys really cops or is this America’s Funniest Home Videos?”

  The black guy ignored me. He went through my pockets and down my pants, and then he said, “He’s clean, Tommy.”

  Rossi stopped all the squirming and trying to get at me. The older guy came over and badged me, too. “I’m Detective Tomsic, and you’re being investigated for stalking a Los Angeles police officer. Do you understand that?”

  The teenage girl with her hand to her mouth disappeared inside the house. The other two stayed on the porch, watching. A couple of faces appeared in the windows, and I said, “Hey, look, Tomsic. I think they’ve got a video camera.”

  Tomsic said, “Good. Let’m watch.”

  “Maybe they got the sap on tape. You think?” Saps are classified as dangerous weapons. They are illegal to carry, sort of like rocket launchers and samurai swords.

  Rossi said, “What were you doing at my home?” She was breathing hard, but she was well back on the sidewalk and she probably wasn’t going to hit me again.

  “ID and license are in my wallet. I’m a private investigator.” The black guy tossed my w
allet to Tomsic.

  Rossi said, “We know who you are, shitbird. Tell me why you came to my house.”

  “I was investigating a lead that you were living beyond your means.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s what I do. Investigate.”

  The third girl returned from her house to join her two friends, but Tomsic didn’t seem overly concerned. He was going through the wallet like he had all the time in the world. “He’s our boy, all right. California PI license. Elvis Cole.” He looked at me. “You’ve got a license to carry here. Where’s the piece?”

  “Under the seat.”

  The black guy laughed. “You left it under the seat?”

  “I was talking to a woman in her sixties. Who would I shoot?”

  The black guy said, “I hear you.” He went to my Corvette without having to ask which car was mine. They’d probably followed me. Rossi’s neighbor had probably copied my tag number and they’d run the plates and picked me up at my house or maybe even on the way to Terminal Island.

  Rossi frowned at Louise Earle’s place. “You investigating the LeCedrick Earle thing?”

  “Earle claims you planted the cash.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  I nodded. “I had to check it out.”

  She put her right hand on her right hip, just above the Browning. “Who are you working for?”

  “Jonathan Green. In the matter of Teddy Martin.”

  Tomsic said, “Well, fuck me.”

  The black guy stood out of the Corvette, grinning. “You on the Martin defense? Whadda they call it, the Big Green Defense Machine?” Like he wanted to laugh.

  I looked back at Rossi. “People are making accusations that may be relevant to the defense effort, and I’m checking them out. So far you look pretty good.”

  She looked surprised. “What accusations? Teddy Martin killed that woman.”

  I made a little shrug. “If you planted evidence once, the theory is that you’d plant it again. Some people called Green and told him that you’ve got a history of doing anything it takes to jump your career. Green hired me to see if there’s anything to it.”