Bully

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  “I’ve been in touch with a couple members of that original task-force,” Detective Little said. “Also the former mayor. We’ve got all the material from the original case files and as soon as we were at a certain point, we were going to ask for your insights.”

  Chief Manning nodded. He leaned against the podium like he belonged there. “Yes, Alex Dunning requested shortly before his death that I play a hands-on role in the investigation.” Alex Dunning had been the Mayor of Gardena from 1973 to 1980 and retired from a career in public service in 1987. Three months ago, he was killed in a freak hit-and-run accident while on his morning jog on Diego Road in the hills of Aliso Viejo, where he maintained a home. The driver of the vehicle that hit him had yet to be apprehended.

  “In what capacity?”

  “Consultant.” Chief Manning grinned. “Dunning arranged with the present city council to retain my services as an independent consultant to the case. You can verify this with Mr. Hydo.” John Hydo was the present Mayor of Gardena.

  Hydo’s representative looked embarrassed as Detective Little scowled at him. “Is this true, Bart?”

  “That was to be the subject of my meeting with you this afternoon after we adjourned,” Bart confessed, embarrassed.

  “Great,” Detective Little said. His face looked flushed. He turned to Chief Manning. “I suppose the three of us will need to talk then.”

  “That’s fine.” Chief Manning nodded.

  Tom Jensen watched the exchange with interest. He knew there were very few city officials still in office from the late seventies, and he had no idea what happened to many of them. There were most likely city employees who’d held their positions for that long, but as far as actual elected officials went, he knew for a fact that most of them had come on board in the past decade.

  “With that in mind, I move we adjourn today’s briefing and reconvene tomorrow afternoon,” Detective Little said. “I’m going to further request to Chief Manning that he come prepared tomorrow afternoon to present a report of the original investigation and perhaps distribute materials he feels will be necessary to aid our detectives.”

  “That would be my pleasure,” Chief Manning said, grinning.

  “Adjourned,” Detective Little said, and as Tom Jensen rose to his feet with the rest of his colleagues, he detected the faint hint that his boss was not too pleased with this sudden turn of events.

  Four

  IT TOOK DANNY Hernandez nearly two days, but he did it. In hindsight, Karen’s sudden about-face in not letting the kids spend the weekend with him was a blessing in disguise.

  If he hadn’t had the time to devote to it he never would have located Jerry Valdez.

  It was Sunday afternoon, two days after Detective Jensen paid Danny a visit about the Valesquez case, and Danny was sitting in his Toyota on a side street in Manhattan Beach, checking the address of a house. He had gotten the address from an internet site called yellowpages.com. After spending a few hours Saturday morning trying to find old friends and acquaintances and getting nowhere, he’d called his sister, Tina, in Costa Mesa and asked her if she still had Angelina’s phone number. Angelina Gonzalez had lived down the street from them in their old Gardena neighborhood, and at one time she and Tina were best friends—the last time Danny saw her was at Tina and Jim’s wedding nine years ago. He’d asked Tina for Angelina’s number casually, saying he was trying to find Paul Katsamata’s phone number and the last he’d heard, Paul and Angelina were still friends. Tina passed the number on to him and Danny was fortunate enough to talk to Angelina’s mother, who remembered him. “Angelina lives in Torrance now, but I know she’d love to hear from you,” Mrs. Gonzalez had said. “She’s usually home Saturday afternoons. Give her a call.”

  Once he got past the initial surprise and the how-you-doing-long-time-no-see conversation when he got Angelina on the phone, he casually inquired if she knew where Jerry Valdez was living. At one time, Jerry dated Angelina’s older sister, Maria, and Danny recalled they remained friendly even after they broke up. Angelina said, “I haven’t seen Jerry in years, but Maria still keeps in touch with him. He went through a bad patch a while ago.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Drugs and stuff. I hear he’s married now or something, has a kid. Last time Maria saw him, he was working as a carpenter for some construction firm and living in Manhattan Beach.”

  Danny asked Angelina if she could get Jerry’s number from her sister—he’d been thinking about him lately and wanted to talk to him. Angelina said she would, then when they got off the phone Danny cursed silently. It could be days, maybe weeks before he heard anything back from Angelina or Maria, and by then—

  With all his known contacts tapped out, lost, or moved on to new lives, Danny contemplated his options.

  Manhattan Beach. Not a very big stretch of land, but there were hundreds of apartment complexes and houses in the area. Danny picked up the local phone book and started flipping through it, noting it only covered Gardena, Carson, and parts of Torrance. He looked at the cover and then noted a web page address at the bottom.

  Following his hunch, he’d gone upstairs to his computer and typed in the web page address— www.yellowpages.com. Once there, he found the section where he could look up anybody who was listed in the phone book, discovering he could look them up by State and City. He quickly typed in Jerry’s name, configured the search engine to search in Manhattan Beach, California and hit enter.

  The query spit back fifty-two Jerry Valdez’s in Manhattan Beach.

  It took Danny the rest of that day and part of Sunday morning to filter through the first twenty-eight names and call them.

  More than halfway down the list was a listing for a Christine and Jerry Valdez who lived on La Rotunda Avenue in Manhattan Beach. When he called that number this morning a woman answered. Danny identified himself and said he was looking for a Jerry Valdez he had grown up with—the line he’d repeated over two dozen times—and when he told her he’d lived in Gardena in the late seventies, on Atkinson Avenue near El Camino College, the woman perked up. “My husband lived on Atkinson,” she said. “What’s your name again?”

  “Danny Hernandez,” he’d said. “I also used to be into skateboarding, and the guy I’m looking for was into it as well. He was pretty good at it, too.”

  The woman chuckled. “My husband used to ride a skateboard when he was a kid. He showed me some old pictures of himself one time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He looked like he used to be pretty good, too.”

  “Is Jerry home? Can I speak to him?”

  The woman indicated Jerry wasn’t home but that she would take a message. Danny gave the woman his name and phone number and hung up, his heart racing. He wondered if Jerry would call him when the woman, who Danny assumed was Christine Valdez, gave him the message.

  Danny took off for Manhattan Beach, address in hand fifteen minutes later.

  And now he sat in his car, watching the house from the safety of his vehicle across the street.

  The house was an older craftsman style with white paint and blue trim. It looked cozy, yet small, with a well-trimmed lawn and a little detached garage in the back. There was a red El Camino parked in the driveway and a scattering of toys on the front porch.

  Danny got out of the car and walked across the street to the house.

  His heart was pounding as he rang the doorbell and waited.

  For a moment, Danny didn’t think anybody would answer. He was certain somebody was home, and was about to ring the doorbell again when there was the sound of the door unlocking and then it opened. A thin man with a receding hairline, his shoulder-length hair frizzy and graying, and a long graying goatee wearing wire-frame glasses peered out at him cautiously. “Yeah?”

  “Jerry Valdez?”

  There was a faint hint of recognition in those brown eyes. “Danny?”

  And then it hit him. The man standing in front of him who was so far removed from the hip du
de he’d last seen all those years ago was Jerry Valdez. “Yeah, Jerry. It’s me.”

  “I couldn’t believe it when Chrissy told me you called,” Jerry said, his voice a whisper.

  The two men stood on opposite sides of the threshold looking at each other, noting how much each other had changed.

  Jerry’s features, which had lit up briefly in a kind of boyhood nostalgia, quickly darkened. “Something’s up. What’s going on?”

  “Is your wife home?”

  “No. She and my daughter went to her mom’s. What’s up?”

  “We need to talk.”

  Jerry looked at him, his face grim. Then he opened the door and stepped aside and invited Danny in.

  DESPITE THE NICE sunny day outside, Jerry had the window shades drawn. For an ex-surf cat and skateboarder, he seemed to have retreated into a different persona. The interior of the house was dark. What little light there was came from the kitchen and the rays of sun that bled through the closed drapes and curtains. Danny followed Jerry into the living room and pointed to the sofa. “You’ve got ten minutes. I have an idea what this is about. It’s not everyday that somebody you haven’t seen or spoken to in two decades suddenly tracks you down for no apparent reason.”

  “I got a good reason,” Danny said, turning to Jerry. He didn’t sit down; he was a little afraid to. Jerry had taken on a threatening edge. The other man’s body looked tense and wiry, as if he were ready to spring at him at any moment. Despite the wear and tear displayed in Jerry’s features, he looked like he kept in shape; his body was lean and trim, his arms were well-toned and muscled. “I wouldn’t have come over here if I hadn’t had a good reason.”

  “So what is it?” Jerry asked, and now Danny could tell that beneath the high tension there was fear in his eyes as well.

  “This detective came by my place a few days ago,” Danny said, feeling nervous now. “He said that they released Doug Archer.”

  Jerry’s eyes widened in surprise. Danny plunged on and told him the rest, running down what his conversation with Detective Jensen had been like. When he was finished he felt even more nervous and scared. “He did a lot of poking around, man. He was asking me stuff that nobody asked before. He asked about you and—”

  “He asked about me?” Jerry’s voice and posture suddenly changed. Now he appeared threatening again.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t say anything.” Danny went on. He sat down on the worn green sofa, fidgeting. “I mean, shit, I had no idea where you were, or—”

  “You do now,” Jerry said, remaining standing. “You do now, man.”

  Danny looked up at Jerry, feeling the blood run out of his face. He slowly stood up. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that I didn’t tell him anything. I said I didn’t know where you were, that I hadn’t seen you in almost twenty years, that—”

  “But you’ve seen me now,” Jerry said.

  Danny looked at him and their eyes locked. Jerry’s features looked almost wraithlike. He’d lost some hair along the top of his head but he still had plenty of it everywhere else. For a guy who was only three years older than Danny, he looked a lot older. “He started asking me about Bobby Whitsett and wanted to know what happened that day at the ditch.”

  Jerry blinked, as if taken aback. “You shittin’ me?”

  “No man, I’m not. He hardly even asked me about Raul at all, just wanted to know about that day at the ditch because he read about it in a police report.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him what we...you know, what we originally told them what happened.”

  “And he believed you?”

  “Yeah.” Danny nodded. He almost added, I think he did, but then wisely decided not to.

  “And he asked you if you knew where to find me?”

  “Yeah.”

  They were silent for a moment, each man regarding the other. Danny was nervous and scared and he wanted another drink real badly. He licked his lips. “Nobody’s come around asking you shit?”

  Jerry shook his head. “No. No cops have come around here.”

  Danny found that hard to believe, but then maybe the cops just hadn’t gotten around to Jerry yet. Surely they would have tracked him down by now; surely it would be fairly easy. Danny was positive Jerry had a minor criminal record like he did. “Well, I just wanted to let you know what was up,” he said, shuffling on his feet. “You know, see if any cops had come poking around.”

  Jerry moved to the living room window and peered outside quickly. When he came back he looked menacing again and Danny could tell it was fueled by fear. “Listen to me, Danny, and listen to me good. Okay?” His voice was a whisper and Danny nodded. “You just keep playing this guy the way you did and everything will be cool, okay? I’m gonna do the same if anybody comes poking around here.”

  Danny nodded, his breathing heavy.

  “How the fuck did you find me?” Jerry asked. “I forgot to ask you that.”

  “The internet, man. If your number’s listed in the phonebook, you can look anybody up on yellowpages.com.”

  Jerry grimaced. “I told Chrissy not to have our number listed. Goddammit!”

  Danny waited for the anger to boil over. Jerry took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and appeared to get himself under control. He let out a long sigh. “Okay.” He looked up at Danny, his brown eyes blazing. “Fine, we deal with it. I’ll meditate on this when you leave to help myself chill out, but you should probably know that if you come back here tomorrow you won’t find me.”

  Danny was taken aback; Jerry’s train of thought was running so fast it was hard to keep up. “What?”

  Jerry took a step toward Danny. “Let me tell you something, Danny. There’s nothing to worry about because we did nothing wrong. You got me? We didn’t do anything, and the cops are just doing what they’re doing because some college prick got a hard-on to fuck with things, so we gotta ride it out for a while, okay? We just lay low and play it cool, and everything will be okay. This is no time to be freaking out.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” Danny said.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Okay, I am, I am, but Jesus Christ, man, I’m scared!“

  “We did nothing wrong!” Jerry emphasized this point again, thrusting his face toward Danny. “You got me?”

  “Why did you say that I might not see you here tomorrow if I come back?” Danny said, the words coming out of him so fast he couldn’t stop them. “You gonna cut and run?”

  Jerry was suddenly in his face, his lean form thrust against him the way a bully will throw himself in front of you in a schoolyard fight, chest out, shoulders back, fists clenched. “Let me tell you something, Danny-boy, and you better listen fucking good ‘cause I’m going to tell you once. That little fuck Valesquez doesn’t deserve your pity or your sympathy and neither does his fucking family. You got me? If it wasn’t for that fuckwad, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they had. As far as I’m concerned, it was Raul’s goddamn fault he ended up the way he did, and I ain’t taking any rap for his psychotic, fucking ass!”

  “But—” Danny sputtered.

  “Shut up!” Jerry said, and now his voice was rising and it scared Danny a little more. “I’m not taking the blame for this and I’m not saying shit, and I suggest you keep your mouth shut, too. I’ve got enough problems of my own to care about a twenty-year-old case that’s as dead as Raul.” He regarded Danny with something like anger in his brown eyes. “Let me ask you something, man. You married?”

  “No,” Danny whispered.

  “Ever been married?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “We got divorced.”

  “No shit? Welcome to the club, man. I’m on wife number three now. You know that old saying that three’s a charm? Whoever said that is right. Chrissy’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Actually, I take it back. Olivia, our daughter, is the best thing that ever happened to me. You have kids, Danny?”
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  Danny nodded, thinking of Tina and Christopher and how he missed having them over this weekend. “Yeah. A boy and a girl.”

  Jerry was watching him; he could tell that he had gotten through to Danny. He relaxed his aggressive stance somewhat. “So you know where I’m coming from, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Chrissy helped pull me out of my shit, man,” Jerry said. “Every relationship I’ve ever had has crashed and burned because of me. I’ve had problems with drugs and alcohol, but Chrissy helped me. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be sober now. I’d probably be dead or in jail. And Olivia...she’s the reason I stay sober. I’ve never been as happy before in my entire life. Do you understand that?”

  Danny understood—he’d had that kind of happiness before. He’d had that with Karen and he’d fucked it up. He nodded.

  “I don’t intend to fuck this up,” Jerry said. “Not for you, and certainly not for that despicable piece of shit and his shit-for-brains, no good, fucking family. I don’t give a shit if they’re still searching for answers and all that shit you hear families of murder victims go through. I don’t give a flying fuck if they’re still hurting. I don’t know them, and I don’t want to know them. All I want is my life, man. I never got to live the kind of life I was supposed to live.” He stopped and looked at Danny. “You know what I mean?”

  “I think I do,” Danny said.

  “What do you do for a living, Danny?”

  Danny was about to answer and then saw the hidden meaning to Jerry’s question. The irony of it hit him like a ton of bricks and he chuckled. “I work at WalMart. Shipping and Receiving.”