A spark flared in Nelson’s eye, then vanished. “Jenkins was a problem, yes. Why did you kill him? Was it self-defense?”
“I didn’t kill him. Give me a polygraph.”
Nelson clicked off his tape recorder. “You’re an actor. I don’t give a damn about polys,” he said. He dug his key chain from his pocket and flipped through several keys, choosing a tiny one that fit into my handcuffs. The metal clicked free. “Your story stinks, Hardwick. Work on a better one, for your own good. Whatever you’re not saying is missing loud and clear. Get up.”
“What now?” I rubbed my wrists. When I stood up, my legs tingled.
“The judge signed the warrant,” he said. “You’re having company.”
There was no hiding the police presence from my neighbors now.
By the time I got home, there were four unmarked police sedans parked on my street, and enough men wearing LAPD windbreakers in my driveway for a Police Benevolent Association meeting. One of the cops had a hand-held video camera.
I saw Mrs. Katz from the Spanish-style house across the road peering over as she watered her white roses. Once Mr. Katz started talking, the whole street would know by nightfall, but at least I wasn’t still in handcuffs. I waved at her from the passenger side of Nelson’s car. She waved back, tentatively.
“Were you robbed?” she called to me when I climbed out.
I shook my head, smiled, and gave her a politician’s wave that saidTell you later.
My smile died as soon I began wading through a dozen cops to get to my door, snorkeling inside a school of sharks. They milled closer to me than they needed to, and stepped back only grudgingly to make way. Their eyes hammered at me. I was glad Nelson was at my flank.
Arnaz and O’Keefe were camped on the front stoop with white bags stenciled with red-lipped clown smiles. They must have been watching the house to make sure no one took anything out while I was detained. My heart raced. Where was Chela?
“Hey, man, my goddaughter was supposed to visit me this morning,” I said to Arnaz. “Did she come by looking for me? About fifteen?”
Arnaz shrugged, chewing his red coffee stirrer with deliberation. To him, I was invisible, so he wasn’t going to chit-chat. I sighed. At least my explanation was planted if we found Chela. But what if we didn’t?
I opened the door and led the unwelcome expedition inside my house.
Even when police have a search warrant, the law says they can’t just tear your place up and see what they find. That’s called a general search, and it’s illegal. Nelson had given me the warrant to read when he drove me back in his car, and it was very specific: They could only look for my Glock as a possible murder weapon, my clothes, my answering machine, my cell phone, and my computer, to determine if there had been email between me and Jenk. They would no doubt also search my car and trash cans. The warrant was tied to the Robert Jenkins case, but of course Nelson wouldn’t be unhappy to find clues about Serena either. By law, they could search anywhere large enough to conceal a gun. Boxes. Closets. Drawers.
I thought the box where I’d packed the gun was in the basement, but suddenly I wasn’t sure. Had I brought it up to the pantry instead? It was possible.
Shit. It was going to be a long day.
Inside, my house was pristine. No one had touched it. The TV was still on.
“My gun is in a box in the basement,” I told Nelson. “You should start there.”
Nelson didn’t look at me. “We’ll get to the basement,” he said.
Rage surged through me, but I locked it down. I wasn’t going to inflame the cops by mouthing off at their CO. I sat on my living room sofa with my hands on my kneecaps, in plain view, and forced my eyes to stare at the parade of barely dressed video dancers and instant pop stars still romping on my television set. While I sat and tried not to get pissed, Nelson sent detectives to every corner of my house: my guest room. Screening room. Office. Bedroom.
I tried not to look as a wiry, blond-haired detective crossed my living room toward the guest room, but I felt a flush of adrenaline as he went inside. I might have held my breath for thirty seconds while I waited to see if he would come out with Chela. He didn’t. I closed my eyes, not sure whether to be relieved or worried. Could she have made it to the pantry in time when the police came knocking? It was possible.
Even while one part of me hoped she was in there, another hoped she wasn’t. If my gun wasn’t in my basement, I might have to lead them to the pantry myself. My Glock wouldn’t prove I hadn’t killed Jenk, but it would rule out the gun registered to me as the murder weapon. I had to help them find that gun, no matter what the other consequences.
You can make it through this. Just keep your cool.
I kept my cool for three minutes.
Then, I heard a scraping noise behind me. One of the detectives was yanking Alice’s framed one-sheet poster fromA Raisin in the Sun from my foyer wall. I turned around in time to see the cop lose his grip, and the large frame crashed to the tiled floor. Cracked glass sent spiderwebs across Sidney Poitier’s face.
I still remember the first time I saw that movie on television when I was ten and up late because my father was working. Sidney’s power transformed our little television set to something large and grand. Something important. Right then and there, I decided I wanted to be an actor. Sidney did that.
“Hey,”I said. I was on my feet, not even thinking. That was all I had time to say. I felt one arm around my neck, and another around my waist. I was yanked from my feet, and my shoulder fell hard against the floor. Even with the inch-high living room piled carpet, I felt an electric sizzle of pain shoot from my shoulder to my neck. One of the cops, who was fifty pounds overweight, pressed his knee against my jaw while the other twisted my arm around my back as if he was warming up to break it.
Nelson had been in the kitchen, and he ran to see what the commotion was. Nelson loomed above me like Atlas.
“What?” Nelson said. I recognized my cell phone in his gloved hand.
“He made a move,” said the detective on my face. He sounded sheepish.
“Let…him…up.”
The officers backed away, and I brought myself to my feet with as much dignity as I could. Just that fast, I ached all over. I worried with my jaw, trying to rub it back into alignment.Fat bastard.
“That’s a collectible, asshole,” I said to the cop with the frame.
“Watch your mouth,” Nelson said. His face was suddenly the only thing in my vision. His breathing was fast and shallow, and his pores reeked of the coffee he’d been drinking while he drove. To me, he smelled like fractured nerves.
I calmed my voice, deferring to Nelson by staring at his shining black shoes. “The warrant doesn’t authorize you to—”
“I’m directing this search, so the warrant authorizes me to do whatever the hell I say it does,” Nelson said. “You may have a hidden safe, so we’re clearing the walls. If you can’t handle it, go outside and get some air.”
At first I thought it was a suggestion, but then I realized he was ordering me out. I gazed back at the cops’ faces: The big one was nearly leering at me, breathing hard, and I suspected Jenk was a friend of his. The other two cops looked jumpy, especially the one with the frame. The lone, officious-looking female cop stuck her head in from the screening room to see what was going on, her face angled upward with concern.
Nelson was right. I needed to be outside.
I straightened my T-shirt, tucking it into my sweatpants. “Detective Jenkins’s message is on that phone,” I said to Nelson as I passed him. “Don’t erase it.”
“I know how to use a cell phone. Get the hell out of here.”
When I opened my front door, I ran straight into Arnaz and O’Keefe. Any fantasies I might have had about running off were quelled before they were fully born. Through the door, I heard Nelson rebuke the detective inside the house: “Show some respect. The Poitier poster’s almost fifty years old.”
If not for O’Keefe
and Arnaz watching me, I might have smiled.
I felt their eyes tracking me, so I moved slowly, cautiously, and sat on the polished stone steps to my front stoop. I’m not into fast food, but the fading scents from the McDonald’s bags beside me made my stomach growl. It was lunchtime, and I’d never had breakfast. My detention hadn’t included a meal plan.
“There’s an extra double cheese in there,” Arnaz said, and O’Keefe shot him a glare. Arnaz shrugged. “What? It’s a sin to waste food.”
“Yeah, whatever, go ahead and eat it, Hardwick,” O’Keefe said. “The way I hear, you may never eat McDonald’s again.”
“Promise?” I said, but I grabbed the bag anyway. The meat was still warm, the bun not yet stiff, and McDonald’s had never tasted so good.
A black-and-white cruiser appeared from around the bend on curving Gleason Street, and it slowed as it neared the house. I couldn’t see who was inside as it passed, but it drove on without stopping. Onlookers, maybe. Or, maybe my neighborhood was under surveillance. Were they looking for Chela?
I was almost ready to confess to things I hadn’t done just to end this day.
“You should get to Preach before somebody else does,” Arnaz said quietly.
My neck didn’t have the strength to turn around and look at him. “Leave Dad to me.” I was still hoping for a grand reprieve—even an apology—before I would have to tell my father about it. I wanted him to hear it in past tense, not present tense. But I was only fooling myself. I was in denial, and I knew it.
Arnaz and O’Keefe resumed their earlier conversation, debating whose breasts were real and whose were fake on the Hollywood A-list. I could have enlightened them, if I’d been in the mood.
The police cruiser reappeared, and this time it coasted to a halt.
I straightened up so I could see the car better. Kojak was sitting in the driver’s seat with his elbow propped in the open window, staring at me from behind sunglasses. His partner was the passenger. My heartbeat sped up again.
“Easy,” O’Keefe said. “They’re not going near the chain of evidence.”
My lawyer would love it if they did,I thought. “They’re dirty. I’m sorry about the detective who died, but he was dirty, too. This whole thing is part of a cover-up.”
“Rumor and innuendo,” Arnaz said, noncommittal. “Not for us to decide.”
I stood up suddenly. “I want to talk to them. Alone.”
“Hell, no,” O’Keefe said. “Sit down and keep your mouth shut.”
“They’re telling lies about me, and I want to know why.”
“Go knock yourself out, Hardwick,” Arnaz said. O’Keefe gave him another look, and Arnaz went on: “What do we care? Just go slow. No sudden movements. And don’t try to take off, because Lorenzo’s king of the OIS. Don’t give him an excuse.”
OIS.Officer-involved shooting. I felt a chill ripple up my spinal column.
I raised my hands high, keeping them in plain view. “Five minutes,” I said, and I walked toward the police car that was stalking me. The men inside seemed to smile as they watched me approach—but the smiles were tight, painful masks.
“Where you going, brother?” Kojak said. “Need a ride?” I hadn’t noticed it before, but he had a slight accent almost hidden in his speech. A black Latino, maybe. Lorenzo was probably the cop I called Kojak—I thought I remembered M.C. Glazer calling himRenzo —and his partner was DeFranco. Acne scars on Lorenzo’s face were so pronounced in the sunlight that they looked like freckles. DeFranco nodded to music in his head, chewing gum with great deliberation.
“I just came to talk,” I said. I walked as close to the car as I dared, just beyond the trajectory of Kojak’s door if he suddenly flung it open. “I didn’t kill your friend. You probably know that, or you wouldn’t have lied to jack up a case against me.”
Their grins withered.
“You better watch who you call a liar,” Kojak said. He took off his shades so I could see his eyes.King of the OIS. His dark eyes chilled me. They seemed to float like separate entities above the bridge of his nose, manic and pained.
“I didn’t do it, man,” I said. “I only met him that one time.”
“You know what you sound like?” Kojak said. “You’re whining like my three-year-old kid.‘It wadn’t me, it wadn’t me.’ But your business card says different, right there in Jenk’s car. It was the first thing we saw when they called us to the scene.”
“Why would I be stupid enough to leave my card there if I killed him?”
DeFranco spat a wad of chewing gum out of his window. “We meet a lot of stupid people,” he said. “How about that guy who broke into Glaze’s house?”
“Thatguy was stupid,” Kojak said.
“I didn’t kill your friend,” I said again, struggling to hold my voice steady. “If Glaze wants to have me arrested for what happened at the beach house, fine. But I’ll have to explain why I was there.”
“Glaze doesn’t believe in pressing charges,” Kojak said dismissively. He winked. “By the way…how’s Chela?”
My neighbors’ houses blended into one as the street seemed to spin. Suddenly two facts clicked together in my mind that hadn’t felt linked before: M.C. Glazer’s bodyguards knew where I lived, and I hadn’t seen Chela since nine o’clock last night. I felt my limbs turning leaden as new, horrible possibilities wormed into my mind. M.C. Glazer’s life would get simpler if Chela disappeared.
They might have her.I forgot my morning at the police station as a new depth of helplessness held me rooted in place. I had never been responsible for a child’s life. The enormity of it stunned me.
“She’s just a kid,” I said. “She didn’t want to leave with me. If you have her, don’t hurt her. Please. Seriously, she’s fifteen years old, for God’s sake.”
Time created new rules, and the moment drew itself out. For an impossibly long interval, neither of them spoke. I couldn’t see anything in their faces to tell me if the girl I had brought to my house last night was dead or alive.
Kojak’s eyes narrowed, studying me. “You’re good, but keep practicing,” he said. “You’ll be doing more of that.”
“More of what, man?”
“Begging,” Kojak said. His voice cracked, before it was propped up again by cold, controlled anger. “You killed our brother—that’s what he was to us. I don’t know how it happened, because Jenk was too sharp to go down for amaricón like you. But everybody fucks up sometimes. So I want to hear you begging like that when I see you again. But really play it up next time. Screaming, maybe.”
“We’ll help with that part,” DeFranco said.
Kojak gunned the car’s engine. He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “If they arrest you, we’ll still get you,” he said. “If theydon’t arrest you…” He shrugged and smiled a stomach-churning smile.
Those two menbelieved I had killed Jenk, I realized. Their accusations weren’t a bluff by dirty cops trying to hide their illegal activities from LAPD brass, shielding a real suspect who might reveal criminal connections. I was under a death sentence—and not the slow, lingering sentence meted out through the justice system, with rules and warrants. The quick kind. The real kind.
I was standing within a few feet of men who had just promised to kill me. This was my chance to choose the words that might save my life, and maybe Chela’s too. And I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Their car squealed and was gone.
Mrs. Katz was still standing in her yard with her hose. I think she might have called out to me, but I barely heard. That time, I couldn’t fake a smile.
My Glock, as I’d guessed, was in its black plastic case in a box in the basement. I watched the police file out of my house as they took the automatic, my computer, a pile of clothes, my cell phones, and a few other items I wasn’t worried about.
No Chela. No stolen Smith & Wesson. No stolen goods.
Police car doors slammed and engines revved along the street, a chorus.
Nelson da
ngled my passport out of his driver’s-side window. “We’ll hold on to this,” he said. “Work on your story. Our people will call your people. That Hollywood enough for you?”
I stood in my yard and watched Nelson’s car drive away, out of sight. I had lost seven hours of my life, but I was finally at home alone. And I was still a free man.
I could barely get my legs to work right as I ran into my house. I stumbled into my kitchen barstool. The papers and items strewn around the kitchen floor ordinarily would have upset me, but I barely noticed. My heart was shaking in my chest.
“Chela?” I called.
The wine rack was empty. All of the bottles had been lined up neatly on the floor. Had they found the pantry? Had Lorenzo and DeFranco gotten to Chela somehow?
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
I grabbed the door by its groove and tugged. It stuck. The door was locked.
“Chela!” I said, tapping on the wall. “It’s me. Everybody’s gone.”
I pressed my ear to the wall, but I didn’t hear anything. Then, the chair inside whined against the floor. I heard fumbling with the locks. The door pushed open.
Chela stood there wearing an oversized red CopKilla T-shirt that reached her knees, her hair tied in a ponytail. She’d made a pallet of fur coats on the floor, and on the table she’d opened a box of Saltines and a jar of peanut butter. The room smelled sour. “Bathroom,” she said, and ran past me into the hall. I heard the door slam and stood there open-mouthed with relief as silence was followed by the sound of running water.
She returned looking about five pounds lighter, yawning. “I’mthirsty,” she said. “And you need a CD player or something in here. Bad.”
I lunged to hug her, but Chela tensed up, looking startled, so I pulled back and only squeezed her forearms tightly, at arm’s length. “I was worried.”
“Uhm…I can see that,” Chela said, wary.
I could only look back nostalgically at yesterday, when I was considered a suspect only in Serena’s death. Things had only gotten worse. Much worse. But at least one thing was intact, untouched. Chela. I always wondered why Alice built her panic room so close to the kitchen when most people would want it near their bedroom, but now I was glad. It had worked.
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