A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

by Tyler Dilts

  I put my hand in the stream of water. The pressure was amazing. Even better than it had been with the old head. It was already getting hot. I turned the knob all the way up. The water flowed so forcefully it almost stung my hand. Oh my god, I thought.

  When I went back into the kitchen, she was loading her chicken tacos onto a plate.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Really?” She looked at me with disappointment in her eyes.

  “What?” I said.

  “If you’re going to be that sincere,” she said, “it’s going to take all the fun out of me giving you shit about this.”

  28

  SILVA POLARIS 177 COMPASS.

  The press release showed up on Longbeach.gov the next morning. It read:

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS RELEASE #2013

  Subject: MURDER (1000 block Ohio Avenue)

  Contact: Media Relations Detail (555) 985-4111

  Yesterday, at approximately 8:45 p.m., Long Beach Police responded to a report of a disturbance in the 1000 block of Ohio Avenue, which resulted in the death of a male teenager.

  When the officers arrived, they discovered 15-year-old Jesús Solano, a resident of Long Beach, suffering from multiple stab wounds to the upper torso. He was transported by Long Beach Fire Department paramedics to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

  No suspect information is available, and the incident is being investigated as possibly gang related.

  Anyone with information is urged to contact LBPD Homicide Detectives Danny Beckett and Jennifer Tanaka at (555) 985-2101. Anonymous tips may be submitted by calling 1-800-777-TIPS, texting TIPLA plus your tip to CRIME (27463), or visiting www.lacrimestoppers.org.

  I read it over a few times and went to the Press-Telegram website to wait for it to show up there as well. It was surprisingly quick. In less than an hour a single paragraph paraphrasing the release showed up on the Crime page under the heading “Homicide.”

  At six thirty, I called Benny War’s office line, identified myself to the receptionist, and asked to speak to Mr. Guerra. “He should be expecting my call,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Guerra has gone home for the evening. May I take a message or put you through to his voice mail?”

  “Just tell him I called.”

  “And what shall I tell him it was regarding?”

  “He’ll know.”

  I parked my car illegally in front of Benny’s garage door on East Lido Lane. It was really more of a glorified alley. On Naples Island, every extra square foot had been swallowed by wealthy residents remodeling their homes over the years. What had once been a charming neighborhood of small, quaint bungalows had metastasized over the decades into a nearly seamless mass of bloated, multistoried architectural ejaculations that left me feeling claustrophobic and depressed.

  I didn’t want to ring the bell on the entrance that faced the street, and the buildings were so tightly packed together that, unless I wanted to trespass and cut through one of the narrow spaces between them, I was forced to walk all the way around six of the large houses before I could cut over to the pedestrian walkway they called Vista Del Golfo and walk back past the same six homes to get to the side of Benny’s place that faced out toward Alamitos Bay.

  When I got there, I stood outside the perimeter of the low stone fence that separated Benny’s patio from the concourse. Like most of the residents of the island, he kept the expansive picture windows that ran along the entire first floor of his home unencumbered by shades or curtains. It was like looking into a giant, vainglorious fish tank.

  In what I’m sure was described as a “great room” by Benny’s real-estate agent when he was creaming his jeans over the sale, Benny sat on a large white-leather sectional with a glass of wine in his hand, watching a basketball game on an immense wall-mounted flat-screen TV. He wasn’t alone.

  From my vantage point, I was able to see past the living-room furniture and into the kitchen. Gregory, the obsequious assistant who had led Jen and me into Benny’s office the first time we went to see him, was doing something at one of the counters. After a few moments, he came out with a pizza box in one hand and a beer in the other and joined Benny. I couldn’t make it out clearly, but the logo on the pizza box looked like it belonged to Michael’s Pizzeria. They had a location on Naples Island, too. That one didn’t have pepperoni either.

  I watched them for a while, wondering what Gregory’s job duties included. The only one I was sure of was sycophant. The others could have included anything from hired muscle to personal chef to consigliere. I didn’t know, and frankly, I didn’t care.

  The short wrought-iron gate in front of me was locked, but it was so low I could almost step over it without making any contact. I texted Jen and walked past the teak furniture and the built-in grill and up the three steps leading to the glass-panel door.

  I gave it a gentle tap, startling both Benny and Gregory.

  They looked at me and then at each other. Benny got up and opened the door.

  “Hello, Detective,” he said as nonchalantly as if I were a favorite neighbor popping in to borrow a cup of pinot noir.

  “Benny,” I said.

  “We weren’t expecting any company, but I think we can spare a slice if you’d like to join us.”

  I tried to read his expression to determine if he’d heard the news. He knew how to play it cool, but I was betting that his attitude meant that he hadn’t yet found out.

  “Jesús Solano is dead.”

  The smirk fell off of his face and his eyes widened so slightly that I would not have noticed if I hadn’t been watching for the tell. He held my gaze for a moment and then turned to Gregory, who gave his head a puzzled shake and reached for the iPad on the frosted-glass coffee table.

  Benny and I watched him slide and tap and wait and read. He looked at Benny and nodded.

  When he looked back at me I thought I saw a twitch of fear in his eyes, but it was probably just wishful thinking.

  “We need to talk to you at the station,” I said. “How many of those have you had?” I gestured toward the wine glass Benny had left on the table. “You want to ride with me or have Greg drive you?”

  The clenching in his jaw gave me more pleasure than I wanted to admit.

  29

  USED ALTOIDS TIN SECURED W/ RUBBER BAND, CONTAINING: $8.37 IN COINS.

  The timing was crucial. Jen had been waiting for me with a backup unit half a block away from Benny’s and listening on a wire in case anything went wrong. While Gregory and Benny were making their way into the garage and loading themselves into the Jag, I texted Jen again and let her know everything was going according to plan. She needed to beat us back downtown.

  The visitors’ parking area was nearly empty when we got there. I parked and Gregory took the spot next to me. Seeing my Camry next to Benny’s Jaguar gave me a pleasantly smug feeling of superiority. It probably did the same for him.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” I said to Benny. We started walking, and I said, “Actually, Greg, you might be more comfortable out here.”

  Benny shook his head. “No, he’ll be coming upstairs with us.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  “He’s my attorney.”

  Maybe that job description included even more duties than I had imagined.

  I led them through the lobby, and we rode the elevator upstairs in silence. Before an interrogation, I often feel a twinge of excited anticipation deep in my gut, and as I watched the ascending floor numbers over the door I felt it deepening. The doors slid open and I moved in next to Benny, forcing Gregory to follow a step behind us.

  On the way to the interview room we’d selected for Benny, I escorted the two of them the long way around, through the Homicide squad room and past the lieutenant’s office. Benny’s head swiveled to the left when he saw who was sitting across the desk from Ruiz. I didn’t get a good look at Benny’s reaction, though, because I was too focused on the slack-jawed fear that overtoo
k Hector Siguenza as we strode past the glass wall.

  We turned the corner and Patrick was waiting at the door of the interview room. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Make yourselves comfortable.” He gestured inside to the two chairs next to the table pushed back into the corner. “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?”

  I looked Gregory in the eye. “Sorry,” I said. “Our espresso machine’s out of order.”

  In the men’s room, I knocked back a cup of lukewarm coffee, brushed my teeth, and put on the coat and tie I’d stashed earlier at my desk. I checked myself out in the mirror. The face I saw looked a little more tired than I would have liked, but it would have to do. It was game time.

  When we’d formulated the plan, I suggested that Patrick interview Siguenza. He had made the most important connections in the investigation, and we wouldn’t have been where we were without his analysis of the vast amount of metadata he’d been able to collect. He had earned the interrogation.

  But this wasn’t a normal situation. The most important lesson I’d been taught about interrogations when I made detective was to never ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to. Of course, that’s an idealization, a lofty and ambitious goal that we can’t always pull off in the real world.

  Sometimes, all we have are questions.

  Whoever went into the interrogation room with Siguenza wouldn’t have many answers to work with. Patrick knew that as well as I did. And he knew that I had spent a lot more time in the box than he had. “You take it,” he said. I didn’t argue.

  I smoothed the front of my shirt, snugged up my tie, and went in.

  “Hello, Mr. Siguenza.” I closed the door behind me. I sat down and said, “I’m Detective Danny Beckett.” I stated the date and time and case number for the recording. “Thank you for coming in.”

  Ruiz had left him a bottle of water on the table when he’d escorted him inside. Siguenza looked at it.

  “Can I get you anything? Are you thirsty?”

  He kept staring at the Arrowhead bottle. He was wearing jeans and a sweater. Without a suit he looked like a different man.

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “Okay, then. Why don’t we get started? I just have a few questions. Shouldn’t take long at all, then we’ll have you on your way.”

  You never really know how someone will hold up under interrogation. I thought Siguenza’s experience in criminal defense might give him an advantage, that he’d hardline me or try to play me, or just count on his own knowledge of the process to make it impossible for me to get anything useful from him. I thought he might have an ego or a backbone.

  Unlike Benny, though, Siguenza had never been on the other side of the fence. He’d grown up solidly middle class, made it into UCLA on his academic merit, and gone straight on to law school at USC. Then it was directly on to defense work. He’d never even committed a crime that we could find, let alone done time.

  He didn’t have the grit to stand up. And because of that, our play had been a success. He was scared shitless of Benny.

  I spent an hour building a rapport with him, asking questions that didn’t have anything to do with what we really wanted to know. Who do you root for in the big cross-town football game, Bruins or Trojans? After golfing at the Virginia Country Club, is it lame to play the public course at Recreation Park? Did you look at the Jaguars before you bought your Mercedes?

  He’d relaxed as much as he would ever be able to in the situation, so I eased Benny into the conversation so gradually that Siguenza never even noticed the transition from the casual baseline-building questions to those that would eventually incriminate him. You like Benny’s car? What’s his handicap? Did you know him when he was in law school?

  Another hour in and he’d given us the name of the man with the neck tattoo. All it took was showing him the list of cell-phone calls and a few careful lies that led him to believe that we had not only all the metadata but recordings of the actual calls as well.

  Rudy Guerra was his name. Benny War had more than one skeleton in the family closet. Rudy was his half brother.

  When I pressed him for details about their history, he barely hesitated. A few years ago Benny had asked for a favor, and before he knew it, Hector was involved in a successful side business laundering the income from imports of black-market AK-47s through Long Beach Harbor.

  “Hector,” I said, “Why did Rudy need to kill Bishop?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The homeless man.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know his name.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He saw something he shouldn’t have. There was a meeting between Rudy and the suppliers down by the harbor. Omar was a lookout half a block away. Kid saw the old man walk past. Started going on about ‘no witnesses’ and taking care of loose ends. Rudy didn’t even care. Wasn’t going to do anything. That old guy wasn’t going to talk. Didn’t even know what he was seeing.”

  “What happened?”

  “Fucking Omar.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Rudy hated that little psycho. Didn’t want him anywhere near the business.”

  “Then why was he involved?”

  “Omar’s father. You know how much juice he has, right? He gave the word, and the kid was in.”

  I nodded. Hector didn’t know that Benny was Omar’s real father.

  “He had to take it on himself. Thought he was showing some kind of initiative or something. Killing somebody who didn’t even need to be killed. And it wasn’t good enough for him to just pop the guy. No. He thought if he made some big show of it, that he’d make his bones, impress everybody. Stupid little fuck. This is all his fault.”

  “Of course it is,” I said. Thinking, Yes, of course it’s his fault that you’re eyeball-deep in Mexican Mafia gunrunning. It’s all on a seventeen-year-old kid.

  “Why’d Rudy keep going after Jesús?”

  “Omar said he knew everything. That he was going to spill.”

  “You think Omar was right?”

  “No, Omar was pissed off that Jesús thought he was too good for the rest of them and wouldn’t get on board and lick his ass like his brother did. And that was all he needed. Stupid, vindictive little fuck.”

  Omar was right about one thing. Jesús was too good for him.

  When I came out of the interrogation room, Patrick had already found some basic information on Rudy Guerra. He owned a condo in Brea and supposedly sold Infinitis in Tustin.

  “You sure that’s the right Rudy Guerra?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a car salesman?”

  “Apparently.”

  “No record?”

  “Clean as a whistle,” Patrick said. “He must have learned some serious lessons from his brothers.”

  We put out a BOLO on Rudy Guerra and sent a dangerous-warrant team to his address. They didn’t find him.

  In the morning, a press release would be issued, and his photo would be put up online and, with luck, would start popping up on the morning news shows.

  By the time we finished for the night, it was after midnight. But Jen and I needed to make one more stop. We drove north on the 710 and cut back down the 405 to Lakewood Boulevard. At the Residence Inn, we checked in with the uniforms in the parking lot and went upstairs to room 217. We knocked softly on the door. They were probably asleep inside.

  “Call,” Jen said.

  I did. When he answered, I said, “It’s Danny. Open the door.”

  A shadow moved across the peephole, we heard the deadbolt unlock, and the door eased open.

  Jesús looked at us and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” I said.

  He didn’t look like he believed me.

  30

  KNUDSEN LOWFAT COTTAGE CHEESE CONTAINER, WITH SEWING NEEDLES, MISC. BUTTONS, THREAD.

  The next day, I took another run at Siguenza. He didn’t give us much more
than he had in the first interrogation. There were a few more details—he fleshed out some facts, dotted i’s and crossed t’s. He swore up and down that he didn’t have anything on Benny War, that Benny had only made the introduction with Rudy and didn’t have any other knowledge about their enterprise. Benny made the same claim. I didn’t believe them, of course. There might have been a slim possibility that it was true, that Benny had kept himself in the dark deliberately, but I was betting on one of two things: either Siguenza was a lot more worried about Benny than he was about Rudy, or he was holding onto information in hopes of bargaining with the ADA. At one point, he even asked me about witness protection. I pretended like I thought that was within the realm of possibility and said I’d talk to the prosecutor about it. Either way, he didn’t offer up anything on the man we believed was calling the shots, and for the time being, it didn’t look like we could make anything stick. Benny War would almost surely walk away from the whole ordeal unscathed.

  After we wrapped things up, Jen, Patrick, Marty, Ruiz, and I gathered in the squad room.

  “I just got a call from ATF,” Ruiz said. “Apparently we cracked a big case for them. They’ve been chasing those AKs for months. Who wants to liaise with them so they can elbow their way in and claim all the credit?”

  After a few seconds of us all sitting there in silence and refusing to make eye contact with him, he said, “Thanks, Patrick. I appreciate it.”