"Knock if off! We're code four!" I yelled.
Alonzo finally stopped and looked down at the little Mexican fighter, who was unconscious and prone on the concrete floor.
"That's how we do it Haven Park-style," Alonzo growled.
"We need to get some EMTs in here," I said, spitting out droplets of my own blood as I talked.
Ten minutes later Chacon had been revived by paramedics and was sitting up on a bunk in one of the holding cells. He refused to talk, refused to look at us. He had sustained a concussion, but his eyes were pinpoints of hatred.
"Where the hell were you, Al?" I said as the EMTs iced my split lip and put cotton sticks up my bloody nose.
"I thought you needed a little object lesson in how to take an order. When I say to do something, you need to do what I tell you instead of giving me a bunch a guff. You're lucky I didn't pay you back for the sapping you gave me at the restaurant."
Alonzo held up the videotape of our I-room brawl. "After we file the assault charges I'm gonna leak this to the Courier and some local TV stations. Let them see what a violent, unstable prick their mayoral candidate is."
"I'm not sure showing a tape of Rocky taking on two cops twice his size is going to screw him up with his constituents."
"Yeah? Well, that's why you're stuck down in this shit hole, being retrained by me."
While I wrote up the assault report, Alonzo sat at the desk next to mine and dialed somebody at the Haven Park Courier. After explaining the situation, he added, "He's under arrest right now.
This guy committed felonious assaults on two police officers. Yeah, yeah." He paused and listened a moment before saying, "You bet. I think I can steal a copy of the tape for you guvs. But I'm looking for a nice clean piece. You gotta stop with all this Rocky Chacon, man-of-the-people propaganda and print what really happened."
Chapter 18
Roeky contacted a beautiful, raven-haired lawyer named Carmen Ramirez. His abogada was only about twenty-eight but full of Latina pride. At one point I heard her tell Alonzo that even if Haven Parks city attorney filed these assault charges, it wouldn't prevent Rocky from running for mayor, 'in America," she explained hotly, "you are still presumed innocent until proven guilty, and a presumed innocent man is not prohibited from running for public office."
She promised Alonzo she would delay the trial for at least two years and finished by telling my increasingly glum partner that once Rocky was mayor, the whole crooked police department would be out of a job. None of this information did anything to improve Alonzo s demeanor.
Later, I noticed Rocky and his firebrand attorney talking in his cell. Years of police work have made me a pretty good student of body language. When she was alone with him she adopted a more open posture and as they talked, their nonverbal communicators conveyed intimacy. At one point, she leaned forward and touched his arm. It seemed Rocky had something going with his beautiful lawyer.
Carmen Ramirez quickly arranged bail, which for a felony assault in Haven Park was preset at one hundred thousand dollars. Because there was no loss of life involved, a court hearing was not required.
Rocky called Big Kiss, wrote a chcck for ten percent of the bond and kissed our jail goodbye. He was out of the police building one full hour ahead of Alonzo and me.
We finally finished our paperwork at two and when we walked outside into the afternoon sun, ten or fifteen picketers were already out front holding signs that said POLICE
PERSECUTION and FREE ROCKY CHACON.
"Told ya," I said to Alonzo, who was glaring at the picketers.
He didn't answer, but motioned to our black-and-white. We got in, cleared the station and pretty much blew off the rest of the day watch going code seven at one of the few Anglo-run restaurants in town, called the Coffee Barn. Alonzo said very little to me as we ate and sipped coffee from chipped mugs.
He had not considered the fact that until Rocky was convicted of the felony he could still legally run for mayor. The protestors outside the jail further underlined the fact that Rocky s I-room brawl wasn't going to disqualify him as much as endorse him. It gave Alonzo a lot to think about.
In the stifling silence of this meal, I realized I'd lost a lot of ground with him. It's never a good idea to sap your training officer, even if you're trying to keep him from killing an innocent civilian. As he poked at his greasy hamburger in silence I knew I'd have to find a way to make up the points I'd just lost and I had to come up with a way to do it fast.
At end-of-watch I loitered in front of my locker waiting for Alonzo. I figured I might buy him a few drinks at A Fuego and try to smooth all of this over, but I didn't see him. Somebody on the day watch finally told me Sergeant Bell had left Haven Park to see some people up in L. A.
I grabbed my jacket and walked to my car in the parking area next to the school. I got in and pulled out, heading to the Haven Park Inn, where I was still registered.
I was tired and angry as I climbed the stairs to the second level. My lip was killing me and my nose was swelling. I knew I'd probably wake up tomorrow with two giant shiners. I unlocked the door and entered.
The lights were off, but as I dropped my jacket on a chair, I knew instantly someone was inside the room. I spun and snatched my backup Smith amp; Wesson. 38 out of the clamshell holster at the small of my back, extending the titanium AirLight in the direction my senses told me the danger was. I almost fired. But at the last instant some instinct stopped me. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw a man in silhouette sitting calmly across the room from me.
"Don't shoot," he said lazily. "I give."
It was Rick Ross. He was wearing a blue windbreaker, tennis shoes and khakis from the Gap. A Dodgers ball cap was pulled down over thinning blond hair.
"You just break in here?" I said, taking a deep breath to calm my nerves. "What the hells wrong with you?"
"We need to talk."
I was still trying to get my heart rate to slow. I didn't like Ross. I certainly didn't trust him. I hated that he thought he could just break into my room uninvited.
"I don't want you in here without asking me first."
"It's such a palace," he quipped, looking around. "I can certainly understand why you'd feel that way."
"Don't do it again. I was less than a second away from shooting you."
He stood and moved up to where I was standing. "You forget I rode with you for six months in the Valley. You aren't a shoot-first guy"
"What do you want?" I asked, still surging with wasted adrenaline.
"Brief me," he said, treating it as an order. "Let's go. I want to hear what you got. I don't have much time."
"You might want to slow your roll, Rick. I don't work for you. I'm here to help you if I can, but don't get the dimensions of this arrangement stacked up wrong."
"You're riding with Alonzo Bell," he pushed. "Start with that. Bell's a violent officer."
"I knew him from the job in L. A. Ran into him when I first got here. Since he's our day watch sergeant it actually worked out pretty well. Bell was a good shortcut."
"I hear you're on the pad with the Avilas."
"If you know all this, why did you break in here?"
We stood in silence looking across two feet of mud-brown carpet. I didn't want to tell Rick Ross anything.
"The jail sergeant called me this afternoon," Ross said. "He told me you and Bell shut down Mama's Casita on fire regs, busted Rocky Chacon for verbal assault and then got him for battery in an I-room."
"Pretty much what happened."
"Whose brain-dead idea was that?"
"Alonzo's," I said angrily. "He didn't exactly think it through."
Rick Ross hadn't changed much physically and maybe that's why I felt he hadn't changed emotionally. He was still a very twitchy guy who sent a strange vibe. "Alonzo's already leaked the I-room tape to the press," I added.
"What the fuck for?" Ross snapped. "That isn't gonna help put Chacon out of business. It's just gonna make him stronger, mo
re of a hero down here."
All my warning buzzers were going off. If Rick Ross was on the level with me and was really trying to clean up Haven Park, then he should want Rocky to win the election.
"What do you want from me?" I said. "I can't control Alonzo. He's not real bright."
"You got anything else?"
"What's with this gang problem you've got? How come the South Side Crips are moving back in?"
"I'll deal with the Compton Crips," he said. "You're here to put the hat on Mayor Bratano and these crooked cops."
I stood there trying to sort out my mixed feelings. Finally, I said, "Is there anybody on the job down here I can look to for help or is the whole damn department in the cafeteria line?"
"There's one Hispanic officer, Oscar Juarez. He's a clean-cut kid. Most of the cops I've got are rejects from other departments who can't get employment elsewhere. Juarez started out here because he was born here. He seems to be heading in the other direction. He's applying to departments all over Southern California. So him, maybe. One other thing. His second cousin is Anita Juarez."
"Who's that?"
"She's a reporter on the Courier and Rocky Chacon's current girlfriend." That helped to explain the great press he was getting from that paper, not that he needed much help.
"What about his lawyer, Carmen Ramirez? It looked to me at the jail like that was more than just professional."
"If Rocky has a personal shortcoming, its women," Ross said. "He goes through a lot of them. He's left a trail of broken hearts. Anita is his current squeeze and her second cousin is Oscar Juarez. It might mean something. I don't know."
We stood in awkward silence, still studying each other. Then he asked, "You got anything concrete to give me? Something that could actually serve as evidence?"
I knew it was foolish to hold back on him, especially since he was the one who had arranged to put me undercover in the first place, but some part of me, some cop instinct, told me he might have an ulterior motive. If he wasn't just trying to carry out his original threat from ten years ago, maybe he needed me to cover his ass in case the FBI ever came against him, as they had with his predecessor, Charles Le Grande.
I decided not to tell him about the envelope with eighty bucks in towing kickbacks that I'd turned over to Agent Love for fingerprinting, or about Alonzo's scam of switching out the tags on the COz bottles at Mama's, or that the assault on Rocky in our I-room was really an attempted murder, which I couldn't prove anyway because it would come down to Alonzo's word against mine.
Instead I said, "I'm just working into it with Sergeant Bell."
"I'll check in with you later."
"Don't do it this way next time. Get a message to me. Set up a meet somewhere, outside where I can see it coming."
He nodded and walked to the door, but he stopped again before opening it. "I guess all this attitude is about what I yelled at you in the Parker Center garage all those years ago. You probably still think I've got it in for you."
"You said you were gonna see me dead, no matter how long it took. Hard to forget stuff like that."
"I was drunk. I was losing it. That's not me anymore. This isn't gonna work unless you start trusting me, Shane."
"Hey, Rick, you think I'd be down here at all if I didn't trust you?"
"I got eyes, man. You think I'm dirty. It's all over your face. But I've changed."
"The new Ricky Ross."
"Maybe that's your character flaw," he said, smiling slightly. "You lack the ability to forgive."
"Look around you, Rick. Lack of forgiveness is a big Haven Park problem. I'm just trying to stay alive in this fucked-up place."
"Good luck with that," he said, then turned and left.
Ten minutes later, I'd loaded everything in my bag and was checking out. I needed to find a better place to live.
I also needed to set up my meeting with Sammy from Miami. I was running out of time and my nerves were rattling like dice in a tin cup.
Chapter 19
I ended up at the Bicycle Club Casino Hotel in Vista. The hotel favored southwestern colors and somebody had decorated my room in a weird mixture of tan and orange-peach colors. But the space was clean and the room service fast. I also liked the fact that there were a lot of hotel cops as well as closed-circuit video in the casino and hotel corridors.
Of course, I knew that for the right price anyone could be bought off, including the plastic badges who worked hotel security, but its the little lies we tell ourselves that help to get us through. Whatever the reason, I felt safer here, and it was a big trade-up physically from the Haven Park Inn.
I called Sammy Ochoa from a pay phone in the casino and while I explained what I wanted, and we argued over price, I watched tables full of stone-faced men playing blackjack, wearing ball caps and sunglasses, who reminded me of the walking dead in a George Romero movie. After some haggling, Sammy and I agreed on a price and arranged to meet an hour from now on Melrose.
I left the casino and drove across town in the MDX playing my rap station loud. I spotted Sam standing on the West Hollywood street corner we'd agreed upon, just half a block down from his porno movie theater, which was currently running a gay-biker double bill: Hot Chaps and Chrome Chain Cowboys. Probably gonna miss those two.
Sammy from Miami was a short, wiry Cuban with skin the color of a Starbucks latte. His teeth were yellow from years of smoking Cuban cigars. Tonight he was dressed in leather pants and a vest, looking like a South American gaucho. I thought Sammy would be good for what I needed because he also had a long yellow sheet. If somebody in Haven Park checked him out, he'd come back dirty as a public toilet.
I pulled up and let him into the car, then drove down the street with the rap music pounding.
"Jesus, Scully. What's with this music?" he said, reaching out and turning off the radio.
I pointed out the two hidden microphones as I drove. One under the glove compartment, one in the rearview mirror. He nodded. I'd warned him on the phone that the car was bugged and he understood we were only putting on a show.
"So, is it done?" he said, getting right to the heart of it.
"Yeah, wait a minute. I wanta find a place to park so we can talk."
I turned onto La Brea and drove until I found a strip mall on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard. I pulled in and turned off the engine.
"Okay, Sam, yeah, it's done. The guest of honor's in harp class. Coroner booked the stiff in at two A. M. last night."
"I need proof of death," he said. "I ain't pay-in' till I know that scumbag is really breathin' dirt."
"I got pictures just like last time," I said. "Plus, I can give you the coroners tag number. After I pulled his drapes, I took his wallet. He's a Cuban illegal, and you were right, his prints aren't in the system yet. He's booked as Juan Doe Seventeen and is in the freezer at Mission Road. Just go in and tell them your cousin is missing or something. Describe this guy and they'll show you the stiff."
"I'll send a guy down. After we see him on a tray, I'll pay for the hit."
"Since I got thrown off the LAPD I got no cash. My wife is divorcing me and her attorney is locking everything up. I'm working down in Haven Park now, but the pay sucks and I haven't even got my first check yet."
"None of this is my problem."
"We've done business before. You know I guarantee results."
"Show me the shots."
I loudly unzipped a bag I'd brought with me and Sammy did some good acting, laughing slightly as he pretended to look at digital photos on my nonexistent camera.
"Jesus. What did you hit him with? Back of his head is gone."
"Two hollow points behind the ear. That's what ten grand buys you. I want my money."
He waited a beat and then said, "Okay, tell you what. I'll give you half now and half when I have proof of death. That's the best I can do."
I sighed loudly. "Gimme it."
I had five hundred in fresh currency ready and counted the bills, snapping t
hem loudly for the benefit of the mikes. I slipped the cash silently over to him-payment in full for a great performance.
"You can just let me out here," Sammy said as he opened the door. "I got some jokers working up on Sunset selling Madonna's underwear to tourists. Got her name embroidered on it and everything. Interested? Actual Madonna thongs, crotchless panties and tit-hole bras. I swear it's her gear."
"I look terrible in crotchless panties."
"Suit yourself. But this shit will kill on eBay." He closed the door. "Talk to you in a day or so." Then he walked away.
I stopped at an all-night drugstore and bought a cheap pre-paid cell phone. When I got back to my room in the hotel, it was around ten o'clock.
I called the Haven Park PD and gave them the new cell number, then got something to eat in the casino restaurant. I looked around at the zombies gambling away their futures in a joint that clearly favored the house. As I watched the rows of dead-end players, it suddenly hit me that their odds were a whole lot better than mine.
Chapter 20
The next clay I didn't see Alonzo Bell. I reported to roll call and harnessed up, but was told that my training officer had taken a sick day for personal business. I was still a probationer and Harry Eastwood didn't want me out in the field, so I was sent over to the Haven Park police building, for an eight-hour shift answering phones and filing paper.
I spent a frustrating clay riding a desk wondering what Alonzo was doing. The longer I sat there, the more I wondered if my performance at Manias Casita and in the jail had forced some kind of dangerous revaluation.
The mayoral election was in eight days and there was a frontpage story in this mornings Courier written by Anita Juarez, detailing Rocky s arrest and calling for new leadership in Haven Park. The editorial page had a slew of angry letters protesting his treatment at the hands of the Haven Park PD. I knew the Avilas and Cecil Bratano weren't about to sit back and watch this election go sour. Rocky Chacon had a much better chance of winding up in Haven Parks morgue than its city hall.
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