by Hart Hanson
I hoped that when he checked me on his MDCS computer he wouldn’t find that I had not yet been cleared as a suspect in an attempted homicide. My luck, he’d ask for a meet with Delilah Groopman and become her new boyfriend and turn her against me. Willeniec was just the kind of bitter squeezings Delilah found attractive.
The thought gave me a pang.
“What does it tell you about a man when he can’t find joy in unexpected angels?” I asked.
“You know what’s stupid?” Willeniec asked. “Being a small business owner, like a limo driver, who requires permits and licenses and permissions from the county but decides it’s smart to put himself on the shit side of county law enforcement.”
Then he got into his ghost car and drove away.
Avila spat onto the hot asphalt, typed seven digits into his phone, and watched as the storage compartment door descended, the angels disappearing into the gloaming. I extended Avila the warrant I’d taken from Detective Willeniec, but he waved me off, so I folded it and stuck it into the breast pocket of my jacket.
“Where to now?”
“Home,” Avila said.
I could see Avila’s jaw bunching in the rearview mirror, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was more relieved than angry.
ANOTHER JOB OFFER
The Pacific Division of the LAPD handles Venice and LAX, so it’s not the sleepy beach precinct you might expect. Nine o’clock in the cool of the evening, away from the Valley heat, if you loiter in the foyer of the substation on Culver near Centinela, between Marina Del Rey and the 405 interstate, you’ll see what I was seeing: a constant swarm of cops and righteous citizens and harmless, babbling schizophrenics. The front of the building is a limpid pool of calm compared to the crashing cataracts in the back, where, mostly against their will, the criminal element gathers and sweats and seethes and plots revenge.
I sat on a bench in the foyer, staring at the Pacific Division most-wanted poster, which looked like it had been printed up from a webpage designed by a high school student: two African Americans, an Asian guy, a few Hispanics, and a sketch of what looked like Woody Harrelson in a ball cap labeled UNIDENTIFIED PERSON. One of the black guys had failed to return a rented car, which didn’t sound so bad, but still he was considered armed and dangerous. The Hispanics were gang members: one was a heroin addict who’d killed another gang member; another was five foot three, which didn’t sound so bad, except he weighed two hundred pounds and none of it looked like fat. He was a carjacker. I assumed that he simply picked up your car, shook you out, and ran off with it. The Asian guy was some kind of serial berserker. He kept attacking people and biting them. Woody Harrelson was a stone-cold murderer. His weapon of choice was a car battery. Which didn’t paint a pretty picture.
“You bring me something, Skellig?”
I looked up (which made my stitches twinge) to see Delilah standing at the door beside the desk under the big silver letters—DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY—just the other side of the prescription drug drop-off box. (Did anyone ever use that?) I held up a chai latte and smiled to show I was, indeed, bearing gifts. Delilah sighed and took a seat next to me on the bench, checking her Ironman Timex. She was off at midnight and wanted me to know that her time was precious.
“Shouldn’t you be driving your new boss around? Club hopping?”
“Mr. Avila gave me the night off.”
“You two finding anything to bond over? You got any mad skills on a skateboard?”
“We both agree his girlfriend is beautiful.”
“According to TMZ, the fuckwad cheats on her. You would never do that, right?”
Was it my imagination, or did Delilah sound slightly hopeful?
“Maybe they have an understanding.”
After Avila and I got back to the mansion from the storage unit, Avila was visited by lawyers and managers and advisers while I cooked in the hotbox of Two—hoist on my own petard for bringing a vintage gorgeousity with no air-conditioning to the Valley—observing to-and-froing, come-and-going, poking at my itchy stitches with an index finger. The high point of my afternoon was watching Nina, in an all-white bikini and diaphanous wrap, toting a sky-blue tote bag, smartphone in hand, crossing the driveway to clamber onto her miniature pirate ship and sail across the lake to her private island on invisible underwater rails. She stepped off the other side, waded into the water, and splashed herself, at which point her bikini became delightfully transparent, then settled back into her hammock and poked at her phone while I tried not to stare.
Not one of the women I’d seen Avila with over our twenty-eight hours together could hold a candle to Nina.
“Wow, take your fucking time answering the question,” Delilah said. “How’s your coconut?”
I removed my ball cap and inclined my head so Delilah could see where I was stitched.
“Blech,” she said, poking a little harder than necessary at the sutures.
“Are you being semisympathetic because I was right?”
“I’m not being sympathetic.”
“You said ‘blech.’”
“We may have witnesses saying that two youths matching the description of the hitters skedaddled from the scene in a limo driven by a black male, approximately twenty-eight to thirty years of age.”
“Sweet vindication!”
“I’m certain the pertinent details you provided about those boots will lead to the driver’s inevitable capture and incarceration.”
Sarcasm was as close to an apology as I’d ever squeeze from Detective Delilah Groopman.
She turned on the bench to fix me with her cop eye. “The girlfriend strike you as the jealous type?”
“You mean the type of African American woman who’d hire two white teenage skate punks to kill her cheating boyfriend?”
“Teenage boys’ll do pretty much anything a beautiful woman wants them to do if she provides the right incentive.”
“Plus persuade Chelsea Boots to steal a limo and act as getaway driver?”
“Ignoring your tone, I’m going to say yeah again. Chelsea Boots could be her brother or lover, something along those lines. Maybe he hired those boys on her urging.”
“Avila and Nina aren’t married. There’s no upside for her, him dying.”
“Fuck,” Delilah said, her way of admitting I had a point.
“Didn’t Avila used to be in a gang?” I asked.
“Bismarck Avila’s legend is he came up from the street,” she said. “Gang is the wrong word. More like a bunch of dim-shit skaters who hung out, dealt drugs, and stole stuff.”
“You mean a typical street kid from Lennox?”
“Avila came up tough. Living in motels, mostly. Shelters. Old friends, left behind in the neighborhood, can get envious, figure their homey owes them, get mad when they’re denied.”
“Did you seriously just use the word homey?”
“I work the streets,” Delilah said. “I’ve earned the right. And my theory makes sense.”
When a cop says makes sense in a confident manner, it means she’s not at all confident and is checking to see if she’s lying by saying it out loud to hear how it sounds.
Delilah saw my opinion writ large on my stupid unguarded face.
“No? Not buying it?”
“It’s not a compelling theory,” I said.
“And you come to that expert conclusion after—remind me again how many years of training and experience you’ve had as a criminal investigator?”
“Delilah, I work for the guy. Excuse me for being freaked-out that I could end up with a bullet in my gut from some emo teenage skater hit boy. If you know something real, please tell me.”
Delilah sighed and considered what she could say that wouldn’t get her fired.
“About six months ago, Avila’s cousin got murdered while he was working as Avila’s driver.”
>
“What happened?”
“Carjacking. Shot multiple times through the driver’s window.”
“Was Avila in the vehicle at the time?”
“Nope. Driver was alone. Killer emptied a clip into the kid and vamoosed.”
“The shooter forgot to take the vehicle?”
“That’s right.”
“So, less a carjacking and more an execution?”
“Gangs Unit heard rumors Avila was looking to hire someone to take out the kid.”
“Unsubstantiated rumors?”
“If it’s not unsubstantiated, then it’s not a rumor,” Delilah said, toasting me with her frosty beverage.
“What would be the motive?”
“That is a troubling question which I cannot answer.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“Cannot.”
“You called the victim a kid? Twice?”
“Eighteen years old. I got a proposition for you.”
“Forget it.”
“It’s been authorized from lofty heights.”
“Nope.”
“Will you at least hear it before you say no?”
“I’m not working for you as a confidential informant.”
“Nothing like that. All we ask is you report Bismarck Avila’s whereabouts and doings.”
“That’s exactly the definition of a confidential informant.”
Delilah pinched her nose to indicate that I was a grievous and cowardly disappointment to her.
“Delilah—”
“Let’s stick with Detective Groopman.”
“Everything you’re talking about sounds like gang activity. I am not about to wander into that propeller as a CI.”
Delilah looked around before telling me something she didn’t want to tell me. “Asher Keet.”
I didn’t react because the name didn’t mean anything to me.
“Asher fucking Keet,” she said, pumping more foreboding into the name.
“I gather from his descriptive middle name that he’s a scary dude?”
“You never heard of Asher Keet?”
I shook my head. I felt my stitches tug. My headache got worse.
“Asher Keet is . . . Keet’s part white gangster, full-on bag o’ shit, part biker, part meth distributor, loan shark, illegal gambling, member of the Aryan brotherhood, but only when he’s in prison.”
“What’s he got to do with Bismarck Avila?”
“We suspect Keet and Avila are in cahoots.”
“Vamoose. Skedaddle. Cahoots. What is this? The Wild West?”
“We need a confidential informant to find the nature of the link between Keet and Avila.”
“Who is we? Homicide? Gangs? Organized Crime?”
This time Delilah was the one taking the Fifth, sipping her latte slowly, yawning, gazing out the front doors, informing me that she was done talking to me.
“Fine,” I said. “You can tell them—whoever they are—that I’m a limo driver. Not a CI.”
I stood up to leave. Then, because I was crushing on Delilah and wanted her to like me, I told her about Willeniec, A., serving his weird warrant on Bismarck Avila, solo.
“A sheriff’s detective?” she asked.
“According to his lanyard. I never saw his badge.”
“Out of Lost Hills?”
“Whittier.”
“What was he looking for?”
“You wanna tell me why you’re all excited? No? You’re shaking your head no? So I tell you things but—”
“Skellig!”
“Barrels.”
“Barrels?”
“Fifty-five-gallon drums.”
“Did he find any?”
“Nope.”
Without another word, Delilah stood up, tossed her chai latte into the garbage, and trotted through the door leading back to the serious-business part of the building, like she had to tell someone something in a big hurry.
Which led me to conclude that I’d told Delilah more than she’d told me.
NO TAKEBACKS
I’m a block away from the Pacific Division station and about to put Two into gear when my phone buzzes.
A text from Ripple’s mobile: WE NEED YOU HERE, RIGHT NOW.
All caps, complete words, no abbreviations, punctuation in the form of a comma, no hyperviolent emojis.
Most definitely not sent by Ripple.
Someone else was using Ripple’s phone. Probably Lucky (who is not given to dramatics), so I drove home, window open to the breeze, hoping for spectral clarification, but my ghost voices are not a phenomenon you can summon at will.
I parked near Enterprise Rent-A-Car a couple of blocks down the street and trotted up toward Oasis Limo, stitches throbbing every time I came down on a heel. I approached from the Santa Monica Boulevard side and peeked through the office window.
Totally dark except for meager yellow light leaking through from the engine bays. The main fluorescents had been shut off. My choices were to go in through the dispatch office, go through the door that opened onto Santa Monica Boulevard, or go around the side to punch a code into one of the three large overhead doors in the bays along the alley. Or I could sneak around back, climb the fence into the Yard, and come in through the parts-storage door.
Which would be great except that the door squeaked like a nail being pulled out of green wood every time it was opened.
My phone buzzed again.
Ripple’s number again.
A call this time, not a text.
I opened the connection and held the phone to my left ear but didn’t say anything.
“Where are you?” Lucky asked.
I said nothing, knowing that if Lucky could not speak freely he would pretend I’d answered him and respond in a way that provided insights into his situation. We’d worked this way before with excellent results (meaning we’d survived).
“A gentleman wants Something from you. If he doesn’t get it, he will kill all three of us. Tinkertoy is Down and Out. Ripple is hung up. I’m handcuffed to the vise on the workbench and covered.”
From that I got:
One bad guy.
Male.
No extra players, just the bad guy and my three friends.
Somebody bad enough to surprise and overcome three combat vets, one of whom was as paranoid as hell.
Lucky had said he was covered, which meant the bad guy had a gun pointed at him, not a knife or blunt instrument and not an automatic or shotgun, because in that case Lucky would have said totally covered. If it had been a grenade, Lucky would have said completely covered.
So, a revolver . . .
Handcuffed, meaning the bad guy had come prepared. It wasn’t a meth-head robbery. It had been planned.
Tinkertoy was down and out, meaning she was alive but incapacitated or unconscious.
Ripple was hung up, which didn’t mean a damn thing so was to be taken literally—a double amputee tacked up where he couldn’t hurt anybody.
That made me angry.
“Front door?” I asked.
“Apologies,” Lucky said.
Apologies meant I was going to have to simply walk in. If Lucky thought it was worth me coming in hot, guns a-blazing, he’d have said afraid so.
Apologies meant that Lucky could see no alternatives, and Lucky was very, very good at seeing alternatives.
I punched my enlistment date into the security pad near the center bay and, for the second time in a day, waited to see what surprises lurked on the other side of a roll-up garage door. (I was pretty sure this time it wouldn’t be stone angels.) The door rolled up in near silence. Oasis Limo is an excellent neighbor, even in the middle of the night, facing mayhem and violence.
As advertised, Lucky was sitting on the f
loor, handcuffed to a vise on the workbench, otherwise unharmed.
I couldn’t see the bad guy, but Lucky’s right foot was pointed to his left so that’s where the bad guy was, out of my sight line. I also couldn’t see Tinkertoy, but the haunted Caddie blocked my view to the left. I stepped into the garage and hit the button to shut the door again. Now I could see Ripple hanging from the engine hoist, his wrists bound by an extension cord, his I LOVE JESUS BUT I STILL CUSS fanny pack twisted around onto his left hip, his mouth stuffed with oily rags, vomit visible beneath his nose and all over the gag. The boy had to be in agony, stomach acids in his airways, lungs, and sinuses, but Ripple’s eyes did nothing but glitter hate. I felt a disorienting surge of affection for the tough little stoner son of a bitch.
Another step, another, and there was Tinkertoy, beyond her haunted Caddie, lying on her back, shirt ripped open, breasts exposed, eyes half shut. She looked dead but Lucky would have let me know. I waited for the door to close behind me, after which Sheriff’s Detective Willeniec, A., stepped from the dispatch office, aiming a stainless steel .357 Magnum at my chest. Four-inch barrel. Seven shots. Lethal at this range if Willeniec was any kind of shot—which is something I just knew he prided himself on.
Shit.
“Remember me?” Willeniec asked, glittery eyed. (Coke? Panic? Meth? Red Bull? Ten cups of coffee? Insanity?)
When I didn’t answer, Willeniec kicked Tinkertoy in the ribs, hard, without looking at her. When I still didn’t say anything, he took three quick steps and struck Ripple with the butt of his weapon, in the solar plexus. The sound was sickening, both the impact itself and Ripple’s gulping retch of agony.
Lucky let loose what must have sounded, to Willeniec, like an uncontrolled string of Farsi curses but was actually a terse and cogent warning: “Be careful. This one is evil.”
“Ali Baba keeps insulting me in his gargly fucking language,” Willeniec said. “I guess because he feels bad that these two get all the attention and I leave him alone. But that’s just until I kill him.”
I knew that if I said nothing he’d exact a blood tax, so I said, “What do you want?”
Willeniec kicked Tinkertoy again anyway, meaning this whole clusterfuck was going down the hard way.