by David Putnam
Blue closed the door and locked it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
INSIDE THE TRAILER, Thibodeaux sat at his desk with his usual shit-eating smile. Blue wore a green-and-gold tank top with LASD in big yellow letters on the front. He acted as if he loved the sheriff’s department. He looked calm, in control, as if he always had a wild-eyed, handcuffed crook in his office.
I recognized Jaime Reynosa from the day before at The Park View. Only then he’d been smacked-back, under the influence of heroin, sedate, without a care in the world. Now he bounced his legs as he sat in the chair. His whole body hummed. His nose and eyes and sweat glands worked overtime secreting, all symptoms of opiate withdrawal. He smacked his lips a lot from his overactive saliva glands.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Blue, stoic, serious, all business now, said, “What’s it look like? We’re about to interrogate a major player in Mo Mo’s organization. Jaime doesn’t want to tell us where his boss is laying his head, and we were just about to convince him otherwise. You want a piece of this?”
“I tolt ya,” Jaime screeched. “I don’t know anything anymore. I haven’t been up in there with Mo Mo for months now. I’m tellin’ it straight. Tell ’em, would you, Deputy Johnson? Please tell ’em.”
“I know you?”
“Ah, man, come on. You let me walk about two months ago on a possession beef. I gave you Maurice, remember? After he beat his ma and pa, tolt ya he was layin’ his head over off Alabama and a hunert and seventeenth. Southa there, in that old two story. You caught him and beat the livin’ shit outta him. He’s still in the jail ward. You did him in good, Deputy Johnson. He deserved it, though. Everyone on the street says you did the right thing.”
“That right?” Blue asked. “Jaime’s good for his word?”
I moved past Jaime and tried to remember. I sat at my desk across from Thibodeaux. I remembered Maurice, no way I could forget. “You lost some weight,” I said.
“That’s right. I was healthy back then. That’s right.”
“Yeah,” I said, “now I remember. He’s good. He’ll tell it to you straight.”
“Thank you, Deputy Johnson, thank you.” He still sat forward, his legs bouncing.
With the door closed, the place reeked of sour body odor and an uncomfortable humidity that radiated off his body. Having Jaime in the office for the purpose of finding Mo Mo’s location was my fault. I had the piece of paper Blue wanted in my back pocket. Blue must not have seen or remembered what the note said when he opened the cheeseburger wrapper and only glanced at it the day before when he stood on the stoop with Ollie. Or since Blue wasn’t from this area, hadn’t worked there that long, he didn’t understand what it meant.
Blue could always call Ollie and ask her again. Maybe he’d already tried that and she’d gone to ground after she fulfilled her obligation to us. That’s what I’d do with the likes of Blue and Thibodeaux and Mo Mo all wrapped up into one big ugly mess.
I could take the paper out of my pocket and end Jaime’s bumpy interview, but I didn’t want to give anything to Blue, and especially not to Thibodeaux.
Blue said, “Ol’ Jaime here says he doesn’t know where to find Mo Mo.”
“I’d believe him then.”
Thibodeaux leaned back in his chair and flicked open his switchblade, closed it, and flicked it open again. He pointed it at me. “Homeboy, you fucked the dog yesterday.”
“Let it go, Dirt,” Blue said.
“No, no.” He pointed the switchblade at Jaime. “Yesterday, you handcuffed and searched this little turd and you missed this.” He picked up a plastic evidence bag off his desk that contained a small automatic pistol.
“What?”
I’d been handcuffing Jaime when Blue found the guy gunshot by Chelsea. “I did search him.” I tried to think back how thorough a job I’d done and couldn’t remember clearly enough.
“The hell you did.” He tossed the gun on the desk across from him. It clattered. “I found that little cop killer in his crotch. You missed his crotch. You a homophobe, Bruno?”
Under the circumstances, I guess I could’ve missed the gun. A cardinal rule in law enforcement is you always searched the crook to the best of your ability no matter what circumstances. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? He says he’s sorry, boss. What good does that do us now, huh? This little prick here could’ve killed us all with that little popgun.”
Thibodeaux was an asshole of the first order, but he was right about this. I’d screwed up on a grand scale. The worst part, I’d done it in front of these two master criminals. I’d shown them that I was a screwup of the first order and that they didn’t have to worry too much about me if I couldn’t do a simple pat-down.
Blue didn’t seem to care about my screwup. He only wanted one thing: information from Jaime. Blue picked up the plastic bag with the gun. I got a better look at it, a model 84 Berretta .380. He carried it over to Jaime, waved it around in his face. “You’re an ex-con. An excon in possession of a handgun is some heavy time.”
“I’d tell ya, Blue, if I knew. I swear on my baby’s eyes I don’t know where Mo Mo’s layin’ his head.”
I swiveled in my chair and picked up the phone. I needed to call Wicks. I dialed. Wicks picked up on the first ring. “It’s me,” I said.
Thibodeaux stared at me.
In the phone, Wicks said, “What the hell’s the matter with you? You stuck your nose into that thing I told you not to. I told you that it would be taken care of after this whole thing blew over.”
He spoke in code about going over to Mrs. Whitaker’s. He didn’t want to wait to meet. He was mad enough to risk someone on my end overhearing.
I needed to meet, though. I had too many questions I needed to ask him. Like, did he initiate the black bag wiretap on Blue, the man who’d cuckolded him? Did the deputy chief know? I needed to ask for proof that Blue asked for me to come to this team, which Blue denied.
Just to name a few of the pressing issues on my mind.
I said to Wicks into the phone, “How’s Olivia? She getting any sleep?”
Wicks said, “You really screwed the pooch on this one, Bruno. They’re starting an IA. Kohl called IAB. We now have about twelve hours before this whole op gets shut down. Maybe a lot less.”
“Try giving her another bottle.”
Blue turned his back on Jaime and ejected the magazine from the Berretta and shoved it in his pocket. He turned back and pointed the gun at Jaime. “You’re going to tell me here and now what I want to know or I’m going to blow your head off.”
I’d become desensitized to Blue’s lawless methods. Threatening a crook with death not only violated his Miranda rights but was a felony as well.
Wicks said, “Did your friends make that offer you’ve been expecting?”
He wanted to know if Blue and Thibodeaux had brought me into their confidence, asked me to help with a contract, or offered me any of the missing skim.
“Last chance, asshole,” Blue said. “You’re going to tell me or I swear to you, this will be your last day on this planet.”
I watched Blue point the small automatic at Jaime’s head from less than three feet away and couldn’t believe how calmly I accepted this illegal act.
I held the phone away. “Come on, Blue, quit messin’ around. That thing can go off.”
“You bet it can because I’m gonna drop the hammer on this little puke.”
I said to Wicks, “About that other thing, I think I’ve figured out . . . the ah . . . ”
“The next target?” Wicks said. “Yeah, if you’d answer your pages you’d already know that. We intercepted a phone call. We don’t have it clearly stated, they talked in that jumbled code bullshit, but we think it’s—”
Bang!
The explosion in the confined space echoed in my head.
The Berretta leaped out of Blue’s hand and thumped to the floor. He stutter-stepped backward. “Oh, shit. Holy shit.”<
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Jaime fell over in the chair. He tumbled to the floor, messed and pissed his pants.
Wicks’ small voice in the phone said, “Bruno? Bruno? What’s happened?”
My hand fumbled as I hung up on him.
I muttered to no one, “Blue just killed Jaime Reynosa.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
THIBODEAUX BOLTED OUT of his chair, clapped his hands like an excited kid, and yelled, “Hot damn, Blue, that’s some shit right there.” He threw his head back and cackled, “ Woo-wee!”
I slowly stood from my chair as the gun smoke rose in an even bank and clung to the ceiling like a fog. The acrid odor bit at my nose and masked the reek of excrement and urine in Reynosa’s pants.
Seeing Thibodeaux act the way he did made me realize that white tuft in the sea of black hair on his head might’ve been caused by severe head trauma and because of it he no longer accepted or followed regular social norms or social values, and made him more dangerous than I first believed.
Thibodeaux stopped laughing, lost his grin, and squinted. I followed his gaze to the row of filing cabinets.
“Ah, shit, Blue.” Thibodeaux pointed. “You missed the little peck-erwood and hit the filing cabinet. Damn.”
In direct line with where Jaime had been sitting, the top file drawer now sported a bullet hole, a blemish difficult to explain in the best of circumstances. I went over and carefully picked Jaime up, still in his faint, and put him back in the chair. Thibodeaux squeezed by, chuckling to himself. He pulled open the file drawer. “Hey, Blue boy. You hit the B’s solid in the informant file. Blew a hole right through Ollie Bell’s informant file. Is that some kinda omen or what?”
I stepped over and slammed the file drawer. I whispered, “What kind of idiot are you? You don’t talk about an informant in front of other crooks.”
Thibodeaux stared at me for a moment. I tensed, ready for the violent confrontation, one that I wanted, one that I needed.
It didn’t materialize.
“You’re absolutely right, old son.” He patted my shoulder, turned, and went back to his desk.
What the hell was going on? Why’d he back down?
The phone on my desk rang. I went over and picked it up. “You okay in there?” Wicks asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Meet me, location two, one hour.” He hung up.
Blue came out of his trance. He picked up the gun from the floor. He extended it out to me. “What the hell happened?” He took the magazine from his back pocket and showed it to me. He said, “I pulled the magazine. You said it wouldn’t fire with the magazine out.”
I took the gun and magazine. I shoved the mag in, released the slide, and let the hammer down easy. “This is a Berretta. It doesn’t have a mag safety like the Smith and Wesson. It’ll fire the one round in the chamber without the magazine seated.” I pulled the mag out, ejected the round, and handed him the gun back.
“Oh.” Blue thought about it a moment more and said, “Oh.”
Thibodeaux said, “It’s okay, Blue. Your piss-poor aim saved all our asses today, no doubt.”
Blue sat down at his desk. His reaction didn’t mirror what I’d seen of him the night of the Imperial and Mona gas station shooting. That night he displayed a devil-may-care, stone killer look in his expression, especially in his eyes.
Maybe because Jaime, in Blue’s mind, didn’t deserve to die like the others he’d killed. But that theory didn’t work either, not if he truly possessed a cold-blooded killer mentality.
Jaime started to come around. His eyes rolled and stabilized. “What happened?”
I said, “You’re going through severe heroin withdrawal and you’re hallucinating. You passed out and fell off the chair.”
He looked at all three of us one at a time, nodded, and said, “Really?”
Thibodeaux said, “You gonna tell us where Mo Mo is now or are we gonna give you another hallucination?”
“No, no. Don’t do that. I told you I don’t know. But I can find out for you, you let me go.”
Thibodeaux looked at Blue. Blue nodded.
“Nah, man,” Thibodeaux said, “that ain’t the right move here, Blue. We got him on the ropes. We just need to squeeze him a little more.”
Blue glared at Dirt.
Thibodeaux took the cuffs off. “Come on, I’ll 849b-1 you out of the jail. Give you a citation.”
Thibodeaux helped Jaime to his feet, supported him under one arm so he wouldn’t fall on his face, and walked him out the door and down the steps.
I sat back down at my desk and looked over at Blue.
Blue stared back. He finally said, “You going to report what just happened here?”
“Hell no, not with the way you got my nuts in a vise.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, his expression neutral.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You and your buttboy hung a case on my dad. What do you want from me? What do you want me to do to get that case taken off him? I’m ready to do anything.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mrs. Whitaker, down in East Compton?”
“Nope.”
“Come on, don’t bullshit me. That’s why I’m late this morning. I went down there. I found a witness that saw Thibodeaux with his white tuft of hair and his puke-green T-Bird. In the future you might have him wear a cap and drive a less memorable car.” I was lying, trying to bluff.
Blue stood and stepped over to me. “Stand up.”
I did, and I towered over him, hands at my side, fists clenched, ready for anything he could throw at me.
“Lift your arms.”
I did.
He patted me down, the thorough kind of search, not missing a thing, looking for a wire.
He went back and sat down at his desk. He grinned. “I told Dirt too many times, that hair of his would get him in trouble.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
I GRITTED MY teeth. The casual way Blue spoke about the crime, admitting what they’d done to Mrs. Whitaker—to Dad—made me want to yank him out of his chair and beat that smile out of him.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “What do I have to do to get Thibodeaux to back off Mrs. Whitaker so she can recant her accusation?”
Blue lost his smile and stared at me for a moment.
“I want you to—” He looked to see if anyone stood in the doorway and lowered his voice. “I want you to take out Mo Mo.”
My heart raced. This had been what I’d been waiting for, the whole purpose of my assignment. “What are you talking about? You want me to whack Mo Mo? No way. You’re kiddin’, right? This is some kind of test, right?”
I’d never put a case together for a murder for hire. I didn’t know what I needed as far as the elements of the crime. I did know for sure that at that moment it was Blue’s word against mine. No district attorney would file any kind of charges with that kind of evidence. I needed more, a lot more.
And Blue knew it, too.
Blue watched me close, as if trying to read me. “That’s the cost to pull your dad back from the edge.”
I looked at him. “Murder? I don’t know about that. I—”
“Mo Mo’s a dirtbag sellin’ drugs. He’s got a huge operation. Do you know how many people he’s killed with those drugs? Probably hundreds if you add up the overdoses, the killings over drug turf. And that doesn’t even take into account all the families ruined by the addicts. Do you know how many more people he’s going to hurt and kill with those drugs?”
“But murder?” I said.
“It’s not murder if he resists arrest when you go to take him down.”
That’s what Blue had done at the Mona and Imperial gas station shooting, covered it in the name of the law.
“Why me? Why in the world would you think I’d do something like this?”
“I asked around about you. When you caught up with Maurice Tubbs, you put the boot to him for what he d
id to his parents with that hose nozzle. I’d have done the same thing. You also tracked that car for five miles in the summer heat, pulled a guy through the screen door, and put the boot to him for what he did. He killed a little girl, ran her down in the crosswalk, and took off. And Mo Mo, he’s ten times worse, the worst of the worst.”
Mo Mo wasn’t the worst of the worst. I was looking at the worst of the worst now: Blue.
“I take out Mo Mo, you’ll drop the charges against my dad?”
“That’s right. You have my word.”
“What, the word of a contract killer?”
“You want to call me names, that’s fine, get the hell out. Let your father rot in prison.”
“No, wait, I didn’t say no. I just don’t want to get taken for a ride, that’s all. Set up like a chump and left blowin’ in the wind.”
“What are you talking about?”
“On Peach, Ollie said the bag was supposed to have sixty-two thousand five hundred in it. Thibodeaux checked in forty at narco headquarters. I checked.”
Blue smiled. “You know, I thought you might be a hard sell on this. Dirt thought . . . well let’s just say, I’m pleasantly surprised. So, you’re saying, for a sign of good faith, you want that skim, the twenty-two five?”
“That’s right. I know you have to be getting a nice chunk from whoever it is asking to have this done. Who is it?”
“Who do you think it is? You won’t ever know for sure. It could just be me wanting to rid the streets of scum like Mo Mo.”
“Nah, you wouldn’t do it without compensation. So, if I had to guess, it’s Papa Dee. He probably wants to take out his competition, and he’s willing to pay good money to have it done.”
I didn’t want to get anywhere near the information about the EME, the prison, and the information the black bag wiretap gave us. That would tip off Blue for sure.