Death Walks Skid Row

by Michael Mallory

  “Christ, Nick, how did you find that out? Did you talk to Mac? Jesus, did I kill him too late so he didn’t talk? You have no idea what I thought when I saw him down on Skid Row. At first I didn’t know who he was cause I’d heard he was dead. All those years I thought I was safe, especially after I changed my name. Then a few weeks ago, I was down there on the site of the Phoenix thing, posing for some pictures—”

  “What are you talking about?” Cantone snapped. “I didn’t authorize any photo shoot.”

  “I know … it was my own idea,” Henry said. “I thought if I could get some photos looking around at the blight in Skid Row, I could release them during the campaign to prove that I’m someone who’s going to take on the big issues as mayor.”

  “Oh, good god.”

  “No, it’s a good thing, Nick, because that’s when I saw the wall-eyed little creep. He was a bum, a Skid Row bum. He came walking up to me and I didn’t even recognize him at first, ’cause like I said, I thought he was dead. But he knew me, which I didn’t think much about, because I’m a movie star. I get recognized all the time. But he said, ‘Bone, it’s me! It’s Mac!’ Then I noticed his eye. Mac always had a crooked eye, even when he was young, but now it pointed straight to the side. It was him, all right. I thought I was going to fall down. He said, ‘Look what’s happened to me, Bone. It’s my punishment from God. How did you escape it?’ I said something like, ‘You’re mistaken,’ and turned and ran. But it was him. So tell me, Nicky. You got your information from him, right? There’s no other way.”

  Cantone drew in a long, slow breath, and let it out even more slowly.

  “There was one other way, Adam,” he said. “I got it from you, just now.”

  “You … didn’t know about the hit-and-run?”

  “Not until one minute ago.”

  “Oh, for …”

  “What my team dug up on you was that you were the primary drug supplier for Leslie Malk & Associates Casting while you were in college at UC San Diego, bringing the stuff up from Mexico for Leslie to distribute throughout Hollywood. This made you so wealthy you didn’t need to bother finishing college. After you dealt your way into an acting career, I also learned about that time you were coked to high heaven and roughed up a prostitute while on location in Old Tuscon for a film. You roughed her up enough to cause her to miscarry.”

  “Christ. I paid her off, too.”

  Cantone nodded. “Forty-five thousand dollars. But I digress. Let’s go back to your friend Mac for a moment. Tell me exactly what you mean when you said ‘I killed him not to talk.’”

  “I didn’t do it personally,” Henry said, wiping his lip again. “I hired it out. Found a guy who posed as a Skid Row bum long enough to find Mac and take care of him, and he did.”

  “Is this hitman of yours by any chance about sixty and black?”

  “What? No, he’s a young guy. Good looking, blond. Could have been an actor himself.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this up front?” Cantone asked.

  “I thought you might be disappointed if you knew.”

  “So you took it all upon yourself to hire a hitman to take care of your secret, a secret even I didn’t know.”

  “That show’s initiative, doesn’t it?”

  “What’s his name, Adam?”

  “Well, I don’t know if he wants me spreading his name around.”

  Nick Cantone turned on the high-beam glare again, and after a half-minute, Henry said,

  “Alex Tunzi, but he has a lot of other names he uses. Why do you want to know his name?”

  So I can be sure it is not the same man I hired to kill Ramona Rios, you side of rotting beef, Cantone thought, but said nothing. Massaging his forehead, Cantone silently wished he could ask Fesche to take out Adam Henry, too, before he wrecked absolutely everything. But he could not. He simply had too much invested in this moron, and there was too much at stake ahead.

  But oh, how he wished Steven Seagal had returned his call …

  ****

  Charlie Grosvenor had carefully followed every one of the gunman’s directions, though he took care not to drive fast, which meant that it was nearly eight by the time they arrived at Ramona’s apartment building.

  “How do you open the garage door?” asked Alex Tunzi, alias Aspen, Danny Speakman, Ken Corder and Michael Fleer. He still had the gun pointed at her.

  “A key card,” Ramona replied. “It’s in my purse.”

  “Get it. Slowly.”

  Picking her purse up off the floor of the car, she reached in and found the card. Then on instruction, she handed it up to the Governor who used it to open the garage door.

  “Park in any open space,” Tunzi ordered. “Even if it’s handicapped. I won’t be here that long.”

  “Why are we here in the first place?” Ramona asked. “Why not just kill us back on Skid Row?”

  “Because that would draw too much attention. The cops and the press would be all over the discovery of two more bodies, and that might cause a delay in the development projects. Besides, you were already shot at down here once. This time it was successful.”

  “Shot at by you?”

  “No. Honestly, Chi-Chi, I don’t know who the flower man is.”

  “I guess I’ll take your word for it,” Ramona said, trying to stall for time, “but can I ask one more thing?”

  “Please don’t disappoint me by begging for your life.”

  “I just want to know your real name. And whether this is your real hair, cut and dyed, or whether you were wearing a wig as Danny.”

  “It won’t hurt now. Alexander Tunzi. Pleased to meet you. And no, this isn’t the real me. I had my hair butched and dyed. You figured out the part about my eyes.”

  “You were listening to us,” Ramona said, as Charlie pulled into an empty slot.

  “Yeah. I wanted to know exactly what you knew. I hung around you at that press conference for the same reason, until you started to wreck everything, and there was nothing I could do to get you to stop. Now get out, both of you.”

  Ramona and Charlie exited the car, as did Tunzi, who kept his gun trained on Ramona.

  “Mind if I ask a question now?” Charlie said, pronouncing ‘ask’ as ‘axe’. “You are the one who killed poor Jimmy, aren’t you?”

  “I was hired to.”

  “By who?”

  “By Nick Cantone,” Ramona said.

  “Wrong, Chi-Chi,” Tunzi said. “My employer is the next mayor.”

  “You’re working for Soto? So all that business about him and the Mexican cartels was just bull?”

  “I don’t know if it’s bull or not. I don’t know anything about Soto. Soto isn’t my problem. Only his replacement, Adam Henry. He recognized the little bum as someone he used to know – who could dredge up an old scandal that would wreck his life. So the little bum had to go.”

  “Sweet Jesus, that’s it!” Charlie said. “Adam Henry was the evil-doer! He was the one driving the car Jimmy was riding in. He hit that poor young woman and killed her. And as long as Jim knew that a double-murderer was running for mayor, he couldn’t be allowed to live.”

  “In a nutshell,” Tunzi said. “I found him and took him out, and then pretended to find his body as cover. Even you didn’t really think I killed him, did you, Governor?”

  “I didn’t. Fact is, I told the police if you were the killer, you must be an Oscar-winning actor. You had me fooled.”

  “Yeah, well, I was able to rehearse.”

  “Rehearse? How?”

  “I practiced first on a few other bums to make sure I knew exactly where to put the shiv, and where to stand so as not to get spattered by the blood.”

  “You … killed other men … for practice?” Ramona said.

  Tunzi smiled. “Real serial killer, aren’t I? Look, what’s life even worth for a bum on the streets? I knew I had to get MacLendon right first time, so I couldn’t take a chance on screwing it up.”

  “How many?”
<
br />   “Three, four, who cares? Okay, smarties, I know what you’re doing, keeping me talking, but I can’t screw up here, either. You two were never part of the plan, and truth is, I kind of liked both of you. Still, you know too much, so …” He raised his gun.

  But before he could fire, Alex Tunzi’s head exploded.

  Ramona screamed, and Gunnar Fesche walked out of the shadows of the parking garage, a tendril of smoke snaking up from the end of the silencer on his automatic pistol.

  “Looks like I returned the favor, Ms. Rios,” he said.

  “You’re the flower man,” she said.

  “And you’re the dead woman.”

  Fesche raised the gun.

  She reached out and grabbed Charlie, then dived onto to the garage floor, pulling him with her as a bullet zoomed over their heads. “He’s a terrible shot,” she whispered. “Roll under a car.”

  “You roll, baby girl,” he said. “I’m getting tired of this.”

  Goddamned cat! Fesche thought furiously.

  Ramona wedged herself under the Audi, while Charlie crawled toward Tunzi’s corpse and rolled it over. Another bullet missed his head by mere centimeters, but struck the body of the dead hitman. With the corpse on its back, Charlie was now able to take Tunzi’s gun and return fire.

  “Your odds just changed,” Charlie shouted, his voice echoing throughout the parking garage.

  “You’re not even part of this contract!” Fesche called back. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “I’m the Governor.”

  “Yeah, and I’m the president.”

  Charlie Grosvenor slowly stood up, keeping the automatic trained on his assailant. “What’s it gonna be, man?” he asked.

  Fesche said nothing. He simply stood there, his gun pointed at Charlie’s head, trying to figure out his best course of action. Noticing the slight tremor in the old, black man’s hand as he held the gun – either from age or fear – he opted to take the risk.

  Gunnar Fesche started to squeeze the trigger.

  As he did, the garage door behind him began to open, the sudden, unfamiliar noise startling him.

  The shot went wild.

  Charlie’s didn’t.

  As the car pulled into the garage, its headlights backlit the sight of Gunnar Fesche sinking to the floor, howling in agony from the gunshot wound to his groin.

  The driver of the car, a blonde woman, got out and shouted, “What is this? Are you shooting a movie?”

  “No ma’am,” Charlie called back, and “we’d appreciate it if you’d go find the manager and then call the police. And you might want to back on out and park on the street.”

  By now Ramona had crawled out from underneath the Audi.

  “My clothes and I have spent entirely too much time this evening on the floor of this bunker,” she grumbled. Then she then saw Fesche who was rolling around in a fetal position, whimpering. “Wow, Charlie, you sure know how to hurt a guy.”

  “I was aiming for his knee,” Charlie said. “I’m not much of a shot either.”

  Then his legs weakened and he started to collapse, clutching his chest. Ramona caught him halfway down and eased him to the concrete floor.

  CHAPTER 15

  Charlie Grosvenor was taken to the same hospital as Gunnar Fesche. What Ramona Rios feared to have been a heart attack proved only to be extreme anxiety. She stayed with him in the emergency room.

  Having been informed at the station of the incident, Detective Darrell Knight showed up a little while later. After speaking to Ramona and Charlie, the detective asked to see Fesche, but was informed he was in surgery. Instead he asked to see the gunman’s personal effects.

  In the pocket of Fesche’s jacket was a cell phone. Knight return-called the last number.

  A man’s voice answered. “Tell me it’s done,” he said.

  “Hmm?” Knight mumbled.

  “Dammit, Fesche, tell me it’s done. Tell me Ramona Rios is dead.”

  “Am I speaking with …?”

  “This is Cantone! Who else would it be on this line! What is wrong with—”

  Immediately, Nick Cantone stopped talking.

  After several seconds, he said, “Fesche?”

  Knight cut off the call. A few seconds later the phone rang again, but the detective did not answer. Pulling a plastic evidence bag from his pocket, he dropped the phone into it.

  ****

  When the police arrived at Adam Henry’s Bel Air home at eight the next morning, he invited them in for breakfast, and asked if they had a photographer with them. Once it was explained to him why they were there, he denied everything, including a couple of charges that were never mentioned. As he was being transported to the police station in handcuffs, Henry was heard to mutter, “Damn you, Mac,” over and over again, and then he began to cry.

  At the same time, officers arrived at both the home and the office of Nick Cantone, finding him at neither. He was finally tracked to Santa Monica Airport and was taken into custody minutes before boarding a private airplane with his attorney. They were planning to escape to South America. Even after having been read his rights, and having been warned by his lawyer to shut up, Cantone refused to remain silent, telling the arresting officers, “You’ll all be sorry. You have no idea what I can do.”

  By noon, his attorney had quit.

  ****

  Having been kept overnight for observation, Charlie Grosvenor was released from the hospital at nine in the morning. Detective Darrell Knight was waiting for him.

  “How are you feeling, Governor?” he asked.

  “All things considered, not too bad. Where’s the girl?”

  “My guess is she’s calling every TV station in town to start a bidding war over exclusive rights to the biggest story to hit L.A. in years.”

  Knight’s cell phone rang.

  “Yeah,” he said into it. “Okay, good.” Hanging up, he told Charlie, “We’ve got them both. Henry and Cantone.”

  “Cantone?”

  “The billionaire developer who owns half of Downtown and wants the other half. He was the one who hired Fesche to kill Ramona. Seems he didn’t like that she was starting to ask questions about his plans to run the city. He’s still acting like he has executive privilege but it seems his friend Henry is launching a new career as a singer. Which leads me to my next point. I’m going to need you to come down to the station to make an official report.”

  “I can do that,” Charlie said.

  Knight yawned.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been at it all night. Still wearing the same clothes from yesterday.”

  “You’ll be one of us soon.”

  “Yeah,” Knight said, grinning. “When my wife throws me out for never being home, I’ll be sure to look you up on Skid Row. I’ll tell you one thing, Governor. I wish I had been able to figure this thing out like you did. I’ll get the hosannas from the department since I can close the cases on what looked like six random murders: those four homeless men, the cabbie, and a hired killer, plus a thirty-year-old cold case. But it’s all because of what you and Ramona Rios discovered.”

  “Oh, well, maybe we got lucky.”

  “Yeah. Or maybe you’re both part bloodhound. Look, I don’t suppose there’s any way you’d consider—”

  “Damn!” Charlie suddenly shouted. “All this excitement, I forgot about Pooch!”

  “Who’s Pooch?”

  “I have a dog now. He adopted me. He’s been home alone all night. I have to go put some food down. Damn, do I have any food for him? I’ve gotta go take care of my dog. I’ll come by the station later.”

  “Tell you what, Governor. I’ll drive you home. And I still find it puzzling that you have a home, but you don’t need to tell me about it if you don’t want to. Then we’ll go to the station.”

  On the way to Charlie’s apartment, he said, “I’m rich, that’s what it’s about.”

  “Sorry?” Knight said.

  “I’m rich, detective. I’m wor
th millions. I won the Lotto several years back. Nobody knows that, ’cept you, now, and Ramona. At least she knows part of it.”

  “Why in god’s name do you stay on the streets, then?”

  “To help people. That, and … hell, this is going to sound crazy to you, but Skid Row’s my home now. I’ve been there so long, I don’t know where else to go. With all the news coverage that’s going to result from this mess, I really hope my cover isn’t blown.”

  “I’ll do what I can to keep you out of it. You should probably talk to Ramona about that, too.”

  When Charlie got home, Pooch started running in circles, becoming so excited he peed a little on the floor. “That’s all right, boy, you’ve earned the right to be excited,” Charlie said. After taking the dog out back to do his business, Charlie set down some fresh water and opened a can of beef stew for the dog.

  “Damn spoiled dog’s never gonna accept plain dog food after this,” Charlie told Detective Knight with a smile.

  EPILOGUE

  Mayor Albert Soto looked to be a shoo-in for re-election in November. His campaign was based on the idea of establishing residential hotels for the homeless in Skid Row, particularly since the Phoenix Terrace development had been cancelled and the space was available.

  Nick Cantone and Adam Henry remained in jail pending trial on conspiracy to murder. In addition, the family of Deborah Questal, the young victim of the hit-and-run murder thirty years earlier, had engaged an attorney and filed a wrongful death civil suit against Henry. The story was rarely out of the news.

  Gunnar Fesche had opted to turn state’s evidence against Cantone in return for a reduced sentence for the murder of Alex Tunzi. He was spending his time not in jail, but in secured rehab, relearning how to walk.

  After much deliberation, Ramona Rios agreed to return to KPAC as its morning co-anchor. While her working relationship with the station’s news director, Robert Bauman, remained professional, but cool, she was developing a friendship with the station’s new manager, Martha Agajanian. The latter had replaced station manager Jason Hulme, who was relocated by ComCorp to a station in Boise. All the other anchors and reporters at Channel 8 had started referring to her on-air as “our own Ramona Rios”.