by Marcia Clark
“What? What’s your issue now?” I asked, annoyed.
“Jus’ wonderin’ what’s it like for Droopy. This place is intense, and he’s jus’ a lil’ guy, you know?”
Of all the bangers in the world, I had to get Mr. Sensitive. Droopy, I assumed, was Hector Amaya’s gang moniker. I wondered why they were always so unflattering. Me, I would’ve at least picked something like Foxy or Jet. Which, I supposed, explained in part why I wasn’t gang material.
I saw a pale and skinny young sheriff’s deputy escorting an inmate down the corridor toward us. He was so small, his county-jail jumpsuit swam around him like a parachute. He looked to be about twelve years old. His hands were shackled to his waist, and his feet were chained at the ankles, so the two made slow progress. When they got closer, I understood the Droopy moniker: his eyes sagged down at the corners, giving him a perpetually sad look. Hector, aka Droopy, was indeed a little guy—short and thin, with the long wiry arms that made him a perfect cat burglar. But the colorful tattoos that lined them meant short sleeves would be a dangerous fashion choice.
The deputy unlocked the door on his side, and I watched as Hector entered the room and realized suddenly who was with me. His eyes bulged and his face turned ashen, but I had to hand it to him—he otherwise kept it cool and uttered not one sound as the deputy put him into the chair. I waited until the door had closed securely behind the deputy and he’d taken his seat outside before addressing Hector.
“As far as anyone will ever know, I’m your defense attorney, and this is my assistant,” I said, gesturing to Luis.
I continued, “I’m actually the prosecutor on the rape case involving someone Luis knows pretty well. And she just happens to live very close to where you got caught the other night. Which just happened to make everyone think that the Sylmar Sevens were working that hood. And this gave us the unfortunate impression that Luis was the rapist.”
“Pissed me off good, ese,” Luis said, his voice menacing.
Hector shrunk in his chair and looked down at the table, unable to meet Luis’s eyes, which were trained angrily on his face.
Luis leaned in and said in a low but raw-voiced whisper, “What the fuck you thinkin’, pullin’ a job like that without askin’? You forget who’s the shot-caller?” He spoke with a quiet intensity and menace that showed me what kept him on top of the heap known as the Sylmar Sevens.
Hector drooped so low in his chair that he’d probably have slid onto the floor if he hadn’t been shackled into it.
“I guess I’m goin’ to have to find a way to remind you,” Luis said. “Look at me when I’m talkin’ to you, pendejo.” Hector obediently looked up as much as his still-bowed head allowed. “I got a lot of people in here. They can take care of you… or not. You understan’?”
I had to walk a fine line, letting Luis flex his muscle to make this kid talk without being a party to a felony. Misdemeanors were my limit.
“I can’t be hearing threats, Luis,” I said quietly, with as little challenge as possible, then gave Luis the power to keep Hector’s respect by letting him work the interrogation. “He needs to tell us now why he picked that hood and that house.”
Luis looked at Hector like he was a turd hanging off Luis’s shoe. “Tell the lady,” he said.
Hector took a deep breath, then blew it out and shrugged. “I don’ know. Was stupid, but I never meant for it to come down on you, Luis, you gotta believe me,” he said.
I would’ve felt sorry for the kid, but I didn’t really care whether he meant to frame Luis or not. “What made you choose that neighborhood and that house? And don’t tell me your grandma lives in the area,” I said.
Hector swallowed hard for a minute, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down before he managed to squeak out, “Really, it was jus’ bad luck. No reason. I jus’ was ridin’ around with my homies and we drove by this place and it looked real good, so I decided to hit it.” He paused to breathe and looked between Luis and me, trying to gauge our reactions.
This was total bullshit. Hector looked good and scared, but for some reason he wasn’t coming clean.
“Pinche cabrón mentiroso,” Luis spit at him. “You bring all this trouble down on my head. I’m givin’ you the chance to start makin’ it right, and you disrespectin’ me with this fuckin’ shit?”
Hector’s chains were his “tell.” He was shaking so hard they rattled loudly under the table, sounding like Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghost of Jacob Marley. Luis continued to stare at Hector, his brows knitted, his expression thunderous.
“Luis, I know I got no right to ask, but if I give it up, you gotta get me protection in here or I’m dead, man. I’m dead.” Hector had tears in his eyes, and his already high-pitched young-boy voice got even higher. This was starting to really worry me. What had this goofy kid gotten himself into?
Luis paused and stared at him for several beats. The rattling of Hector’s chains punctuated the tension in the air. Then, in full Godfather mode, Luis slowly nodded. “You have my word,” he said softly, sitting back in his chair.
Hector’s chest heaved, and he began to sob. Luis looked away to give him a measure of privacy, and I did the same. When the sobs had reduced to sniffles, I looked back. Finally Hector began to speak.
“Was this dude tol’ me he knew a house, real rich people, they were gonna be gone for the night. The back door would be open. There’d be cash an’ jewelry an’ he’d let me keep the cash—”
Hector stopped abruptly and looked at Luis. The shot-caller’s nostrils flared as he rasped, “Why don’ you think? Think! Some vato you don’ even know gives you all this, you don’ say to yourself, ‘Hector, this shit’s too good to be true’? Qué tonto estás! You see? This is why you have to ask permission.” He stabbed his finger at Hector’s head. “Because you don’ got nothin’ up here.”
Hector again bowed his head and nodded. “I shoulda known. But I thought if I pulled this off, you’d let me move up.”
Move up the corporate ladder of the Sylmar Sevens. I supposed it was always good to have goals.
“Was it true, was the back door open?” I asked. This was a key point.
“Yeah, it was, but—”
“But the people were home,” I finished for him. Either the “dude” had left the door open himself because he had access to the place, or he knew the family’s habits well enough to know that they left their door open all the time. Either way, it was an inside job.
Hector nodded.
“This dude got a name?” I asked.
“I never knew his name.”
Of course not. That would be too easy. “Describe him,” I said.
“White guy, kinda big. Long black hair, wears it kinda slicked back, in a ponytail.”
“Beard, mustache, soul patch?”
“Nah.”
“Any tatts?” I asked.
Hector nodded and tapped the left side of his neck to indicate where the tatt was, and I heard the chains rattle again as he began to bounce his knee nervously. His reaction to my question told me why he’d been so scared.
“AB?” I asked.
Hector nodded again, and Luis grunted as he sat back in his chair. The AB, or Aryan Brotherhood, was one of the oldest, most powerful, and violent prison gangs. Hector would definitely sleep with the fishes if they found out he’d ratted on one of their own. But nowadays they weren’t as big as the Sureños, a Hispanic prison gang that went back to the original Mexican Mafia. Ultimately the bigger, badder gang would make sure nothing happened to Hector if Luis had enough pull. The baby gangster and I were both hoping he did. But what weird quirk of fate caused a young Hispanic gangbanger to cross paths with an AB guy?
“Where’d you run into him?” I asked. Hispanic gangbangers and white-supremacist groups didn’t mix as a general rule.
Hector licked his lips and looked from me to Luis. “You gonna go arrest him?”
“Eventually, if we find him. But we’ll have you safe by then,” I said with
more confidence than I probably should have. With prison gangs, there was never really such a thing as “safe.” Lucky, maybe, but not safe.
Hector didn’t look entirely convinced, but it’s not like he had any choice.
“I seen him at the Oki-Dog,” he replied.
If it was the place I was thinking of, it was a dive with mostly outdoor eating. Located on Fairfax, it was literally a place where, in the words of Jim Morrison, all the “creatures meet.” Punkers, bangers, all-night druggies, wannabe actors, high schoolers trying to be cool—they all congregated at the Oki-Dog.
“You see him there a lot, or just this time?”
Hector shrugged. “I seen him there a few times before.”
I pulled out as much more of a description of the guy as I could, and when I’d run out of questions, I turned to Luis. “You got anything?”
Luis shook his head, and we stood up to signal the sheriff’s deputy that we were done. The shot-caller started to pick up his file, then stopped and looked down at Hector. “You my homie, so I’m takin’ care of you for now. But that can end, you mess up again, m’entiende?”
Hector nodded quietly. I wondered whether Luis really had the power to protect him from the Aryan Brotherhood. I’d find out soon enough, when we picked up Oki-Dog man. And then the answer would come swiftly.
32
Luis and I emerged from the jail, blinking into the forgotten sunlight, and made our way to Bailey’s car. I ripped off my wig and glasses the moment we pulled away from the curb. Bailey drove us to a nearby clinic, where she had connections that would get Luis’s inner cheek swabbed and blood drawn, no questions asked. I filled her in on what I’d learned from Hector as she drove, and she absorbed the news without comment. Uneasy with our alliance with Luis, Bailey wouldn’t say any more than she had to in front of him. I should’ve been even less enthused with his company, but for some reason I believed he did aspire to something more than being the gang shot-caller.
As we walked out of the clinic, I found a nearby waste container and dumped the long blond wig. I didn’t want to keep any evidence around. Luis seemed disappointed. “Looked kinda hot, you ax me, but whatever.” He finished rolling down his shirtsleeve and said, “We gonna get my poly done now or what?”
We all got into the car. Bailey and I looked at each other. Getting Luis into the station to do a polygraph exam without anyone realizing who he was would be very tough. If he was spotted, they’d lock him up no matter what we said, and that would mean I’d get nothing more out of Hector if I needed it. Besides, a deal’s a deal. I’d promised to keep him out of custody if he delivered, and he had. And I wasn’t a big fan of polygraphs anyway. Bailey turned a quick left, taking us back to Bauchet Street.
Luis was tugging on his cuffs and straightening his shirt collar when he looked out the window and saw where we were heading.
“Uh, excuse me, what we going back to the jail for?”
Bailey continued to drive, and I said nothing.
Luis cleared his throat and tried again. “I don’ want you ladies to take this the wrong way, but you mind if we get this thing going? I got things to do, you know?”
For some reason, maybe a bit of payback, I decided to let him twist a little. Besides, I was intrigued. “What things?”
“Got to help out with the kids today. My ma’s not feeling good.”
I twisted around to look at him, trying to figure out whether he was yanking my chain. But he returned my gaze, in dead earnest.
“We’ll skip the poly. We don’t need it. We’ve got your DNA, that’s good enough.”
Luis’s face reddened and his brows knitted. “What? No! Tha’s not right, man,” he said, shaking his head vigorously to demonstrate just how wrong this was. “You promised me a poly—what if they make a mistake with the DNA or somethin’? They can screw that stuff up real easy. I don’ trust it. Why you doin’ me like this?” Luis said heatedly. He looked at me suspiciously. “You tryin’ to set me up?” He looked down and shook his head as though there were nothing left to trust in the world. “After the way I hooked you up in there…” He jerked his head toward the jail, then looked at me, wounded.
It was one for the books: a felon begging for his polygraph. If I’d had any doubts about his innocence, they were definitely gone now. No one is so confident in his ability to fake a poly that he’d beg to take one.
“No, Luis. I’m not ‘doing you like this.’ I think the DNA’s going to show you didn’t do it, and we don’t need to waste any more time… yours or mine. And, by the way, you can tell everybody that they definitely don’t screw up DNA all the time. But we’re going to need you to stick around. We may need your help with Hector again, so don’t be making any vacation plans, got it?”
Luis looked at me. “Vacation plans. Tha’s very funny. I bet your homies think you’re a riot.”
I saw Bailey suppress a smile as she pulled into an empty spot at the curb across the street from Luis’s car. He looked it over through the window, his eyes narrowed, searching for any signs of defilement. His expression told me it had survived the ordeal of being parked next to the Hellmouth.
Luis started to leave our car and then stopped with one foot on the ground. “Listen, just make sure your DNA person knows what he’s doin’, okay?”
I nodded.
He looked at me, then sighed and got out and sprinted to his car.
Bailey and I watched as he folded himself into the driver’s seat and fixed his hair in the rearview, then gunned the engine and pulled away.
“Think he’s really going to help out his mother?” Bailey asked.
“For the next couple of hours, maybe. After that…”
“Yeah.”
Bailey drove us onto the freeway heading west, for the ultimate experience in contrast: from the bowels of hell to the luxe of Pacific Palisades to check out the errant security guard who worked in Susan’s neighborhood. I rolled down the window and leaned my head out into the wind. I could feel my hair becoming a tangled mess, but I didn’t care. Ever since we’d left the building, each inhaled breath had recycled the noxious smell of the jail back through my sinuses, and I had to get it out. I tilted my face up and took deep, cleansing breaths of carbon monoxide.
When Bailey got off the freeway, I made a halfhearted effort to pat my hair and fix my face. By the time she turned west on Sunset, I felt as if I’d gotten the worst of Bauchet Street out of my system.
When we drove up to the guardhouse, the top half of the door was opened, giving us a view of a state-of-the-art surveillance system, with monitors on the walls that showed continuous views of the streets and registered the time and date of each vehicle’s entry. Even Useless had known to grab the videotapes, so we already knew they hadn’t picked up any activity near Susan’s house. But since the rapist had gone in through the backyard and the residents hadn’t been ready to let Big Brother plant cameras on their actual properties yet, that was no surprise.
“Hello? LAPD,” Bailey said, holding up her badge.
A round, rosy-cheeked guard in shirtsleeves who’d been rocking back in his ergonomic chair sat up from the bank of monitors with a bang and an eager-to-please smile and came to the door.
“What can I do for you, Detective?” he asked. His enthusiasm told me that he had a very boring job. His name tag said he was DIRECTOR OF SECURITY NORMAN CHERNOW.
Bailey graced Norman with one of her professional “just the facts, ma’am” smiles and replied, “We’re looking for Deputy Pickelman. Deputy Duane Pickelman.”
He began to bob his head up and down rapidly, smiling away. “Oh yes, ma’am, I can help you with that. He should be checking in from his afternoon round in just a minute or so.” His obvious delight in being able to satisfy the request was heartwarming, if a little over the top.
“Would you like to wait in here with me?” He began to unlatch the door to let us in.
“No, thank you, sir, that won’t be necessary,” Bailey said, gesturing to the
turnaround behind the guardhouse. “We’re going to pull around behind here. If you could just wave and point him out when he gets in, that would be terrific.”
“You got it, Detective. Not a problem. Will do,” Norman said, bobbing his head again and smiling broadly.
Bailey positioned the car behind the guardhouse, and we settled in to wait.
“ ‘You got it, Detective,’ ” I teased. “Show him your gun—it’ll make his whole month.”
Bailey shot me a look that said she didn’t appreciate my humor. Her loss.
We sat and watched the traffic as it passed in and out of the massive, electronically controlled iron gates. A brand-new Hummer sailed out, driven by an acned boy with pierced ears and a supergelled Mohawk. He was talking into his iPhone, moving his head to the heavy bass line of a gangsta-rap song that boomed out through an impressive set of speakers. The Hummer was followed by a brand-new BMW convertible being driven by a young girl with long, jet-black hair that flew out behind her. She wore a leather-and-bead bracelet that shone in the sun as she carried on a heated conversation on her jewel-encrusted cell phone. I wondered whether, after watching these idle children of the rich drive by him every day, Duane Pickelman had seen one too many and snapped.
A cyclist dressed in bright-yellow spandex with black stripes and matching yellow-and-black helmet pedaled up the incline and turned onto the drive leading to the gates. He waved toward the guardhouse, and Norman waved back gaily as he pressed the button to let the cyclist in. The man drove in circles, waiting for the gates to swing open. I looked closer, then tapped Bailey on the arm. “Check out the bumblebee on the bike,” I said with a grin. “Isn’t that our boy Densmore?”
Bailey turned to look. She nodded and chuckled. “The getup serves the purpose, but it does look stupid,” she remarked. “Gotta admit, though,” she said, watching him. “He’s in great shape.”
He was, but still. Yellow and black? Spandex? The gates finished their stately swing, and Frank Densmore rode up the hill, ending the show.
As he headed out of sight, a perfectly groomed, manicured, and Botoxed woman of deliberately indeterminate age pulled through the gates in a convertible Porsche. She too was on her cell—what did these people have going on that they couldn’t even drive to and from their homes without talking on the telephone? The woman stopped at the curb just inside the gates to finish her call, talking and gesticulating broadly.