by David Chill
The restaurant opened before noon, but when I arrived at 12:30 p.m., there was only one other table occupied. The interior was warm, maybe the air conditioning had not been turned on yet, maybe they were trying to save money on utilities. I wore a sports jacket, and while a little uncomfortable, I kept it on the whole time. In addition to covering my holstered pistol, I'd need the jacket for more practical purposes.
This was an older-style steakhouse, the walls were layered with the kind of plastic wood paneling that fooled no one and only contributed to the cheap feel of the dining room. This was nothing like Morton's or Ruth's Chris, but to its credit, it didn't bill itself as a premium steakhouse. This restaurant struck me as part of a dying breed, joints that served up cheap drinks and cheap steaks at a good value, but paled in comparison to newer establishments. This was certainly old-school, and while that would normally be a point in its favor from my perspective, old-school was not always so terrific.
The bored hostess seated me, took my drink order for an iced tea, and returned with it about fifteen minutes later. Grudgingly, she wrote down my lunch order at the same time. I had no idea if there were any waiters working there. Clearly, business was not good, and no one looked happy.
"Kind of slow today," I said.
"Kind of slow every day," she replied.
"That why the staff is so lean?"
She shook her head. "The owner cut our wages a few times. We also think he's taking from the tip pool. So people keep leaving."
I nodded warily and wondered if having someone taste my food might be an idea, although I couldn't imagine who would be interested in that line of work. My culotte steak arrived a little while later, cooked well-done instead of medium-rare, and tasting decidedly ordinary. But the knife they brought me worked remarkably well. It had a serrated edge, and I decided that rather than try and sharpen ours at home, maybe getting a replacement set was a better idea. I ate about half of the culotte steak before concluding my rib-eye last night was far superior. Then I then turned my attention to the real reason for entering this dingy place.
The absence of a crowd made my task a little trickier. In a hectic, bustling restaurant, no one bothers to watch you closely; there are too many other things going on. In an empty restaurant, however, you never know who's observing your moves. I looked around and saw a tired bartender wiping down a counter, and a few busboys whispering in a corner. The owner of the restaurant, his large body somewhat camouflaged by a suit and tie, had waddled into the main room for a minute. His eyes darted about the room, scanned me briefly, but seemingly without any recognition, and then turned around to talk with the hostess. I reached over, placed the knife inside of my napkin, wiped it down, and wrapped it tightly. I then surreptitiously slipped it into the breast pocket of my jacket, pointed downward, right next to my .357. While this was unlikely to be the actual knife that killed either Jason Fowler or Bob Greenland, it was an important one to examine.
I got the attention of the hostess across the room and used my fingers to make a squiggly motion to signify I'd like the check. A few minutes later, she walked up and presented it to me. I paid in cash, not wanting to leave a calling card that I had been there, but also not wanting to wait the additional fifteen minutes it would undoubtedly take to run my credit card. I strode purposefully out the door and toward my Pathfinder.
"Hey!" a voice suddenly called out behind me. "Hey, you!"
I turned and saw the oversized body of Wally Farsakian coming toward me. From a distance, he simply looked big, not fat. But as he drew closer, I saw that the light gray suit had been carefully tailored to hide his massive gut. He moved quickly for a big man. His face was grim and a couple of bandages were evident on his right hand.
"Wait up, you!"
"I'm waiting," I said.
"You're that detective guy, right?"
"Right," I answered, not sure that I liked that reference any better than being called 'that USC guy.'
"What are you doing here?"
"Eating lunch. Or what passes for it."
"My hostess said you took something. What'd you take?"
"Probably a dose of indigestion."
His mouth curled. "You have a big mouth."
"I know. I get a lot of complaints about it."
"My business isn't doing well, in case you hadn't noticed," he snarled.
"I did notice. Maybe there's a reason. The only thing worse than the food here is the service."
A scowl formed on his face and his breathing started to escalate, sure signs that the conversation was about to escalate from words into something else very quickly. He flung his arms forward in a way that fighters do to loosen up. It wasn't so much of a tell, as a warning. This was a big man who was used to intimidating people. The problem he was about to encounter was that I didn't get intimidated easily.
"What did you take from my restaurant?" he repeated. "I can't have people stealing from me."
"Sure. That would be illegal."
"Give me that knife," he ordered.
"No."
He stared at me, then took a couple of steps back, removed his coat and began to loosen his tie. I knew what was coming, and I knew that fighting a man who outweighed you by a hundred pounds was not an event to be welcomed. What I could make up in the speed of throwing punches, and in the quickness of darting to and fro, could easily be offset by his landing just one solid punch. There were reasons fighters had weight classes. A good big man could take a good little man most of the time. I wasn't so little, but as Einstein postulated, it's all relative. I took two quick steps forward, grabbed him by the front of his starched white shirt, pulled him slightly toward me and drove my knee squarely up into his groin.
Wally Farsakian dropped to the ground and doubled over, his mouth agape. He began moaning slightly. Fortunately, this being a Sunday afternoon, the street had no foot traffic. But a couple of Latino busboys emerged from the restaurant and started to approach. I pointed a finger at them and told them to stop where they were. They didn't stop, possibly because they didn't care what I said, or possibly because they didn't speak English. I drew my .357 and repeated my directive to halt. This time they stopped cold. Brandishing a pistol has become the universal sign to not move.
"I'm ... going to have you ... arrested," managed Wally Farsakian, his uneven voice spewing out words in a staccato manner.
"Are you now?" I asked. "On what charge? Assaulting you before you assaulted me?"
"You're a wise guy ... and you're going to get yours."
"No, I'm not," I said, watching him carefully. "The opposite's going to happen. You're going to jail for murder. Maybe two murders."
"Says who? You can't ... prove shit," he panted. "Those knives I used ... they're long gone. Buried in the trash. No murder weapons. No charges filed. I know ... how this works."
"So you figured you'd kill two men just because they were screwing your ex? You couldn't just move on with your life?"
"We're still married," he glared. "Skye and I were getting back together. Those two assholes were ... they were messing things up. They had it coming to them. Fowler and Greenland. Pair of slimy bastards."
"No one has murder coming to them. Not for any reason. And certainly not because they had an affair."
"They were doing it in public!" he barked, starting to get his bearings back. "All over the place! In an office, behind the bleachers. They were humiliating my wife!"
"Her choice, wasn't it?"
Farsakian glared angrily. "Yeah. And I chose to carve them up for it. Life is full of choices, ain't it?"
Life was indeed full of choices, and at that point, it was my choice to pull out my phone with my left hand and punch Al Diamond's number. I told him he had a choice to get down here on the double and solve two murders. He asked what was going on and I repeated he needed to get down to the Valley Steakhouse immediately, before another person got killed. Farsakian started to stand up. I suggested to Diamond that he bring uniformed backup and tell
them to use the sirens. The detective tried to question me further, but this wasn't the time for an in-depth discussion. I hung up, pointed my gun at Farsakian, and ordered him to stay where he was.
I glanced over at the two busboys. They were staring at us in awe. This wasn't going to be their typical day at work, or probably typical of any of their work days. I wondered if they truly grasped what was going on, and why a patron who had just finished his sub-par meal was detaining their boss at gunpoint. It couldn't have only been about the food. I might have been able to dredge up enough Spanish from high school days to make myself understood, although maintaining any sort of dialogue was a different story. But at that moment, things started to crystallize. Wally Farsakian became more aware of his surroundings, that it was not merely the two of us alone on the sidewalk, with him revealing a secret which might have irreparable consequences. It was no longer his word against mine. He noticed the busboys, and a sick look crossed his face.
"Felipe. Pedro. Abandonas," he said.
"No, boss," one of them replied. "We're not leaving."
"You both speak English?" I queried.
They both nodded.
"And you understood everything your boss just said?"
They nodded again.
I stared at them and began to feel better about things. They apparently took my stare as some sort of disrespect, an indication of disbelief that they actually understood and comprehended the magnitude of what Wally Farsakian had just uttered.
"Look," the first one declared in English that was at least as good as mine. "We were born in fucking East L.A. Of course we speak English. We know exactly what that cheap prick was saying. He stabbed two people to death."
Chapter 14
The mere mention of a need for backup apparently spurred Al Diamond into full-throttled action mode. A pair of black and white squad cars, sirens blaring, roared up less than one minute later, with Detective Diamond arriving shortly thereafter in an unmarked vehicle. I holstered my weapon as they spun around the corner, thus negating any need for the uniforms to force me to spread eagle against the wall, as they did Wally Farsakian when he belligerently demanded my arrest. Diamond himself slapped the cuffs on him, and, after a brief consultation, provided me and the two busboys with a free ride over to the police station for questioning.
I gave my statement to Diamond at his desk in the squad room. He mostly listened, asking an occasional probing question here and there. The knife I had procured from the Valley Steakhouse was quickly shepherded over to Forensics; it wouldn't take long to determine if this was the same model knife that killed Jason Fowler and Bob Greenland. And with three witnesses swearing they heard a confession, along with a rock solid motive, Wally Farsakian had apparently broken down and succumbed to the myriad of circumstantial evidence and confessed. A more street-savvy criminal might have clammed up, demanded an attorney and insisted law enforcement build what might be a tenuous case. But when someone who's never committed a serious crime is told they are facing a near-certain death penalty unless they came clean, they often become inclined to talk. Sometimes they are too emotionally exhausted to keep up the lie; a guilty conscience can place an inordinate amount of strain on a person's psyche.
"Where's Turco?" I asked as we were finishing up. "Gone fishing again?"
"Nah," Diamond said and put his feet up on the table. "His weekend with the kids. Divorced. You know."
I didn't know, and hoped I'd never know the details of what came along with that life. When I was on the job, I saw it second hand, and from my vantage point it was rarely enviable. The long hours and intense work often meant high burn-out rates, with officers bringing home their on-the-job problems, and spouses not reacting well to the added burden. Law enforcement had an above-average divorce rate. A lot of L.A. cops were divorced and didn't see their kids much. And when they did, they were usually too tired to do a lot with them.
"So tell me something, Detective," I said, wondering how much he'd be willing to share. "Who else were you looking at for this?"
Diamond paused for a moment. "We started with the coach, that Savich guy. Your tip about that knife in his office was reasonable, it just didn't pan out. We looked at a lot of people. The one we had the most interest in was the kid. The one with the weird name."
"Dashiell?" I asked. "Dash Farsakian?"
"Yeah. Kid had been dating that Vicki Sailor, the girl who said she walked in on Fowler and Mrs. Farsakian. Figured Vicki told her boyfriend about it, so we pressed him. Kid insisted he knew nothing about any of this. Looks like he was telling the truth all along. Not a bad kid, just had a slut for a mother and a lying, murderer for a father. His bad luck, I guess."
"Again, you sure have a knack for describing things."
"Hey, I don't get paid to be a nice guy."
"Obviously," I noted.
"Yeah, and that knife in Savich's office was another good tip of yours that didn't pan out and wasted our time. I know. You meant well."
I took a deep breath and let it out. "Look, Detective, everything is related here. Sure, that knife I found was too dull to cut anything more than mud out of a bunch of cleats. But because it was dull, it led me to find out the murder weapon was serrated. And where better place to find a serrated knife than a steakhouse?"
"Got it. Point taken."
"And by the way, I also knew Vicki had been going out with Dash. But I spoke with the kid right before Greenland's body was found, and it was found right behind where we were seated in the bleachers. If Dash was the culprit, he'd have had to be a complete sociopath to sit there calmly after he killed someone. He didn't fit the type. So I ruled him out."
"Okay," he said, holding up his hands. "You don't have to get sore about it."
"Sure," I said and continued on. "But what about the girl's underwear that was found in Fowler's office? My understanding is they belonged to Vicki Sailor."
Diamond gave me a funny look. "You heard about that?"
"I hear about a lot of things. Then I try and piece them all together. Sometimes the puzzle makes sense. It's what I do."
"Yeah. Okay. We did find underwear and we did link it back to the girl, Vicki. But Dash admitted he took a pair from her bedroom. Kind of as a joke, hey, he's a teenager. Apparently Skye found it while cleaning his room, and Dash told her whose it was. Skye mentions it to Wally, Wally takes it from Dash's room. He thought Vicki was doing the teacher. I guess Wally thought if he planted it in Fowler's office, we might link the murder back to Vicki Sailor. Puts a wall between Wally and the crime. Or so he thought anyway."
I shook my head. "What a genius," I said dryly.
"Yeah. Girl had no motive, and she certainly didn't look like she could knife two grown men. Again, you talk with some of these people, and you can't see how they could commit one murder, much less two. That was part of why this whole case was so baffling. If a gun were used, maybe. But a knife? That's different."
"Of course," I said. "So tell me. Did Wally Farsakian ever register as a suspect with you guys?"
"Um, yeah. You think?" he said. "Look, we finally got the DNA back on Greenland a few days ago. The lab took a while. Greenland had been with Skye right before the attack. We had talked to both Skye and Wally, but at the time, we had nothing tangible on either. And I couldn't believe that a woman would stab both guys."
"What happened when you spoke with Wally Farsakian?"
"Was calm, had an alibi for the time of both murders. Said he was at his restaurant, in the back office the whole time. A couple of employees backed up his story. I guess they were reluctant to go against their boss. So we had nothing firm on him. Couldn't detain him."
"Nobody thought that the owner of a steakhouse might have had access to some sharp knives?"
"Come on, Burnside. Unlike you, we don't have the right to go seize private property without a warrant. And he's hardly the only person in Pasadena that owns kitchen knives."
"The fact that you didn't even check it out notwithstanding."
"Hey, smart guy, ease up on the snarky remarks. You know, we could charge you with petty theft for taking that knife today."
I stared at him. "Really? Go ahead. I'm sure the Star-News would love to run a series of articles on how the incompetent Pasadena police arrested the P.I. who cracked a case that they couldn't. How would you like that headline to read?"
"All right, all right."
"And I suppose you could also charge me with assault for debilitating a murderer. Or the fact that the item I stole -- allegedly -- was taken solely to give to your forensics lab. And had I not taken it, our friend Wally Farsakian wouldn't have confronted me. And he wouldn't have confessed to those murders in front of three witnesses. I didn't plan on that happening. But did I not make your job a whole lot easier today?"
Diamond gave an audible groan. "I said all right, damn it. Cripes. You don't know when to quit. You have a real attitude problem, you know that?"
"Yes. Or so I've been told. So back to the knife. You had to have known that the one that killed Fowler was serrated."
"Yeah. And the blade was fishtailed at the end. Like I said, Forensics just came back with that. We don't have LAPD resources. We make do with what we have."
"No one thought to check Farsakian's hands for cuts? You stab someone hard enough to kill them, the force of it usually causes nicks in the palm or fingers. His hands had bandages on them. You might say he had blood on his hands."
"Are you going to keep busting our balls over this? No, we didn't think to check. Pasadena doesn't get a lot of knifings. It's not like L.A. It's a safe place to live. Some of this is new to us. Most of what we work on here are burglaries, car break-ins, neighbor disputes. That kind of thing."
"Okay," I sighed. "Understood. I just didn't like that crack about you charging me with theft."
"Look, we thank you for your help. I know that sort of thing sometimes goes unsaid, but we do appreciate your staying on this case. I don't quite know why you did, but we're grateful for it."