In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  I started the disc. Just for form, Guido had appended my series logo. The series title, MAGGIE MACGOWEN INVESTIGATES, emerged from a background montage, pictures of me--usually in motion--and the city, as our heroic theme music built. The title of the new project came up: THE MIKE FLINT LEGACY.

  When Mike's name appeared, Lana looked up sharply.

  "Mike?" was her single word.

  I looked her in the eye and nodded. She frowned, but I could see that I had her full attention.

  I took a breath and I began to deliver the pitch:

  "Every cop, when he leaves the job, leaves behind at least one unsolved case that will haunt him for the rest of his life. For Detective Mike Flint of the Robbery-Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, that case was the unexplained disappearance of a teenage boy named Jesus Ramon. The case had special meaning for Mike because he was the last known person to see the boy. Jesus Ramon got out of Mike Flint's car at noon on a busy downtown Los Angeles street, and seemed to vanish, never seen or heard from again.

  "His family and the many people who searched for Jesus were left in an emotional limbo, never knowing what happened to the teenager with the crooked smile. Never able to lay him to rest.

  "Mike Flint was my husband. I lost Mike recently. The mystery around Jesus Ramon followed him to the very end of his life. When he died, Mike left me an unusual legacy. He asked me to find Jesus Ramon.

  "For Mike, for the family of Jesus, tonight 'Maggie MacGowen Investigates' opens the files, finds the survivors, combs the city to answer the question: Dead or alive, where is Jesus Ramon?"

  Onscreen, as a preview for Lana of the tone and texture we planned to convey, the carnival that is daily life in LA's barrio neighborhoods streamed past, filmed through the open window of a moving car by Guido's video crew early that afternoon: street vendors selling cheap, brightly colored children's clothes strung on makeshift racks; carts offering food made God knows where, crushed fresh fruit frozen on a stick, steaming handmade tamales wrapped in dried corn husks, fish tacos fried on the sidewalk in an oil drum kettle--for a feast for the brave, a guaranteed bad belly for the uninitiated.

  Bus benches advertised legal services for problems with La Migra--the U.S. Department of Immigration--or offered cheap international telephone calling cards or bail bonds or Mexican national identification cards. A mixed crowd, people of all ages, filled the sidewalk. At one corner a group of teenage boys saw the camera and obliged by flashing the gang's hand sign; here was a gaggle of authentic Sleepy Lagoon Crips, one of them already in a wheelchair.

  For the body of the pitch, as the video images rolled, I paraphrased and embellished the essential parts of the original police report, retelling the events on Alvarado Avenue on a bright January day in 1999, the day Jesus Ramon disappeared. I related the arrest of Nelda, told about the prisoner hand-off between Eldon Washington and Boni Erquiaga, all observed by Jesus and Teresa, the girlfriend. I revealed that Jesus was a police snitch.

  I gave a brief where-are-they-now summary: a mug shot of Nelda Ruiz showing a pretty young woman with a thin, worn-out face surrounded by a mass of dark curls; Boni Erquiaga in his county jail jumpsuit.

  When Mike's face appeared onscreen, I had to stop to catch my breath. This was his story, of course, but I was still surprised to see him. Lana took note of my reaction, wrote something on her pad.

  I managed to pick up the narrative again, retelling Mike's version of the story about taking Jesus downtown and dropping him off.

  Fade to: close-up, face of Jesus Ramon: big brown, doe eyes, crooked teeth in a wide smile. The frame widens to show that the face is on a missing person poster; the edges of the poster are torn, stained with age. One corner flaps loose.

  "Mike Flint never gave up his search for Jesus," I said, as Mike, onscreen, grinning, squinted at the camera in a snap Guido took at one of our backyard parties a couple of years ago. "As a memorial to Mike Flint, tonight we try to solve his last case."

  The onscreen images faded to black.

  Lana was thoughtful for a long and painful moment; I could not read her reaction. Finally, she turned to me.

  "This is what it will look like?"

  "Generally," I said. "Hand-held cameras, sharp color contrast, interviews with faces in close-up, streaming panoramas of the barrio sections of the city, cops in action, raucous background audio--Latino music, traffic, people. Edgy, noisy."

  I paused, gave Lana a moment for note-writing. After another excruciating silence, Lana roused herself.

  "But what happened to the kid?" she asked.

  "Don't know yet," I said.

  She looked up, seemed a bit dubious. "You'll have it all figured out by airtime?"

  "Maybe not all of it," I said. "Maybe none of it. That isn't the point, is it? We're going to look at two cultures in the city, law enforcement and street criminals. Minimally, we'll explain some of the complexities of their relationship. Maximally, we'll find Jesus."

  "Hmmm." Lana looked over the notes on her yellow pad, added something to them. She sat very still for another moment before she spoke again.

  "Maggie, do you believe Mike did something to that boy?"

  "I have no proof yet either way. Except that I know Mike."

  "But you believe the project has legs?"

  "Yes," I said. "I'm committed to it. The story has great dramatic potential."

  Lana wrote, "Great dramatic potential. Provocative. The Mike Flint Legacy, A Maggie MacGowen Investigates documentary." Without looking up, she said, "Will you be able to distance yourself enough to get through to the end?"

  "As usual," I answered. "No more, no less."

  "Than the usual." Lana chuckled.

  "Trust me," I said.

  "As your friend, I ought to say you're too close to the subject, you could get hurt more than you already have been, so dump this project and go find something or somebody else to pick on." She set her pen on the table. "As your exec producer, however, I say, do it. Petey, our baby program director, and his strategy boys in New York want something daring and different, provocative and promotable. I think that 'filmmaker solves dead husband's last case' fits that card just fine."

  "Tries to solve," I said.

  "Whatever." Lana's smile was full of calculation. "Maggie MacGowen will expose the lies."

  "Hopes to uncover the truth," I said. "Not exactly the same thing."

  "Darling, remember this is network TV." She smiled broadly, relaxed back in her big chair, wheels in her head spinning. "Keep in mind that the truth just isn't as important in prime time during sweeps week as audience share."

  "I'll keep that in mind," I said, laughing at her frankness. "And deny you ever said it."

  "I know you'll find your angle, Maggie." Smile gone, Lana peered deep into my eyes. "Just don't let Mike get in your way."

  "It's a good project," I said. "We'll do you proud."

  She turned to a fresh page on her legal pad and picked up her pen again. "Now, tell me how this leads to a fall series? We're talking four to six docs."

  I had to pull a rabbit out of a hat here, because I had given no thought to a pitch for a fall series until she brought it up a few minutes earlier.

  "As I said," I said, "every cop goes out bothered by an unsolved case. Why that case resonates, well, that's usually the story. We'll bring in a different retiree for each episode, let him or her tell the story, explain why this one stays with him. We'll go back through each investigation, go back to the scene, talk to the surviving investigators, victims, and witnesses, initiate new investigations. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll actually solve a couple of them. I want to call it 'The Legacy Series.' "

  "You just made that up, didn't you, Maggie?"

  "But I like it."

  "I like it, too," she said. "Get me a couple of those cases, to support the pitch."

  Without looking up from her pad, she said, "And get me a production budget estimate for Mike's story right away." Lana stood, meeting over.
"I'll run this past Petey for approval, but don't wait for the bastards to finish the paperwork. Get your crew together now, get started. In the meantime, I need something to take to New York with me Thursday night."

  "This is Monday," I said.

  She shrugged as if I had offered a ridiculous non sequitur. "Plane leaves at ten P.M."

  "Guido and I will get you something more polished than this before you take off," I said, feeling less confidence than I expressed.

  She gripped my arm, a bit too hard. "This one could be big for you."

  "Of course," I said. "As always, the biggest."

  She chuckled. "Boffo."

  I rode the elevator down from the executive floors to the work zone of the production peons where my office is. Adrenaline letdown, or meltdown, or a long day and too much input, or all of it, hit me hard. Let's not forget profound sadness. I needed some thinking time, alone.

  Fergie, my long-time assistant, was on vacation until Friday, fishing in the Gulf of California. If no one knew my meeting was over, I had a chance of having my office to myself for at least a little while. To avoid running into anyone, I took a back hallway route and a shortcut through a janitorial closet to get to my office unnoticed.

  My office is nothing more than a long cubbyhole divided into two parts by a movable partition with a door in it. Fergie, a woman with ambition, hates it when people refer to her work area as the reception room, because she doesn't want to be mistaken for a receptionist when her title is production assistant. So her desk is in the "outer" office, and mine is, therefore, in the "inner" office.

  I am Fergie's boss, so my share of the space is a little larger. Still, my area is barely large enough for a standard desk, some storage shelves, and a small sofa, with very little walking-around space between them.

  When I came in, I found Guido napping on my sofa, exactly where I had intended to land. He looked very peaceful, sleeping with his mouth half-open, a fine line of drool coursing down his unshaven chin. I tried not to disturb him as I took care of some business details.

  Guido and I have worked together, off and on, since the beginnings of our careers. We met at an independent TV station in the heart of Kansas. I was an on-camera newsreader then--what they call "talent" in the business--and he was an apprentice cameraman. In Kansas he was witness to my transformation from Margot Duchamps, somewhat idealistic philosophy grad with an interesting but too-large-for-TV nose, into Maggie MacGowen, news hen with a pert new nose, perky delivery and a promising new husband--his name, MacGowen, stuck, the marriage didn't. Over the years, I watched Guido morph from skinny genius with residual adolescent acne into skinny genius with a powerful resume. We share three Emmys, and he has a Pulitzer of his own.

  After Kansas, we went in different directions. But his jobs behind the camera and mine in front managed to intersect regularly enough for the two of us to keep up with each other. After a while, I ran out of my quotient of pert-and-perky and struck off on my own to make documentaries. Guido grew weary of ducking incoming objects in war zones and riot epicenters and took a faculty position at the UCLA film school.

  When I signed on with the network, needing the certainty of a regular paycheck when my daughter, Casey, saw college on her horizon, and a permanent home base when Mike and I merged our domestic spheres, Guido came with me as part of the package. The pay is good, Lana protects us, the work is interesting, my daughter is fine, and though I'd like to have my original nose back and I'd like to reclaim my own name, I have few legitimate complaints.

  Guido still teaches a graduate seminar in film-making, giving us access to a small cadre of very talented youth who are willing to work with us just for the privilege, and for the additions our projects make to their resumes. The union regularly gives us hell for using students, but Guido generally finds ways to mollify them or bargain our way out of the union minefields.

  While he slept, I logged in the meeting with Lana and made some notes, dialed my voice mail, and went through the messages.

  Casey called to make sure I was all right and to ask for money, an almost weekly occurrence. I went online and made a transfer from my checking account to hers. My mother called to report on the visit she and Michael made to Mike's father, Oscar. He had no idea who they were but he still managed to pat Mom's bottom. Michael was staying at her Berkeley house for a couple of days, and then he was going up to the cottage. She suggested that, when I felt up to it, she and I take a trip. Italy maybe.

  The next call was from my neighbor, Early Drummond, telling me that he had taken care of the horses that morning as promised and that he was around for me if I needed anything. Oh, and he had worked on the garage-door opener.

  Early was not only my neighbor, we worked together. He was downstairs in Studio 8 or Studio 10 on the first floor, a technical director in the news division. It was Early who had told Mike and me when the house next door to his, now our house, went on the market. We bought it. Early was a good neighbor and a good friend, the kind who keeps an eye on things but doesn't intrude. We shared the horse corral with Early and his big sorrel horse very amicably.

  Harry Young called to confirm that I would show up for roll call at ten that night. He gave me directions to Central Station and said he would meet me at the guard house at the parking lot entrance.

  Tired, knowing better, I opened the bottom desk drawer and took out the bottle of medicinal scotch--good, old, single malt sipping scotch--poured a modest dose into a coffee mug and took a sip. Just one. I closed my eyes, leaned back, and let the scotch do its work. When I opened my eyes again, Guido was staring at me.

  "You sharing that?" he asked.

  I passed the mug to him, he took a drink. Then he yawned and scratched his flat chest.

  I said, "You don't have a sofa of your own to sleep on?"

  "You were with Lana for a long time," he said. "How did it go?"

  "Lana likes the Jesus project for May sweeps and as a promo for our fall season. She's taking it to Peter Kleinman in New York Thursday."

  "Sweeps, huh? That mean we get a big, fat budget for a change?"

  "It means they want two hours, and we have only a month to get it done," I said. "You still aboard?"

  "Whither thou goest, go I." Guido stood and stretched, showing some hairy belly between his jeans and his T-shirt. "She knows it's about Mike?"

  "I believe she actually used the word provocative when some of the possibilities occurred to her. Boffo was also used." I took another sip. "God, I wish we could do this project independently, our way. Like the old days."

  "The old days are gone, Mag," he said. "The way things are now, it's better to let Lana be your bwana-guide through TV Land. Without her? You'd have to fight with the network apes all by yourself. Tough as you think you are, buttercup, you wouldn't last till daybreak among those zombies."

  "I know my way around," I said. "I survived as an independent filmmaker for a lot of years."

  "Oh, yeah?" He barked a wicked laugh. "I was there, remember? We were dealing with genteel old PBS and hungry HBO during the glory years for documentaries, and still barely surviving. Times have changed. It's a whole new jungle out there. Answer me this: You want to be out there making films or do you want to spend your time navigating uncharted terrain and trying to sell your soul for funding?"

  "Yeah, yeah." Through my single window I saw towers of high-rise offices and the brown haze of San Fernando Valley smog that was their backdrop; this ugly sprawl is the center of TV Land. Over the whir of the building's air-conditioning, the high-pitched buzz of the security system, and the general hum of people at work, I could hear the Ventura Freeway, a constant backdrop of white noise somewhere in the distance. A jungle of glass and steel that generates its own form of reality and delivers it in mega-pixels.

  I flashed Guido a big, stagy smile. "We're going to have a helluva good time on this project, mister. Better than the old days."

  "You think so?"

  I saw his quick grin. I said, "What?"r />
  He began to hum, "Back in the saddle again."

  Chapter 5

  Harry's directions to Central Station included "Keep your doors locked and the windows up. Don't stop for anyone or anything." But the scene I passed was irresistible, so I rolled down my window, held a little palm-sized digital video recorder to the opening, and let it roll as I drove, making a crude video record for later reference.

  Changes are underway in downtown LA--lots of gentrification, new shops, and many expensive loft and condo conversions--but there are still two downtowns, one by day, another by night. By six P.M. the day shift, the gray suits who staff city hall, police headquarters, federal, state and local courts, the jewelry and financial districts, for the most part has evacuated downtown and headed for the suburbs. As they leave, a ragged second shift takes over the sidewalks and parking lots: derelicts, hypes, whores, users looking to score crack or blow or H, or people who simply have no other place than the streets to lay down their heads.

  After nine P.M. the city briefly turns its back on the health codes and lets the homeless erect shelters on the sidewalks of a designated few streets on the industrial edges of the city center, the biggest Skid Row in the nation. As I drove through, street people were still diving into Dumpsters to gather the building materials for their overnight shelters.

  With only the street lights overhead for illumination, I filmed people lumbering along the sidewalks with flattened cardboard cartons on their backs, trailing discarded plastic sheeting and whatever else they had scavenged. Through the little monitor on my camera they looked like strange insects with asymmetrical wings. Or broken wings. Didn't matter, they weren't flying anywhere.

  Every dawn, city street crews come through and level the remnants of the shelters, hose down everything in preparation for the brigade of crisp gray suits pouring in off the freeway ramps again, so that the only sign that the shelters had existed is the faint smell of urine, and here and there the toffee-brown resinous residue that is a byproduct of burning crack cocaine. And every night, like the mythic Sisyphus, street people go through the building process all over again.