In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  As I watched the crowd, I had to admit to a certain admiration for their courage to soldier on. Few of them had prospects for anything better, but every day they decided, anew, to begin again.

  I turned off the camera, rolled up my window, and continued on to Central Division's station.

  Locals call LAPD's Central Station the Fort because it has no windows in its stone and mosaic facade; post-Watts Riots design. Located in the middle of Skid Row, Central's jurisdiction covers most of downtown, ironically an area that includes police headquarters, Parker Center.

  When I arrived, Harry Young was schmoozing with the guard on duty at the entrance to the station's parking garage. He said he was watching for me. I knew he was outside sneaking a cigarette. Harry is an old-timer who never bought into the physical culture of the New Cop. His uniform always seems to need pressing or tucking in, his hair, what little remains, apparently cannot be disciplined. This exterior shambles belies the sharp, intuitive cop inside.

  Harry leaned in my car window, cigarette hanging from one side of his mouth like a B-movie tough guy. "Say, sweetheart, you ready for a good time?"

  "Whenever you are, Harry," I said. "Whenever you are."

  "Park it anywhere. Go sign in with the duty sarge. I'll meet you in the roll call room."

  Central Station was old and overused, too many officers working out of too little space. But the paint inside was fresh. And while the furniture was well-worn institutional wood and steel and hardly comfortable, there were enough personal touches to rescue the place from bleakness: snapshots on a bulletin board from a reunion steak-fry at the Harbor shooting range, trophies and banners from a couple of the annual Baker-to-Las Vegas law enforcement relay runs and from the division softball team, a bright philodendron trailing over the door to the coffee room. There was an ATM in the lobby, a neighborhood service.

  The place might be superannuated, but the people who worked there were generally young, hard-bodied, sharp and eager, representatives of the New LAPD diversity created under a federal force decree after the Rodney King riots. Walking among them, I felt I needed to tuck in my shirt and stand up straight.

  The dress code at the TV studio is essentially nonexistent except for the parts of people that show on camera; you don't want to know what the talking heads wear, or don't wear, below the desks they sit behind. As long as you aren't naked or a hazard to yourself or others, no one much cares what you wear. There are some genuine slobs, but most people dress with a sort of studied nonchalance. Very different from the crispness of the police, with maybe the exception of Harry.

  Before I could go out on patrol with Harry I had to prove my identity, state my intentions, and sign a general release absolving the LAPD in case I got caught in some crossfire. On the line that asked the purpose of my ride-along, I wrote research, as instructed by Harry.

  The duty sergeant, whose nameplate identified him as L. Banks, was a big, fine specimen of LAPD's culture of physical fitness. After his first glance at the release form, his head snapped up; he gave me a very pointed looking over.

  "Damn shame about Mike Flint," Sgt. Banks said. "Don't know what I'd do in his situation."

  I said, "Yes," because I couldn't think of anything else to say. I had never seen this man before, but he seemed to think he knew a lot about Mike's business, and maybe my own.

  "How are you doing?" he asked, holding his pen poised over the signature line on my release.

  "I'm fine, thank you." What was there to say?

  "Mike and I go back a long way," he said. "He may have mentioned me, Lewis Banks. I was a rookie at Seventy-seventh Street Division when he made detectives."

  But his name rang no bells for me. It seemed to be important to Banks that I know he had known Mike well, or could call himself a friend, or had wanted to. When Mike worked out of Seventy-seventh Street he was one of a legendary group the others called the Four Horsemen, or Whoresmen, because of their exploits. Of the original Four Horsemen, there was now only one survivor, a retired K-9 officer named Doug Senecal. After Mike made detectives, he was transferred out of Seventy-seventh over his objections, and the group broke up as a patrol force, but remained friends.

  I didn't want to hurt Banks's feelings and tell him Mike had never mentioned him. So I said, "When did you start working Central?"

  "First time? Eleven or a dozen years ago. I rotated out, the way we do, worked all over the city. Came back here a couple years ago when I made sergeant."

  "Were you here in 'ninety-eight and 'ninety-nine?" I asked.

  "Sure was," Banks said. "Working gang detail."

  "You worked with Boni Erquiaga," I said.

  "Don't remind me." He screwed up his face to show his distaste for his former colleague. And he flushed a furious red.

  "I'd really like to talk to you about some things that happened back then," I said.

  "Anytime. You know where to find me." Banks signed my release form and laid it on his desk. Then he straightened his collar and extended his hand toward the door, indicating the way out. "It's time for roll call. You ready?"

  Harry saved me a seat next him in the roll call room. I was greeted by several of his colleagues and given various versions of thumbs-up and shoulder pats as officers filed in past us: as Mike Flint's wife, his survivor, I was a notable presence that night.

  During roll call, Lewis Banks dispensed with most of the usual routine bulletins to save time for a refresher on off-duty safety.

  "I'm reminding you that when you drive out of here at end of watch, look around, make sure no one's following you," he scolded. "If you haven't done it already, make sure the tags on your personal vehicle lead back to a blind so that no one can tap into DMV files and get your home address. Keep your eyes open, be aware going home and driving in. And never, never, never, leave the garage at end of watch with any part of your uniform or department insignia visible."

  Banks picked up a clipboard and turned over the top page. "Some of you have already heard, but just so everyone is aware: Jock Mikulski, works P.M. gang detail, got followed home by a couple of gangbangers who have a special sort of appreciation for Jock's dedication to the job. Looks like they lay in wait, then followed his wife to her place of business."

  There was a good deal of outraged utterance. "She okay?"

  "More scared than anything. They roughed her up some. She's a cop's wife, she'll be fine."

  "Catch 'em?" And variations.

  "Not yet. Mikulski has been putting pressure on a particular set affiliated with Thirteenth Street Bloods clique. If there's a connection between them and what happened, we'll find it. Parker Center is giving us every resource. The message we're putting out is that the department has zero tolerance for any kind of threats or actions aimed at any officer's family."

  Banks leaned forward, narrowed his eyes as he scanned the men and women in the room. "The thing you gotta think about is this: Mikulski lives way out in eastern Orange County. If they'll follow him home, they'll follow you, too."

  After a few more questions that had no answers but which expressed the general outrage that an officer's family had been touched by street scum--further proof that "out there" it was us-against-them--Banks dismissed the squad.

  As I filed out past him, Banks said, "Watch six out there, Miss MacGowen."

  "Don't need to," I said, responding to his caution to watch my back, the six o'clock position on a target. "I have Harry."

  "Uh-huh." He looked toward Harry, studied him, frowned. He said, "Like I said, Watch six."

  Harry led me out to his car, lugging a black duffel full of gear.

  "You worried?" I asked.

  He glanced back at me. "About?"

  "Being followed home."

  "Nah." He sneered at the suggestion as he lit another cigarette. "Not me."

  I nudged his shoulder. "Tough guy."

  "The whole thing's bullshit, Maggie." He dumped his duffel into the trunk of his black-and-white patrol car, then leaned against the back
fender to finish his smoke. "Jock Mikulski is too good a cop to let some pissant gangbangers tail him all the way home behind the Orange Curtain. Nope. Didn't happen that way."

  He flicked the butt away. It landed on a collection of butts of the same brand directly under a NO SMOKING sign.

  "Half the brass in the city is over at Jock's house right now," Harry said, "talking about going to the mattresses. My money says the problem will be inside the house, not outside. Jock has a little asshole of a teenage stepson. They want an answer, they should find out who the kid has ticked off."

  "Maybe you should say something to the brass," I said.

  "I don't tell assistant chiefs nothing." Harry shot me a smart-alecky grin. "Anyway, by the time we check back into the station at mid-watch, they'll have it figured out for themselves. Why spoil their fun?"

  He slammed the trunk shut. "Ready to roll?"

  Uniformed street patrol is a young man's job. At fifty-five, Harry had outlasted most of his Police Academy classmates. After thirty years on the job, he had no desire either to retire or to join the suits in the detective squads. He was a street cop, period. And he was old school, inclined to kick butts now and take names later.

  Among his colleagues, Harry's a legend. They brag that he has a sixth sense about crimes in progress. A car parked hinky in a driveway says break-in to him when it says nothing to his partners. An out-of-state license plate on a nice car always needs a second look: what would Iowa or a new Beemer be doing on Skid Row at midnight?

  I asked him, "Where is this woman who's going to tell us about Nelda Ruiz?"

  "Working." He drove up out of the garage and turned east onto Sixth Street. "It's too early to talk to her. Let me take care of some business--I got three probationers in the field tonight. When everything is nice and quiet, we'll go on over and visit Ms Lisa Penaloza at her place of employment and see what she has to say. And before that, as soon as I get the call, we're going to also go see Jesus' little girlfriend, Teresa Galba."

  "You found her?" I was surprised, delighted. "I thought she left the country."

  "She did. Now she's back at home with the kids, and so is hubby," Harry said. "We need some backup before we go in. When that's in place, we'll roll."

  "Backup, because?"

  "Hubby, though I doubt they're actually married, is a real problem child. Not that she's a prize." He checked his rear view. "You'll see the kind of adulthood Jesus Ramon missed out on."

  "You've put together a full dance card for me, Harry," I said. "I'm grateful."

  "You might want to wait until end of watch before you commit yourself to gratitude," he said, grinning. "Get yourself comfy, it's going to be a long night."

  Harry could have asked me to join him later in the shift, but I got the feeling that Harry liked having company in the car, an audience for his stories. Sergeants usually ride around alone. Every time one of the patrol officers makes a stop, the sergeant drives over and takes a look at what's happening to make sure that no unfixable mistakes are made, and to call in for any needed support. For the most part, it can be a lonely evening.

  For an old hunter like Harry the fun was being on the scent, making the collar. Riding up after the fact held few charms for him. He told me the only reason he took the sergeant's exam was to raise his salary base before he pensioned out. Otherwise, he'd still have been in a patrol unit.

  We rode Harry's route, circling through empty parking lots looking for stolen cars, coursing down alleys behind the vast, dark warehouses of the produce district watching for anything that seemed out of place to him. And then up San Pedro Street making sure the hookers behaved. As long as the working girls kept walking, Harry did no more than wave as we passed.

  The footage I captured, accompanied by Harry's running narrative, was priceless. The quality of my video was crude, but I knew I had something that Guido could use, if only to get Lana onto her plane Thursday night.

  All the time he drove, Harry was on the radio to units in the field, black-and-white cars with two uniforms in each. An hour into the shift, they were all complaining that it was a quiet night. Next door, in the Rampart Division, there was a bank alarm and a four-car collision. But in Central, there was nothing except the occasional fistfight between drunks and a fender bender near a freeway onramp.

  About eleven o'clock, Harry got the call he had been waiting for.

  "Backup's in place," he told me, making a midblock U-turn. With his gumball lights flashing, but without a siren, he sped over to the Main Street address where he said Teresa Galba was living. When we arrived, there were already four patrol units parked on the street and a plain city car. Two more black-and-whites pulled up behind us.

  "Why is all of this necessary, Harry?" I asked, watching uniformed men and women emerge from their cars and strap on their gear: Kevlar vests, nightsticks, side arms, flashlights, cuffs, and a battering ram.

  "All of this isn't necessary." Harry reached for his own nightstick. "It's a quiet night, so we can give the troops a good training exercise."

  "And I thought this show was for me."

  "Sure," he chuckled. "We're hoping to bag two birds with one visit tonight. The guy Teresa lives with, Xochimil Guerrero, is a capo in the prison mafia. He's recently out of the slam, on parole. Word is, he's working his old connections and getting back into the action. Parole officer has been planning an unscheduled visit, so we'll back her up."

  "You have a warrant?" I asked while he called in his location and his intention to go inside the address.

  "Don't need it," he said. "Not with the parole officer there. She'll talk to Xochi, you can talk to Teresa. And while we're in there, we'll see what we see. You never know until you go in."

  "And the reason Teresa will talk to me when she has never talked to anyone else is, what?"

  "The stakes have never been this high for her before. She has a couple of kids now, and a bun in the oven."

  We joined the huddle that had formed in front of the building next door. There were eight officers, four of them wearing midnight blue jumpsuits and boots, and an attractive woman about my age, wearing a polo shirt and khakis with a Luger on her hip. Harry introduced her to me, Patricia Goodson, the parole officer.

  Goodson asked the first question. "What's the plan, Harry?"

  "We're going in, apartment two-ten." Harry sorted the officers, jabbing the air with two fingers as he defined squads and assignments. "Two, two, and two. You two, outside, all exits, front and back. You two, in position up the stairs just past the second landing, you two, downstairs hall. Be ready if we need backup or someone comes running out." To the remaining pair, both in jumpsuits, he said, "Flank the apartment door. I'll knock, Goodson will call out. If there's no quick response, I'll signal you to boot the door. Maggie and Goodson will stay in the hall until the place is secure. Got it?"

  They all said, "Roger that," but I held up my hand.

  Harry turned to me. "Concerns?"

  "There are kids inside," I said.

  "Kids should be in bed at this time of night," Goodson said, eager to go in. "If they aren't, we'll add a neglect charge to anything else we find."

  My face must have shown my reluctance.

  "Trust me on this, Maggie," Harry said. "Because of the way these folks choose to live their lives, midnight raids are just a fact of life. You're going to be a whole lot more traumatized by what you see in there than they will be about finding us at their door."

  "Whatever you say, Harry." I held up my little video recorder. "But camera's running."

  "Good idea," he said.

  One of the jumpsuited officers, a big, well-built man with Skruggs on his nameplate, straightened his collar and ran a hand over his short hair. "Try to get me from the left," he said. "I film better on the left."

  There was some nervous chuckling and nudging.

  "When we go inside," Harry said, "we'll send Teresa out into the hall for a conversation with Maggie. You guys out there, keep a close eye on things. Ter
esa is a hard case."

  "Where will you be, Harry?" I asked.

  "Inside with Goodson, tossing the apartment, chaperoning a piss test." He swung his arm in a broad forward arc, doing John Wayne proud. "Let's roll."

  Officers quickly and quietly moved into position. I walked up the flight of stairs, hugging the wall like the others, following Goodson, the parole officer. On the opposite side of the door Skruggs, the jumpsuit with the photogenic left side, held the battering ram ready to boot the door. When Harry saw that everyone was in place, he gestured for Goodson to move closer beside him, and then, with the barrel of his pearl-handled Smith and Wesson .45--he was an old cowboy at heart--he knocked on the apartment door.

  "Parole Office," Goodson called out. "Open up, Xochi."

  From inside, silence, and then some rustling. The battering ram came up, but Harry raised a hand to stay it and to keep everyone in position when locks turned, one, two, then there was a thump on the far side of the door as if someone kicked it or jumped against it, and then the sound of a chain hitting the door jamb. The knob turned, the door began to open.

  Harry, poised to drop his hand as the signal to rush the door, froze, waved everyone back as he dropped to one knee, face now level with a pair of wide dark eyes in a frightened little face. Cautiously, Harry pushed the door open. Standing there, in a living room lighted only by a television set was a very little boy, no more than three years old, wearing action-figure jockey shorts.

  Harry raised a finger to his lips as he looked into the boy's face. "Shh. Calmate, mijito." Be calm. "?Tu madre esta en casa?"

  The little boy nodded and pointed toward a closed inner door. Behind the door we could hear the unmistakable sounds of love-making. I brushed past Harry, took the little boy by the hand, and walked him out into the hall, out of the traffic lanes. Holding the boy to the side, I knelt beside the open door to see what was happening inside, camera running.

  Silent in their rubber-soled boots, the jumpsuits slipped inside. The apartment was tiny, a galley-sized kitchen off the living room, and, apparently, a single bedroom at the end of a short hall; doors on either side led to a bathroom and a closet. It didn't take long to check over the entire place. When it was clear there was no one hiding, Skruggs, Goodson and Harry went to the bedroom door, flanked it, and, over the squeal of old bedsprings and the lovers who were making them sing, did their routine again. A loud knock and a shout: "Parole Office, Xochi. You need to come out. Now."