“You find out something?” leaned Tim. “You told me that it was just the way it looked. Carjacking.”
Cat shifted in her seat, looked for her yoga pants pocket, discovered the hanging tag, and snapped it free. Next she retrieved a folded news clipping. Damp. Carefully, with fingernails only, she peeled the parts from itself and laid the article in front of Tim.
“It was glued to my windshield.”
Noting the font and print-style, Tim recognized the clipping was from the Los Angeles Daily News. In the upper left corner was a two-by-one-inch black-and-white photo of Hal Solomon followed by a headline and short story sketching the DWP board member’s untimely murder.
“Sonofabitch…” mumbled Tim. “You said Hal had nothing to do with anything.”
“I said ‘probably’ or ‘most likely’ but not ‘nothing.’”
“Hal was having second thoughts,” worried Tim, working through the possibilities. “But you said you had it handled.”
“Think this is just a warning,” cautioned Cat, an accusing finger pointing at the news clipping. “Keeping us to our commitment.”
“Christ’s sake. I haven’t stepped out or indicated… Have you?”
“You know I haven’t,” said Cat.
Tim sat back, his head on a slow-motion side-to-side swivel.
“What?” asked Cat.
“The blowout.”
“So? What’s that got to do with our deal?”
“Someone got killed last night.” Tim cleared his throat. “On the site. Homicide. Some vagrant—or at least that’s what I got from my guy.”
“What’s the blowout got to do with us?”
“Crime scene,” said Tim. “And one of the techs came in contact with an old transmission line.”
“You mean your transmission line?”
“Our transmission line,” Tim reminded, nodding equally slow. “Electrocuted. Dead. An accident for sure. But she’s dead all the same.”
Cat’s eyes were swimming. Her elbows came off the table and she let her back pop the padded rest behind her. She was at a loss for words, let alone a coherent thought on the matter.
“So far it’s just an accident,” reminded Tim. “Sheriffs don’t know or probably care that we don’t run power underground anymore. Family of the tech, maybe the union’ll make waves. But how long does a lawsuit take? Keeps it internal. Gives us time—if we’re lucky—to find a work around.”
“And if you don’t find a work around?” she pressed, though her tone was more rhetorical.
Tim heaved with his big chest and let his eyes rest upon hers. In his view, she was scrubbed of any of her usual hotness. Cat appeared small and weak and hardly the kind of soldier with whom one would want to share a foxhole.
“Without a work around?” Tim asked. “We’re screwed.”
“Then fucking find one,” Cat insisted. “And fast.”
27
Altadena. 1:00 P.M.
It wasn’t like Gonzo to chase. When she was angry at Lucky, she preferred to disappear into an array of errands—keeping her out of the house and the offender out of her periphery. Her secondary reaction was to seek a soft spot to recline, stretch out her nearly six feet of limbs and play endless hands of solitaire on her phone.
July Fourth was different.
While Lucky showered once again, dressed for a hot day, and gathered up pieces of a clean uniform, his lover and co-parent nipped at his heels in full protest.
“You, most of all, should get this,” defended Lucky. He speed-sifted through the hallway closet where Gonzo usually deposited the dry cleaning.
“Maybe I should,” agreed Gonzo, if only halfheartedly. “And maybe I’m not the least bit out of line to expect more.”
“More,” repeated Lucky. If it was a question, he didn’t voice it as such.
“Our first Fourth as a family,” reasoned Gonzo. “I get you’re on the clock tonight. But that’s not until nine. Between now and then we had plans.”
“Barbecue,” agreed Lucky, keeping up his string of one-word retorts. He paired some regulation green work pants with a khaki LA Sheriff’s shirt and hustled toward the kitchen.
“Think of the kids.”
“Right now I’m thinkin’ ’bout Mush Man.”
“He’s not your family.”
“’Least I got a family.” Lucky opened and browsed the refrigerator for something portable to square his hunger. The appliance buzzed loudly. “Didn’t we get this fixed?”
“Just this once,” pressed Gonzo. “All I’m asking.”
“Mush had nobody but his dogs,” said Lucky, choosing a box of leftover chicken legs from Popeye’s. “I’d bring ’em home if they hadn’t near killed me already.”
“How come I never heard of this Mush Man till today?”
“Are you really gonna do this to me?” said Lucky, finally facing her, his arms awkwardly loaded with dry cleaning, a four-day old box of chicken, and in addition to his service pistol, a pair of SIG Sauer 1911 .45’s—one a standard Fastback model, the second a small, seven-shot Ultra Compact for his boot.
“You’re doing it to us.”
“To us? Or you?”
“Goddammit! You’re not a detective this time!” argued Gonzo. “You’re just a T.O. So let the homicide crew do their job!”
“Dead homeless guy in a hole? Please. Someone used him for target practice. It’s already a write-off.”
“It’s not your job.”
“I don’t do this, nobody will.”
“Then leave it and do it tomorrow!”
Lucky shook his head no. He’d already explained himself. If the streets and potential sources were left unworked for forty-eight hours, chances of finding Mush Man’s shooters fell to south of nothing.
“We’re going without you then,” was all Gonzo could muster.
“Have fun,” Lucky returned, attempting a kiss to her cheek. She held up a hand and turned. The rebuff spoke volumes.
Lucky made a move for the front door, slowing at the doorway to Travis’s room. Relieved to see the boy was blissfully lost under his headphones, face stuck eighteen inches from the game on his computer screen. Lucky notched at least one child who hadn’t recorded the fight.
But where was Karrie? Lucky knocked on her door, then peeked inside. The room was practically wall-to-wall purple, impossibly neat for a teenager with a bed so tidy it would have passed boot-camp inspection.
You’re an asshole, Luck. Not cut out for this family hooey.
Viewing the household from his gutter-high prism, Lucky knew they deserved a better husband and father. He liked them all. Loved them even. Would gladly bleed to death for any one of them. Despite that, he’d yet to find a comfort zone within that nuclear structure that rivaled anything he felt on the street. Lucky’s bloom came on the job, in or out of uniform. Until those feelings flipped to something otherwise, he’d have to keep up the pretending.
Fake it till you make it, ass-cactus.
“Hey,” greeted Karrie, in jogging shorts and a retro Nirvana t-shirt. She was leaning up against Lucky’s ’99 Vic, arms crossed with what appeared to be automated disappointment.
“Found you,” played Lucky. “You mind?”
Karrie opened the rear door for Lucky, where he hung his dry-cleaned uniform.
“Just want you to know that I get it,” said the teenager. She’d either heard the argument from outside or possessed astonishing perception.
Lucky straightened and got momentarily lost in her preciously freckled face. He saw the part of him that desired to be her father and protector. The connection was palpable. If she had asked him to stay for the day, he might not have been able to deny her.
“I get it,” Karrie repeated. “You gotta do what you can for that Mushy guy. Find his killer.”
“Gonna give it a go,” said Lucky.
“Then what?”
“Then we’ll see,” said Lucky.
The teenager nodded her understanding, pushed up
onto her tiptoes, and kissed Lucky on the cheek before wrapping him up in a forever grateful hug.
“Don’t really like fireworks anyway,” she finished.
“Yeah,” said Lucky. “Me neither.”
The teenager stood on the driveway and regarded Lucky as he backed into the street, reversed gears, and rumbled away. It wasn’t aloud, but Karrie could hear her own sage voice as if in prayer.
Yea, though he walks through the valley of the shadow of death…
28
LA Sheriff’s station. Compton. 9:02 P.M.
The moment Lucky glimpsed him, the words of the late great New York Yankee Yogi Berra panged between his ears.
It’s like déjà vu all over again.
Leaning against the front right fender of Lucky and Shia’s assigned black-and-white was the familiar, lanky Atom Blum. The boy wonder was identically dressed as he had been the night before, replete with that form-fitting Kevlar riot vest. The only addition to his look was a bandage to his broken nose, a clear plastic shell protecting the injured appendage.
“Sir,” said Shia from behind Lucky. “Lieutenant wants to talk.”
“Night number three,” said Lucky. “No more of your ‘sir’ shit.”
Shia trailed Lucky to Lieutenant Torres’s office, a cramped, utilitarian box no larger than most public bathrooms, and poorly lit despite the waist-high window facing the busy corridor that cut between the men’s locker room and the dispatcher’s bay.
“Screen test?” began Torres. “Seriously?”
Lucky gave a sideways glance at his trainee. The set of her jaw gave nothing away. Whomever or however Torres had heard about the duo’s mistreatment of their ride-along, it hadn’t come from the trainee.
“And if he asked for a demonstration?” asked Lucky, not at all trying to sound convincing.
“Really?” The sarcasm in Torres’s voice was further enhanced by his comical mustache.
“Technically, yes,” answered Lucky.
“Okay,” straightened Torres. “Let’s say he’s a big ripe asshole. Racist, annoying beyond reason, whatever. Can’t imagine what he could’ve done that would’ve deserved getting his nose broke.”
“Is that a question?” asked Lucky.
“As in do I wanna know what kind of douche-knob behavior incited the incident?” waxed Torres. “Not really. Because that Hollywood shit-heel is buddy-buddy with the Assistant Goddamn Sheriff. Paul McGill? Heard of him? Yeah? Our Captain Daniels gets a call from him this morning, inquiring as to if Compton Station has an initiation policy that involves giving all new deputies a surprise ‘screen test.’”
Torres punctuated his annoyance with a pair of comical air quotes.
Comfortably partnered deputies might have quietly guffawed at the lieutenant’s phrasing. Even Torres might have betrayed his authority with a semi-understanding smile. Yet Lucky’s de facto manner was to give little away in both words and body language. And Shia, from her training officer’s perspective, showed stalwart control, nary a muscle twitch but for the occasional pulse of tension where her mandible attached to her temporal bone.
“So ask me why Mr. Blum is back for a second ride-along?” Torres knuckle rapped his desk.
“Why?” played Lucky.
“Because the Assistant Sheriff didn’t have an appropriate response for why you did what you did,” said Torres. “So he invited Mr. Blum to return to our fine and upright station for a do-over. I suggested a change of deputies. The Captain agreed as well did McGill. But it was Mr. Blum that insisted on saddling up again with you two for a second go ’round. So go figure.”
Lucky and his trainee remained seated with synchronous poker faces.
“Okay,” relented Torres. “What did the asshole do that got him a screen test?”
Lucky tipped his chin toward Shia to see if she had an objection. The trainee remained stoic, squarely facing her lieutenant.
“Fine,” decided Lucky, “Our ride-along was—in my opinion—engaging in improper sexual advances toward—”
“Advances?” repeated Torres. “Like he hit on you?”
“He sent me a dick pic, sir.” Shia announced, her first words in the meeting.
“Sent you what?” asked Torres.
“A dick pic,” repeated Shia. “From his phone to mine. A digital photo of his manscaped genitals.”
“You’re shitting me,” said Torres.
“No sir,” confirmed Shia. “It was when I made my training officer aware that he…arranged…for our ride-along to experience the aforementioned screen test.”
“Two nights in a black-and-white,” said Torres, turning his attention to Lucky, “and your trainee already knows about screen tests. I expect she understands the policy against such acts.”
“I am aware, sir,” said Shia. “But Mr. Blum was neither a suspect nor in custody. My opinion, sir?”
“Yes?”
“Deputy Dey’s actions were…” Shia searched for the word, not certain she’d landed on the perfect descriptor. “Chivalrous.”
“Defending the honor of his trainee,” Torres tried to confirm. “Is that it, Lucky?”
“I’m good with it,” said Lucky. “But if a ride-along had sent snaps of his junk to a guy trainee? Not sure I woulda done it any different.”
“You know,” said Torres. “Let’s not go out of our way to split sex identity hairs. Cuz between you and me and ghosts of Lee Baca, this shit gives me a migraine.”
A pause followed as Torres tried to untangle the wires in his brain. Across his desk, the duo was in tandem, reading each other’s body cues with little more than peripheral glimpses.
“What do we do?” shrugged Torres.
“Your call,” said Lucky.
“A dick pic? Jesus.”
“I’m good if Mr. Blum wants another ride-along,” volunteered Shia. “I’m pretty sure he’ll behave.”
“And if he doesn’t?” asked Torres.
“We return him to the station. And what the Assistant Sheriff doesn’t know…” Lucky left the rest unsaid.
Sated, Torres released Lucky and his deputy sidekick to a third night of training and bid them good luck and be safe before shutting his office door behind them.
Four strides down the corridor Lucky broached the subject. “Dick pic?” he said, suspicious as hell.
“I might’ve had the timing wrong,” confessed Shia. “But douchebag sent more than one. Woke up around four this afternoon, my phone blowing up. Each pic in various stages of attention, if you know what I’m sayin’.”
“Lucky you.”
“For every dick pic he sent I returned him a photo of a chlamydia-infected genital,” she shrugged. “Seemed to do the trick for the moment, sir.”
“Sir?”
“Lucky.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
29
Shallow blooms of fireworks sprouted from inside the walls of Compton’s Woodlawn Cemetery. An extensive party had assembled inside the historic walls. Some fifty Independence Day revelers, armed with a cornucopia of illegal rockets, mortars, and malt liquor joined the hundreds of buried dead, including the eighteen Civil War veterans interned beneath the monthly-mown sod.
The historic graveyard, designated a Los Angeles Historic Landmark in 1946, had since suffered a dubious legacy. As the Crips, Bloods, and Sureños gangs ran roughshod over Compton in the seventies and eighties, Woodlawn had become even more famous as the funeral ground for countless young men, mostly black—victims of a ceaseless war over turf, drugs, and foolish pride. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the approximately ten acres had become overcrowded and so shoddily managed that graveside visitors would find randomly scattered human bones poking through the grass like skeletal fingers grasping for a midday scare.
All four windows of the black-and-white were rolled down and the dry Compton air was tinged with whiffs of spent sulfur and weed. The constant cacophony of crackles and pops made it nearly impossible for even the best ears to
distinguish between the firecrackers and actual gunfire.
Lucky, though, wasn’t listening for gunshots as much as he was for loud whistles.
Barely an hour into the shift, Atom Blum had fallen asleep in the backseat of the unit. This came as no surprise considering that upon being reunited with his ride-along hosts, he’d bragged about having caught no sleep whatsoever since the previous evening’s hijinks.
Shia had a notion the time might be ripe to ask her training officer about the plastic container he’d secured just forward from the center console.
“So you gonna tell me what’s in the Tupperware?” asked Shia.
Lucky fired her a sideways look. Knowing. Yet without recrimination for the knowledge he held.
“Okay, so I peeked,” admitted Shia, slightly unnerved that he’d pegged her well enough to make the assumption—and that with just one look from him she could practically read his words.
“What you need to know?” asked Lucky.
A call came across The Box, directing the nearest units to Woodlawn, ostensibly to shut down the block party, confiscate whatever was illegal—be it unspent fireworks, liquor, or drugs—give warnings and scatter the participants.
“Not worth our time,” announced Lucky. “Go ahead. Ten-six us.”
Shia obediently keyed the code into the computer. Next she reached forward and popped the lid on the container. She returned her hand with a pink plastic ring around her index finger. Attached to the ring was a pink plastic whistle with a pink plastic crucifix.
“Warning. Blow it and you might wake up you know who,” advised Lucky.
Shia twisted, caught a glimpse of the still-sleeping boy wonder, then twirled the ring on her finger as if to invite Lucky to explain.
“Rape whistles. Patrol confiscated ’em from some nut-job wannabe priest,” explained Lucky. “He was going up and down Long Beach Boulevard, encouraging the hookers use ’em whenever a john rolled up to proposition ’em. The girls complained to the PD. Whistles ended up in storage.
“And now they’re in our unit.”
“What’s left of ’em,” winked Lucky, who went on to explain how he’d spent his afternoon and early evening instead of catching up on his sleep. Shia had already heard about Mush Man, the murder, and where the body had been recovered. She’d expressed her condolences to Lucky, assuming she’d properly read his affection for the homeless character. He’d barely muttered thanks. After, she thought that was that.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 77