The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset)

by Doug Richardson

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Okay. Pulling it up now,” said the desk sarge. “Y’all got two pings. One from Deputy Kenya in 820. It says, ‘No luck with finding out about status of dogs.’ Another from Deputy Rodriguez in 750. Says, ‘Got one of your whistles.’ He added his mobile number. You want that?”

  Whistles, thought Shia. Pink and full of promise. If there was one thing she’d gleaned from her three nights with Lucky, it was that he was like a dog with a bone. There was no way, suspension or otherwise, he’d let go of his ghettocide. If Shia could gift Lucky with a lead, he’d probably bring her along for the ride.

  “Yes, please,” said Shia. “Give me Deputy Rodriguez’s number.”

  42

  Altadena. 2:48 P.M.

  In news parlance, the murder of Atom Blum was a fast-evolving narrative. While it was initially reported that the blockbuster film director was killed in a drug deal gone awry, the story quickly morphed from a tragedy brought on by the victim’s own personal frailties to the rumored malpractice by the LA County Sheriff’s Department. The leaks were everywhere and mostly without foundation. Some online sources wildly claimed the boy wonder had been killed by a deputy’s stray bullet; others that he had accidentally administered the deadly shot himself.

  Yet it was the gossip website TMZ that was first to get the story straight.

  After paying off a qualified source inside the LASD, TMZ was able to reveal that Atom Blum had been in the black-and-white’s backseat as a guest “ride-along.” A simple cash transaction had produced crime-scene reports which also included the names of the tour-guide deputies tasked with the director’s safety. There was no mention whatsoever that prior to the ride-along, Atom Blum had soberly scribbled his famous signature on a standard, LASD liability waiver.

  “Moooooooooommmmmmm?” called Travis from the living room of the Altadena rental house. The young teen, his face temporarily removed from behind his electronic device, had the ears of a fruit bat. Upon hearing the distinct rumble of a diesel engine idling, he’d trundled into the living room to get a better looksee out the street-facing picture window. A mobile satellite truck, courtesy of a local television news station, was framed by the room’s lacy curtains. Moments later, a news van with a microwave antenna and a competing station’s call letters emblazoned across the side panels pulled up to the curb.

  “MOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!” repeated Travis.

  “I’m right here so stop yelling,” began Gonzo, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Then she saw the gathering of news crews. “Jesus H. Christ.”

  “Does anyone around here respect the nap?” complained Karrie, her hair a static mop on the side where she’d been sleeping.

  “Where’s Lucky?” asked Gonzo.

  Instead of answering, Karrie caught sight of the TV news throng assembling outside the house.

  “Ohhhh,” said Karrie.

  “Oh, what?” asked Gonzo.

  “Why I just saw Lucky going over the backyard fence,” answered Karrie. “I heard Travis and thought it was about Lucky, so…”

  “So yeah. It is about Lucky,” chimed Gonzo, releasing the curtains from their hooks and struggling to slide them shut. Karrie joined the cause, assisting in blocking all uninvited eyes, not to mention camera lenses, from prying.

  Lucky had been sorting through boxes in their detached, cobweb-infested one-car garage at the end of the rental’s driveway. Unsatisfied with the mobility the hospital sling offered, he’d been rummaging for his rope-ring of duct and electrical tape. With an unconscious glance down the driveway, he had glimpsed the satellite truck angling for a parking space. That was all he required to connect the media dots. A famous movie director had turned up murdered. The sergeant in charge of the victim’s safety had been Lucky. In the unholy search for ratings, local news directors would be demanding some kind of televised reckoning.

  The door at the dark rear the garage led into an overgrown vegetable garden Gonzo had planned to bring back to life. Lucky pushed past the stacked bags of soil conditioner, peeled off the sling, and ignored the soaring pain as he pulled himself up and over the ivy-covered fence. Before he landed on his feet, he could feel the wound-sealing staples pop and tear. Damn, he thought. Bleeding would likely follow. It wouldn’t be long before the bandages were soaked through.

  In his speedy dash, he hadn’t considered the Rottweiler mix that normally patrolled the yard of his neighbor’s property. Lucky was grateful to mark the beast as boisterous, yet restrained, behind the house’s back porch slider.

  At least one thing is going my way.

  Despite the tempered glass barrier, the dog’s bark was still piercing. Lucky quickly hurried up along the west side of the lot, churning up the gravel as he ran along the side panels of the house, then emerging through a wooden gate and into a front yard and a street empty of news trucks.

  The phone in his jeans pocket buzzed. Certain it was Gonzo, Lucky answered without checking the incoming number.

  “Hey, sorry,” said Lucky into the phone. “Best I’m not around to feed the circus.”

  “Circus?” asked the voice. “Um. This is Shia Saint George.”

  “Not the best time right now,” said Lucky, slowly jogging east down the sidewalk. “And you’re not supposed to be talking to me or me you.”

  “Got something on your pink whistles,” she braved. “I know we’re on suspension pending—”

  “Who and where?” asked Lucky, slowing only slightly to better his hearing.

  “Deputy Rodriguez,” continued Shia. “Last night. He pinged our box. I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d come back this way and check it out.”

  Lucky’s trainee was officially out of bounds.

  Along with her training officer, Shia was on suspension pending a shoot investigation, during which period neither were allowed to so much as communicate a human or digital syllable. It was also departmental protocol to examine every discharge of both deputies’ weapons. The chaotic shoot-out at the New Wilmington Gardens promised to be so complex that Shia’s paid leave could last from months to as long as a year. Add to the bloody stew a dead movie director who just so happened to be palsy with LASD’s Assistant Sheriff and Vegas might have taken bets on how the internal investigation would eventually spin to a conclusion.

  It was Lucky’s sworn duty to show Shia the ropes—both inside and outside the confines of the black-and-white. His better judgment tapped on his shoulder, begging him to demand she step off and go home. But then there was Lucky’s gutter side. The part of him that often trolled the waters of his darker impulses. If his young trainee had shown the initiative to follow up on his ghettocide—who was he to deny her the co-satisfaction of solving Mush Man’s murder?

  “Where are you?” Lucky asked.

  “Northeast side of the grid,” she said, referring to their patrol beat of Compton.

  “Get up to Altadena. Need you to be my ride.”

  “You sure? We’re both—”

  “You’re gonna break suspension all by your trainee self? C’mon. Flip a one-eighty and come get me.”

  “On my way,” promised the deputy.

  43

  Rape.

  Cat couldn’t stop repeating the word, if only inside her skull. Upon her retreat from the fourth-floor ladies room in One California Plaza, she’d bypassed the frosted double-doors to her business suite and quick-stepped her way to the elevator bank. Fully ignoring the Chinese investor group she’d left mid-business pitch in her conference room, she climbed in the first lift to open its doors, pressed the button for the thirty-first floor and took a twenty-seven floor ride.

  Rape.

  She thought of all the men who’d touched her. Those who’d made her tingle with excitement. Those who’d left her cold and indifferent. The common thread among them all was that each—even those in her occasional forays into group sex—had been invited.

  Cat was a woman. As such she’d supported every gender-related cause with her time, political
connections, and money. She calculated that she had identified with practically every women’s issue from discrimination to assault.

  I had no idea.

  That unwanted touch. That unsolicited finger-walk Julius had taken up her inner thigh to the lips of her vulva. Though hardly the worst of violations, combined with the threat, Cat felt as if the full, penetrative sexual assault had taken place. The shock wave the act had express-delivered to her soul was without mistake.

  Ding.

  Cat drove those killer heels into the thirty-first floor carpeting, travelling a route she knew well until she pushed through an oak door stenciled with:

  3144

  Halberstram and Jenks

  A Law Corporation

  “Need to talk with Willie,” snipped Cat to the sweater-wearing twenty-something perched behind an impossibly high reception desk. Not waiting for permission, Cat was dead reckoning for the partner’s office.

  “He’s on a conference call,” called out the receptionist.

  Ignoring the warning, Cat turned the sharp corner into the roomy office of William Jenks. The lighting was exactly as he preferred—shades drawn, an amber glow from incandescent lamps of different antique designs. The lawyer himself—tiny enough to be Cat’s fraternal twin—was appropriately suited, wearing a telephone headset, seated with his feet up behind an original J.G. Stickley desk.

  William Jenks held up a stalling palm indicating for Cat to give him just a moment.

  “Enrique,” said Jenks. “Can I call you back in a few minutes? Promise, okay?” He hung up on the call and adjusted the headset so it dangled from his ear.

  “I need a lawyer,” announced Cat.

  “And if anyone has her pick,” quipped Jenks, “It would be you.”

  “I want you to rep me,” she insisted.

  “I’m flattered,” he returned.

  “What do I need to officially engage you—the firm?” she asked. “Whatever you need. Just say.”

  “It starts with you sitting down, taking a deep breath, and telling me what’s going on.”

  “So you’re my lawyer now?”

  “With a promise to pay my fee you are entitled to all rights and covenants.”

  “Done,” said Cat, allowing her machine-carved derriere to squish into a leather chair ample enough for a man four times her size. She crossed her legs for punctuation. “You’re my lawyer now.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I’m a criminal,” said Cat, plain as wallpaper. “I’ve engaged in a criminal conspiracy which, I guess you could say, has gotten out of hand. My partner in crime has threatened me and I’m now in fear of my life.”

  “Okay,” said Jenks. He sat up, taking a more significant and curious account of his friend-turned-client. “Is that all?”

  “Is that all?” she asked with a sharp dose of unmeasured incredulity. “How long have we known each other?”

  “Eight years? Ten?”

  “Have I ever confessed to being a criminal?”

  “Not a priest, Cat. No confessions necessary.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Maybe I should ask you to start at the beginning.”

  “Fine,” said Cat. “You need to call Enrique back?”

  “Enrique is an understanding client,” assured Jenks. “Now tell me how Cat Rincon turns into a wanton lawbreaker.”

  “Admitting it only to you,” she reminded.

  “Of course,” said Jenks, assembling a fresh legal pad.

  44

  Lil Rod. The name was all Shia had acquired when she’d run down a vagrant woman who’d taken up residence at the Jordan’s Disciples Transitional Living Shelter near the Compton recycling center. The lady, mentally challenged and naturally frail, was too afraid to give her name. She did present Shia with the correct pink whistle, the name “Lil Rod,” and what she’d heard on the street to be the motive.

  “He kilt da Mush Man cuzza he was protectin’ da man’s hole in da groun’.”

  The hole. By late morning, with the mystery electrical transmission line shut down, union and insurance investigators had been allowed to enter the blowout to photograph, measure and document enough of the accident scene to satisfy their professional curiosities. Never mind that twenty-four hours prior it had been tagged a crime scene with the murder of a homeless man. It was as if the killing of Mush Man had been wiped away and replaced by the tragic, workplace investigation of a valued county employee’s death.

  The DWP construction crew arrived to continue the repairs. Their overall mood bordered on giddy at the guarantee of overtime pay. At five in the afternoon, three diesel-operated light trailers were delivered. Each trailer was self-contained with a mast affixed with four metal halide lamps, promising a work-site blast of light so blinding the nearest neighbors would hang blankets over their windows to temper the glare.

  Standing conspicuously still at the southeast edge of the hole was Lucky. With each second staring into the chasm, he hoped for an answer to the question why? The burning in his shoulder had been replaced by a deep and unstoppable ache. He had been able to fortify his bandages by yoking a Kotex pad over his injured shoulder with breathable cloth tape. He’d replaced his bloody t-shirt with a FIFA-approved Viva Mexico jersey. All items purchased at one of the five Compton Circle K gas stations. The Sudanese-born cashier who rang up the transaction didn’t bat an eye. In fact, when handing Lucky his change, he’d grinned with a “Thumbs up Mexico, yeah?”

  “Crew foreman says they had a delayed start today because of the insurance investigators,” said Shia, easing up on Lucky’s left. “That and the transmission line was still live until late morning, I guess.”

  Lucky acknowledged her. His eyes, scouring the hole, lifted slightly to survey the exposed clay conduit that carried the old power cable.

  “So it’s just like you said,” continued Shia. “One CSI gets zapped and it’s like, ‘What murder?’”

  “How old does a transmission cable gotta be to be cased in clay pipe?” mused Lucky. His view lifted to the nearby rooftops and the above-ground power lines that fed electricity to each home. “Houses. They get their power from where? The external lines, right?”

  Lucky was pointing, his index finger tracing the air as he followed the drooping phone and electrical lines from pole to pole. A squat, hard-hatted man in DWP overalls and rubber boots was climbing one of the ladders leading out of the hole. Lucky stepped over and offered a helping hand.

  “Ask you a question?” began Lucky to the hardhat. “That clay pipe with the hot cable in it?”

  “Not hot no more,” said the hardhat.

  “How ancient it gotta be for you guys to use clay pipe for insulation?” asked Lucky.

  “Not a pipe,” said the hardhat. “Conduit. And how old beats the hell outta me. Before this blowout, hell, nobody I know has ever hit a live wire.”

  “I didn’t even know Water and Power ran underground electrical,” said Lucky.

  “Hey, man,” said the hardhat. “I’m on the water side of this shit. But from what my boss told us, we haven’t run power under city streets since before World War Deuce.”

  “That so?” asked Lucky. It was rhetorical, as if to confirm a notion he was already considering.

  “What’s that mean to you?” asked Shia.

  “Visit to The Bunker,” said Lucky, already ambling in the direction of Shia’s parked car.

  “What’s The Bunker?”

  “Gramercy Depot. Looks like a German pillbox bunker. Near Lennox.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “Water ’n’ Power switching station. Ways back, guys workin’ night shift were slingin’ crack through the fence between the utility property and Jesse Owens Park. Lotta foot chases in that park.”

  “Ergo the name,” joked Shia. Her punch line missed wide. Thus the sideways squint Lucky passed her way. She tried to save it with, “Jesse Owens? Gold medals? Famous American track and field athlete?”

 
; “Oh,” said Lucky. “Like maybe I didn’t run down ’em all.”

  “Did you?”

  “Real world, kiddo,” said Lucky. “Not everyone gets caught.”

  45

  Hard as you work, Timbo, you’ll always be fat.

  He’d stayed late into the day, holed up inside his DWP cave, catching up on paperwork. All the while, worrying how—if at all—he’d be able to cover his tracks.

  “Last to go makes all the dough!” called out Front Office Peggy as she slipped by his door.

  “I’m a civil flippin’ servant!” replied Tim from behind his computer.

  “Yeah, but you’re management!” she said, her voice trailing as she exited.

  Tim checked his watch. It read almost half past six. With nowhere to go but his depressing, week-to-week apartment, he locked his office door, elevator’d down to the garage, and drove the five short blocks to the Athletic Solutions Fitness Center where he’d been a member since January. By the time he climbed onto one in an endless row of west-facing treadmills, the sun was dipping behind the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The geometric-tipped high-rise, overlooking LA Live—the posh downtown destination that included the Microsoft Theater and Staples Center—appeared magically backlit in glittering gold. A fitting sight, thought Tim, considering the hefty price he paid for the gymnasium membership.

  Paying to get fit.

  That was going to be Tim’s bonus for the cash he’d accepted from Cat Rincon and Hal Solomon. He’d drop a fistful of Benjamins and lose the weight, transforming himself into a more attractive photo to post on dating sites. Live bait for his future wife—the yet-to-be-discovered Missus Tim Gilligan Number Three.

  In the six months since Tim joined the gym, he had scanned in a total of five times. And a scant fifteen minutes into his Thursday night workout, he’d practically sweat through his 4XL t-shirt, turning the light gray into a shade closer to black.