The Heartless

by David Putnam

  I rolled down the window to let in the warm summer evening. I couldn’t shake the cloying scent that had hung heavy inside the Grand Orchid. Too many perfumed candles and incenses had ended their lives in that place. They lit them in an attempt to mask the lack of hope and despair and hide the odor of the sexually deviant. The sickening sweet odor clung in an invisible sheen, thick as a gel, to the walls and floors and curtains. Now it permeated my clothes and skin. It’d linger there for a day or two as nothing more than an ugly afterthought.

  As soon as the glass door came down and I stepped inside, I knew we’d find the place empty. Anyone who could plan such an audacious jail escape was not going to be found that easily. We were going to have to dig him out of his hidey-hole, and it would take a lot more than shoe leather to do it. It’d take a similar cunning, a criminal wit.

  At the same time, something niggled at the back of my brain. That feeling only came around when I’d missed something, usually something big. I played back everything we’d done since we left the courthouse, all the houses we’d hit, all the people we shook down, but nothing bubbled up. The Grand Orchid, for some reason, bothered me. Maybe it was the odor. Or maybe it was the many individual rooms with the beds and rumpled towels strewn about, the hidden cameras that captured the multitude of sex acts to be sold on an even broader market. Or the idea of all the women that were needed to run an operation that size. The terrible waste of life. And for what?

  No, it was something else. I’d missed something important.

  “What are you thinking, big man?”

  I didn’t answer, just watched the houses zip past in a blur of speed. Everything was bathed in orangish-yellow sodium vapor streetlights that fought back the encroaching darkness, the place where evil lurked. Locked gates and wrought iron on windows and doors buttoned the houses up tight. Some of the yards had oscillating sprinklers working hard to keep the dry summer heat from killing the rest of their lawns, the only evidence of life inside waiting out the dawn.

  “Bruno, my friend, you’re too wrapped up right now. You got the scent of revenge in your nose and you can’t smell anything else. You’re running too hot. Back it down a couple of notches and refocus. Think about how we’re going to find this little puke. You’ve got to be able to visualize it.”

  He knew me like a brother and could read me like a spouse. I missed working with him.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and shoved. “Hey, anybody in there? Talk to me, my fine Negro friend. Fire up that brilliant man-hunting brain of yours and let’s put this guy on a slab.”

  “Why don’t we pick this up in the morning, all right? Just take me home. We’ll get him tomorrow after I’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

  “Hey, come on now, it’s too early to call it a day. You got any ideas at all? ’Cause I’m drawing a big zero here and the clock’s tickin’. I have to report to the deputy chief in less than an hour and I better have something for him or he’s gonna hand me my ass in a hat.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a few ideas, but I need to get home tonight. I need to talk to Olivia. It’s important.”

  “Didn’t you call your dad to look after her pending the outcome of this operation?”

  “Don’t try and come between me and my daughter, Robby. You’ll lose.” I never called him by his first name. He didn’t like it. He even preferred “Asshole” over his first name.

  We drove for a couple of minutes more. His jaw muscles worked as he suppressed his anger. “Okay, I’ll take you home. Just tell me what you got in mind. I’ll work on it through the night, and if we don’t get him by morning, I’ll pick you up bright and early.”

  He was playing me. He knew I wanted to be in on the take-down—that I had to be in on the takedown. He was trying to push my buttons, and it was working. I needed to push back.

  I looked over at him. “Alienating other members of this department isn’t going to help find this guy. You were never like that when we used to run together.”

  He looked at the road, looked at me, then back at the road. “What the hell are you talking about now?”

  “We need to work with, and get along with, the other members of this department.”

  “Agreed, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We should’ve waited for SWAT to clear that building. That’s what they were there for.”

  “You goin’ soft on me, big man, is that it? Were you afraid to go in there after a weasely piece of shit like Borkow? He’s a skinny little pencil-neck, know-nothin’ white boy. How tough can he be?”

  “You know better than that. Going in before SWAT made them look like a bunch of idiots. You couldn’t leave it at that; you had to go and flip off the team lead.”

  “What? Oh, no, no. You got that all wrong. It’s not what you think. I know the guy. I flipped him off because he wasn’t supposed to be going in on that raid in the first place. And he knew it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lieutenants are supposed to stay at the Incident Command Center and direct the op. When the captain’s not around, that cowboy takes the lead. His boys love him for it. That was Lau. He and I went through sergeant’s school together. He’s a real comer and he’s going to be the sheriff one day, you wait and see if he’s not. You’d be smart to hook your wagon to that rising star.”

  “Lieutenant Lau?” I asked, my voice more a croak.

  Nicky Rivers’ husband.

  The Nicky Rivers who I had a thing for. The Nicky Rivers who I’d already kissed too many times and twice more passionately than the others.

  When the SWAT team had passed by, I hadn’t seen his face well enough to identify him. He’d had his goggles on and his balaclava covering his head under a Kevlar helmet. I didn’t know how Wicks could identify him well enough to flip him the bird. Maybe it was Lau’s voice when he called us assholes, uttered with complete contempt as he went by on our way out of the Grand Orchid.

  “You okay, partner?” Wicks asked. “You look like you just ate a bad taco or something.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, my stomach’s a little sour.”

  “I’ll drop you off and pick you up in the morning. We’ll get an early start, say oh-dark-thirty. Now tell me what you got.”

  “What?” My mind had shifted from Olivia to Nicky and then to Lieutenant Lau. I had inadvertently got myself into a real mess. But it wasn’t too late to extricate myself, and, hopefully, without anyone finding out. If the department at large somehow got wind of my indiscretion, it would compound the problem tenfold.

  “Come on, gimme your best ideas about how to take down this puke.”

  “Alright. Listen, I … ah. You remember that place over in Torrance, right on the border of Hawthorne? The one we hit when we were looking for T-Dog—you know—Roy McKinney?”

  “No, I don’t. But keep talking.”

  “A massage parlor that belongs to Borkow over off Hawthorne Boulevard, where McKinney used to go to get a rub-and-tug. You remember, the Willow Tree.”

  “Okay, we hit that one already today. Zero. Zip. And?”

  “Back then there was a woman working there. I remembered her when we were in there today looking for Borkow.”

  “Buddy boy, all they got working in massage parlors are women. You’re gonna have to gimme a little more.”

  “You going to smart off or do you want to hear this?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “When we were looking for T-Dog, we talked to everyone in the place. We pulled them all aside and talked to them individually.”

  “Okay, I remember that. And?”

  His eyes diffused as his mind worked on another problem, probably trying to remember the event I described.

  “This one girl wore a real nice pair of pumps.”

  Wicks snapped his fingers. “That’s right, now I know the T-Dog you’re talking about. He was an Avalon Gangster Crip, who’d gunned his two nephews over a half pound of coke. We got him on 133rd ea
st of Wilmington. You took down that door hard. Old T-Dog was sleepin’ on the couch, and he jumped straight up into the air like a cat with a firecracker up its ass.” Wicks laughed. “I remember how big his eyes got, huge. He was so scared he crapped himself.”

  “That’s him.”

  “He’s doin’ time now and he’s never gonna get out. How’s he gonna help find Borkow if he’s in the joint?”

  “No, you missed what I’m saying here. The girl, she was wearing a pair of shoes worth two or three grand.”

  Wicks looked over at me and smiled. “I gotcha. You’re saying girls in massage parlors don’t wear shoes like that. So she has to be one of Borkow’s Ho Chi mamas.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yeah.” Wicks shook his head. “But if she is one of his special girls, and she does happen to know where Borkow is laying his head, he has to trust her a lot. She isn’t going to just flip and talk to us. We’re gonna need a twist on her.”

  “Or?”

  “Or what?”

  “We can get a wiretap on her place and—”

  He snapped his fingers again. “And tickle the wire.”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “That’s brilliant. It’s going to be a lot of bullshit paperwork, but that’s truly a brilliant idea. Especially since we got nothing else. What’s the name of this broad?”

  “Her name’s not an easy one to forget. It’s Lizzette.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WICKS PULLED UP and stopped in front of my apartment complex. He double-parked with the engine at a low rumble. “Talk to your daughter; get all that shit straightened out so you can have a clear head in the morning. We’ll get this guy tomorrow.”

  I opened my door and stuck my leg out. “I wish it were that easy. I mean about talking to O.”

  “It is, buddy boy. An obstinate woman just needs a good slap on the ass and made to understand that, in no uncertain terms, you’re the boss.” He moved the flat of his hand in a lurid wave as if slapping a woman’s rump. He could be a real pig at times. He realized that he was talking about my daughter.

  “Wait, you know I’m not talking about Olivia here, right? I meant women in general.”

  “Is that right? So I should ask your wife, Barbara, if that’s how it really works? See what she thinks of your theory?”

  He smiled. “Whoa there, cowboy. Barbara doesn’t qualify under the every other woman standard. You know that. She’d burn us both down if you were dumb enough to tell her what I just said. And I know you’re not that dumb. You’re not, right partner?”

  I smiled. “That’s the only intelligent thing you’ve said all night.”

  The door to a car parked at the curb two cars away opened and drew our attention. How could we have missed an occupied vehicle so close?

  Out stepped a long, beautiful leg. We silently watched. The leg turned into a sleek woman wearing a pencil skirt and a pair of nice heels.

  I recognized her lovely face.

  I muttered under my breath, “Ah, shit.”

  “Hey,” Wicks said. “Isn’t that Nicky—” His head whipped around. His eyes glared at me. “Tell me it ain’t so.”

  Words fled my brain. I didn’t know how to begin to explain, to make him understand.

  “This is absolute bullshit, Bruno, and you know it.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Oh, it’s not? It’s nine thirty at night, pal.” He jabbed his finger toward the windshield. “She’s parked in front of your apartment. Go on, tell me again it’s not what I think. Get the hell out of my car. To think I was buying that bullshit about you wanting to talk to your daughter.”

  “Let me explain.”

  “I said get out.”

  I did as he asked. I leaned in. “See you in the morning, then?”

  He took off with a chirp of the tires. The momentum closed the door. He dodged around Nicky and gunned the car down the street. She watched it for a second, then walked toward me. “Was that Robby Wicks?”

  “Yeah, and he’s not happy. He’s friends with your husband.”

  She looked uncomfortable. “I know.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  She reached out and took my hand. “I’d tell you that I was worried about you … and I am. But really, it’s just that I don’t have the trial to think about anymore and, well, Bruno, I kinda got lonely.”

  I stood there stunned, still trying to accept how things had spun out of control so quickly. In the space of two minutes, life had complicated tenfold. A beautiful and smart woman, whom I wanted, stood in front of me and I couldn’t have her.

  When I didn’t reply and immediately return her romantic sentiment, she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get you in a jam with Wicks. I had no idea he’d be dropping you off. Your truck’s not here, and I thought you’d be alone when you did show up.” She paused in the uncomfortable silence. “Maybe I should go.”

  I didn’t release her hand, just pulled her in close and hugged her. I put my head down in her hair. She smelled wonderful. I held her tight, not wanting to say the words that needed to be said.

  We can’t see each other anymore.

  She struggled a little and pulled her head back to look into my eyes. The pang in my chest that had been there since the night before when we kissed in the front seat of my truck grew larger.

  “I filed the papers today. He’ll be served tomorrow at eight thirty at his office. I would’ve had it done tonight, but he was out on some operation.”

  “Oh, man,” I said.

  “What?”

  I said nothing and looked down the street where Wicks had driven off.

  She followed my gaze and turned back to me. “Oh, no. You’re right. If Wicks talks to my husband, he’ll think the papers are because of us, that I did it because of us. That’s not true, Bruno. I told you that. You know the truth, right?”

  The words “my husband” pinged around in my head.

  Her concerned expression shifted to an unsure, nervous smile. “What the hell. What’s done is done. We can’t do anything about it now, right?”

  She wanted me to tell her that everything was all right when it wasn’t. I needed to walk away—had to walk away. It was the only logical thing to do. But right there, in the moment, logical didn’t matter; it didn’t seem real. What I wanted most was to kiss her again, to make sure that same feeling was still there.

  I did. I pulled her in tight, kissed her. She relaxed in my arms and went with it. Nothing had changed—the same passion was there.

  Maybe Dad was right about women and love. You couldn’t fight it. You just had to go with it and hope when you tumbled out the other end, you weren’t too bruised and broken.

  And, in the end, it did have the absolute ability to start a war.

  Still in my arms, she swayed a little on her heels and shivered.

  We stared at each other.

  I tried to think how long it had been since I’d shared anything with a woman. Two years, maybe more.

  She leaned in closer, put her arms around my neck, and rested her head on my chest. When she spoke, I could hardly hear her. “Bruno, how long are we going to stand out here?”

  She sounded as scared as I was about starting a relationship.

  Then I thought about her husband. How, for many years working patrol, I had responded to domestic calls arising out of love triangles, how easily they could turn violent and even deadly.

  My head nodded, but my mind said, No, no, no. Don’t. Run away. Run away. I took her hand, and we walked up to the apartment.

  At the door I stopped and fumbled, trying to pull the key from my pocket. “What do you think your husband will do if Wicks tells him?”

  With a serious expression she said, “I wouldn’t want to be you. He’s one tough son of a bitch with a mean-assed temper.”

  “Really, are you kidding me?”

  She shrugged, still solemn. “No sense crying over spilt milk, right?”

&
nbsp; CHAPTER THIRTY

  I GOT THE keys sorted out. Stuck the right one in the lock and froze. I put my forehead to the door and closed my eyes. What the hell was I doing? Everything in my heart and soul said this was right—that this was what I needed—what I had to have. And yet the rational side of my brain called me a damn fool and ordered me to walk away.

  “What’s the matter, Bruno? Come on, hurry up.” Her voice a husky whisper. How did women turn that voice on and off like that at just the right moments?

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.” I turned around to face her.

  “What’s the matter?” She moved in close, her warm breath on my chin.

  I moved her back a little, afraid I’d lose my resolve. “I … I got too much going on, right now. Maybe we can … you know, later on, after I get this thing with my daughter straightened out. And it’s also not a good time because this case with Borkow is going to keep me running hard for the next couple of weeks until we bring him down.”

  What was I saying? I fought the urge to bring a knuckle up and bite down hard so the pain could help clear away the needy lust and desire that pulled on me like a tractor beam.

  She opened her mouth in shock. I guess she wasn’t used to being turned away. She recovered, her eyes narrowed. She shook her head. “No, that’s not it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This isn’t about your daughter.”

  I straightened up, trying for indignant and failing. “What? Of course it is.”

  “No, it’s not. This is about that damn code, isn’t it?”

  “The code?” I tried to play dumb. But she’d hit it exactly right. She’d read me like a book. I liked her even more for it.

  “It’s that macho, make-believe code you have for your bullshit boys’ club. I know you’re not afraid of him. I know you, Bruno Johnson. Like everyone else, I’ve heard all the stories. You’re not afraid of the devil himself. No, it’s that damn code, all right. That stupid, ridiculous code that says one brother cop can’t go out with another brother cop’s woman. Even if they’re separated, even if they’re divorced.” Her voice went up a little. “That’s it, isn’t it? Shame on you. I thought you were braver than that.”