The Trials of Nikki Hill

by Christopher Darden; Dick Lochte

  “Why not? My life’s an open murder book.”

  She thanked them and, spotting Wise heading for Walden’s office, moved off in that direction herself.

  SEVENTEEN

  Goodman was relieved that the D.A. had excluded him and his partner from the meeting with Wise. Walden wasn’t a bad guy, but, as Goodman saw it, the strain of dealing with the hue and cry over Maddie Gray’s murder was taking its toll on the man. He didn’t want to be around when or if the

  D.A. blew his stack.

  Morales evidently had noticed the change in Walden, too. “Big shot’s not smiling so much these days,” he said as they descended to the parking area. “I never liked the cabrón. Right from the start I got him figured as Tom Gleason in blackface.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” Goodman said.

  “You knew he was Gleason’s boy, right?”

  “Yeah. Still, he’d have to go some to be as big an asshole as Gleason.”

  “Asshole and a half. Thanks to him we got at least four stone killers walking the streets today,” Morales said as they got into the car. “Crazy Eights.”

  “I used to hear those stories,” Goodman said. “Mainly from Jay Barkovich.”

  “Sure. Barko and his partner—what was his name, Ruger?—they took every last fuckin’ Crazy Eight off the streets. Had ’em in the lockup. Gleason gives ’em a pass, a slap on the wrist, because some minister swears they was good boys at heart. Good boys! I hope that fucker Gleason is rottin’ in hell with some of those good boys.”

  “What’s with your hard-on for the Crazies?” Goodman asked.

  Morales paused only briefly before turning on the ignition. “It’s personal,” he said, the finality of his tone ending the discussion.

  The two detectives spent most of the afternoon at the scene of a drive-by shooting on the Hollywood Freeway near the Cahuenga Pass. The vic was a male Caucasian, age eighteen, who’d spent some of his childhood in a popular TV series about street life. The bullet had removed the back of his head. He’d been in the slow lane, but it was still a minor miracle that his untended Mercedes-Benz 300SL had avoided collision, merely swerving to the right and nestling against the far side of an exit ramp.

  It was a wearying investigation. The freeway, connecting the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood and downtown L.A., was clotted with vehicles nearly every minute of the workday. Surely someone had witnessed the shooting. But had that someone thought to study the killer’s car? To write down the license number? Would they be part of that diminishing number of citizens willing to stand up and be counted?

  Photos of the traffic were taken periodically by the highway patrol. With luck they might have caught something useful.

  By five-thirty, the detectives had not received their golden phone call and nothing had dropped into their laps except a small vial of cocaine found in the 300SL’s glove compartment. Goodman didn’t mention drugs when he notified the boy’s mother, but he might as well have. She seemed to blame him for her son’s death, pounding him with her tiny fists. He and Morales finally got her to calm down enough to tell them how to reach the boy’s father, who, it turned out, was a barber at one of the Hollywood shops where the term had been replaced by “stylist.” The man fell apart completely and had to be sedated.

  Another day on the job.

  They arrived at the Academy shortly after seven.

  Gwen Harriman was drinking with her partner, a Samoan named Manolo who stayed twenty to thirty pounds beyond the LAPD weight limit except for the periods set aside each year for annual physicals. Judging by his size, that time was far off.

  By eight, Morales left to have dinner with his family. An hour later, Manolo departed in search of another few pounds of body fat. He’d tried to convince Gwen and Goodman to join him but they’d both previously gone through the expensive and generally unappetizing experience of dining with the big detective who enjoyed talking with his mouth full.

  By ten, Goodman was sorry he hadn’t eaten earlier. The room was spinning. Gwen was bending his ear about a boyfriend who was not treating her right.

  “Get him on the horn,” Goodman said. “Tell him your problems.”

  “You’re more understanding,” she said. “Besides, I can’t phone him at home.”

  “Married?”

  She nodded, then finished her bourbon. “Let’s go to your place.”

  “Not tonight,” Goodman said.

  “Then let’s have another drink,” she said.

  So they did.

  EIGHTEEN

  Nikki’s afternoon had been considerably less active than that of the two homicide detectives. For a half hour she sat in Joe Walden’s office watching in silent amusement as he chewed the ass off Ray Wise for selling him on the Deschamps indictment. Following that entertaining interlude, she returned to her desk to immerse herself once again in the known facts of the case.

  She was rereading Goodman and Morales’s initial interview with Deschamps when she became aware of something in her doorway. A brown hand waving a white handkerchief.

  “I hope that’s clean,” she said.

  A sheepish Virgil Sykes entered the office. “Pressed it myself this morning,” he told her, tucking it back into the top pocket of his suit. “Didn’t want you to shoot me before I could apologize.”

  She thought, somewhat begrudgingly, that he wasn’t a bad-looking man when he cleaned himself up. “Who you pretending to be this time, in your nice threads? A Fuller Brush salesman? A defense attorney?”

  “Nope. Just a cop who had to give a deposition to one of your associates.”

  “Which associate?”

  “Dimitra Shaw.”

  “The Sutter case?” she asked. It had been at the top of the media slice-and-dice list before the naked body of Maddie Gray refocused their attention. A three-year-old boy had been beaten to death. His adoptive mother, who was being charged with the crime, had declared that the child battered himself to death in a fit of rage.

  “The Sutter, yeah,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Listen, you mind if I park for a second?”

  She hesitated, then said, “For a second.”

  “I’m really sorry about that stunt at the office,” he said, taking a stack of books from a chair and placing them on the floor. “Sometimes I can’t help being an asshole.”

  “They have shrinks for problems like that.” She wondered if he was being straight this time or just opting for a subtler put-on.

  “Anyways, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I was hoping we could make out like it didn’t happen and start out from the jump again.”

  Her bullshit sensors, hair-triggered by past experiences with gangstas, junkies, murderers, and men in general, were on full alert. “What is it you really want, Mr. Styles?”

  “It’s Sykes,” he said. “Virgil Sykes.” He broke into a grin. “You remembered my name. That was a put-down, right? You playing the dozens? What comes next, a ‘you so stupid’ rank?”

  “I don’t see you as being stupid,” she said.

  Their eyes met and held for a moment. She looked away.

  “How’s the Gray case going?” he asked. “You keeping Goodman and Morales hoppin’?”

  “Not me, exactly,” she said. “I’m just gathering rosebuds for my boss.”

  “But you got eyes for doin’ more than that.”

  “You my psychic friend?”

  “What else? You want Ray Wise’s gig?”

  She’d certainly given it a thought. “Why not?”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “No?” She could feel herself flushing.

  “Course not,” he said. “It’s one thing for Walden to make you his assistant, cause that’s what guys have—women assistants. But how’s that gonna look, if a black D.A. appoints a black honey as his chief deputy?”

  She glared at him, anger spreading through her body like fire. “How’s that gonna look?” she repeated incredulously. “Why you smug, jive-a—”

  “
Gotcha,” he said, chuckling.

  She shook her head. “You’re a bad man,” she said, unable to hide her smile.

  “Like I’d seriously think it’d be a mistake to replace a bigoted asshole like Wise with an intelligent, dedicated, open-minded prosecutor such as yourself.”

  “You don’t know what kind of prosecutor I am.”

  “Sure I do,” he said. “I checked out some of your work in Compton. The Gandy trial, Mary Loomis—that was a good one, set fire to her old man—the Dawes boys...”

  “You looked up my trials?” She couldn’t believe it.

  “I had somebody fax me the salient details.”

  “Why?”

  “Why you think? I’m interested in you.” He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I figured it’d give us something to talk about at dinner tonight.”

  “Not tonight,” she said.

  “But you haven’t heard the program.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve got other plans.”

  “Big mistake,” he said.

  “I’ll try to live with it,” she said.

  He stood. “Well, then, I guess I’ll jus’ try to live with your rejection.”

  She watched him walk slowly from her office.

  A beat later, he was back. “Damn, woman, you let me walk out of your life, jus’ like that?”

  “I sorta figured we might be meeting up again,” she said.

  “Look,” he said, “we been going around it today, but I really think something might be brewin’ here.”

  “My fiancé would be happy to hear that,” she said.

  “Fiancé? Aw, shit. Don’t tell me that. The Lord couldn’t be that cruel, to put you in my path twice and then have you be private goods.”

  “No,” she said, amused by his terminology. “No fiancé. I’m still public goods.”

  “Well, now,” he said, straightening, the smile back on his handsome face. “Then there’s the chance we can pursue the idea of gettin’ together?”

  “You know where to reach me,” she said.

  “And I will,” he said. “You can count on it.”

  NINETEEN

  The deputies came for Jamal at 6 P.M.

  When Jesse Fallon had visited earlier in the afternoon, the lawyer had said nothing about him being moved to a new jail. What Fallon had said was that, because of the polygraph, he’d probably be a free man within twenty-four hours. The case against him had all but fallen apart.

  Jamal tried to explain this to the deputies. The only one who bothered to listen showed him the computerized removal slip ordering his relocation to Wayside, a facility sixty miles north of the city.

  “What’s the point, if I’m getting out tomorrow?”

  The guard was big and burly, a buzz-cut redneck version of William “The Refrigerator” Perry. His lazy eyes stayed on Jamal for a beat. “I don’t know nuthin’ about you getting out. I don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’ except this removal slip. So get your stuff.”

  They transported him in a yellow bus, along with four other men in prison garb. Each was handcuffed to his respective seat. Two armed guards went along for the ride, sitting behind wire mesh, one at the rear, shotgun on his lap, one at the front, beside the driver but facing back.

  In spite of shouted orders from the guards to shut up, two of his fellow prisoners kept up a steady stream of mouth music all the way to the new jail. Judging by their chatter, the little one, with what appeared to be several pink burn splashes on his dark face and neck, was nicknamed PhillyQ. His beefy, slack-jawed, droopy-lidded friend answered to a name that Jamal assumed was Mar-ket, because the guy looked like he was full of groceries. He discovered later it was Mark-It, because he liked to leave his mark on things. With a knife.

  They arrived at Wayside shortly after the dinner hour and were quickly logged in and led to the dining hall. They were treated to a meal of chicken and potatoes, heavy on the lumpy white gravy, what Jamal used to call “gran’ma food,” along with the usual dessert, “gorilla biscuits,” oatmeal cookies so thick it was rumored the kitchen crew used their armpits to mold them.

  That image did nothing to improve Jamal’s appetite. He moved the food around his plate while idly observing his fellow inmates. He’d been spoiled by the private digs near the courthouse. He didn’t like being a member of the general jailhouse population. He was worried about being beaten or raped before Fallon could get there with the golden key. And he was picking up weird vibes from PhillyQ and Mark-It, who were sitting across from him, no longer talking, just staring at him like it was him who cut the cheese.

  Feeling definitely creeped out, he stood, picked up his plate, and began to carry it to the dirty-dish counter. Mark-It rose, too, then PhillyQ. The big man suddenly elbowed the little brother, forcing him to drop his plate. It clattered on the floor, followed by the sound of nervous laughter. Then silence.

  PhillyQ shoved back against the big man, but Mark-It barely budged. When he returned the shove, PhillyQ went reeling toward Jamal.

  Jamal saw something in the little con’s hand that caught the light. A metal spoon. Oh, shit, a shiv! He took a step backward and bumped against somebody. A glance told him it was a big con he’d never seen before, glaring at him like he was a bug on the floor.

  PhillyQ was almost where he wanted to be. He flipped the spoon so that its handle was pointed at Jamal’s stomach.

  Without hesitation, Jamal kicked out, the toe of his shoe connecting with PhillyQ’s family jewels just as the sharpened spoon handle sliced a groove along his inner thigh.

  As PhillyQ folded and hit the deck on his side, squealing, Jamal felt a push from the rear, then a hot, stinging sensation deep in his back, beneath his left shoulder blade. The room shifted and the floor rose up to greet him, moving much too fast. He landed hard only a few feet away from the puking PhillyQ.

  Everybody in the room seemed to be screaming and yelling, but Jamal was having trouble hearing. Something was wrong with his eyesight as well. Colors were fading. Just before blackness took over he thought he saw beige uniforms moving toward him through the crush of county-jail blue.

  TWENTY

  At eight that night, when Nikki arrived at Loreen’s beauty salon, she found it crowded and overflowing with hip-hop, talk, and laughter. The establishment had begun to outgrow its neighborhood strip mall origins back when Rose Battles was still its proprietor. Once Rose’s Beauty Palace had been passed on to Loreen, she acquired the store space to the west, knocked down the common wall, and expanded the operation from four to eight chairs, each of which rented to an independent stylist at $650 a month. Nikki had never seen an empty chair in the place.

  When she entered, the women filling them looked up from their magazines or paused mid-gossip. Ain’t celebrity grand.

  “Well, hello, missy,” her stylist, Baron, said, deserting his customer to study her hair. “We plan on makin’ any more TV appearances, we’re gonna need a little topside tidyin’ up.”

  “Gee, Mr. Silver Tongue, you sure got a way with a compliment.”

  “Honey,” he said, indicating with a toss of his head the gimlet-eyed woman sitting in his chair, “tonight Mr. Silver Tongue’s all complimented out.”

  “I’ll try to make it in Monday, let you do your magic on my topside,” she said, glancing around the shop. “Where’s the boss lady?”

  Baron pantomimed the smoking of a cigarette.

  Jocasta, the manicurist, a news junkie who’d been dividing her attention between her customer’s cuticles and the television set suspended from the ceiling in a corner of the room, called out to her. “Hey, Nikki, what’s with Jamal Des-champs? Court TV says he’s innocent.”

  “Court TV probably knows more about it than I do,” Nikki said.

  She found Loreen sitting on a white plastic chair behind the building, puffing on a cigarette and staring at a scruffy garbage dump just off the mall’s rear access road. “Enjoying the sunset, huh, girlfriend?” Nikk
i said.

  Loreen’s foxlike face brightened and she smiled, exhaling a plume of smoke into the still evening air. “Nikki,” she said. “Don’t tell me it’s that late already?”

  “Depends on what you call late.” She watched Loreen toss away the cigarette and use both hands to push herself from the chair, wincing. “Hip giving you trouble again?”

  “It’s nothing,” Loreen said, hobbling a little as she approached. They hugged.

  “I missed lunch,” Loreen said. “Had a last-minute press and curl. So I’m hungry enough to max out both our credit cards.”

  She led the way back through the shop. As they passed a screened-off area where a hair weaver plied her trade, a customer was just leaving. She was a big, flashy woman wearing a glittery tank top and shorts. One look at Nikki and the smile on her face froze, then disappeared. “You bitch,” she screamed. “Took away my man.”

  The shop went silent, except for LL Cool J rapping away and the thrum of the dryers.

  “Oh, hell,” Loreen said, moving between Nikki and the woman. “Violet, you got your weave done to your satisfaction?”

  “Ain’t ’bout my weave,” Violet said. “It’s ’bout that Oreo bitch hidin’ behind you.”

  Nikki stepped away from her friend to face the furious woman. “No reason for me to hide, Violet,” she said, surprising herself with the calmness of her voice. “You’re angry at the wrong person and you know it.”

  “Wrong person?” Violet took a step toward her. “You the one sent my man to San Quentin for no reason.”

  Nikki shifted her stance only slightly and stood her ground. “Girl, they must’ve tied your weave too tight. Your man shot a Brink’s guard. Came near killing him.”

  “He say he didn’t do it,” Violet shrieked.

  “He also says he never laid hand to you,” Nikki said. “That the truth?”