by Noel Obiora
this is a genuine rare bird book
Rare Bird Books
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013
rarebirdlit.com
Copyright © 2021 by Noel Obiora
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events in this book
are used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, real businesses, places, events, or locales is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
“A Past That Breathes, You’ve Been Cruel Again, Let’s Try Again”
are used with permission of the publisher, A03 Music (ASCAP).
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:
Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013.
Set in Minion
epub isbn: 9781644282052
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request
For my mother,
Violet Odiso Obiora,
who gave absolutely everything to motherhood.
Contents
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Part Two
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
Acknowledgments
Part One
1
Footsie
Her stage name was “Footsie.” A songstress, she often left flyers at neighbors’ doorsteps inviting them to performances at local nightclubs and open mics they never went to, nor ever will. She was found dead in her two-bedroom apartment on Armacost Avenue in Los Angeles on January 6, 1995. At 2:00 p.m. that day, about three hours after her body was first discovered, a rash of police activity was all over Armacost Avenue. Police blocked off the entrance from Wilshire Boulevard to the north and Texas Avenue to the south and redirected traffic that did not reside on Armacost Avenue to other streets.
In this part of the city, a few blocks east of Brentwood and southwest of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, large or persistent police presence was considered a nuisance. Residents briefly came out onto their porches and leaned out of open windows to see what could possibly have called for this show of force, as they saw it. One man asked the officers why they were there and was respectfully told that a young woman was found dead on the floor of her bathroom. “Probably a drug overdose,” he passed on to his neighbors who assumed the police had told him that, but they had not. The police cordoned off the woman’s apartment with yellow tape and closed the main entrance to the building, allowing only tenants into the complex. Detectives Alvarez and Fritz arrived in an unmarked vehicle to take command of the investigation. A veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, Frank Alvarez had never held any other job in his adult life. Stephen Fritz had joined the police academy after college and made detective only recently. As they parked their car, an officer with a German shepherd on a leash came out through a drop-down iron gate on the south end of the apartment building.
“The garage is underground?” Alvarez asked the officer.
“Only part of it, just slopes down like it is going under but it’s on the same level.”
“You picking up something?” Alvarez asked the officer.
“She was,” the officer said, “but she lost it…in the garage.”
Alvarez followed the officer as the dog pulled him along to return to the garage. Fritz walked up the main entrance to the building.
“Where is her car at?” Alvarez asked.
“We don’t know which one yet,” the K-9 officer said.
“Who found her?”
“The apartment manager. Said she told him to go in and take a look at her sink garbage disposal, and when he went, he found her dead.”
“Ask him about her car,” Alvarez ordered, then rejoined Fritz and officer Tse, who was leading a team of forensic officers in the dead woman’s apartment on the second floor. One look at her lifeless body, lying half-naked on the floor of the bathroom, with her face turned up toward the ceiling, and Alvarez stopped in the short passageway to the bathroom.
“Don’t fucking tell me she was raped in this neighborhood?” Alvarez said to Fritz and Tse, who were behind him.
“She wasn’t,” Tse said.
“So, how’d she die?” Alvarez asked.
“If we rule out some kind of allergic reaction to something in the bathroom that could have killed her, then I think she was smothered.”
“He definitely thinks it’s a homicide,” Fritz said to Alvarez.
“Unofficially…” Tse added to the conversation between the two detectives. Alvarez and Fritz looked at each other as though to say that Tse should save his technicalities for the lawyers. They left Tse and continued to the bathroom. Tse returned to the adjoining bedroom. Another officer was in the bathroom placing markers on different objects, and a photographer was still taking pictures of the corpse. Both stopped what they were doing as Alvarez and Fritz stood at the door and observed. There was a slight stench in the air that had mixed with the many scented fragrances of a lady’s bathroom. She was five feet six inches tall with short hair that fell over half her forehead, a doll’s round face, a prominent nose, and big eyes.
“What’s her name again?” Alvarez asked.
“Footsie,” Fritz said.
“That’s her real name?”
“Goldie Silberberg.”
“We use that name,” Alvarez said and walked away impatiently. Fritz stood there briefly, looking down at the corpse. “Nice work, guys,” he finally said to the two men and left them.
Goldie’s bedroom was lavishly furnished but a modest space. Her bed was so disproportionate to the size of the room that for a moment the officers pondered how it was delivered through the narrow doors. Tse and an officer were busy examining items and going through them with gloved hands.
“You think she knows the person who did this to her?” Alvarez asked. Tse nodded.
“He didn’t have to force himself through the doors to get to her. And there was this…” Tse pointed to the trash can by the bedside in which were used condoms, tissues, and wipes. Alvarez stepped closer and looked.
“I thought you said she wasn’t…” Alvarez started to say to Tse as Fritz joined them.
“She wasn’t. This is all neat and tidy, like consensual stuff.”
“Don’t go to the other bathroom,” Tse warned Alvarez.
“Why?” Alvarez asked.
“The tile looks like it’s got some
prints we can lift.”
Alvarez went into the living room and walked out onto the balcony overlooking Armacost Avenue. There were two chairs made of interlaced belt-sized plastics wound around a metal frame and a small rustic wooden table. Standing on the balcony, Alvarez found himself looking into the apartment directly opposite him. The curtains there were pulled back, and he could see what was on the television in their living room. He put his head around the door and looked at Fritz, who was in the kitchen examining the sink.
“You come out here yet?”
“Nope,” Fritz shook his head and joined him. There was no one in sight in the other apartment directly opposite Goldie’s.
“You think they saw something?” Fritz asked.
“Let’s find out,” Alvarez said and, coming back into the living room, pulled the curtains on Goldie’s living room wide apart.
“You wanna talk to the manager first?” Fritz asked as they walked downstairs into a courtyard in the middle of the apartment building.
“He ain’t going nowhere, is he?”
The man who opened the door across the street was slightly built, average height, and in his thirties. He looked surprised to see Alvarez and Fritz at his door.
“Can we take a look out across from your balcony?”
“Sure,” he said and stepped aside. “I was just talking to my girlfriend on the phone about you guys.”
“Yeah, what about?” Fritz asked. Alvarez walked out onto the balcony.
“Is Footsie really dead?”
“Did you know her?” Fritz asked.
“My girlfriend did. She’s at work.”
Fritz lead him to meet Alvarez on the balcony.
“You can see clear through, if the curtain is open,” Alvarez said looking straight ahead at Goldie’s apartment.
“Yes,” their host said. “My girlfriend said she saw them arguing yesterday.”
Alvarez and Fritz turned simultaneously to him.
“She saw who arguing?” Alvarez asked.
“Footsie and her boyfriend.”
“You know her boyfriend’s name?” Alvarez asked. The young man shook his head.
“But he’s African American.”
“What’s your girlfriend’s name?” Fritz asked.
“Ola, Ola Mohammed. She’s Caribbean but naturalized.”
Fritz brought out a notepad and pen from his pocket.
“Can you give us your girlfriend’s number? We just need to ask her a couple of questions really quick,” Fritz said.
Then Tse appeared on Goldie’s balcony and whistled. When Alvarez and Fritz turned to him, he waved them over urgently. Alvarez left Fritz with their host, Ms. Ola’s boyfriend, and hurried out of the apartment.
“Rachel, the lady in that apartment,” Tse said pointing to an apartment two doors from Goldie’s as they stood at the entrance overlooking the courtyard. “She was very close to the dead woman, but she was no help when we got here. She was crying, and all confused. But she just came back while you guys were over there and said Goldie’s manager, not the apartment manager, but the music manager, he called and told her Goldie got a call from her ex before she started coming back last night. The manager thinks she was coming to meet her ex,” Tse told Alvarez.
“The ex got a name?”
“Paul, Paul Jackson.”
“We’re gonna need to rush those fingerprints in that bathroom, see if there’s a match to this ex.”
“I’ve got even better prints.”
“What?”
“Two beer bottles in the guest bedroom, one’s not even finished. The other’s in the trash can. Both got prints on them. And we’ve got something else you’ll wanna see,” Tse said and led the way back to Goldie’s bedroom. Alvarez watched as the uniformed officer working with Tse raised Goldie’s California King mattress at an angle to reveal an intricate web of wires funneled through a pipe from which they were connected to a device that looked like a computer modem.
“What the hell are those?” Alvarez asked.
“Looks like a sophisticated RFID that tracks shit, listens to them, and transmits them,” Tse explained.
“Where do you get shit like that?”
“Not Radio Shack, that’s for sure,” the uniformed officer working with Tse said. “We found these, too,” the officer said, holding up tiny microphones the size of almonds in a transparent evidence bag.
Alvarez grimaced and patted Tse on the back. “I’m gonna go see this Rachel. And call the manager.”
•••
Fritz returned from across the street to find Alvarez at Rachel’s, and they both left Rachel’s apartment briefly to talk.
“She’s a hottie, ain’t she?” Fritz said.
“More like a hot mess. What you got?”
“Yeah, this Ola lady did see them arguing. It looked pretty heated until someone walked into the room and he backed off.”
“You got the boyfriend’s name?” Alvarez asked.
“Paul Jackson,” Fritz said.
“That’s her ex.”
“No, that’s the boyfriend.”
“Same guy that owns a nightclub downtown?”
“Yes, Cool Jo’s Café.”
“Who walked in?” Alvarez asked.
“She thinks it was some other tenant. An older guy.”
“Find him!”
2
Usual Suspects
With a lead in the case and the weekend upon the officers, Alvarez had requested that the district attorney assign a deputy to the case before he left the crime scene. Senior Deputy DA Kate Peck was assigned, and she stopped by the crime scene at about 6:30 p.m. on her way home from court.
By 10:00 p.m. that night, Alvarez was at Kate’s house discussing a warrant to search Paul Jackson’s house.
“Did we find the man they said walked in on them arguing?” Kate asked.
“Not yet.”
“Who is he?”
“We think his name is Monsieur Arnot. He is the only tenant we haven’t talked to yet, and he’s an older man. Conrad, the apartment manager, also said he was close with the deceased woman.
“What are you going on for this search?”
“The two beer bottles in her guest bedroom. Looks like they had his prints.”
“Yes, someone saw him arguing with her that afternoon. So, he had a couple of beers before that argument.”
“Her manager said she got a call from him before she came back to the apartment. He says she was coming to meet him.”
“You’re still gonna need more than that—”
“To search his house?”
Alvarez was incredulous.
“You’ve got traces of drugs on her bedroom floor and a couple of used condoms with some blood smears on them in her trash can—neither of which we can tie to this Jackson guy yet, right?”
“Yes, and semen in the victim.”
“Excuse me? You checked that at the scene?”
“No, a nurse came to the morgue because forensics figured the autopsy might not be done quickly enough.”
“So, you’ve got semen in the victim and semen in the condom? Are you listening to what you’re saying?”
“Ma’am, the only way anyone goes to that apartment and kills that woman thinking they were going to get away with it is because they weren’t thinking. That’s why this son-of-a-bitch makes sense. He lost his shit,” Alvarez said.
“Look, I suppose we can get a search warrant with what you’ve got, but it is not gonna look good at trial. Let’s see what else we can get before we ask for the warrant,” Kate said calmly.
“Can we see if he’ll let us in without a warrant?” Alvarez asked.
“Be my guest.” Kate said.
•••
“Cool Jo’s Café was craw
ling with the undercover pigs,” the business manager told Paul over the phone on Saturday morning.
“If they come back tonight, call Kenny,” Paul said.
“I tried calling him. I left him messages at home and the office. I told that nigger a hundred times to get a fucking cell phone already.”
“You can’t fix Kenny, you best just let him be.”
“You want me to come over to the house, until we reach Kenny?”
“No, you got enough on your plate with the club.”
Kenny, or rather Kenneth Brown, was having dinner with friends at a half-priced sushi bar along the old Route 66 in Pasadena when he found out the police were looking for him. His mother had sent him an urgent message on his electronic pager, requesting that he call her back, and one of his friends offered him a cell phone to make the call. Kenneth had called from their table without excusing himself, but his countenance soon changed as he appeared to listen and he got up and left the booth. They could hear him shout into the phone before he was fully outside the restaurant.
“I can’t say I was at the club when I wasn’t. I am not a regular.”
Anthony Rayburn and his wife, Mary, Anthony’s sister, Cassandra, Jed Jensen and his wife, Tiffany, had known Kenneth since he arrived in Los Angeles three years previously. They were all lawyers, except Mary, who was an elementary school teacher. Every other weekend, they met and either went to a movie or had dinner and passed the time at one of their houses afterward. Infrequently, they went to bars and nightclubs.
“Everything okay?” Cassandra asked when Kenneth returned.
“The owner of this nightclub downtown is a person of interest in the murder of his girlfriend, and the club’s manager is trying to use me as one of his alibis.”
“This happened recently?” Cassandra asked.
“Thursday night, I think. They told the police I was at the club that night.”
“Where you?” Tiffany asked.
“Of course not.”
“Wait, is this the case near UCLA?” Cassandra asked. At twenty-nine years old, Cassandra was the youngest tenured professor at the University of California Los Angeles Law School.
“I don’t know,” Kenneth said.
“Do you know this guy well? The owner?” Cassandra asked.
“Not that well. We’re not buddies or anything, but sometimes we hang out at his club, and I have represented the club a few times. When my mother came to visit for this long stay, it turned out she had a connection with his family a long time back in Philadelphia.”