The Bad Shepherd

by Dale M. Nelson

  Then black.

  Chapter Forty Six

  Rolles watched Shabazz fall. He just folded up, crumpled like a piece of paper. It was like looking on in slow motion: the draw, the three shots, and just a shocked grunt from Jamaal as he fell. The fall seemed to take forever, and there were no other sounds in the garage but the slowly fading echo of the gunfire. Marlon couldn’t even smell the burnt cordite or the lingering stink of refuse.

  Jamaal hit the ground in a pile of clothes and blood, and the world sped up. Ryan, and his man, the one who shot Jamaal, fired on the two of Marlon’s who were on either side of them. One of his in the front ducked behind a drum and returned fire while the fourth grabbed him and hauled him back. He was shouting something in Marlon’s ear, but he couldn’t quite make it out.

  “Damn it, Marlon, we got to go!”

  Rolles snapped out of it and turned to follow his man. He was still shouting, “Come on!” He reached out a hand and grabbed Marlon’s shoulder. The other man turned around to face him.

  “Get the others, get in the cars, and follow those motherfuckers. I want them dead.”

  The man looked confused. He reacted the way Marlon wanted him to react, his first and only instinct was to get Marlon to safety. He didn’t argue, but he clearly thought he should be getting the boss to safety.

  “I will see to Rafiq and Bobby. And Jamaal,” he said, softer than the others. “You go and get the others, get us some get back. Now!”

  The man nodded. He’d accepted his new mission, and Marlon could see the fire in his eyes; he wanted revenge as much as Marlon did.

  “What if they’re cops?”

  “Then I guess they’re about to learn there’s some chances cops shouldn’t take.”

  He sprinted down the hallway and out the front of the building. Marlon dipped into an office and made a call. Odell Otis owned Inglewood Hauling and Removal and used it to front a number of illicit endeavors, one of which was a massive auto theft operation that Marlon himself used to get clean vehicles. Like Marlon, Odell was OG, although his path to solid citizenry had taken a slightly different route, and he had avoided prison. As one could expect of someone who’d made a career in car theft, Odell knew how to make certain things disappear.

  “How much of a mess you leave me?” he asked amiably when Marlon identified himself.

  “They got the drop, man. I think they’re cops.”

  “Sheeeit. Couldn’t have been too much of a drop of you’re talking to me.”

  “Listen, man, they got Jamaal.”

  Odell was silent on the other end of the line.

  “God damn it,” he swore. “Marlon, I’m sorry.”

  “There ain’t time for that. This has to go away.”

  “I’m on it. How many?”

  “Jamaal is the only one killed. I got two more shot, but I think they’re OK. They’re soldiers. I want them patched and back out there.”

  “Done.”

  Marlon closed his eyes in the dark office. Outside the building, he heard the dim rattle of gunfire and the squeal of tires. His blood was still up, adrenaline coursing through his veins, but now that he had a moment to focus the realization that Jamaal was dead began to sink in. Marlon had to do right by him, by his people.

  “Odell, listen, with Jamaal. I don’t want him to sit on no slab or no hole in the desert. I want his people to know he was a hero. I want you to get a clean car, dark windows, all that. Find a street corner with no one around in a Crip hood, 60s or 30s, and set Jamaal on the ground. Fire four-five shots into the air and bug out of there. Find a pay phone, call 911, and tell him you heard shots fired and give the approximate address. You got me?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t understand. Don’t seem right just leaving the man there.”

  “You don’t have to understand, Odell. You just have to do. Call me at the foundation when it’s done.”

  Rolles hung up and left the office. He had to get out of here quick. Otis had people standing by for what they expected to be an entirely different clean-up job, and they’d be here within a few minutes. He ran back into the garage to check on Rafiq and Bobby before he split. Both were alive. The wounds weren’t going to kill them before help got there. Bobby was hit in the chest, and that would need attention fairly quickly. Rolles fashioned a compress out of Bobby’s t-shirt and told him to keep pressure on and that help was on the way. That done, he trotted over to the center of the room to Jamaal’s slumped form. He carefully laid his friend on his back. There was no dignity lying in a pile of blood and clothes. Marlon bent low and gently closed Jamaal’s eyelids with his hand.

  “I’m sorry, blood. I will get them if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  Rolles stood, eyes misty and his heart heavy. This was no way for Jamaal to go out. This was not what Marlon had promised him. Marlon had said they were going to die rich and on their own terms a long time from now, not on the dirty floor of some Inglewood garage under the stench of other’s people’s waste. He took one last look at his friend and walked over to Rafiq sitting up against the far wall.

  “How you feelin’, soldier?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “I know. You a fighter. Listen, I got people coming right now to look after you and Bobby. Give them your straps. They’re going to take care of Jamaal too. Later on, people may ask if you saw him today. You have not. You understand? He was not here.”

  “I got you.”

  Rolles gave him a solid, patted him on the shoulder, and stood to leave.

  Rolles started to walk away when Rafiq called to him. Rolles turned his head.

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Fo what?”

  “Guy, he got me first.”

  “No,” Rolles shook his head. “He’s police. He’s got more practice shooting niggas than you have shooting cops.”

  Rolles left the garage through the center door where that white cop had parked his Mustang. The warm summer night was filled with sirens now, though they were more distant than they had been. The order for his people to give chase wasn’t strictly motivated by revenge, though that was the balance. He was also keenly aware of the need to draw the authorities’ attention away from this here. Rolles knew his people were solid, and he took great pains to ensure none of his enforcers could ever be tied back to the foundation. If they were caught, they wouldn’t talk, and he retained a lawyer also with no ties to the foundation who would have them back on the street in a matter of hours. This would burn him with the Viking, though. Such is war. He’ll find someone else on the inside.

  A white Chevrolet Citation pulled through the gate and stopped a few feet from him. Two brothers got out; the driver nodded to Rolles. “You Odell’s people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got two alive and one dead.”

  “I understand. Odell told me everything.” He handed the Citation’s keys to Marlon. “This is clean; you can take it and get out of here. We’ve got another two on the way so we can do as you asked. Odell has a guy lined up to look at your boys. We’ll take good care of ‘em.”

  Rolles nodded. He didn’t thank them. They were well paid and he wasn’t in the mood to be magnanimous.

  Rolles got in the Citation, backed onto Hyde Park, and made for Crenshaw.

  He’d cool his heels in the office until he got the call telling him that Jamaal Shabazz was shot and killed. Rolles would tell them Jamaal was working with someone he was trying to turn away from the streets. Instead of choosing the righteous path, the coward shot him dead. Jamaal would be lionized. He’d be a martyr. That would draw a lot of attention to the foundation and all of it good, but they’d need to cool the operation for a time all the same.

  That was fine; they had to lie low regardless until this Olympic bullshit rolled over. He was set to speak with the P-Stones day after next and had already had words with Tookie in the Q. He could’ve gotten the audiences with the Crips, most were already his customers, but Tookie added weight. The larger issue was this
cop, Adler, and what to make of him. If he proved true to his word and they actually did get a pass, Marlon would need to retool certain aspects of his business, but he’d had a mind to do that regardless. If this cop were talking out of both sides of his mouth, then that would need to be dealt with like this Robert Ryan and his friend, a face that Marlon recognized but couldn’t quite place. They’d ripped him off and killed one of his own. That would be seen to as well.

  But those were problems for another time. Today, Marlon had to bury his dead.

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Bo remained unconscious for nearly eighteen hours.

  When he finally awoke at LA County General, he was amazed to find he wasn’t handcuffed to the bed. His nurse explained that he’d sustained several broken ribs and suffered a concussion. She also said she hoped making the light was worth it because he could’ve killed someone. Bo said it wasn’t like that. He was a private investigator and was working undercover when it went south. He was fleeing for his life. She told him it was pretty selfish to risk tens of lives to save his own. Bo knew she was right. He was reckless. His first instinct was always self-preservation, in whatever form that took.

  Bo didn’t tell her that if he hadn’t ran the light, the Rolles’ people would’ve caught up to him and there’d have been a shootout on a packed street at rush hour. The argument didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  Whoever he was working for had vouched for him to the hospital administrator because he was listed as a John Doe.

  Bo was eventually discharged, but since he didn’t have health insurance anymore, he was being hit for the entire bill, which was just over three grand. Bo had no money on him and no way to get any before the morning. He also didn’t have any clothes because his had been cut away in the ambulance. The nurse found a pair of jams and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt in the Lost and Found so that he’d have something to wear home. She said that’s all they had that would fit him but he couldn’t break the feeling she wanted him to look like an asshole. He was given a three-day supply of codeine, care instructions for his broken ribs, and sent on his way. He’d receive the bill in a few days.

  The only problem now was how to get home. Bo tried haggling with a few of the cabbies out in front of the hospital, but no one was willing to stake him on a ride all the way up to Hollywood.

  He called Kaitlin, collect, at home.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  “Yeah, I came out of it a few hours ago. Nurse said I could go home, though I think she was just happy to get rid of me. I’m a little light headed, not sure I should be walking around just yet.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “It only hurts when I move.”

  “Well, what do you expect?” she snapped. “You rolled your car four times and nearly took out a streetlight. You’re lucky to be alive. You could’ve killed someone, if not yourself.”

  “You can save the lecture,” he said in a weary voice. “I already got an earful from the nurse.” Bo realized he was being defensive and backed off. He’d given her a hell of a scare and it was manifesting itself. “I’m sorry, Kat. I didn’t mean that. Listen, I don’t have a way home. I don’t have any money for cab fare. Is there any way you could come pick me up?”

  She said she would, but it would be an hour or more to get down from Santa Monica.

  Bo paced the hospital lobby to pass the time. As his mind cleared he began to remember the events of the previous night with the chase and the crash. The car that he had so painstakingly restored after returning from Vietnam was destroyed. That car had been his healing process. Bo was never a gear head and had had to learn how to fix it. That in itself had been a kind of treatment. Now it was gone, a twisted wreck at a salvage yard.

  Gunshots echoed in his mind, the picture of Jamaal Shabazz folding in on himself froze like the afterimage on a TV screen. He’d killed a man. War was different; that enemy was faceless. Bo had fired from a helicopter. He’d never had contact with anyone he’d shot. Yesterday, he watched Shabazz die. He was a thug and a drug dealer. It was still a human life, a life that Bo Fochs took.

  Bo sank into a black pit as the full weight of what he’d done became apparent to him. He looked down at the orange tube in his hand. Without thinking, he popped the top and swallowed two of the tablets dry.

  Kaitlin arrived seventy minutes after they spoke.

  Bo pulled open the passenger door and eased himself in. He wasn’t feeling good, but was at least mellow. The codeine buffered what otherwise would’ve been searing pain in his chest.

  “Thank you,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here. I couldn’t get a cab for love or—well, I obviously don’t have any of the other.”

  “It’s no problem, Bo.” She pulled into traffic and headed north to Hollywood. “Do you remember what happened?”

  “I remember everything,” he said softly, eyes dimly focused on the world passing by through the passenger window. “Rolles,” Bo said at length and without preamble. “Set us up. I don’t know, maybe he suspected something, or maybe he just saw it as a chance to take out some competition.”

  “I heard about the accident from the police scanner we have at the station. I was hanging on it, listening for anything that sounded like the meeting.” Bo looked over at her for the first time since getting in the car. All of the color had drained from her face, and it was obvious that if she’d slept recently, it hadn’t been much.

  “When I heard shots fired in Inglewood, I thought you were dead.” Her voice wavered. “Then there was the report of the crash when they said it was a blue Mustang.”

  “I’m sorry I put you through that, Kat.” Bo’s eyes went to the blue plaid pattern of the throw-away shorts he was wearing. “Why am I not under arrest right now?”

  “You’re going to have to talk to the Inglewood Police soon, but I don’t think you have anything serious to worry about other than the accident. I poked around their station last night. They don’t have anything connecting you to the shootout, and they didn’t find anything in the car, but it’s obvious to anyone the two are connected. They were going to arrest you as soon as you woke up, but I explained that you’d been working for me as a private investigator, trying to catch a drug dealer on tape. I also told them you were a cop.” She sighed heavily. “Still, you getting in that crash probably saved your life. Inglewood PD said several cars turned around and sped off when they arrived at the scene. They asked if it were connected to you.”

  “Did you get the tape? Did Deacon get you the tape?”

  “I did and we listened to it. It doesn’t matter. It was dead on arrival.”

  “What do you mean? Of course it matters. That tape is everything.”

  “They’re not doing the story, Bo.”

  “What do you mean you’re not doing the story?”

  “Someone high up in the department called the station manager and I don’t know what was said, I wasn’t told, but the story is officially killed. I was also told, specifically, not to argue the point.”

  “What about the goddamn tape,” Bo shouted and immediately regretted raising his voice to Kaitlin.

  “The news director—and more importantly our lawyers—don’t think that you can conclusively prove that it’s Rolles on the tape. They said it could be anyone.”

  “Oh, that’s bullshit. We need to—”

  Kaitlin smacked her right palm on the top of the steering wheel with a sharp, sticky “pop”. “Its over, Bo.”

  She pulled into Bo’s driveway, and she put it in park but kept the engine running. The sky above was a burnt orange and fading quickly to indigo. The lawn, normally shaded, was completely dark and was beginning to look shaggy. Bo’s jeep was parked out front.

  “I’ve told you this before, this thing is an obsession. My station was your last hope and when I told you they weren’t going to do anything with it your first thought was to protest even that. The thought of accepting it didn’t even come into y
our mind, you just reacted.” Kaitlin breathed out.

  She shifted in her seat, turned to look at him and Bo caught a trace of the perfume she’d worn to work. All that was left of it was the ghost of something that smelled like flowers.

  “I thought, hoped, that when this was over, however it worked out, you’d be able to put it behind you. Move on. I realize now that you can’t. Not until you win on your terms.” She blinked away hot tears and tried to avoid Bo’s gaze. “When I met you at that coffee shop, you were so earnest. You had conviction. I thought you were trying to right a wrong. You were on a path because that’s what you believed was right.”

  “I was trying to right a wrong,” Bo said. “He’s a cancer. The things he’s doing to this city are beyond words.”

  “Do not give me the speech again,” she said, her voice hard through the sobs. “I didn’t realize how you were until after Mitchell walked out. I should have seen your obsession for what it was. Then, you called up a different drug dealer.” She waved her left hand frantically. “Just so you could catch the other one.” She waved her right hand some space away. “Do you know how insane that is? I should’ve run then. But I wanted to believe in you. I wanted this to be what saved you. I hoped, that if you went through with it you would find your closure.” Kaitlin looked up at the roof of the car. “I saw what was happening to you, what you were doing to yourself, and it was breaking my heart. I went along with it because I hoped that would pull you out of it. I wanted to see the Bo Fochs that I believed was waiting on the other side. But I realized, that maybe there isn’t another side. There is just you, and there is just this, and it’s something I can’t be a part of.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “No,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “It’s not. Not for you. As soon as you walk in that door tonight, you’re going to go through your files and think about how you can come at him again.”

  “Kat,” he whispered.

  “I have to go,” she said almost breathlessly. “Please get out.” Her voice broke into sobs.