Flea Flicker

by David Chill

  “I can imagine.”

  “Yeah. Tyler knows football inside and out. Great play-caller. Knows how to use guys, insert what player at what time, knows what buttons he has to press to get the most out of them. You know. Some guys need a pat on the head, others need a kick in the tail. He could practically figure out a guy by just looking at him.”

  “That’s probably why he moved up fast,” I observed.

  “Big reason. But you know how a person’s biggest strength can be their biggest weakness? Tyler’s act was fake as hell. The guys figured out when Tyler was playing them and they shut down. After a while, the pats on the head were ignored as false flattery, and the kicks in the tail were answered with belligerence. I’ve been with him for a while. It took the guys on the Jets a couple of years to catch on. But once they did, the whole league knew about it. Players talk. With the Chargers, things went off the rails in a hurry. Players can sense when a coach is snowing them, they are street-smart beyond anything you can imagine. Maybe they’re not brain surgeons, but they can sniff out BS a mile away. It was okay when we won some games in the beginning. But you know losing breeds a nasty culture. And when we started losing last year, the team took a nose dive quick and never recovered.”

  At that point, a pretty, redheaded waitress came by and asked if we were ready to order. Riddleman immediately ordered a steak, baked potato, and two iced teas, both for himself. I asked the waitress what she recommended, and she told me the fish tacos were the best she’d ever had. That was good enough for me, along with a Coke. Just one.

  “Let me ask you about what happened with Tyler this week,” I said.

  “The homicide charge.”

  “Yeah.”

  Anthony Riddleman shook his head emphatically. “No way in hell. Tyler is a lot of things, some of it good, some of it bad. But that makes no sense. Cold-blooded murder? Of a politician? Can’t imagine it.”

  “Did Tyler have a temper?”

  “We all do, man. Tough to deal with the pressure without blowing a fuse once in a while. Yeah, I’ve seen Tyler go off on a few people.”

  “Anyone in particular?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Most of these flare-ups just blow over. Guys learn to let things go.”

  “Anything else? On a personal level? Hannah asked me to investigate, she doesn’t believe Tyler’s guilty, so anything you can share with me could be crucial.”

  Anthony Riddleman sat back and stared up at the ceiling. I couldn’t figure out if he was searching his mind for something or simply trying to decide if he should tell me what he knew. I figured it was the latter.

  “Look,” I continued. “Tyler’s facing life imprisonment and possibly the death penalty. Now’s not the time to hold back. Even if it’s unpleasant. Even if it’s something you ordinarily wouldn’t tell anyone. Remember I’m not the police, and I’m technically on Tyler’s side. Sometimes the smallest detail turns out to be important.”

  “All right,” he finally said. “But you can’t share it with Hannah.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tyler was cheating on her.”

  I stared at him. This wasn’t big news. “I got that impression,” I said slowly, knowing it was more than an impression since Tyler admitted it to me after his tongue got lubricated with the help of a few craft beers at eleven in the morning yesterday.

  Riddleman looked down at the table. “I’ve known them both for a long time, they’ve had an up-and-down relationship. Thought it might have been righted when they had Madison. But I’ve seen normal people do crazy stuff. I told Tyler he was nuts for stepping out on her. But some guys do what they’re gonna do.”

  I paused and looked at him, and then something suddenly occurred to me. “You think Hannah might have been cheating on him as well?”

  He threw up his hands. “Who knows, man. But I can’t see how that would lead to anyone getting killed. I mean why would it?”

  Our food arrived and we ate mostly in silence. I tried to process this, but mostly got nowhere. I changed the conversation to football, always an easier topic for most men. I reminded Anthony I had been a former coach, which led to the usual gossip of who was about to be fired, which coach was likely going where next season, and a bit of talk about how hard it was to move to L.A. My lunch was half the size of Riddleman’s and I probably finished it in a quarter the time. I asked about speaking with Ray Streams, not because I thought the quarterback would know anything about the murder, but because I was running out of people to talk with. The check arrived and I picked it up, got a receipt in case Hannah asked, which I doubted she would. Anthony thanked me for lunch, said he had a game plan to install for next week’s season finale for the Chargers, and departed.

  I had logged a full day already and it was only a little after 2:00 pm. I decided to head back to the office and think about whether anything I learned today was logical, useful, or might somehow congeal into a plausible scenario. This only meant that right now I had no decent leads to explore, no one else to speak with, and virtually nothing to go on.

  The afternoon drive on the 405 jammed up just past the Marina Freeway, and I exited at Venice and took Sepulveda the rest of the way. I drove past Babe’s and wondered if the same cast of characters were getting an early start this afternoon. I drove past Pico and just sneaked through the intersection when the light turned yellow. And that’s when it happened, the type of incendiary event that takes you by surprise, the way things tend to go on a lazy afternoon when you least expect it.

  It turns out I wasn’t the only one who was slipping through the yellow light at Pico, doing so at a speed just a hair beyond what the law allowed. Another car behind me did the same. But then we ran into a wall of stalled traffic and I needed to jam on my brakes in a hurry. The car behind me did the same, only his tires screeched and he needed to swerve to avoid rear-ending me. He hit his horn, which for years had been a very un-L.A. thing to do, but now it was de rigueur. Honking one’s car horn was becoming more and more socially acceptable as L.A. became more and more like New York: crowded, frustrated, and angry. I glanced at the wildly gesticulating driver in my rear view mirror and looked away. Nothing good comes from making a return gesture, especially the middle-finger salute, another move that’s become commonplace, and can signify a reason to declare all-out war.

  The other car, a five-year-old black Audi with a scratch along the right door, pulled alongside me, and I could see a couple inside arguing with each other. The man was driving, and he lowered the passenger window and yelled an invective past her and at me. I looked at him, smiled, and waved. Sometimes that diffuses things. Sometimes it does not.

  The Audi shot past my Pathfinder, swerved in front of me, and then jerked to a stop. The man got out and started walking toward me in a menacing manner. He had a shaved head and looked stout, the type of stout that came from lots of time at the gym. He wore a black North Face jacket, zipped partway up his chest.

  “Hey, what the hell’s the matter with you?!” he screamed. “You could’ve messed up my car!”

  I looked at him and said nothing. There was absolutely no benefit to getting out of my Pathfinder and engaging him. He was standing and I was sitting. He was already in the street and I would need to emerge from my vehicle. He would have the freedom to punch and kick at any angle, and I would have no defense other than my driver’s side door, which was not much of a defense. I said nothing and kept a placid expression on my face, which most likely served to embolden him further.

  “Come on!” he yelled. “Get out of there, you pussy! I’ll kick your ass!”

  The man punched my window, not hard enough to shatter it, but enough to heighten my senses. I put my hand on the .357 sitting snugly in my ankle holster, in the event the window did indeed break. But for me, carrying a gun was often a way to diffuse trouble, not ratchet it up. I briefly thought of brandishing my weapon, but when someone is enraged, that might or might not calm them down. It might even exacerbate the situation. For a brie
f moment, I thought Gail might be proud of the restraint I was showing.

  “Fucking faggot!” he screamed, as he finally walked away and climbed back into his Audi. But instead of leaving, he put his car in reverse and backed it into mine. Not hard, but enough to give a jolt. Whatever restraint I had been able to display had now vanished. We both jumped out of our vehicles at the same time and moved toward each other.

  “Finally decided to be a man, huh?” he yelled.

  “I could be a gorilla like you, but I don’t think I could get that stupid,” I said, balling my hands into fists, and glancing carefully around to make sure there weren’t any cars whizzing by closely.

  “Oh, you’re gonna get it,” he sneered, with the slightest hint of a smile. He took a few steps forward and threw an overhand right, a haymaker designed to be a one-punch knockout. I knew it was coming and side-stepped the punch, but it still grazed the side of my head. I recovered enough to drive my left fist into his solar plexus. He doubled over in pain and I hit him with a hard right to the nose. He yelped in pain and instinctively reached up to his face.

  I extended my arms and grabbed his jacket from behind his shoulders. Yanking it forward, I managed to pull half of the jacket over his head. It served to stand him upright, but it also pushed his jacket collar over his head. His arms were effectively immobilized as he desperately tried to throw some more punches, but they were awkward and spastic. I sensed some cars stopping to watch the spectacle as I moved out of his path. If nothing else, I wouldn’t get run over.

  The big man staggered awkwardly and tried to claw at me. His angry red face was barely peeking out from the jacket, but there was enough of a target there for me to reach. I smashed my fists angrily into his face with a left-right-left combination, waited a beat, and followed up with another hard right to the nose. His body slumped. I jerked his collar back down and punched him cleanly one more time, on the side of the temple, hard and fast and vicious. The big man grimaced as he collapsed into the street.

  I stood there for a brief moment looking at him. I glanced up at his car and saw the woman in the passenger seat holding her phone up. From the looks of it, she was recording the episode. I briefly thought of confronting her, but then I realized I wasn’t the one who started all of this. I hadn’t instigated a car accident, and I hadn’t thrown the first punch. A video can show many things, but it would be difficult to obfuscate what had just happened. I looked around and began to relax for a second, and felt pretty good about myself. And then my all-too-brief moment of calm evaporated into thin air when I heard the incredibly loud beep-beep-beep of a police siren. I looked up into the flashing red and blue lights of a motorcycle cop.

  The officer wore a black uniform, black jacket and white helmet. He dismounted his bike, spoke something into his lapel microphone, and ordered me to put my hands on top of my head.

  “I think you’ve got things wrong, officer,” as I complied with his directive. “I didn’t start this.”

  “Well, I’m finishing it,” he said smugly.

  “Look,” I said, growing a little wary. “It was self-defense. He attacked me.”

  The officer snapped a pair of handcuffs on me and twisted my arms behind my back as he clicked them together. They were tight and they stung. My wrists already began to hurt. It reminded me of a time, a decade earlier, when I had been arrested on a false charge and ended up spending a few nights in jail. It was the beginning of a hellacious period in my life, and I couldn’t believe I might have to deal with something like that again.

  “Don’t you think you should ask what happened before jumping to conclusions?” I shouted.

  He turned slowly and gave me a look. “I don’t need to ask anything. I saw the whole thing. You rear-ended that guy, you both got out of the car and then you beat the hell out of him. What’s the matter? Didn’t your Driver’s Ed teacher tell you you’re just supposed to exchange information, not punches?”

  I shook my head. “How close were you?”

  “I was close enough,” he responded, and he began to frisk me. He stopped when he got to my holster. “Well, well. What do we have here?”

  “I’m licensed to carry that.”

  “Sure you are. And I’ll give you plenty of time to come up with that piece of paper. But we’ll do it at the station house. That okay with you, tough guy?”

  I tried to think of a way to express my innermost thoughts in a manner that would not create more trouble than I was in already. Taking a trip to the police station, bound with handcuffs, was not how I planned to finish my afternoon. It was not how I planned to finish any afternoon.

  Chapter 8

  The holding tank at the Purdue Division was noticeably light this afternoon, as it often tends to be. Nighttime was when the men’s jail filled to capacity, as drunk drivers, muggers, male prostitutes, and other nocturnal creatures entered, most often after midnight. This afternoon the cell was host to a pair of burglars, a shoplifter, and a high school student who brought a pistol to school, in order to show someone the nasty consequences that came with asking out his girlfriend. What the student didn’t know was that today was the day the school imposed a random check on students’ backpacks, ostensibly to search for drugs. Discovering a firearm was an unexpected bonus. What was also unexpected was that the student grabbed it back, angrily pointing it at the security guard and earning himself a trip to jail.

  I didn’t request the one phone call I was entitled to, mostly because I wasn’t certain who to call. My wife the attorney would certainly take a dim view of my behavior, even though I had neither instigated nor inflamed the situation. But self-defense was hard to prove, and I had a feeling the woman recording the brawl inside of the black Audi was not going to be on my side.

  I thought of calling an attorney friend I had known for a while, but his specialty was slip-and-fall lawsuits, which meant he was more of a financial negotiator than someone well versed in criminal law. Most of the good lawyers in town were very expensive, and I needed to think this through. I even considered calling Cliff Roper, who might be willing to provide me with a referral; in his line of work, football-player clients occasionally wound up on the wrong side of the law. But I suspected he would be more concerned about why I hadn’t called him back, and why I hadn’t solved his problem. Listening to Cliff Roper give me grief was not something I felt like initiating just yet, especially not from behind bars. After a few hours, I was about to give in and call Gail when the jailor approached the cell and barked out my name.

  “I’m Burnside,” I said, walking toward him.

  He unlocked the cell and motioned me to come out. “Let’s go. Your lucky day. No charges filed.”

  “All right,” I said, curious about why I was being sprung, but sensing the answer to that question would be forthcoming soon enough.

  “You got some friends with juice,” he remarked as he led me down a nondescript corridor and into the police station. It was a path I had journeyed down plenty of times, but almost always as a proud police officer, not as a downtrodden suspect. I didn’t like the feeling. And my wrists still ached from the handcuffs.

  “Apparently I have a guardian angel,” I said.

  “Yeah. And he wants to talk with you, too,” he said, as he led me through a maze of cubicles and desks, finally arriving at a corner office, and leading me inside.

  “He’s all yours, Captain.”

  The beaming face of Juan Saavedra greeted me. He stood up, moved quickly around his desk, and reached out to shake my hand.

  “How you doing there, Champ?” he laughed. “Heard you had a little workout on one of my streets.”

  “Um, yeah, not quite how I planned on spending my afternoon.”

  “Life throws you curveballs, huh?” he smiled. I looked around for a chair, but there were none. It was not an omission, but rather a clear message Captain Saavedra wanted to send out to his visitors, mostly police officers. He was the one who sat, everyone else would stand. It made for short conversat
ions.

  “Well, you’re in a good mood,” I said. “I suppose I should thank you for releasing me.”

  “You absolutely should. But first tell me your side of the story.”

  “Pretty simple. Road rage on the part of one of our good citizens. Looked like he was having an argument with his wife. He couldn’t hit her, so I became a convenient target. He forced me off the road, and when I wouldn’t engage him, he backed into my car. At that point, I got out, and well, you know. Forced to defend myself.”

  “Yeah, I saw the video. Nice trick, pulling his jacket over his head. Haven’t seen that one since middle school.”

  I smiled. When someone bigger and angrier than you is coming at you fists first, with cars whizzing by, there isn’t a lot of opportunity to maneuver. Putting the assailant in an off-balance position and then trying to neutralize him was the best approach, albeit one that comes fraught with risk. If I hadn’t been able to pull the jacket over his head, the outcome of the fight could have been quite different.

  “The wife showed you the recording?” I asked.

  “Nah, and it wasn’t his wife, either. We had cameras stationed at the intersection. The arresting officer only saw part of the altercation. Look, there’s no privacy these days. Lucky for you. Not real lucky for Brutus there. He’s still over at UCLA Medical. That is until he’s released and we can book him.”

  “Oh? Do I get to press charges for assault?” I smiled.

  “In your dreams. There’s a warrant out for him. Apparently he forgot to show up to court for a bunch of traffic tickets. Guess it slipped his mind. But it gets better.”

  “You seem to be enjoying this,” I commented.

  “Beats most of my other duties today,” he laughed. “Turns out this guy’s trying to be a UFC fighter. The woman wasn’t his wife, she was some TV executive. They were trying to get him some publicity, some good PR for his next match. You know, up-and-coming fighter gets into an altercation with some schmuck who thinks he’s tough.”