by David Chill
I found a Starbuck’s nearby, sipped a grande Christmas Blend, and wondered at what point they’d stop serving this seasonal roast. Probably the day after Christmas. I thought about Gail and wondered who had approached her. I found my fists clenching involuntarily, and tried to think about something else. I looked around the shop and saw there were about twenty people seated, a few talking, but most were quietly hunched over computers or phones. I was the only non-Asian there, but somehow I didn’t feel terribly out of place at all. We were connected in a more important way, we were all Angelenos, and that seemed to trump ethnicity. In L.A. a lot of people came from somewhere else, and even natives like me, born and raised in Culver City, were forced to mesh. It eventually became a non-issue. You accepted it or you left. There was no other option.
Koreatown was, if nothing else, centrally located. I was close to USC, and given my proximity, I decided to see if I could talk to the perpetrator, or perhaps victim of the burglary incident involving Patrick O’Malley and Fili Snuka. At the very least it would take my mind off of Gail for a little while. I looked up the address Juan gave me, and discovered the man, Tristan Lopez, lived about eight blocks from the intersection of Adams and Hobart. Almost within walking distance. Or running distance.
I drove south on Normandie Avenue, but instead of the growing sense of optimism that greets Koreatown visitors with its shiny new buildings and well-maintained strip malls, the area south of the 10 Freeway was a hodgepodge of urban blight. Shuttered storefronts, graffiti-marred buildings and shops with hand-painted signs littered the landscape. Turning east onto Adams provided little relief; instead of dingy retail outlets, the neighborhood gave way to shoddy apartment buildings. The few private homes I passed were surrounded by white metal fences featuring sharp, pointy sticks, designed to deter potential thieves from jumping over and helping themselves to whatever meager valuables lay inside. This was a few miles away from the historic West Adams district, which featured lovely 1930s gingerbread houses and Craftsmen homes. The only thing that the West Adams neighborhood had in common with the one I was driving through was the name of the street. To say the least, it was depressing.
The address I had for Tristan Lopez brought me to a decrepit, two-story apartment building about a block south of Adams. It was a prefab stucco structure, poorly maintained and painted a shabby-looking pale yellow. Iron bars were hammered across all of the windows. A broken bottle lay shattered in the front doorway. Some ranchera music wafted out of an open window on the first floor. I climbed the uneven and filthy staircase, and knocked on a door that had a black decal with number 4 glued onto it, the upper-right corner of which had begun to peel off. The door opened, and a slender young man faced me. He had light brown skin, looked to be part Hispanic, part African-American, and he had bruises along the side of his face and a cut on his lower lip. He wore an undershirt and a pair of shorts, and he looked like he had just rolled out of bed.
“Tristan Lopez?” I asked.
“Um, well, yeah,” he said haltingly, either because he was surprised a stranger would know his name, or because he was grappling with that elusive question himself. “What’s up?”
He looked like he was in his early twenties, about the same age as Patrick and Fili, but with a far different future in front of him. Kids who grew up in this neighborhood and wanted out either studied hard or played sports. The majority did not escape, and they wound up sinking into the same decay, parenting another generation of kids who would follow a similar pattern. Poverty was a cycle. People had the potential to break out of its grasp, but most never managed to. Some just didn’t know how; others just didn’t care enough.
I flashed my fake badge. “I’d like to talk about what happened to you recently.”
“What do you mean ‘happened’?” he asked warily.
“You know,” I said patiently. “At Hobart Street. With the guys you say beat you.”
“They did beat me,” he said indignantly. “Beat my ass pretty good. Like I told those other fuckers. The ones that took the report.”
I pointed to the door. “Mind if I come in?”
He shook his head no. “My grandma’s sleeping.”
“Okay,” I said, figuring not many neighbors in an apartment building like this would be concerned about a resident being questioned by someone with a badge about a crime in the area. This was de rigueur in some communities, barely worth noticing.
“You going to arrest those punks?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, well aware I did not have the authority to do more than make a citizen’s arrest, something that would be a laughable gesture here. “Tell me what happened. And don’t lie, I’ll know it.”
“Hey, look,” he began. “I was just doing my job.”
“Right,” I said, wondering what job might include breaking and entering, and boosting valuables as part of the requirements. “Who do you work for?”
“This magazine company. I was selling subscriptions.”
“And you knocked on the door at that house on Hobart.”
“Yeah. Well, sort of.”
“You sort of did or you sort of didn’t?” I asked.
“The door was partway open. Yeah, I knocked, but maybe not loud enough. It swung open, so I walked inside and asked if anyone was home.”
“Go on,” I said, not mentioning that he had just admitted to breaking the law. Entering a premise uninvited where you didn’t know the occupant is called trespassing.
“Yeah, I walk in and ask if anyone’s home. Said hello a bunch of times. Heard some noise in the bedroom, I figured I’d check it out. Nothing wrong with that, I figure. Then all of a sudden, this really big dude jumps me and starts pounding on me. Hawaiian guy or something. Damn, but he was big. Then another big dude grabs me and they take me downstairs and tie me up in this chair. Couple of others joined them. Kept asking me what I thought I was doing. One of them burned me with cigarettes.”
“This is all because you walked into someone’s house.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You didn’t try and steal anything?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t try climbing out of window?”
“No. They went and stomped me. They didn’t have to act like that. If they didn’t want me there, they should have just told me to leave. I would’ve left. Simple as that.”
“You take something? Anything at all?”
“Like I says, man, I was only in there for a minute when they grabbed me.”
“They said you took things.”
“I says I didn’t.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. These were the worst cases for me. Two sides of the story, each different, each plausible. No other witnesses, no evidence, just two versions of the same story, and you didn’t know who was lying. When I was with the LAPD, we’d sometimes bring both sides to the station house, put them in separate rooms, and drill them for a while. Make up some nonsense that we found a video proving they were lying. Occasionally that was enough to get one of them to come clean and change their story. Sometimes you could physically see it in their eyes that they were lying. When they clung to their version though, it often meant they were telling the truth. Not always, but enough of the time. Unfortunately I didn’t have the luxury of having these resources, and I suspected the police didn’t have the time or patience to go through this, either. Maybe they just didn’t care. Football players at a major university were often given the benefit of the doubt. Celebrity had its share of perks.
“They said you stole some things,” I told him. “Money, electronics. Some jewelry.”
“No, man, like I told the other five-ohs. I didn’t take anything, they just beat me up for nothing.”
“Other five-ohs?” I asked, knowing that was ghetto slang for police.
“Yeah, and they didn’t do shit. I went to the papers, they put something in the Times last week. But then it’s like everyone forgets about it. Nothing changes. It’s like we don’t matter down
here.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and watched Tristan Lopez carefully, his anger starting to rise.
“Don’t worry,” he snarled. “I got a few more cards to play.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What are those?” I asked him apprehensively.
“This dude in my ‘hood, his cousin plays for the Raiders. He says if any of those guys go to the NFL then he’d let them know what happened. They tell me the NFL won’t put up with none of that.”
“Okay,” I said. “Anything else you got up your sleeve?”
“I might call my homies. I know where these punks live. Obviously. You cops never do anything, so maybe we go fix this on our own. This is our ‘hood, not theirs. They need to be taught a lesson. Learn some respect. You just don’t pull that bullshit on us and get away with it. It’s not like I did anything to them.”
I took a breath. This was not an uncommon form of justice in neighborhoods like this, where violence served as a perfectly acceptable substitute for financial litigation. Differences were settled with guns, or the threat of using them. We were eight blocks from Hobart Street, and about a mile and a half from the USC campus. But for all intents and purposes, we were in another country, in another part of the world. The laws were the same, but the rules were not. And the interpretation of justice was immensely different. When I was a patrol officer, I once ran into a woman whose boyfriend had been murdered outside their apartment building a month earlier. I asked if the killer had been caught and she surprisingly said yes. When I asked when the trial would be, she looked at me long and hard, finally saying the matter had been settled privately. She didn’t need to say any more. Justice had already been meted out.
“Okay, look,” I said, handing him my card. “Don’t go taking any action, yet. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t arrange any meetings or whatever you call them. I’ve got an idea. Might work out really well for everyone. Especially you. I think I can negotiate something.”
“How you going to do that?”
I looked into his hardened eyes. “Can you just give me a few days?”
He stared back at me, and for a brief, fleeting moment, he seemed to soften. He looked down at my card. “Burnside, huh? If you’re thinking you can do something for me, well, okay. You got a few days. I just don’t know how you’re going to fix this.”
I thanked him and left, not bothering to tell him that I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to fix this, either.
Chapter 10
I drove by the dilapidated Hobart Street house, thought briefly of getting out, but finally decided against it. The residents were most likely out, possibly studying in the library or taking final exams, but there was a better chance they were simply pumping iron at the McKay Center and swilling energy drinks. More importantly though, I had not mapped out any sort of a cohesive plan to get Fili and his teammates out of trouble. I had vague ideas, a few what-if thoughts, but nothing fully formed, and nothing that was worth sharing without being more thoroughly fleshed out and vetted. I decided to turn back to my main case, and also decided, with my grumbling tummy letting me know it was close to empty, that it was time for lunch.
Fortunately, my other client was available and suggested a downtown eatery near where she was finishing a meeting. If nothing else, I was being fuel efficient with my Pathfinder. Lunchtime traffic was starting to build, and I figured I’d wait until the mid-afternoon window allowed me to make the drive back home in a reasonable time. Like many Angelenos, I was cursed with having to rearrange my time due to traffic. Unlike a lot of Angelenos, my schedule had some flexibility.
Hannah Briggs was seated at a small table at the back of Bottega Louie. This was not my kind of restaurant, and not just because it didn’t focus on burgers, pastrami or Chinese food. Bottega Louie was a crowded Italian restaurant with an entrance that boasted a gift shop, and it also flaunted brightly colored French macarons in a glass-enclosed pastry case. The dining room was very pretty and very loud. It was painted stark white from floor to ceiling, with white patterned tile on the floor, and white-and-gray-marble tables. Even on a bleak day, the interior was as bright as you could imagine.
I had been to Bottega Louie before, and the food was okay but it was quite possibly the loudest restaurant I had ever eaten in, the acoustics could well have been designed by a rock musician. It was exactly the kind of place we loved taking Marcus to when he was a baby, because any loud infant wailing was quickly drowned out by the din of the chattering restaurant guests. On this day it was more of a roar. The idea of having a talk about a sensitive subject in this environment made me uneasy. But as we sat down, I discovered the brilliance of the place. Not only was it so loud that we’d have some trouble hearing each other, it was so loud that the people sitting at the next table would never pick up a word.
“Hello,” I shouted, slipping into a seat across from her. Hannah was dressed in a light blue business suit with a white top. Her platinum blonde hair shined. She fit in well here, a polished professional in a room full of polished professionals. I wasn’t that sure about myself, but I tended to not fit in well anywhere.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m glad you could make lunch. I was planning to call you today.”
“It worked out well. I was in the neighborhood. Sort of.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Just finished meeting with a defense attorney. Tyler’s situation is not looking good. And he’s not doing well with it. Anger, shock, fear, depression, all rolled into one. He went out drinking again last night. And again he didn’t come home. This time I didn’t bother to call you. He’s probably sleeping it off in his car.”
I was not entirely sure what to say to her. It was a very tough future he was facing, and the thought of a long prison sentence that a guilty verdict could bring would make anyone agitated. And if he were indeed convicted, a long stretch in the pen was actually not the worst scenario.
“I understand the police have some evidence. And an eyewitness placing him at the scene.”
Hannah nodded. “I heard. No one in the City Attorney’s office would confirm it, but my lawyer found that out, too. They discovered Ty’s baseball cap. Oh, I don’t know why he insisted on wearing that stupid thing. And his fingerprints on the gun makes no sense.”
“Do either of you own a firearm?” I asked.
“No, that’s the thing. Tyler’s never been interested in guns. It just doesn’t add up that he would even be at Glasscock’s office. They had nothing to do with each other.”
I looked at her and pondered how to ask the unaskable question. Whether or not my pretty client was having an affair with the late city councilman. Whether her behavior had elicited a raw emotion in her husband that propelled him to go take care of family business, be it for pride, anger, revenge, or a deluded sense of street justice. In some societies, this type of retribution was acceptable; in more civilized ones, we follow the rule of law, which sometimes means you take your lumps and move on.
The waitress came by at that moment to ask what we’d like. I glanced down at the menu in time to see Hannah order a twenty-dollar salad and an iced tea. I ordered a pasta dish that I could barely pronounce, along with a Coke. The waitress smiled, collected our menus and thanked us.
“Okay, I need to ask you something that’s a bit sensitive,” I said. “It may be uncomfortable for you.”
“You mean was I screwing Colin Glasscock?”
I looked at her. “Well, maybe it won’t be that uncomfortable.”
Hannah Briggs’s mouth tightened. She had on pink lipstick that blended well with her outfit, but not with her demeanor. “The answer to that question is a decided no. And you’re not the first to bring that idea up. I’d met Colin and I’ve talked with him briefly. He insinuated he’d like to get to know me better. I deflected his advances. That’s as far as it went.”
“Were you screwing anyone else?” I asked, not so sensitively this time.
Her mouth opened briefly and then snapped shut. She glared at me for a
long second. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because I’m trying to figure all of this out. And there are some big pieces missing.”
She looked down. “We don’t have a perfect marriage.”
“No one does,” I said, not liking the answer that was hovering in front of me.
“We’re not even close. And I can assure you, Tyler has done ten times the damage to our marriage than I could ever dream of.”
“So, who are you having an affair with?” I asked politely.
Hannah Briggs’s eyes widened and sparks started to fly out of them. “I don’t like where this is going. I don’t like your questions. Especially since I’m the one who’s paying you. And paying you quite a bit, I should add.”
“And I don’t like wasting my time or your money. I don’t need total transparency, but this has gone well past a simple case of ‘my husband got drunk and didn’t come home last night.’ It’s morphed into the assassination of a public official. So you’ll excuse my manners if they come off as impolite and my questions if they come off as nosy. But you’re holding back something that only implicates you and does nothing to help Tyler. If that’s your goal.”
“My goal?” she exclaimed. “My goal is to get my husband off from a crime I’m convinced he didn’t commit. Tyler’s a lot of things but he’s not a killer.”
I kept my mouth shut for a moment, I thought of what Gail had said, and I agreed with her. Everyone has the capacity to kill if placed into certain situations, and it doesn’t always emanate from self-defense. There are psychological triggers that can be activated with the right words or the right actions. We all have a level of rage inside of us, and I’d seen a few people who came off as the mildest, meekest individuals end up committing some of the most heinous crimes when their tolerance levels were surpassed.