Flea Flicker

by David Chill

  “Mmmm,” came the happy response.

  A middle-aged man sitting next to us watched Marcus with interest. “You look like a very sophisticated sushi eater,” he said.

  “What’s that mean?” Marcus asked, scooping up a few more salmon eggs.

  “It means you’re adventurous.”

  “Yup,” he answered, more focused on eating than making conversation. I recalled a conversation Gail and I once had with Marcus about being wary of talking to strangers. I wasn’t sure if that lesson had resonated deeply, or if he was simply more focused on the dinner in front of him.

  I turned to Gail. “How was your day?” I asked, careful to make sure Marcus was engaged with dinner and not listening to us talk shop. In our household, the family business was fighting crime, but that often involved discussing the thornier aspects, ones that were wholly unsuitable for a five-year-old to hear.

  “Oh, finishing one case, starting another. The first one was easy. This thief accosted a truck driver in a fast food parking lot. I guess he saw an Apple logo on the truck and figured the driver was carrying a load of expensive cargo. He was. Crates of new iPhones. He thought he hit the jackpot, those devices are worth a small fortune. He didn’t realize something, though. Know what it was?”

  “Hmmm,” I said, picking up a piece of yellowtail with my chopsticks and dipping it into some wasabi-laced soy sauce. “The iPhones had GPS on them?”

  “They do. And what shocked the thief was that once the truck driver called it in to his boss – and note that he called his boss before he called the police – the boss turned on one of the iPhones remotely, and activated the tracking.”

  “And then he called the police,” I said.

  “Yes. The LAPD simply had to drive over to the garage that the thief pulled into. Imagine how shocked this guy was. He had arrived just ten minutes earlier. He was smoking a cigarette, he figured he had some time to unload.”

  I took another bite of yellowtail. Nice and rich. I looked over at Marcus, still pulling salmon eggs out one by one and rolling them around in his mouth. It reminded me of when I had alphabet soup as a child. I was more concerned with spelling out words, and my mother had to keep reminding me to eat.

  “And are they pleading innocent by reason of stupidity?”

  “We’re doing a plea bargain. Prisons are beyond max capacity, but I think they’ll still serve time.”

  “Good.”

  “That was an easy one,” she continued. “My current case is trickier. Two brothers. They’d go to a Home Depot, load up two carts with expensive product, but both carts were identical. One would pay for his and go put it in his truck. Then he’d go back to the store and hand the brother his receipt. The brother would go to Returns and say his client cancelled on him and he needed his money back. The brothers effectively got the items for free.”

  “Ingenious,” I marveled. “How’d they get caught?”

  “They hit up the same Home Depot three times this month. Someone finally caught on.”

  I smiled. “Imagine if these brothers would only have put their talents toward good and not evil. They’d probably be running Home Depot by now.”

  “For some it’s the thrill of the game,” she said. “How are you doing? I heard about Tyler. The whole thing makes no sense. Why would he take his own life?”

  “I know. Juan’s sure it’s not a suicide. Forensics is confirming, but it looks like he’s right. I called him a little while ago. No powder burn on Tyler’s hand, no gunpowder residue near the wound. It’s dressed up to look like a suicide but it’s not.”

  Gail frowned. “I was talking with someone at Arthur Woo’s office yesterday. They had heard something about Tyler having left with some blonde at the Alibi room the night Colin Glasscock was killed. I guess that’s about the last thing Tyler remembered before he blacked out. And I’m wondering if that blonde had something to do with Tyler ending up on the street this morning. If this was indeed a homicide, whoever did it might have been covering their tracks.”

  I nodded. “You’ve got some good detective chops.”

  “Why thank you sweetie.”

  “What do you think of Hannah Briggs?” I asked absently, mostly because she was blonde and attractive.

  Gail stopped for a moment. “I don’t know,” she replied. “She was friendly with the councilman.”

  “Could she have been having an affair with Glasscock?” I asked.

  “Hard to say,” she admitted. “Not to be crass, but the rumor mill said Glasscock walked around with an open fly. He was supposedly generous with his affections.”

  “That’s what I’m hearing, too,” I said, starting to wonder if there was a single soul in city politics who wasn’t having an affair with someone. “And when Glasscock was shot, it happened at point blank range, meaning this was probably an act of passion. Maybe revenge, jealousy. If Tyler had done it, it might well have been the work of a cuckolded husband. Pretty sure Hannah was having an affair. Just not sure with whom.”

  “Oh?”

  “Let’s just say that when I asked her, she didn’t admit it but she didn’t deny it, either.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “You’ve had quite a busy day today.”

  “It just keeps going. And there’s another thing,” I said, feeling a bit of trepidation coming through in my voice.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I met with Arthur Woo this morning.”

  “Ah. The rising star of L.A. politics.”

  “Yes,” I continued. “He’s quite a bright guy. Ambitious, too. He said he thinks you have a career in politics. He said he can spot ambition in others.”

  “I don’t know about entering politics. It’s an option, but it’s a life changer.”

  “Sure. But Arthur also told me something else. Said that you’ve gotten some, ah, other types of offers. Of the romantic kind.”

  Gail turned and gave me an odd look. “Oh? He told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  Gail nodded. “I’ve gotten offers. A lot of women get them. It’s nothing. I turn them all down.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “It’s a complication that comes with being a beautiful woman.”

  “That’s nice of you to say,” she answered. “But it’s not about beauty. A lot of women get hit on at the office. Looks aren’t always it.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Power. Ego. Some just want to have another notch on their belt. I’ve heard it said that some men do it because they want to live forever. I never understood that.”

  I shrugged. “Me neither. But I’m glad you’ve turned them all down. Arthur told me I had nothing to worry about. But of course, that just made me start to worry.”

  At that point I felt Marcus tug at my sleeve.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, Marcus?”

  “Why would someone walk around with their fly open?”

  I looked at Gail and she looked back at me. Neither of us had a good answer ready. And I sensed we both started to silently reconsider having these types of conversations within Marcus’s earshot.

  Chapter 12

  I awoke just past dawn and, as is my habit, turned toward the bedroom window to get a glimpse of what the day would be like. I didn’t need to look past the rectangular panes of glass to see droplets of water sliding down. The weather app said today would be gloomy and wet, and it looked like it was right. I moaned to myself and rolled out of bed quickly. If there was one thing I needed to do to avoid making my morning a full-on disaster, it was to jump on the freeway before everyone else.

  There was a drive-through window at a nearby Coffee Bean. Their dark roast was lacking in boldness, but they made up for it with speed and convenience. The 10 Freeway had some minor slowing even before 7:00 am, but the Harbor Freeway was gloriously open as I sailed south, away from the crowded downtown interchange. I exited the Harbor at Century Boulevard and turned toward one of the most infamous neighborhoods in Los Angeles. />
  The Watts riots in the 1960s put that community on the map forever. Prior to the uprising, the area was known mostly for the Watts Towers, an Italian artist’s tribute to garbage, a sky-high series of cylindrical sculptures, decorated with all sorts of throwaways like broken pottery, dented bottle caps, and random shards of glass, items that would most likely be tossed into a recycling bin these days. Watts had morphed into a black neighborhood back after World War II, and while it was still perceived that way, even by many Angelenos, the reality was that the Watts of today was populated mostly by Hispanics.

  I drove about twenty blocks until I reached Grape Street and turned right. I came across the address for Teresa’s apartment building a few blocks away. It was a standard nondescript, beige two-story building, the kind of building that was ubiquitous in the Southland. The steel security gate was relatively new, painted black, with wire mesh preventing anyone from sticking a hand through and opening it from the outside. Iron bars covered all the windows, even the ones on the second floor. It looked impenetrable from the outside, but access proved easy when a resident exited on their way to work, and simply held the door open for me.

  While Teresa’s driver’s license only gave the street address with no apartment number, this problem was easily solved by scanning the brass-colored mailboxes. Not all were identifiable, but some held scraps of paper with names scrawled in ink. One or two mailboxes did not have locks on them, and were slightly ajar. But I did find the Ortiz name, and it was right above the box marked with a number 7. My lucky day. I walked down the hall, rang the bell that did not work, and then knocked. It opened a few seconds later. Teresa Ortiz was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, and two small children were seated at the table behind her, eating cereal.

  “Hello, Teresa,” I said.

  Her mouth opened and stayed open. Her eyes darted, first looking behind me to see who I was with, then behind her at her children, and then back at me. For a fleeting moment I thought she’d slam the door in my face.

  “Wait,” I said, putting my hand up. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Señor! Soy inocente!”she exclaimed.

  “Again, I’m not with INS. This has nothing to do with immigration.“

  She stared at me. I continued.

  “You remember me from last week.”

  “Si. At … motel.”

  “I’m the one who told you to give the syringe to the officers.”

  “Si. I gave to the manager, señor,” she said. “I no go back there. I am sure he give to the policia. My friend told me. She still there.”

  “I know. But I need to find out more about the woman. The one who was in that room where you found the syringe.”

  Teresa shook her head. “I never saw woman. I leave at las seis en punto. Six o’clock.”

  “Who would know about that woman. Who worked late last Friday night?”

  Teresa shook her head. “Maids leave by seis. The manager would know. His name is Vidur. He the only one still there. He always there.”

  I took a breath. Vidur had been about as helpful as a sixth finger, and there was no reason to assume a return visit would change any of that. I thought of asking him for a list of the guests that night, but I doubted Vidur would give that up without a stack of fifties. I decided to try something else.

  “So who might know her?”

  “Como?”

  “Might there have been any motel guests who could have seen that woman? Any regulars?”

  Teresa thought about this for a moment before replying affirmatively. “Si. There is one couple. They come every Friday. They always come at five.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  Teresa looked down. “He is married. She is not.”

  I smiled. “No, no. I mean, do you know their names, what they look like.”

  “I no have names. But they are older. Forty, maybe. I hear they have been going there for years. The other maids tell me. Same night each week. Same room. Every week.”

  “What room do they stay in?”

  “Veintiuno.”

  “And what number is that?” I sighed.

  She licked her lips. “It is … twenty-one.”

  I reached into my wallet and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. She had been more helpful than Vidur, but at this point my expense report was going to go unpaid. Life was not fair.

  “Gracias, señor,” she said gratefully, as she pocketed the bill.

  “De nada,” I said, and watched her carefully. “So, you stopped working at the Snuggle.”

  “Si, señor. I quit.”

  “Oh. Why’d you do that?”

  She bit her lip. “Too many policia last week. That no good for me. I feel nervous. I don’t feel safe around policia. You know.”

  “What else can you tell me? It’s important.”

  She shook her head and looked back at her kids. “That’s all I know, señor.”

  I nodded and realized I wasn’t going to get much more from her. Teresa was like a lot of immigrants, here illegally, trying to earn money and trying to stay out of trouble. In some circles, a police presence provided reassurance; for Teresa, the police meant trouble. With two children, she was going to do what she could to avoid the authorities, even if it meant quitting her job. But in her world, earning mostly minimum wage, jobs were not hard to find. There was always an employer somewhere who needed cheap help. I thanked her and left.

  After checking my traffic app, I saw that cars on the road had already coalesced into full gridlock, helped in part by the light sprinkling of rain coming down. I wasn’t terribly far from USC, about twenty minutes, but the drive there would flow evenly as long as I stayed off the Harbor Freeway and took surface streets. I thought this might be an opportune time to catch a few football players before they left their house, and, quite possibly, before they even woke up.

  I drove up Broadway, passing not only a wide variety of rundown apartment buildings and dicey retail outlets, but a large number of churches as well. It is perhaps not surprising that the worse the economic conditions of a neighborhood, the greater the need to pray for something better. In the five years I worked as a patrol officer in the Broadway Division, I did not see life get any better for residents here. If anything, it had gotten worse.

  Hobart Street was quiet, and I parked midway down the block. The house looked in even more disrepair on a murky morning like this, and the sparse patch of dirt that served as a front yard was depressing. The only thing different from my last visit was what appeared to be a gang-related splash of red graffiti on the front wall, a marking that probably meant something to a group of local thugs, but may have gone unnoticed by the residents. I knocked on the door, and as anticipated, after no answer in the first sixty seconds, began banging loudly.

  “Okay, okay,” came a tired voice as I heard a deadbolt lock being turned. The door opened, and a sleepy looking college student, who barely seemed twenty-one, blinked and tried to focus on me. He was attired in a cardinal t-shirt and white boxers, his torso thick and trunky, although he might have come off as more physically imposing had he been alert.

  “Yeah, what is it?” he asked sleepily.

  “Let me guess,” I said, not guessing at all. “Patrick O’Malley. You’ve grown quite a bit since high school.”

  He tried to process what I was saying but could only blink a few more times and answer with a one-word response, along the lines of “Huh?”

  “I’m Coach Burnside,” I said. “I helped recruit you to SC a few years ago.”

  A dim sense of recognition began to appear, and the slightest hint of a smile crossed his face. “Oh, yeah. Fili told me you came by the other day.”

  “Can I come in ?” I asked.

  Patrick opened the door without saying anything, and I entered the house. It was as disheveled as it had been the other day.

  “You guys should bring in a maid,” I said, sweeping some errant clothing off the gray couch and sitting down. “You’ll be able to af
ford it soon.”

  Patrick sat down. “You want some coffee? I think we might have some.”

  I waved my hand and decided not to ask what roast. “I’m good.”

  “I remember you from the Coach Cleary era.”

  “And I remember you torching my secondary in practice every day. You ran the scout team your first year at SC. Good thing we didn’t have to play against anyone like you on Saturdays.”

  Patrick smiled a shy smile. Maybe it was a sleepy one. He had auburn hair, thick, and wavy. He was a big kid as far as most human beings go, solid, about 6’2” and probably weighed 220 pounds. But as far as most football players go, he was not especially large.

  “That was a fun year,” he said. “No pressure. I’d go to classes and then at 3:00 pm I’d go play ball. Then I got to sit on the sidelines and watch USC play each week.”

  “This year had to be fun, though. You’re headed to the Rose Bowl against Michigan. You had a great season,” I said, vaguely wondering if I should hit Patrick up for a pair of Rose Bowl tickets, before my ethics intervened and I decided against it.

  “Thanks. Finals are almost over. After Christmas we go into full practice mode for Pasadena. I’ve never played in the Rose Bowl game before. Watched it so many times on TV, I’m pinching myself that I’ll actually be in it.”

  “It’s an amazing experience, it truly is,” I told him. Having played in a couple of Rose Bowls myself, and having coached USC in a few others, I could honestly say there was nothing to quite compare it with. “What are you going to do after that?”

  Patrick shook his head. “That’s what everyone’s asking. I really don’t have the answer. Honest, I don’t. Agents are telling me I’m leaving millions on the table if I come back to school next year and pass on the NFL this season.”

  “You think you’re ready for it?”

  “Hard to say. I’ve done well playing college ball this year. But everybody I’ve talked to says the NFL is a much different life. Everything’s a big deal there. You’re under a microscope all the time. Feels like I just started college a couple years ago. I like it here. But I don’t know how smart it is to leave all that money on the table.”