Flea Flicker

by David Chill

  Emma looked down. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had to get him out of the car. I couldn’t drive around like that in his Mercedes, him dead in the next seat.”

  I shook my head. “I imagine you were thinking a few thoughts very clearly. You killed Glasscock out of hot-blooded rage, but you went and killed Briggs in a way that was cold-blooded and dispassionate.”

  “You believe I’m some kind of monster, don’t you,” she said in a low voice.

  “I think you got yourself into a bad situation, and then you made it a hundred times worse. It was a stupidly hatched plan, but you’re hardly a criminal mastermind. You just knew you needed to get rid of Tyler Briggs. He was the only connection that led back to you. With Tyler out of the way you could rest easy. He started out as the fall guy and then you realized he had become a much bigger problem. One you had to flick away.”

  She stared at me, and for a brief, fleeting second, I saw an innocence, a vulnerability in her eyes. I had struck something, I just didn’t know what. But as quickly as that came, it left just as fast. And at that point, she jerked her hands free and scrambled to her feet.

  I grabbed at her and she put one hand on my face as she dug her nails in. I yanked her fingers away, but she lunged again for the Glock and she almost got to it. I dived on top of her and wrestled her arms behind her back again. I rolled her partway over on her side and drew my .357 and pointed it at her. She continued to wriggle against my body, but she couldn’t squirm free. I yanked her up by the hair and pressed the gun flush against her nose where she could not help but see it. She stopped wriggling. Her eyes widened in fear, and her breath came in spurts.

  I reached over and smacked the Glock with my free hand and it skittered off the end table and behind the couch, well out of reach. I let go of her hair and ordered her to crawl to the other side of the room, and to lay face down with her hands over her head. Surprisingly, she did what I told her. I went over to the other side of the room and gingerly picked up the murder weapon with another tissue. At that point my phone rang. The number was blocked, but I answered it anyway.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Juan. What’s happening?”

  I told him and gave him the Marcasel Street address. He had already reached his home in Orange County but he would turn around and head back here. He said he’d send uniforms over right away and hung up. Two minutes later the uniforms were on the scene. It took Juan over two hours to arrive, but not surprisingly, the news vans arrived shortly after Juan did. His interview played on every local news show.

  Chapter 14

  Emma Wick was booked for two homicides. Detective Orlando Brown was conveniently away for the weekend, so another homicide detective interrogated her. I had gotten most of the story correct, and given that I had found the murder weapon in her end table, Emma did not put up much of a fight. After a lengthy discussion, she finally told the whole story to the detective, wrote it down, and signed. Tyler’s blood-soaked Mercedes was found in a Taco Bell parking lot down the street from the Roasters, and Emma’s prints were all over the steering wheel. They were also matched to the syringe Teresa Ortiz found in the motel room of the Snuggle Inn. Why she left it there was still a mystery, although there is a school of thought that suggests deep down, some people just want to get caught.

  I used to wonder why criminals confessed to crimes; sometimes they did so without much evidence against them. In the end, I finally concluded much of it came down to guilt, that overbearing, existential weight that was too heavy a load for most people to carry. Only the most hardened criminal or borderline sociopath could move forward with their life and be unaffected by the cross they bore, the taking of a human life for reasons that were indefensible and craven. Confessing relieved most people of that burden. It was, in a way, cleansing.

  I visited Hannah Briggs, not to hand her an invoice but to express my condolences. Regardless of the broken state of her marriage and the mutual infidelities, she did lose her husband in a horrific way, one that first painted him as a murderer himself. That Tyler Briggs was subsequently killed by a woman he was having an extramarital liaison with did little to improve his public reputation, and it also made it highly unlikely Hannah Briggs would be able to continue in the City Attorney’s office. A prosecutor who was tarred with a very public humiliation, even through just an association with her husband, would be problematic. But her life would go on, albeit in only a slightly different direction. When I went to visit Hannah in her Silver Strand home, I ran into Anthony Riddleman, the Chargers QB coach. It looked as if he and Hannah were more than just friends.

  Juan Saavedra came up smelling like a rose, as the arrest of Emma Wick indeed made the deputy chief look bad for targeting Tyler Briggs. There was no official announcement, but Juan indicated changes would be brewing at Parker Center. Neil Handler was sworn in to replace Colin Glasscock, and the first thing he did was move the district headquarters to a building a few blocks away. It was still not in Mar Vista; I guess he felt the traffic problems would be too difficult to endure.

  I received a surprise phone call from a producer at Fox Sports. She told me she was the one who had been in the car with the pugilist, the one who attacked me after ramming his car into mine. After recording our brief match in the middle of Sepulveda Boulevard, she had graciously uploaded the video onto YouTube and it had already received hundreds of thousands of hits. It was titled, “UFC Guy Gets Beat Up By Everyday Joe.” She wanted to schedule a rematch, to be broadcast as a Pay-Per-View special, and said there would be some good money in it. I told her to go soak her head, and pull the video down. My guess is she did neither.

  Marcus received a number of board games for Christmas, including Monopoly, which Gail thought might be too advanced for him. I told her he’d grow into it. I also gave him my old iPad, wiped clean and de-fragged to remove any remnants of searches for firearms and criminal behavior; the last thing I wanted was a five-year-old exposed to the difference between a Glock 19 and a Sig P320. The old iPad brought a new kind of joy to him. It did for me as well, as I went out the day after Christmas and bought a new one for myself. That my iPad was a few years old did not prove to be a problem for Marcus, he was thrilled to have it. I also let him know we’d be taking him to the Rose Parade, followed by the Rose Bowl game afterward. He was thrilled.

  After buying my new iPad, I took it back to the office to set it up. After a few hours of the frustration that comes with being a technophobe, I decided to go to lunch and call the help desk afterward. As I was trying to figure out if I should have a burger or a burrito, my door opened and a familiar, but not unexpected figure strolled in. He looked around and shook his head in disbelief.

  “How do people live this way?” Cliff Roper asked.

  “I don’t live here.”

  “You spend a lot of time in this office. The least you can do is put up some artwork. Or maybe buy a decent chair for your clients to sit in,” he said, as he pulled a utilitarian office chair over, making a point of brushing a few specks of dust off of the seat.

  “So nice to see you, too,” I said. “Thanks for asking how I am.”

  “Does it bother you that I don’t care?”

  “No, and it doesn’t surprise me, either.”

  “Real nice,” he said. “You ought to be more supportive, considering I fixed that problem you created.“

  “A problem I created?! I didn’t create any problems. And I didn’t even have a whole lot of problems. That is until you walked back into my life.”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “Watch your mouth. I’m the one paying your fee, which means I’m paying for this dump.”

  I sat back and looked at the small, slender, volcanic man in front of me, whose body fit snugly into his two thousand dollar suit. Cliff Roper never failed to instill a certain level of awe. A wildly successful agent, capable of either cajoling or dominating anyone in his path. He was the star of every room he entered, and I knew there was little point in p
utting up a fight. The only option was to indulge him until he chose to leave.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. Tell me how you bailed me out of my problem.”

  “Fili Snuka. One of your SC boys. Was about to get smoked by some local gangbangers down in the ‘hood. I asked you to help dislodge Patrick O’Malley from this, uh, situation. Not his whole crew.”

  “It was a package deal.”

  “Yeah, and it cost me ten large to pay off that punk, Tristan Lopez. For another ten, I could have had him whacked. He was lucky I was in a good mood that day, and was willing to hand over a large pile of green.”

  “I’ll let him know that if I ever see him again,” I said. “You paid Tristan personally?”

  “Are you joking? Of course not. I don’t get involved in the messy stuff anymore. I run a respectable agency. One of my runners took care of the payment.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Respectable. I forgot who I was talking to. I also forgot about the time you yourself were brought up on manslaughter charges.”

  “Totally bogus, and I was never found guilty of anything,” he declared angrily. “Don’t bring up the past. You of all people should know that.”

  “Okay,” I said. He had a fair point. “But I think it’s going to work out okay for you financially. Long-term wise.”

  “We’ll see,” Roper said. “Yeah, I signed Fili to my agency, that was good. But he’s looking like a fourth-round pick. Big difference between him and Patrick, who’ll go number one whenever he declares for the draft. Maybe he’ll be picked two or three. The difference between Patrick and Fili is millions. Lots of them.”

  “You take what you can get in this world. You know that.”

  “Yeah, and I gave a lot to get Fili, just to maybe get a shot at Patrick next year.”

  “What does a fourth-round pick earn?”

  “If he makes the team, and that’s a big if with a fourth-rounder, he’s looking at getting maybe $600,000 a year. Only half that is guaranteed, and again, he only gets salary if he makes the team. I’m looking at just fifteen percent of that. Do the math. It may not be that much.”

  “That’s still more than the ten grand you paid Tristan Lopez,” I pointed out.

  “Hey, I’ve got expenses, too. I got to get Fili’s head together and get him ready for the Combine and then teach this kid how to do an interview. And how to behave when he talks to coaches. What to say, what not to say. How to comport himself.”

  “Comport?”

  “Yeah, comport. Do I have to teach you everything?” he asked.

  “Stick with the basics and I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, the basics are I have to get him to a gym and have him build up his strength. He weighs half a ton, but he’s got to be able to lift more weight. And he can’t jump worth crap. Which means I’ve got to get him some training. That costs, and these kids never have any money. I’m paying for it.”

  “It’s an investment. If he makes it in the league, there’s a big payoff down the road. You know that.”

  “Yeah, and I also have to invest in paying off the kid’s uncle, some paralegal schmuck that signed him to a sweetheart contract. The uncle didn’t like it, but I told him I’d report him to the NFL for signing a kid without being registered with the league. Threatened to blackball him for life. Got his attention, and he voided the contract, but I still had to hand him some coin. Damn families, most of them are leeches. They just see dollar signs.”

  “Unlike you, of course,” I pointed out.

  “Hey, I’m a businessman, but I’m also a father-figure. Fili’s dad’s sick, and guess who’s going to be holding his hand when the time comes. There’s a lot I do that people don’t know about.”

  “And some of that’s stuff you don’t want people to know about,” I mused.

  “I swim in the same pool as everyone else,” he protested. “I’m just better at it than most people.”

  I did not deny that. I also didn’t feel a shred of sympathy for Cliff Roper, who was a millionaire many times over and could afford investing in a few kids who might not make it into the NFL. He could also afford to pay off a sketchy gang member who was weighing retaliation for a beating at the hands of a few football players, the morality of all that notwithstanding. My suggestion that he make the Tristan Lopez situation go away in exchange for Fili signing with Roper’s agency worked out for all concerned, except perhaps for the uncle, who would receive less money than if Fili had remained under contract with him. I reconciled that with the fact that had Fili stayed with the uncle, there was a better than average chance he would have dropped in the draft. And there was an even bigger likelihood Fili would have been cut from the team, and washed out of the league before the end of the preseason. Sometimes things work out for everyone.

  “Say, how did those young coaches do on their job interviews with that school across town?” I asked. “The ones we went to the Charger game with. I think their names were Devon and Alshawn.”

  Roper shook his head. “They didn’t get offers. Had too much champagne the day before and showed up hung over. Look, being an agent is a crapshoot. If the guys work out, I stand to make money. If they don’t, I get zilch. Nada. Nothing. In fact, I lose money. Things aren’t what they seem to outsiders. The big money comes with the big fish. But you only land so many of them.”

  I agreed with that. “Did you get a chance to speak with Patrick?”

  “Of course I did. You think I’m going to miss out on talking to a kid that’ll sign a thirty million dollar contract one day? Guys like Patrick, they’re what I live for. I’m just glad you didn’t totally mess that up.”

  “I’m glad to hear that I didn’t. I’m not sure how I could have, though.”

  “Oh, you could have,” Roper sneered. “Believe me. You almost did. What are you doing, telling the kid he ought to do what he wants to do. What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me?” I exclaimed. “To tell a kid to listen to his heart and choose the path he really wants to go down? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with you is you don’t respect money. This kid is money. You don’t walk away from tens of millions of dollars because you prefer doing slopestyle tricks on rock-hard snow that might break your back and earn you pennies for your trouble. This is the big leagues we’re playing in. What his heart wants doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I said. “If his heart isn’t into playing pro football, he shouldn’t do it.”

  “What do you know about heart?”

  I gave him a long look. “At least I know mine works.”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Roper sneered, pointing his finger at me once more. “I’m not going to tell you to watch your mouth again.”

  I laughed. “You going to sic your runner on me? I can handle myself.”

  “I was going to give you twenty grand for helping me sign Patrick,” Roper said. “I still might if he signs with me next year. That is, if you can watch your mouth and be pleasant for a little while.”

  I processed this. “Then Patrick’s not signing with you this year.”

  “You finally get it. Yeah, he’s going to spend another year at USC and then reevaluate. I did get a leg up on other agents, though. If he picks the NFL, all I got to do is remind him how I made the Tristan Lopez problem disappear.”

  “Maybe it’ll all work out,” I said.

  Roper stood up and pulled out an envelope from his suit pocket. He tossed it on my desk. “There’s the payment for your services. I always believe in making sure no one walks away feeling bitter. Everyone gets compensated for their time, and you’re getting more than you deserve. But I will tell you I’m holding something back. I was going to give you four Rose Bowl tickets. Out of the goodness of my heart, which does exist, whether or not you believe it. But I’m tired of your insults. So I’m giving the tickets to someone else.”

  I didn’t say anything about the tick
ets, but I did thank Cliff Roper for the money, a gesture he noted with a quick nod before he turned and left without saying anything more. I opened the envelope and counted out five thousand dollars in crisp hundred-dollar bills, which might have come straight from a bank, or maybe from his safe. It was an odd realization, that his payment for my work was exactly one-half of what he handed to a gangbanger for the simple act of being quiet and going away. I didn’t bother to tell him I was going to the Rose Bowl with Johnny Cleary, and that there was a fair chance our seats would be better than his. Then again, they might not be.

  *

  It goes without saying in L.A., that despite whatever inclement weather has descended upon the region over Christmas, no matter if it rains on the last day of the year, or the second day of January, New Year’s Day always manages to be sunny, warm, and full of promise. The world tunes in to Southern California on January 1st to watch Pasadena’s Rose Parade, to ogle at the beautiful people waving to the crowd from ornately designed floats under a canopy of blue skies. It is our signature moment, and the region rarely ever disappoints. It is as if to show the rest of the world how to throw a party. This year would be no exception. It would be a beautiful day, with lots of sunshine, and a brilliant blue sky, perfectly choreographed, as if the climate itself had been delivered straight from central casting.

  Marcus’s birthday brought him another bounty of toys, more old-school board games, some safe toys like a few stuffed animals and a nerf football, and a slew of clothes. We began his birthday celebration the night before, on New Year’s Eve, because our final series of gifts would be on New Year’s Day, and we had some special plans for him.

  New Year’s Day in Pasadena is a day unlike any other. I had been to the Rose Parade half a dozen times, in various ways. When I was young, my mother once took me up to Pasadena the night before and we camped out in sleeping bags on the sidewalk, securing a spot along the parade route. Another time I went to an all-night New Year’s Eve party a block north of Colorado Boulevard, and we walked down to watch the parade as it grew near. One time I was given tickets to sit in the bleachers, which was the most civilized way to watch the parade, but insanely expensive if you had to pay for it. This year, our friends, the Alperns, taught us a new method.