Markov again attempted a chuckle; and it came out even worse than last time. He said, “Are you sure I cannot get you something to drink?”
Bino shook his head and said, “About Hector Cozzo: did you know he has a criminal record?
Markov looked up, as though trying to remember. “I may have heard that he had minor skirmishes with the law when he was younger. But I think everyone deserves a second chance, don’t you?”
“Like Charles Manson?” Bino asked.
It was hard to see if the detective was smiling under the bushy white mustache, so Markov opted for ignorance and said, “I am afraid I do not know that person.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Bino said. “We’ll be talking to Mr. Cozzo and maybe Mr. Kim if we can, to see what they can tell us about Daisy. But in the meantime, if either of them should call you, give them my number.” Bino dropped a business card on the coffee table and stood up.
Markov hesitated before saying, “Detective, I am very sad about the poor girl, Daisy. If there is anything I can do for her family . . . well, do they live locally?”
Bino answered, “As far as we know, all of her family is in South Korea. We think she was smuggled into this country.”
“I see,” Markov said. “Well, please be assured that I would never have anything to do with an investment if I knew it involved illegal immigrants. As a young man I waited for a long time before I received a visa to come to America, and I have always tried to be grateful for the privilege.”
“I’m sure you’re a real credit to your heritage and to this country,” Bino said, and Markov was frustrated because again he couldn’t see if the detective was grinning at him under that bushy white mustache. And those penetrating brown eyes revealed nothing.
THIRTEEN
Sunday for Lita Medina at the Babich house had meant food, followed by a stroll through the shops at Ports O’ Call with Dinko, where a mariachi band was playing on a restaurant patio. Then more food, and another stroll with Dinko along the cliffs at Point Fermin Park. Then an evening in front of the television watching 60 Minutes.
This was the first day that Dinko had not pressed Lita about the possibility of a future together. It had been a peaceful day with lots of hand-holding and nuzzling and, a few times, a serious kiss. One of those had taken place on the Point Fermin cliffs with the offshore summer breeze blowing her hair around her face. Dinko had to gently sweep the hair back to find her lips.
After they’d kissed, all he could think of to say was a reprise of what he’d said to her before: “You are loved.”
She’d said nothing in reply but had put her head on his shoulder as they walked across the grass to the car. They saw the feral peacock fan its tail feathers and squawk when a child approached too close.
Both Dinko and Lita had groaned and laughed when Brigita Babich said she was retiring early and wanted to know if they’d like her to make a snack for them while they continued watching TV. She’d glanced at them and knew they were going to make love after she went to bed. And though in past years she’d told Dinko, “Not under my roof,” requiring that Dinko’s occasional overnight girlfriends sleep alone in the guest room, this time Brigita knew things were different. Lita Medina was different. Her son had become astonishingly different since meeting this girl. She could say nothing about where they slept or what they did under her roof.
Brigita Babich had spent the day searching her heart for answers to her deep misgivings. She was ashamed to think it could be because the girl was Mexican. Her husband had always hoped that Dinko would marry a Croatian girl, or at least an all-American hybrid who could produce babies that would look Croatian. What would he say to this potential match? That made her shame deepen, and she thought, No, it’s not that the girl is Mexican. It’s her past. A dancer from a strip club in Wilmington? The girl was virtually a prostitute. What had she done in Mexico to make a living? What was she doing in Los Angeles now?
Brigita knew her only child better than he knew himself. She’d been the one who’d spoiled him, especially after her husband died. She knew he was lazy and immature and had never taken advantage of the good job on the docks that nepotism had provided him. Nevertheless, he had a big heart, even as a child, always taking care of stray cats and dogs and, on one occasion, an injured seagull that had lived with them for a month before being set free. She’d wanted a strong woman to take him in hand and make him grow up and be responsible.
And that was the troubling thing about this child, Lita. By virtue of who she was, Lita was making Dinko seem more mature, more responsible. This change was in his eyes, in every word he said, in every gesture since he’d met this girl. He’d spoken in front of Lita about taking more shifts on the docks and earning the kind of money a longshoreman should make, the kind of money his father had made. The kind of money that had built their house, which was owned free and clear. In a few short days, this girl had somehow transformed Dinko in the very way Brigita had always hoped a good woman might do it in a few years.
But then she thought, No! Not a nineteen-year-old girl from a strip club. Not an illegal immigrant whose story about an ailing mother and younger brothers in Mexico did not ring true. All of that made Brigita Babich fear Lita Medina, for the sake of her son. And yet . . . when Brigita looked into the unsettling amber eyes of this child, she saw goodness there, regardless of the kind of life she’d lived or the doubtful history she’d recounted. Brigita saw an uncomplaining hard worker and a strong, intelligent girl who could make Dinko happy and turn him into a real man, like his father. And Brigita could see a helpful, beautiful daughter who she could grow to love very easily, and who would surely provide Brigita with pretty grandchildren.
All of this soul searching left Brigita Babich bone weary when she retired for the night, leaving Dinko and Lita blissfully alone in the living room with Ollie the cat. Brigita fell sound asleep before 9:00.
When Dinko was sure that his mother was asleep, he kissed Lita and whispered, “Let’s go to my room. I wanna tell you about the house I’m gonna buy for you and how I’m gonna help your family. I’m gonna keep bugging you till you say y-y-yes just to shut me up!”
By midnight, most of the preliminary work was finished at the taped-off crime scene near Hollywood and Vine, and it had drawn a television crew that had slipped Teddy twenty bucks for a ten-word interview, which had made the local news at eleven. Trombone Teddy had also been given ten more by Flotsam and Jetsam, who were back on patrol after their undercover adventure, and who’d stopped by the crime scene to see what was going on. The surfers had known Teddy for a few years and, like the other coppers on Watch 5, were amused by the quickly circulating story of him sleeping with a dead body.
And then, much to Teddy’s delight, Hollywood Nate and Britney Small cruised by out of curiosity, and Nate, also an old acquaintance of Trombone Teddy’s, gave him another ten dollars just for having been through such a grueling ordeal earlier in the evening. A few more black-and-whites drove by to look at him and chuckle.
Teddy couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about and why he was being rewarded. He hadn’t seen the dead girl at all and hadn’t even smelled her; nor had he been able to smell much else in the past ten years. But with forty bucks in his kick, he did the sensible thing as soon as the detectives let him go. He went straight to the nearest liquor store and bought all the 80 proof gin the largesse could buy, and drank much of it before he could begin heading to his favorite doorway, where he kept an old blanket for serious sleeping.
The problem was, he’d gotten hammered in a hurry. He hadn’t guzzled a bottle of gin like that in he didn’t know how long. Teddy was lurching from one side of the sidewalk to the other as he staggered along Hollywood Boulevard. Then he slouched off to a side street and didn’t know where the hell he was.
Both Chester Toles and Marius Tatarescu were off that night, so Sergeant Murillo had teamed up their partners in 6-X-46. At Selma and Las Palmas, Fran Famosa and Sophie Branson had jammed up four young c
ruisers from a Compton Crips gang, who’d come up on the subway wearing gang colors for a night of hustling and strong-arming the gay men who frequented those streets. They’d already begun harassing gay pedestrians when 6-X-46 spotted them.
Sophie was finishing up field interrogation cards on all four and had run them for wants and warrants with negative results. Their shop was parked fifty feet away on Selma Avenue, with the parking lights on. Fran had left the passenger door hanging open in case she had to run back for assistance.
Sophie finished up the four FIs and said, “Okay, why don’t you head for the subway now and go home. Your Hollywood evening is over.”
The four Crips grinned and whispered to each other, and blew kisses at Fran Famosa while sauntering away singing the theme from the Cops television show, changing the “boys” to “girls.”
“Bad girls, bad girls, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”
“Assholes!” Sophie said, but Fran had to laugh.
Sophie headed back to the radio car while Fran stayed put to make sure the Crips kept moving. Sophie opened the driver’s door and sat down, but then she felt peculiar, only she didn’t know why. It was one of those moments where she literally felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck. She turned around and, through the dividing screen, saw a man sitting behind her.
Sophie screamed and leaped from the car, pulling her pistol and yelling, “Get out! Get the fuck outta the car!”
But, of course, he did not have that option, not from the backseat, where prisoners sit. He could get in, but not out. Fran Famosa came running up and jerked open the back door, and Trombone Teddy stared at both of them, thoroughly confused. He staggered out and looked at the car, suddenly aware that it was painted black and white.
Fran said to Sophie, “This is the guy from the dumpster. This is Trombone Teddy!”
“What in the hell are you doing in our car?” Sophie yelled.
“I got lost,” Teddy said. “The other officers made me leave my dumpster and I can’t find my favorite doorway and I saw the car with the door open and I wanted to lay down for a while. I’m sorry.”
“We’ll give you a place to sleep!” Sophie said, still steaming, her heartbeat barely beginning to slow.
“I understand,” Teddy said. “This has not been my day.”
But Fran Famosa said, “Partner, I saw Hollywood Nate handing him money. It’s partly Nate’s fault that Teddy got wrecked like this. And he’s kind of a celebrity tonight. Maybe we can help him find his doorway?”
“It’s on Cherokee,” Teddy said, “right off Hollywood Boulevard. I’m slightly lost at this moment.”
“That’s right around the corner,” Fran said to Sophie.
Sophie Branson reluctantly told Teddy, “Okay, get back in the car and we’ll take you to your doorway.”
A few minutes later, Trombone Teddy was overjoyed to spot his doorway with his blanket folded up where he’d left it.
“That’s it!” he said. “That’s my doorway!”
He got out of the car and said guilelessly to Sophie, “I’m real sorry, Officer, but if I may say, it was charming to hear you scream like a little girl. We sometimes forget that police officers are human beings.”
“Get your ass to bed!” Sophie said as the radio car roared away from the curb.
FOURTEEN
The discovery of the body of a strip club dancer was covered by the Los Angeles Times the next morning. The story said that an unidentified source at the club indicated that the dancer may have been an undocumented Asian immigrant, and that her name and identification might be fictitious. It wasn’t a big story, but it was big enough for Brigita Babich to notice and read with her coffee, before Dinko and Lita had showered and dressed.
Dinko, entering the kitchen ahead of Lita, saw at once the grim set of his mother’s mouth.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Look at this,” she said, showing him the newspaper story.
“My God,” Dinko said, and crossed himself involuntarily.
“Now are you ready to take her to the police?”
“Yes,” he said. “Now I’m ready.”
Lita entered the kitchen wearing her jeans and her only tee that was clean, and asked, “Is okay if I wash my clothes today?”
“Sit down, Lita,” Brigita said. “Let me read this to you.”
As Brigita read, Lita’s eyes widened and the corners of her mouth turned down. After Brigita was finished, she put the newspaper down and, without a word, poured a glass of orange juice for Lita.
Dinko said, “We gotta call the police today, Lita. There’s no choice now. You gotta tell them you saw someone resembling Kim driving Daisy away. Understand?”
Lita nodded, her eyes glistening. “I have much fear,” she said.
“You don’t have to fear the police,” Brigita said. “They’ll treat you very well because you’re an important witness. They won’t be worrying about your immigration status.”
Lita said, “No, I have fear that Mr. Kim will find me!”
D2 Albino Villaseñor drove straight from his home in Montebello to San Pedro in the city car that he got to take home by virtue of his job as an on-call homicide detective. His detective partner would be attending the postmortem, scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m., where they’d be told officially what they already knew: she’d died from strangulation, probably on the day she’d disappeared. The contusions on her neck suggested that she’d been garroted.
Bino Villaseñor remembered back thirty-one years to when he was a young cop and the OGs used to refer to Harbor Division as “San Pedro PD,” as though, by virtue of its remote location, it was not part of the LAPD. He’d been told by coppers who’d worked Harbor Division that you were on your own down there if you needed an airship. By the time a police helicopter could get to a San Pedro incident, chances were good that the crisis would’ve been resolved in some other way. And the nearest LAPD division that could help you was housed at Seventy-seventh Street Station, a long way from Pedro, especially in heavy traffic. The Port Police was the closest agency they could depend on for faster emergency assistance.
In many ways, Harbor Division was sort of a police department unto itself. When Bino was a young cop, he’d always wondered what it would’ve been like to work way down there, back in the day when the Porthole Saloon on Sixth Street used to stay open until 4:00 a.m. to illegally accommodate the Fish Town coppers. Now the Porthole was gone.
He found the Babich house easily enough, arriving just as Brigita was preparing a brunch of cevapcici, a kind of Croatian hamburger made of spicy pork, with a side of blitva, Swiss chard with potatoes and garlic and lots of special olive oil, and bread from an Italian bakery. Of course, she insisted that Bino Villaseñor have something to eat before his interview with Lita Medina, but the detective asked courteously if he might speak to Ms. Medina privately and then join them for the Croatian brunch.
Bino and Lita spoke outside on the patio, each with a glass of iced tea. The entire interview was in Spanish, and Bino was careful not to alarm the young woman with any hint that she might be in danger. He made it seem no more urgent than if she were making a routine police report on an annoying neighbor who was disturbing the peace with loud parties.
But he asked her twice in Spanish if she was sure that Daisy had yelled angry things in her mother tongue at the driver of the big black car with the shiny wheels.
And Lita answered, “Sí, señor.”
Then he asked her twice if she was absolutely sure that the driver of the car had said something to Daisy and that Daisy had looked fearful when she got into the car.
And Lita answered, “Sí, señor.”
Then he asked her if she’d seen enough of the driver’s profile to positively say that it was Mr. Kim. She hesitated and shook her head, indicating that the glimpse she’d gotten was of a big man with black hair who looked similar to Mr. Kim, but she could not swear that it was him.
Bino
took down the address of Lita’s mother and brothers, and the telephone number of the neighbor in Guanajuato who could be relied upon to fetch Lita’s mother to the phone. This was just in case Lita Medina decided to escape the duty of testifying in a murder case and opted instead to return home to Mexico.
After they were finished, and Bino was satisfied that he had all that might help build a case against the elusive Mr. Kim, Bino and Lita joined Dinko and Brigita Babich in the kitchen.
Bino Villaseñor sat at the table, tucked a corner of a cloth napkin inside his shirt collar, and said, “This looks like the kind of midday meal my mother used to make on Sundays.”
Dinko said, “And this is Monday. You shoulda seen what she made yesterday.”
The detective was talkative, and told funny stories about police work in Hollywood. When it was time to leave, he thanked Brigita Babich. And he thanked Lita Medina, saying he would be in touch with her at the Babiches’ phone number. Then, with a subtle movement of his head, he indicated that Dinko should walk him to his car.
As soon as they were out of earshot of the women in the house, Bino told Dinko, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. We’ll find William Kim if he’s still in L.A., but it might take some time. Half the population of Koreatown is named Kim and the other half is Lee, but his name doesn’t appear on any of the documents or records at Club Samara. Personally, I think that after hearing we found the dancer’s body, he might’ve already booked a flight to points west.”
“How would he know that Lita saw him with Daisy?”
“Ms. Medina made the mistake of telling too much of what she saw to the other roommate, Violet,” Bino said. “Like the fact that Daisy spoke Korean to the driver of the black car. I’m guessing that Violet coughed that up to Kim the second he gave her the bad eye or a couple hundred bucks. So we gotta figure that Kim believes that Lita can positively identify him as the guy who took Daisy on her last ride that day. Even though she can’t.”
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