Trying to sound sober, the mother said, “He got into some cleaning product and started vomiting.”
Chester looked around the filthy house and said, “I don’t see any evidence of cleaning around here.”
The mother said, “Well, that’s what happened, and then he fell down.”
“Where?” Chester said.
“Off the porch,” she said. “I think he hurt his head.”
Then the grandmother spoke for the first time. She said, “Can I walk down to the 7-Eleven and get some cigs?”
Her hairline was so high he suspected that the dirty blond hair was a wig. She had protuberant eyes, and those eyes stared at him unhappily. Chester didn’t answer her, but instead advised both women of their Miranda rights, receiving dull responses of understanding.
The oldest of the children started sobbing then. At first they were quiet sobs, and then he was wailing.
His mother said, “Hush, Terry!”
But Chester walked over to the sofa, lifted the six-year-old up until he was standing on the sofa cushions, and said, “What is it, son?”
Terry sniffled and said, “I killed my brother.”
“Oh, for chrissake!” the mother said. “Terry, go wash your face!”
Chester gave the woman a look that silenced her, then asked the boy, “Why do you say that?”
Terry said, “I took too long to find a phone!”
“Where did you look for a phone?” Chester asked.
“The houses on the street,” Terry said. “I went to three houses but nobody was home or they didn’t speak English, and then the lady in the fourth house let me in and phoned for me. If I hadn’t took so long, my baby brother would be alive!”
“Come outside, son,” Chester said, taking the boy out to the front porch. He told Fran, who had finished the notifications, “Go inside with Mom and Grandma while I have a chat with Terry.”
Fran nodded, but she didn’t like the look in Chester’s eyes. His pupils behind the aviator glasses almost looked dilated, and he spoke in such a quiet voice it was unnerving.
Then he said sotto to the boy, “Terry, you didn’t have anything to do with your baby brother’s death. He was already dead when you went for help. Did somebody hit your baby brother?”
The boy began sobbing again and nodded his head.
“Did your mother hit him?” Chester asked.
The boy nodded again.
“Anybody else?”
“Buster,” the boy said.
“Who’s Buster?”
“Mommy’s friend.”
“Does Buster live here?”
The boy nodded.
“Where is Buster now?”
“He left when I went looking for a telephone,” the boy said.
“In a car?”
The boy shook his head and said, “The car’s broke. That’s it.” He pointed to a wreck of an old Pinto up on blocks in the side yard.
“Then he left on foot?” Chester said.
The boy nodded again.
“What was he wearing?”
The boy said, “A Dodgers shirt.”
“Which way did he walk?”
Terry pointed north and Chester nodded slightly, because there was a neighborhood tavern at the end of the block.
Unit 6-X-72 cruised slowly down the street and stopped. Sophie Branson held four fingers up to ask if everything was code 4, or if further assistance was needed.
Chester Toles called out, “Can you come in for a few minutes.”
The boy and Chester walked back inside the house, and Chester said to his partner, “Fran, let me have the shop keys for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Fran took the keys from the belt of her Sam Browne and handed them to Chester, asking, “What? Something in the trunk we need?”
“Be right back,” Chester said a bit too casually, and he shuffled out the door and down the narrow, oil-stained driveway to the radio car.
Minutes later, he’d parked the black-and-white in an alley behind the bar at the end of the street. It was frequented by a number of Asian patrons, but there was also a sprinkling of old men from nearby Little Armenia, and there were some Latino customers as well. It was the end of the Monday workday and the bar was crowded, with only a few women sitting at the tables.
Several customers looked surprised to see the bald, overweight fifty-eight-year-old uniformed cop standing inside the doorway, scanning the crowd.
Then he walked up to a husky, thirty-something white guy in an L.A. Dodgers T-shirt. His neck was acne-pocked, and there were serious sweat rings on the shirt.
Chester said, “Step outside with me, Buster. We need to talk.”
Twenty minutes later, two detectives had arrived at the crime scene, and 6-X-72 was still at the house, assisting. Fran Famosa looked at her watch and went outside to peer up and down the street for her partner. She figured he’d had to take an urgent dump and had probably driven to the nearest gas station to get it done. That’s when she saw their shop driving back toward the house.
She stood, hand on hips, ready to needle him with an admonition that his urgent bowel movement was a good reason to eat Cuban black beans, like her mother used to make, instead of the lard-laden refried frijoles at his favorite Mexican taco shop. But when he got out of the car, Fran didn’t say anything. She put her hands to her face and uttered a little cry of alarm. Blood ran from a laceration over Chester’s right eye, and his hands looked like he’d experienced stigmata.
Fran ran to him, saying, “Chester! What the hell happened to you?”
He pointed toward the backseat of the radio car, where she saw a handcuffed man whose face was a mask of blood. He was trying with great effort to breathe through a mouth full of broken teeth, and both eyes were swelling shut. He was whimpering, attempting to say something to Fran Famosa, but he seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness and couldn’t manage it.
Chester said, “We better notify the watch commander and get Buster to Hollywood Pres. He resisted arrest in the alley behind the bar. I had to fight.”
Fran Famosa didn’t say much to her partner on the code 3 run to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, where the injuries to the prisoner were deemed severe enough that he had to be transported by ambulance to the thirteenth floor of L.A. County–USC Medical Center, where the jail ward was located.
Later, in a Hollywood Station interview room, a member of Force Investigation Division gave Chester Toles the same Miranda warning Chester had given the mother and grandmother of the dead child.
After affirming his understanding, Chester pointed to the six white service stripes on the left sleeve of his blue uniform shirt and said to his interrogator, “Count ’em. Five years for each hash mark, for a total of thirty-four years and six months. So don’t talk to me like I’m a boot right outta the academy. I could demand to have a rep from the Protective League here right now, but I’m gonna cooperate as long as you show respect.”
The FID investigator, an up-and-comer on the lieutenant’s list with only nine years on the Job, who looked to Chester like the guy on American Idol, said, “Okay, no bullshit then. Let’s cut to the quick. Why would you go to that bar all alone if not to give some payback to a baby killer? Maybe you were very upset by what you’d seen and weren’t behaving like you normally would?”
Chester replied, “I thought you said no bullshit.”
The FID man smiled mirthlessly. “All right then, you tell me what was on your mind.”
Chester said, “After talking to the little boy Terry about the direction Buster took, I wanted to see if I could spot him anywheres. I saw the bar on the corner and decided to have a look inside. If I saw a guy in a Dodger shirt, I was gonna go outside and call for backup.”
“Then why didn’t you do that?”
“He spotted me in the bar and looked like he was gonna rabbit, so I asked him to step outside with me. I think the bartender mighta seen that and can verify what I’m saying.”
“Then what happened?”
“We went outside and I asked him to step to my car in the alley and produce some ID. That’s when I was getting ready to call for backup.”
“Did he ask you what it was about?”
“No.”
“Did he give you his ID?”
“No,” Chester said, pointing to the taped bandage across his forehead. “He gave me this. The minute we were alone in the alley, he head-butted me. I got six stitches here.”
“Then what happened?”
“Whadda you think happened? The fight was on. Nonstop and desperate.”
“Why didn’t you call for help?”
“I couldn’t. He was all over me.”
“Give me a blow-by-blow.”
“He’s a strong young guy and I’m a flabby old man, fifty-eight years old. I used the force needed to overcome his attack and to effect the arrest. And I’m lucky I was able to do it.”
“The no-bullshit pledge cuts both ways,” the FID man said. “The arrestee suffered a concussion, a broken nose, a jaw fracture, four broken ribs, and he lost a few teeth. At least two dozen stitches were needed to close lacerations over and under both eyes. Were you a professional fighter before you came on the Job?”
“I was a U.S. Army Ranger before I came on the Job,” Chester said. “Long before you ever took your first swig of mother’s milk.”
With an unchanging expression, the FID man said, “Your uniform is barely disheveled and your glasses weren’t even broken. And except for that cut on your forehead and your chewed-up fists, you came out of the fight unscathed.”
“I fought sober, he fought drunk,” Chester said. “I had the edge. And yeah, I tried to break his nose. The blood goes down their throat and they feel like they can’t breathe. Ever tried clocking a guy like that?”
Chester paused, but the FID man said, “I’m still listening.”
Chester said, “As for my glasses, I took them off the second we got to the alley, just as a precaution. I got my last pair smashed by an Indian purse snatcher in a fight last week. And by the way, the Indian brave was a stand-up guy. He never made any whiny complaints about excessive force. But you probably know all that already. So how does the baby killer say it went down?”
The FID man thought it over for a moment and said, “He claims he cooperated, but the minute you handcuffed his hands behind his back, you started pummeling him with punches and kicks.”
“I suppose you wanna test my boots for blood evidence?” Chester said. “Want me to take ’em off?”
The interrogator said, “I’d rather just hear the truth of what happened out there.”
“Got any witnesses that claim it was a total beatdown?”
“I can’t say at this time.”
“You’d say if you had any.”
“The truth would help everyone.”
“How about the head-butt?” Chester said. “What’s he have to say about that?”
“He thinks it may have happened by accident while he was struggling to escape the beating.”
“He’s a liar,” Chester said calmly. “Isn’t this a lotta fuss for a baby killer? Especially one who’s a white guy?”
The interrogator said, “Everyone has a breaking point. Maybe you reached yours today. Maybe seeing that dead baby triggered rage you couldn’t control.”
Chester scoffed, “You mean, you think just because I was arresting a guy that raped a child and beat a baby to death, I somehow went off my rocker? Is that what you’re saying here?”
The FID man cocked his head quizzically. “Who said anything about him raping a child?”
Chester Toles did not reply to that question. His blue eyes behind the smudged eyeglasses opened a bit wider, and he stared at the interrogator as though he didn’t quite understand the question, or even his own answer.
The FID man repeated it, saying, “Who said anything about him raping a child? What’re you talking about?”
Chester Toles finally replied, “I’ll do any further talking through a lawyer. I think it’s time to retire on my vested pension and go fishing. And if you think you can get the DA to issue on me for tuning up that guy, send your nastygram message to the office of my future congressman in Idaho.”
Chester Toles removed the LAPD badge from his uniform shirt, saying, “I’ll give this to the boss on the way out.” With that, he made his exit, leaving his interrogator sitting alone in the interview room.
Fran Famosa and others on Watch 5 expressed the opinion to Sergeant Murillo that Chester’s court experience earlier that day, and the feelings it had evoked in him, had played some part in whatever happened in the Thai Town alley, involving a cop who, for fifteen minutes in his long career, was not the same apathetic, indifferent slacker they’d known for years.
As to the surprising feeling of sadness they all felt at losing the Unicorn from their ranks forever, Hollywood Nate spoke for many on Watch 5 that day when he said, “Why the hell couldn’t the lazy old bastard have been as hard to find as usual, when they assigned him that goddamn call to Thai Town?”
SIXTEEN
A little over an hour had elapsed before Hector Cozzo arrived at the surprisingly unimpressive house of Mr. Markov on Mount Olympus. Then Hector thought it over and decided that he shouldn’t have been surprised. Everything he’d learned about his boss so far had indicated that Markov was just another player, perched only a few rungs above Hector on the Hollywood hustlers’ totem. And with that thought in mind, he felt emboldened when he went to the front door and rang the bell.
Markov was dressed in a collarless white jersey with black stripes, white linen trousers, and Gucci loafers with no socks. His Elvis do had been recently dyed, and Hector thought he looked Eurotrash faggy.
“You are late,” Markov said with the slight accent that Hector had come to hate.
“There was traffic,” Hector replied, without groveling.
“Come in and sit down.” Markov led Hector into an unremarkable living room that didn’t even have a view.
Hector sat and showed as much attitude as he dared by asking, “Got something to drink?”
Markov looked as though his lowly employee had just slapped him, but he managed to say, with only a hint of a sneer, “The market has not delivered this week’s liquor order.”
“Never mind,” Hector said. “You probably only drink Russian vodka anyways. I’m sick of that potato juice.”
Now there was no doubt about it. Markov could see that Hector Cozzo was being deliberately insolent. But he checked his growing anger and said, “Things are going very badly for us.”
Hector recalled seeing the peg-leg guy and his partner in police uniforms. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You first,” Hector said. “This is your meeting. I guess you’re really pissed off at the way things got off the hook on Saturday night with Basil and Dr. Maurice.”
“You are once again tardy in reporting events to me,” Markov said. “Ivana has already telephoned me with the details of that disastrous evening. Which, by the way, has no doubt cost me the investment from Basil that we need so much.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Hector said.
“It was partly mine,” Markov admitted. “I should never have sent Dr. Maurice there in an attempt to please Basil. Do you suppose he really did operate on that man Kelly, or did he not? I do not fully understand it all.”
Hector said, “The doctor’s a badly bent and drugged-out lunatic. You can’t go with anything he says.”
Markov said, “Well, the entire debacle is water under the bridge. I did not bring you here to chastise you for that. Surely you know that the police have found the body of our missing dancer?”
“Who doesn’t by now?” Hector said.
“When was the last time you saw Mr. Kim?”
“I heard from him a couple days ago,” Hector said. “He’s got lethal anger-management issues. The guy could kill, jist because.”
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“What did he want?”
“He wanted me to find a certain Mexican dancer for him.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
Markov clenched his jaws. Then his eyes grew darker and, with an ice-pick smile, he said, “Do not toy with me, young man. You will be making a big mistake to do so.”
Hector’s insolence faded and he lost his nerve, remembering that these people had survived in places far removed from his Pedro salad days. He became more conciliatory, saying, “Mr. Markov, I don’t think I oughta get involved with whatever Mr. Kim wants, and I’m not even sure if I oughta keep my job with you.”
Somewhat mollified by the new deference in Hector’s tone, Markov said, “The business down at the Los Angeles Harbor began originally with Mr. Kim freelancing. I did not know about it at first, not until he needed money from me to complete the arrangement. I invested money without fully understanding the nature of my investment. Had I known from the beginning that he was smuggling human beings from Asian countries, I would not have become involved at all.”
Hector no longer believed anything Markov was telling him, but he shrugged and said, “Okay, if you say so.”
“But now you see what has happened, do you not? Mr. Kim has admitted to me that Daisy made certain threats, the kind of threats that would bring the local police and the federal authorities to our doorstep. She made accusations that might bring very serious charges against me and perhaps even against you.”
“Why against me? I didn’t do anything.”
“You talked with Mr. Kim about a street gang, and about having the container robbed from the storage yard, did you not?”
“I jist spitballed with him about the Crips doing a takeover of the security office!” Hector said. “I didn’t actually take any steps. The stupid silverback I was supposed to meet got himself busted, and the whole plan went away.”
“If the authorities find out about those meetings, they might consider it part of a larger criminal conspiracy,” Markov said. “Thirteen people dead? Kim could drag us both into it.”
“Maybe I’m not big enough to play with you people,” Hector said, a bit of a whine creeping into his voice. “Maybe I should jist give you back the keys to the house and go home to Pedro.”
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