There were only two elderly women in the church, praying in one of the pews near the front, and after a moment they got up and walked down the aisle and left. Lita dipped her fingers in the font of holy water and crossed herself, ending by kissing her thumbnail as a way of symbolically kissing the cross, in the custom of her homeland. She chose a pew near the rear of the church, genuflected, then knelt, crossing herself again and thanking God for never giving up on her, and for providing her with this chance of redemption and love. She thanked the Holy Virgin for guiding her during her long journey, and for bringing her here, to a home at last.
Lita Medina never saw or heard the big Korean who entered the church silently. He removed his silk necktie when he saw her kneeling alone at prayer.
Returning home from the Dispatch Hall, Dinko chose to drive up Eighth Street from Gaffey for no other reason than that he would soon be driving back the same way to go to the rectory for the wedding preliminaries. He was shocked to see several black-and-white police cars, several other official-looking vehicles, and two ominous-looking vans parked in front of the church, where there was yellow tape strung across the entrance.
A uniformed police officer was directing traffic, waving all the curious motorists past. Dinko lowered his window and said, “What happened, Officer?”
The cop didn’t answer, only gestured with more urgency, so Dinko continued driving west, but when he looked back at the church’s entry, he saw a familiar bicycle lying on its side. He slammed on his brakes in the middle of the street, leaped from the Jeep, and ran panic-stricken to the church doors, where he was physically intercepted and restrained by two detectives and a uniformed officer. Another uniformed officer ran from the black-and-white parked directly in front of the church to assist, and soon all four cops were yelling commands at him.
But Dinko Babich didn’t understand a word they were saying. The tears were running into his mouth, and he couldn’t do anything but scream, “LITA!”
TWENTY-TWO
Hector Cozzo had not gone to his parents’ home the prior night, after he’d left Markov on the streets of Hollywood. Instead of going home, he’d decided he needed solitude, and he’d checked into the DoubleTree Hotel in San Pedro, where he’d swallowed the last of the zannies, washing them down with several ounces of Scotch from a bottle in one of his suitcases. He’d decided that he was going off the vodka now that he’d left behind the Russians of Hollywood and the Serbian Markov.
Hector had spread the packets of money on the bed and opened each stack and counted every hundred-dollar bill. He’d held many of them up to the light and then recounted. Everything checked out correctly, but the exercise had given him no satisfaction. He’d picked up his new go-phone several times to call Dinko Babich and warn him that Kim would be coming to kill Lita Medina. The last time he’d held the phone in his hand, he’d been certain he would do it. He’d dialed the first four digits of Dinko’s number before tossing the phone onto the bed.
Hector had finally convinced himself that Kim, brutal and stupid thug though he was, would not try a home invasion to wipe out Dinko and his mother, along with Lita Medina. He wasn’t crazy enough for that. He’d find a way to get her alone; Hector was sure of it. The thought of it had sent splinters of fear up his spine, and at one point he’d actually gotten tears in his eyes. Then he’d sniffled and taken another gulp of Scotch, and told himself, She’s just a Mexican whore.
He made arrangements for a late checkout, and it was nearly 2:00 p.m. when he went to the front desk. After he left the hotel he drove to his parents’ house, and even though neither parent had seen him since his last visit, three months earlier, their greeting was less than lukewarm.
His father said, “How long will you be staying?”
His mother said, “Have you been arrested again?”
Hector was making the third trip from his car with his clothes when his father asked, “Where’d you get the fancy car? I hope it belongs to you.”
“I leased it,” Hector told him with a sigh. “I’m gonna turn it in tomorrow. I was hoping I could use your car till I can buy a decent used one.”
“So does this mean you didn’t conquer Hollywood?” his father said.
“Yeah, and it means I’m still jist the same crappy son I always was,” Hector said, “but I’ll be paying you six hundred a month to put up with me.”
Neither parent had a comment about that, and then his mother said, “I guess you heard the terrible news about the murder in the church today?”
Hector’s heart fluttered. “What murder?”
“A young woman was strangled right in the pew at Mary Star of the Sea,” she said. “Our own church. Can you imagine such a thing?”
“No, I can’t,” Hector said.
“It’s the bad element that’s taking over Pedro,” his father said. “I’ll bet some Mexican did it. Nobody’s safe these days.”
That was the busiest day in months, at both Harbor Station and Hollywood Station. Bino Villaseñor and his partner, D2 Flo Sanders, headed for San Pedro the moment the call came in from Harbor homicide that the young woman in the house for which Bino Villaseñor had requested extra patrol had been murdered in a Catholic church. By midafternoon, the nature of the crime and its location had brought TV crews and print journalists from all over Los Angeles. There were so many people with cameras and notebooks in their hands, swarming the streets and mingling with the crowd gathering around the church, that the uniformed lieutenant directing the attempts at crowd control was red-faced and sweating, barking orders that the news gatherers mostly ignored.
The Hollywood homicide detectives took a look at the chaos around the church and Bino said, “What say we drive straight to Harbor Station?”
The new station on John S. Gibson Boulevard had everything a modern police facility could wish for. It was huge and well designed, with a heliport and a parking lot adjacent to the building and accessible by a footbridge. There were flat-screen televisions all over the station, and each room was more impressive than the last. The roll call room had seven rows of tables, with eight fixed chairs at each table, and a grease wall, supplied with pencils, was mounted behind the elevated table in front—a vast improvement over the old chalkboards. There was a break room with six indoor tables and two more tables outside, on a terrace. The weight room would be envied by any commercial fitness club.
But the jail was a marvel. There were metal benches outside the holding tanks with handcuffs attached to a steel bar for temporary restraint, and anyone in the tanks could be observed through the shatterproof glass. There were even special holding tanks for juveniles, and the jail design divided the space into a women’s side and a men’s side. This divisional jail was so large that it could accommodate sixty-eight prisoners, but there were none to accommodate. The LAPD—like the city of Los Angeles and the state of California—was nearly bankrupt, and this cavernous jail, recently finished to perfection, went empty and unused.
Bino and Flo Sanders, coming as they did from Hollywood Station, which was so outdated and overcrowded that they had to use interview rooms as storage closets for records and squeeze themselves into tiny cubicles the size of parrot cages, could only gawk at what they saw in the state-of-the-art detective squad room. Flo Sanders nudged Bino with an elbow when they saw the “kiddie room,” full of toys, along with another flat-screen TV, for victims of child abuse or neglect.
Bino nodded to Flo and said, “I’m so tired I wish I could go in that kiddie room and watch cartoons with some milk and cookies, before a nice long nap.”
The Hollywood detectives met their Harbor Division counterparts, and after the visitors were given cold sodas, all pertinent information on each homicide was shared. That done, Bino was directed to one interview room, where Dinko Babich awaited him, and Flo Sanders went to another interview room, where Brigita Babich had been weeping, sometimes uncontrollably, during a one-hour interview, prior to the arrival of the Hollywood detectives.
Dinko sat i
n a chair next to a small table. He didn’t even look up when Bino sat down and said, “Mr. Babich . . . Dinko . . . I’m so sorry.”
Dinko’s eyes were raw and swollen, and the young man looked at the detective with a blank stare. Bino said, “I know you’ve been interviewed already, and I know you’re exhausted and would like to go home, but I just have a few questions that I need to ask so we can find the bastard that did this awful thing.”
Dinko blinked a few times but did not respond. Bino said, “I have to try to find out how the killer knew where to find Lita. I know you’ve already been asked that, but the answer you’ve given was that you don’t know. But was there anything that Lita ever said to you that might provide a clue for us? Did she ever mention phoning one of the other dancers or any club employee after she was living at your house? For any reason whatsoever?”
Dinko shook his head but did not speak.
“How about the former roommates she had when she worked for the club in Wilmington? Is it possible she could’ve phoned one of them and told them she was back at the harbor and living at your address in San Pedro?”
Dino shook his head more forcefully, as though that was impossible.
“Okay,” Bino said, “then how about Hector Cozzo? Have you seen him anywhere around San Pedro since the day you met Lita and drove her to and from Hollywood?”
This time Dinko said, “No.”
“Then did you phone him, or did he phone you at any time after that day?”
Dinko shook his head once more.
The detective said, “Can you think of anyone at all who could connect you in some way with Lita Medina? Anyone who might’ve given the information to someone in Hollywood, like the Korean?”
“Nobody,” he said.
“I’m very sorry to be badgering you like this,” Bino said. “I’m determined to talk to Hector Cozzo before I go home tonight, and I was hoping there was some link to William Kim that I could make before I talk to Cozzo. We learned a few hours ago that he’s vacated his rented house in Encino, and I’m betting I might find him here in San Pedro, at his family home. I just thought there was a moment in the last few days when he could’ve spotted Lita with you, maybe in a San Pedro restaurant or something?”
At last Dinko said something significant to the detective: “That first night when I drove Lita to Hollywood, I saw a car exactly like his, parked just off Pacific Highway. There was a big guy in a suit and tie who looked Asian talking to the driver. I couldn’t see if it was Hector behind the wheel, but the driver was smoking a cigarette, and I thought at the time it mighta been him.”
“Thank you, Dinko. Thank you for remembering that,” Bino said.
“But I’ve known Hector Cozzo all my life,” Dinko said, “and I can tell you he’s not the type to be involved in murder.”
“I’ll let you go home now,” Bino Villaseñor said. “There’s nothing I can say to you and your mom except that we’re going to get the guy that did this. Lita was a very special girl.”
After Brigita and Dinko Babich left the station to be driven home by Harbor detectives, Bino said to his partner, “Flo, would you ask the patrol watch commander to send a radio car to the Cozzo house to bring Hector Cozzo here?”
“You’re that sure he’s moved back home to Mommy, are you?” she said.
“I’ll bet you a taco and raise you an enchilada that he’s there,” Bino said. Then he addressed a Harbor Division detective: “In case I win this bet, do you have any good Mexican takeout in San Pedro?”
“You gotta be kidding,” the detective said, echoing an oft-heard complaint. “Pedro’s becoming Tijuana by the sea.”
Thirty minutes later, Flo found Bino sitting alone in the kiddie room watching cable news. She told him, “You won the bet.”
Hector Cozzo didn’t like the look Bino Villaseñor was giving him. In fact, he didn’t like anything about the old Mexican cop. And he didn’t think the younger lesbo partner was much of an improvement. Hector had never liked big, athletic-looking women in Hillary Clinton pantsuits, and figured most of them for box bumpers. Her pale blue eyes were even colder than the Mexican’s nearly black ones, where Hector couldn’t tell the pupils from the irises.
After Hector was advised of his Miranda rights, Bino said, “Did you get my card asking you to call me ASAP?”
“No, sir,” Hector said. “I was real busy moving outta the house in Encino, and maybe I missed it. Where did you leave it?”
Bino said, “Why did you move back home to San Pedro?”
“Well, sir,” Hector said, “I wasn’t making a living up there in the city, and I thought I should move back home and rethink my options.”
Flo Sanders said, “How did you make your living up there?”
Hector looked at her with a skewed smile. “I sorta hate to admit it in front of a lady, but I kinda did odd jobs around a strip joint.”
Neither detective returned his smile, and Flo said, “Describe your job for us.”
“At Club Samara?” Hector said. “Well, I sometimes drove to different clubs to look for talent, and then I’d report back to Leonid, the manager. If he gave me the okay, I’d go and meet the dancer and try to sell her on the Club Samara operation. And if any of the girls from the club needed costumes, I’d drive them all over the fucking—pardon my French—I’d drive them all around. And sometimes I’d even have to shop for groceries, because they liked to live in bunches in east Hollywood apartments. And like that.”
“So you were an errand boy,” Bino said.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Hector said.
“Were you on salary?” Flo asked.
“No, I’d jist get a little green once in a while. I mostly hung around the club hoping to meet people that might offer me a better job.”
“Doing what?” Flo asked.
“This and that,” Hector said. “I’m a good salesman. Maybe a sales job.”
“How could you afford your car?” Bino asked.
“I don’t own it. I lease it. In fact, now that I’m back home, I’m gonna return it to the dealer.”
“How were you able to even lease it with a job that paid no salary?” Bino asked.
“There’s a new-car manager at this one Mercedes dealer,” Hector said. “He hangs around the nightclub, and he kinda excused the normal lease requirements for me.”
“What did you do for him?” Flo asked.
“Bought him a drink once in a while.” Hector shrugged.
“And provided him with a girl at a discounted price once in a while?” Bino said.
“Wait a minute, Detective!” Hector said. “If those bitches sold their asses to customers, I didn’t profit from it. I ain’t no pimp.”
“Where is Kim?” Bino said.
“Who?”
“William Kim, the Korean talent agent,” Flo Sanders said.
“Oh, him,” Hector said. “I don’t really deal with him real often. Maybe I picked up one of his clients a few times, is about all.”
Bino said, “The night that Dinko Babich drove Lita Medina to and from Hollywood for you, he saw you with Kim.”
“He said that?” Hector said. “Where did he see me?”
“Parked off the boulevard as he was heading for the Harbor Freeway,” Bino said. “Kim was standing by your red Mercedes SL, talking to you.”
Hector said, “If Dinko told you that, he’s mistaken. I hardly know Kim.”
Both detectives heard the faint tremble in Hector’s voice and the clicking of his teeth after he said that. Bino continued: “What if we can prove that you tipped off Kim or Markov about Lita Medina living with Dinko and Brigita Babich? That would make you a principal in the commission of a murder, wouldn’t it?”
“Wait a minute!” Hector objected, his face hot with fear. “Wait a fucking minute here!”
“Maybe if you’d tell us how to find that Korean who calls himself William Kim, we’d feel that you want to see a killer brought to justice,” Bino said.
; “So you think he did it, huh?” Hector said, his mouth so dry that his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“Where is he, Hector?” Bino said, moving his face a few inches forward.
And that was when Hector’s resolve collapsed. He said, “I swear I don’t know for sure, but one time a girl from the massage parlor did some kind of party in Koreatown. She said there’s a condo above some restaurant called Kimchi Heaven. An old buckethead babe lives there who knew Kim from back in whatever fucking country he lived in before coming here. Her name is Tang. And that’s all I know, so help me! I wouldn’t tell you this if I was somehow involved with the guy, would I?”
Flo Sanders left the interview room without a word, to make a call that would send arrest teams heading for Koreatown.
Hector said, “Can I go home now, sir? I told you all I know.”
“You’ll keep yourself available for me, won’t you, Hector?” Bino Villaseñor said.
“Absolutely, sir,” Hector promised. Then he added, “I hope you catch Kim, if he’s the one that did the crime, but I’d like to offer a piece of advice, if you wanna hear it.”
“By all means.”
Hector said, “Anyone who’d kill a girl in the house of the Lord is beyond dangerous and beyond reasoning with. That kinda guy will no doubt be armed, and I think you should tell your officers to shoot him down on sight, like a mad dog.”
“Thank you for that advice, Hector,” Bino Villaseñor said, for the first time showing a hint of a smile under the bushy white mustache. “Dead men tell no tales, do they?”
That afternoon, there was something taking place on Eighth Street in San Pedro, across the street from Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church, that would bring about the conclusion of their investigation more directly than anything the detectives themselves had done. And a resident of Harbor View House was the one who made it happen.
Franklin Abernathy was a senior-citizen resident of the intermediate-care facility, with which none of the Los Angeles news gatherers was familiar. He was always well groomed and well dressed, and nobody noticed the room key Franklin Abernathy wore around his neck on a shoelace. Nor did they know that he often roamed the streets close to the facility with General Douglas MacArthur, and they certainly had no reason to doubt his claim of being a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. It did not take more than twenty minutes for the word to spread that there was an eyewitness who could identify the killer, after Franklin Abernathy approached the first television news crew with the exciting news that he’d seen a man run from the church at the time of the murder and speed away in a car.
Harbor Nocturne Page 30