by Baxter Clare
It was his house and Wardell Helms was a big man, but he left his beer warming by the recliner and took the hard chair pushed toward him.
23
The bar was busy for a Sunday afternoon, most of the patrons sitting with their heads tilted up at the TVs. The Raiders and Broncos were brawling it out and as much as Frank wanted to watch the game, she had to concentrate on writing her notes.
Bored with resting and being nursed, albeit by the loveliest of nurses, Frank had run out to Eagle Rock hoping to talk to the Mother's other sister. She'd been initially disappointed that Jessie Helms wasn't home, but her husband, Wardell, was pretty talkative when he realized Frank didn't have a grudge with him. He'd offered her a beer—she'd demurred—and he'd settled back into his easy chair keeping half an eye on the morning game.
Turned out he grew up with the Mother in a little suburb outside of Compton that got buried under the Artesia Freeway. She let him talk about growing up, gently leading him where she wanted him. They all four of them, Crissie, Jessie, Olivia and Wardell, used to hang together catching crawfish and frogs in the ditch behind their house and chasing dragonflies with mayonnaise jars. They hung out in the same gang, the Black Swans.
"Nothing like the gangs today," he'd chuckled. "Lord, the things we did back then."
That's when the Mother had really started making her mark, mojoing rivals and hexing their girls. Crissie was arrogant and strong-willed, and Olivia whetted her budding piety on her sister's transgressions. Jessie, the quiet one, went her own way, and while not as good looking as her sisters, she was kinder.
"She a good woman and I'm still proud to have her on my arm."
Wardell had sipped on his beer, continuing, "Now you take Olivia. There's a woman whose love of the Lord has turned her bitter and close-minded. And Crissie, she started off with religion, their folks raised 'em right, but she took off on her own path."
He'd heard stories about her on the street. What she did in that church of hers. Dark things. Things he wouldn't listen to anymore and didn't want to believe were true.
"Like what?" Frank had asked.
"Naht—" He held up a meaty palm. "I don't mess with that. Jessie don't tell me nuthin' and I don't ask. I do not want to know," he stressed.
"How come?" Frank pushed, looking perplexed.
"I hear, rumors, a'ight? 'At's enough for me. At's more 'an I wanna know."
"How 'bout her business?"
Helms shook his big head.
"Crissie married into money. 'At's all I know. How she runs her affairs ain't no concern a mine."
"She married into money?"
The big man nodded, taking a long pull off his Coors.
"Right outta high school." He smacked his lips. "Married Old Man Love. Her daddy was dead by then. He'd a never stood for that. You know ML Laundries? Off Manchester and another to 76th, 77th Street? Those were his. And that old warehouse she livin' in? He won that in a game a low-ball. Can you believe that?"
Helms shook his head again, as if awed by the inequities in life.
"Pretty lucky guy," Frank agreed.
Helms snorted, "Not that lucky. Old Man died before his and Crissie's first anniversary."
"What'd he die of?"
"Old age? I don't know. Said it was natural causes. Natural enough a man his age couldn't keep up with the likes of a gal Crissie's age."
"How long before she remarried?"
Helms thought hard.
"It was some while. Before she took up with Eldridge, she was with a fella named Roosevelt. Lincoln Roosevelt. I always remembered him 'count of he was named after the presidents."
"Nice guy?"
"Line? He was tight. Kinda close-mouthed like Crissie. She got that church from him. He was a preacher too, if I recall correct. But she didn't bring him around too much before he went off to Kansas or someplace like that."
"He just gave her the church?"
"Yeah, I don't know." Helms waved a big hand. "You'd have to ask Jessie about that. All I know was he was gone and she got the church. And that fine Cadillac she still driving. That's a good car, Cadillac, uh-huh, way they made 'em back then."
"So who'd she take up with after Roosevelt?"
"I don't know that there wasn't anybody serious 'til Eldridge. Crissie fell for that man," he chuckled. "I mean hard. And God Almighty what a hustler he was. They was a perfect match those two. Mean as a nest of baby rattlesnakes and twice as hungry. Both of 'em. 'At's when she fell in with those Panamanians."
Helms tensed, his face locking into the mask of someone who realizes he's said too much. Frank didn't want to lose him so she eased into another area.
"Did she marry Eldridge?"
"Uh-huh," he said, tracking a shovel pass on the large screen TV.
"That's how she became Jones?"
"Uh-huh."
"What about her boys? Who's the father?"
"That'd been Eldridge," he answered. "They're good boys. Rough, but respectful."
"Yeah, they seem pretty devoted to their mother."
"Uh-huh."
"What do they do?"
"For work you mean?"
Frank nodded.
"Little a this, little a that. They mostly help Crissie run her businesses."
"Did she have other kids?"
"Just the twins. Didn't want no more after that."
"What happened to their father?"
"Eldridge?" Helms wagged his head again. "He got sent up to 'Dad. Got himself shanked in there. Aryan Nation done it, what I heard. Made a circle around him to keep the guards out long enough for him to bleed to death."
"Crissie"—the name felt strange in Frank's mouth—"she musta been pretty upset."
"Nah, she'd left him by then. Had no more use for that snake."
"She pretty mad at him?"
Helms grinned at her.
"Leave it to say I'm glad I wasn't Eldridge."
"Let me guess. He left her bank too?"
"No, he was different from the other ones. He didn't have much to start with. Worked the streets some, drove an old Lincoln, but he didn't have much to leave behind."
"She married him for love?"
"Much as that woman can love, yes, I believe so."
"So why'd she boot him?"
Helms chuckled again.
"You gotta understand, Eldridge was a player. Crissie couldn't keep that boy chained to her bed too long, see?"
Now it was Frank's turn to shake her head.
"What'd he get busted on?"
"Oh, he wasn't no good, old El. Got caught with five pounds of coke in his trunk. Uncut. Sent him up for dealing the stuff."
Satisfied with what she already had, Frank gambled, "And it was probably Crissie's all along."
"I ain't sayin'." Helms shrugged.
"Don't have to. Your sister-in-law's record's longer 'an your arm. What about that fortune-telling stuff she does? How long she been doin' that?"
"Oh, a long time. Crissie been doing that since we was kids. Always good at. She has her mama's talent. It runs in the Green women's blood, you know."
"She read the tea leaves for you?" Frank joked.
"She definitely has a gift for prophecy," Wardell mused. "She can see things before they happen. Between you and me," he confided, "that business makes me nervous. Jessie does it too, some, and I tell you, I don't like it. Makes me nervous."
"What about that church of hers? Do you ever go?"
"Lord, no," he chuckled. "I ain't much of a religious man and even if I was I don't think I'd be going to that church. Uh-uh."
"Why's that?"
"Not my cup of tea, Lieutenant."
"Does your wife go?"
"Not her cup, neither," he sniffed.
"What exactly goes on there?"
Wardell's head swung from side to side.
"I do not want to know," he emphasized again. "But I don't think it's anything good."
"Why do you say that? I mean, if you've never been?"
/> "I hear things. They ain't good things."
Frank could sense Helms entrenching himself so she fed him easier questions.
"Like devil worship? That kinda thing."
"On a level with that."
"That's pretty harmless, isn't it?"
The man looked at Frank as if gauging her sanity. Maybe he deemed it questionable because he just sucked at his beer.
"Well, isn't it? I mean, if they're just in there mumbling about the devil and lighting black candles where's the harm in that?"
Wardell remained fixated on his can.
Frank bent her head closer to his.
"That's all she's doing, isn't she?"
"You know, I ain't never been. I really can't say."
"But you hear stuff."
"It's talk. That's all."
"But you believe it."
"Look. Let's just say my sister-in-law has certain . . . talents. Things happen to her that don't happen to ordinary folks."
"Give me an example."
"Just. . . things," he shrugged.
"Well like what?" Frank grinned good-naturedly. "Is she sacrificing virgins on an altar?"
Wardell was suddenly and clearly afraid.
"You know," he said, plunking his beer on the end table, "I promised my wife I'd get lunch started and I haven't done a thing about that. She comes home and catches me in fronta this ball game, they'll be hell to pay."
He stood. Frank had to follow suit.
"You don't really believe Crissie's doing anything harmful, do you?"
Exasperated, he puffed his cheeks and blew a load of air.
"Lieutenant, I don't know what that woman does and I don't want to know. Yeah, I hear things but you know what they say; don't believe everything you hear. I know she's a strange woman, a powerful woman. She can make things happen. Things that I sleep better at night not knowing about. You want my advice, I'd leave her alone."
"You mean things like this?" Frank raised her gauzed hand. "The dog that bit me was red. Your sister-in-law warned me a couple weeks ago to watch out for a red dog."
Helms nodded, "Exactly like that."
"But you don't believe she made that happen" Frank argued. "She might have seen it in some weird way, like a premonition, but she couldn't make it happen."
He shrugged again, "Maybe. Maybe not."
"Do you think she could make things happen to her own nephew?"
He stared at Frank.
"I can't say."
"Can't or won't?"
"Can't, Lieutenant. Now I really best be getting to lunch."
Frank flipped him a card.
"You seem like a decent man, Mr. Helms. If you think of something I should know, here's my number."
Frank had let herself out.
Now she twirled her pen around and around on the tabletop, losing herself in the pinwheel effect. The Mother had everyone tiptoeing around her like she was enthroned on eggshells. For Frank's money, Mother Love was just another hustler. An effective one, but a charlatan nonetheless.
The odds were good, Frank had contended all weekend, that at some point she'd come into contact with a dog. If it happened to be a red dog, all the better for the Mother's prediction. If it wasn't, it was still a dog. An easy enough scam. Because Frank had been looking for the thing in rags when the dog bit her, the relic's image was in the forefront of her consciousness. The dog bit her where the beggar had grabbed her a few days ago so her discombobulated brain had made a logical association.
The explanation sounded perfectly viable, and Frank wanted to believe it, but her reptilian brain fought her. Thrashing around just under the waterline of her consciousness, it whispered, too many coincidences. Reluctantly, she listed them.
Being warned about a red dog, and then a red dog biting her. That thing in rags popping up all over town like a target in a shooting gallery, then disappearing from the station. The intense deja vus when she'd been bitten; the one before that when she was in the Mother's office. The freaky dream that had left her jumpy and rattled. And what about Darcy knowing all that voodoo shit and his wife being a mambo?
Separately, there were logical explanations for each incident. Bumping back to back, they made an ugly pattern. It was a pattern Frank didn't want to see, but all her training and instinct told her the line between coincidence and design had broken.
She held a finger up, motioning Deidre to bring another stout.
24
Frank emerged from her office at six sharp and Johnnie crowed, "Hey, look at this—Frank's imitation of Julia Child. Where's the other mitt?"
Noah asked, "What the hell happened to you?"
"Didn't you hear?" Johnnie answered for her. "Frank's taken up pit bull wrestling."
Jill rushed into the squad room and Frank said, "All right. Let's get going. What've you got, Taquito?"
She called on Diego first, knowing he wouldn't razz her or ask questions. She kept the briefing short, motioning Noah and Lewis into her office afterward.
"So what happened?" Noah insisted.
"Long story. There was this pit bull across the street. Dug out from under its yard and nailed me. Punched a couple arterial holes and made a helluva mess before Garcia beat it off with a board. I gotta give her a heads up for that."
"Did you have to have stitches?"
"Forty-two. And a little reconstructive surgery, but it's fine." Frank held up Danny Duncan's preliminary autopsy report. "Couple things Boo Radley failed to mention."
Noah turned to Lewis, marveling, "You gotta love her. Forty-two stitches and reconstructive surgery, but its fine. You're like the freakin' Black Knight, Frank. 'Oh, it's nothing! Just a flesh wound!'"
"Don't change the subject. Lewis, did you see the bruises on Duncan's wrists?"
"No," she answered, embarrassed. Frank handed her the autopsy report and recited it from memory for Noah's benefit.
"Track the body down. If it's been released, get to the funeral home ASAP. I want you both to check out this bruising. See if you can find a pattern. Get clear pictures."
"Didn't Boo Radley get pictures?"
"If you'd have been there you'd know that. I just got the text faxed to me. Did you see him take pictures?" she asked Lewis.
"I, uh, well, yeah, he took some," Lewis admitted. "They were peeling this old lady's face back on the table next to me. I must've got sidetracked."
Frank sighed, "When you're with Seuter, question his every move because he won't volunteer anything. Duncan could have had a time bomb ticking inside of him and fucking Boo Radley'd take a picture and sew him up without a peep.
"I dropped in on Jesse Helms. She wasn't there, but her husband gave me some names to look up. Lewis, run a male black name of Lincoln Roosevelt. Used to own the church the Mother's in now. Might trace him through property records. That would have been back in the sixties. Helms said he might have moved to Kansas around that time."
Lewis was making fast notes, bobbing her head.
"Run the second husband, too. Eldridge Jones. He ended up at the 'Dad on felony possession. Got a back door parole. And here's some names Kennedy dug up for us."
Frank passed Lewis a sheaf of papers. She'd called Kennedy to apologize for standing her up Friday afternoon. Kennedy had rightly figured that unless Frank was dead she'd want the notes ASAP so had taken them home with her. Frank picked them up Sunday before visiting Helms.
"How's she doing?" Noah grinned.
"Good. This should hold you two for a while. Now go away."
Uncoiling his long frame, Noah declared, "Well, this talk meant a lot to me too, Frank."
With her left hand Frank awkwardly signed off for personal leaves and overtime. She scanned a collection of 60-days, deciding to send them up to Foubarelle. Let him mark the red hell out of them, if he could even tell what needed correcting besides dangling participles and inappropriate use of commas. Thinking her supervisor would have been more useful to society as an English teacher, she reached for a pen with he
r right hand. Jolting it against the desk made her wince. Worse than that, the leering image of the relic popped up again.
"Fuck you," Frank whispered to it. She concentrated Kennedy's data. The narc had uncovered a nugget that neither Gough nor Joe had dug up during their investigations.
In 1967 Lincoln Roosevelt bought two life insurance policies, both naming Crystal Love as beneficiary. Seven months later, the insurance company identified his bones amid the rubble of an unexplained fire in a St. Louis boardinghouse. The Mother had collected $50,000 from the first policy and a cool $300,000 from the second.
Helms pronouncement, that his sister-in-law "can make things happen," echoed in Frank's head. Too many accidents around the Mother, and unexplained deaths. While her supernatural talents were debatable, Frank decided her maliciousness was not. If all these cases were connected, then Lewis was chasing a career serial killer.
Frank was plotting a time line of the Mother's suspected criminal involvements when the phone rang.
Bartlett, from Sheriff's Homicide, said, "Look here, see. I gotta do this. 'All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.' Okay, so it's a little trite, but you can't go wrong with Saint Matthew. But seriously, I've thought about this. Stick with me. The first is Wilfred Owen. Great war poet. You gotta love him. Listen.
" 'Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade how cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; and thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.' Great, huh? Now listen to this. 'For—' "
Frank interrupted, "So they were both cut. Was it swords or bayonets, Bartlett?"
"Houseman. Another great war poet. 'For when the knife has slit the throat across from ear to ear, 'twill bleed because of it.' "
"English, Robbie."
"Their throats were cut. Both of 'em. It didn't happen where they found 'em though. They were cut, then dumped."
"You got pictures?"
"Sure, I got 'em. Got the whole enchilada here. Whaddaya want to know?"
"How do they look? Kind of tidy or the usual mess?"
Frank heard him flipping pages, muttering something about bloody blameful blades and boiling bloody breasts. She was never sure which irked her more; the endless quotations or his normal conversation, which was more like dialogue from a 40's B-movie.
"Looks normal to me. As normal as guys can look with their windpipes letting the rain in."