“I’ll get my car,” Carolyn told her. “I drive a white Infiniti.”
“I’d like to buy you dinner,” Arline said. “Maybe one night after class. I usually have conferences during the lunch recesses.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she answered as she walked off.
“Wait, Carolyn,” Arline yelled out the window. “You’re doing very well in my class. And I’m not saying this because of tonight. You’ll make an excellent attorney.”
“Thanks,” she said, waving as she jogged toward her car. It was nice to know that a day that had started disastrously was ending on a positive note. She couldn’t wait to recommend a prison term for Fast Eddie. Already, she was stacking the counts in her head. What she couldn’t accomplish by law, the prisoners themselves would handle. Not even hardened criminals could tolerate a man who raped a child, and their punishment would be far more fitting than anything the court could administer. Downly would be lucky if he survived.
“Get used to bending over, Eddie,” Carolyn said, depressing the button on the alarm and climbing into her Infiniti. At nineteen, Fast Eddie was a slender young man. His skin was smooth and his features were slightly on the feminine side. The line would be a mile long. The inmates would love him. First, however, they would beat him and sodomize him.
The two-story house was located in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles. The driver parked his black Jeep Cherokee at the curb, making certain to engage the emergency brake so the vehicle wouldn’t roll down the hill. The two passengers got out of the car and made their way up a stone walkway to the front of the house. The taller one, a dark-haired man in his late forties with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, was smacked in the head by a tree branch. “This place is a jungle, Pete,” Boyd Chandler said in annoyance, snapping the thick branch in half as if it were a twig. Chandler was dressed in a blue knit shirt and dark slacks. “You’d think the chief would at least have the trees trimmed.”
“He’s drunk out of his mind half the time,” Pete Cordova told him. A short, olive-skinned man, Cordova had graying hair and was wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt. “He probably can’t even see the damn trees.”
“So he dips into the sauce too much,” Boyd tossed back. “He’s still the deputy chief of the LAPD.”
They stepped onto the porch and Pete rang the doorbell while Boyd removed a pack of chewing gum from his pocket and popped a piece in his mouth. “I’d die for a cigarette right now.”
“I don’t remember,” Pete said. “How long has it been since you quit?”
“Three years.”
“That long, and you want to smoke?”
“Yeah,” Boyd told him, “some urges never go away. Know what I mean?”
Pete laughed.
A pretty Hispanic housekeeper answered the door, lowering her eyes as she gestured for the men to enter. “You can go into the study,” she said. “Would you like coffee, water, a cold soda?”
“Bring us a couple of beers, sweetie.” Boyd’s eyes swept over her body, coming to rest on her ample breasts. She was dressed in a white cotton dress, and he could see her nipples through the flimsy fabric.
“I’m sorry,” the woman explained. “Chief Harrison’s doctor had me remove all alcoholic beverages from the house.”
The two men exchanged glances. “Things change,” Boyd whispered. “If he’s sober, we’re gonna be in even more hot water.” He watched the woman’s hips sway as she walked into the other room. “Think the chief is doing her? Mighty fine body, don’t you think?”
“Nah,” Pete said. “That woman’s a lady, man. What would she want with a burned-out drunk like Harrison?”
They entered a dimly lit room. A fifty-eight-year-old male was slouched in a brown leather recliner, his legs splayed out in front of him. He peered out at the men through watery hazel eyes hidden behind thick glasses. He was dressed in pajamas and a terry-cloth bathrobe, and his feet were encased in fur-lined slippers. A stack of newspapers was tossed on the floor beside him, and the end table was cluttered with prescription pill bottles.
“Sit,” Charles Harrison said, glancing toward the sofa. He fixed the two men with an icy stare. Finally he spoke, his words low and measured. “I trusted you to take care of things. Metroix was never supposed to see daylight.”
Boyd cleared his throat, almost swallowing his chewing gum. Plucking it out of his mouth, he deposited it in an ashtray. “We got to most of the parole board, Chief,” he told him. “The problem was they appointed three new people this year.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“We tried,” Pete interjected, finding the man in front of him more pathetic than menacing. He remembered Charles Monroe Harrison in his prime—good-looking, educated, articulate, a shining star in the world of law enforcement. Then his entire life had crumbled. His seventeen-year-old son had been murdered. His wife, Madeline, had been hospitalized for years with some type of peculiar illness. He believed they called it chronic fatigue syndrome. These days, Pete thought, people had a fancy name for everything. The wife had cracked up, plain and simple. Harrison’s career had advanced but the man had drowned his sorrows in the bottle. From the way he looked tonight, Pete was certain the booze was going to kill him.
“We did everything we could, Chief,” he said. “We wined and dined them…told them how dangerous Metroix was, that his psychological profile indicated a high probability that he’d kill again if released. We even showed them Tim’s picture in his football uniform.” He stopped speaking, seeing the deputy chief’s chest expand and contract with emotion. “Things were looking pretty good until we met with this woman, one of the new people on the board. The first thing she asked was to see our credentials. As soon as we admitted we were no longer officially employed by the police department, she slammed the door in our faces.”
“Yeah,” Boyd added, his right shoulder twitching with nervous energy. “I called her up later and convinced her to talk to us again. This time we leaned on her. Her husband chased us off the property with a shotgun.”
Charles Harrison’s eyes flashed with rage. “I told you fools that those kind of tactics would only work against us. What did you do? Tell her you were going to break her legs?”
“Not exactly,” Boyd told him, making a waving motion with his hand. “She’s got a son who’s a senior in high school. So I follow him one day, see, catch him smoking pot with some of his friends. I’d already checked out his school records. The little snot had won a scholarship to one of those fancy schools back east. Harvard, I think.”
“Princeton,” Pete said, a look of envy on his face. He imagined what it would be like to start his life over. The day he’d been sworn in as a police officer had been one of the proudest moments in his life. Several members of his family had gone into law enforcement as well, quickly moving up through the ranks. A Hispanic cop carried a good deal of status. All Pete had was a high school diploma. Unless a person became a security officer, ten years as a cop didn’t account for anything, and his situation was far worse than most. Pete and Boyd were convicted felons.
“All I did was tell the kid’s mother that the university might have some pretty strict rules regarding the use of narcotics,” Boyd explained. “You know, that her boy could lose his scholarship.”
“Metroix had already served a longer sentence than most people convicted of the same offense,” Pete added, fidgeting in his seat. “Not only that, the guy became buddies with the warden. His report listed Metroix as a model prisoner.”
The older man’s face froze into hard lines. “That bastard killed my son. And you two morons have the balls to sit in my house and tell me he was a model prisoner. Get out of my sight,” he shouted, a trickle of saliva running down the side of this mouth. “You disgust me. You were both worthless when you wore a badge and you’re worthless now.”
Pete coughed, glancing over at Boyd as he tried to decide what they should do next. They’d tangled with a cranked up burglar one night and Boyd
had beaten the man so severely, he’d suffered permanent brain damage. Pete had altered his report to cover his partner, unaware that there were several witnesses to the incident, one of them a reporter for the local newspaper. During the majority of the beating, the prisoner had been in handcuffs. Both officers had been convicted and sentenced to three months in the county jail. The day they were released, Chief Harrison had been waiting outside in his car with a suitcase containing twenty thousand in cash. Somehow, every year, the chief had come up with another twenty grand to make certain Daniel Metroix remained in prison.
Over the years, the two former officers had moved into the shadows, rubbing shoulders with organized crime and narcotics traffickers. Pete and Boyd didn’t steal or deal; however, they served as extra muscle with a few remaining contacts inside law enforcement. The money Harrison paid them was peanuts. They had continued to work for him out of respect.
“Forget it,” Harrison said, his voice trailing off. A shaky hand reached for a bottle off the end table as he poured several pills into his palm. He popped them into his mouth, then washed them down with water. “My liver’s shot,” he told them. “Alcoholics aren’t placed at the top of the transplant list. I can’t go to my grave knowing this man is on the street. Do you understand me? I’ve got two hundred grand in my brokerage account.”
“We’re glad you’ve got some money to keep you comfortable,” Pete said, pushing himself to his feet. “Problem is, Chief, Boyd and I don’t kill for money.”
He started to walk over and shake the man’s hand, thinking this might be the last time they saw him. Harrison wasn’t an evil person. He was a dying man who’d never come to terms with his grief. Pete took several steps forward and then stopped, terrified that he might be looking at a future vision of himself. What would he do if someone killed one of his children? He quickly spun around and followed his partner to the door.
“Two hundred grand is a lot of money,” Harrison told them, his voice strong now. “Do you think I haven’t kept tabs on you? I can document every crime you’ve committed, as well as every crook you’ve associated yourselves with since you were booted off the force in Ventura. All I have to do is make a few phone calls, and you’ll spend the rest of your lives in prison. Of course, if you turn your back on me and walk out that door, you may not live long enough to go to prison.”
Pete Cordova had feared all along that it might end this way. He had a wonderful wife and two darling daughters. The underworld people they dealt with couldn’t afford to be exposed, and Harrison had nothing to lose and everything to gain. “Come on, Boyd,” he said, tugging on his sleeve. “We’re not talking to a rational person anymore. You’re on your own, Chief.”
“You’ll be back,” Harrison told them, bending over at the waist as his face contorted in pain. “Even if you don’t, someone else will take me up on my offer.”
Once the two men left the house, Boyd said, “I wanted to take out Metroix the night he killed Tim. Greenly was chicken. Would have saved everyone a lot of grief if he’d listened to me.”
Pete Cordova kept his mouth shut and walked ahead to the car. The time had come for him to turn his life around. He owed it to his family. One of the first people he needed to distance himself from was Boyd Chandler. He doubted if Harrison would follow through on his threats and report their illegal activities to the authorities, but Boyd might go behind his back and take the chief up on his offer. Two hundred grand was a sizable sum of money, and Boyd was a habitual gambler.
Chapter 4
Carolyn resided in a modest three-bedroom home located near Ventura College. Before she began attending law school, she’d spent her weekends gardening in the California sunshine. The walkway leading to the front door was lined with blooming rosebushes, and the beds along the exterior of the house were filled with rows of vibrantly colored perennials.
Pulling her white Infiniti into the driveway at ten-thirty that night, Carolyn rushed into the house, hoping her son was awake. Because John cooked dinner and helped Rebecca with her homework on Mondays and Wednesdays when she attended classes, Carolyn had given him permission to convert the garage into his own private apartment. All three of the bedrooms were located on the same side of the small house, and at fifteen, John needed privacy.
Rebecca was a rambunctious, popular twelve-year-old. She played her stereo at deafening levels, constantly had one girlfriend or the other over visiting, and only cleaned her room when her mother threatened to ground her. Unlike most teenage boys, John was fastidiously neat. He spent his time reading and studying, and detested any type of noise whatsoever. Outrageously handsome, he stood over six feet and had thick dark hair and luminous green eyes. At present, though, the opposite sex played an insignificant role in her son’s life. He would occasionally take a girl to a school dance or a movie. Afterward, the girl would call or drop by the house, but John was too busy to put up with the demands of a steady girlfriend.
Carolyn’s son aspired to go to MIT and major in physics. Providing for her children’s needs was not easy. She certainly couldn’t depend on her ex-husband. Frank had been a compulsive liar, and had cheated on her repeatedly. When he’d started using drugs, Carolyn had finally put an end to the marriage.
She found John in the kitchen stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a white tank top. His skin was tan and his body taut and muscular.
Carolyn walked over and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re looking good, kid,” she told him, knowing he worked out every day now in his new garage apartment. Lifting weights, John told his mother, helped him to sleep at night. Like herself, her son found it hard to quiet his constantly churning mind. After years of sleepless nights, Carolyn had finally resorted to medication. She hoped her son didn’t end up following in her footsteps.
“I’ll finish cleaning up,” his mother told him. “You need to get to bed. I’ve told you a dozen times not to bother with the dishes. You do enough as it is.”
“Bed?” John said, an anxious look on his face. “I have hours of homework left to do.” He wiped his hands on a dish towel. “Paul Leighton bought a house down the street. I saw him outside today. I was going to walk over and introduce myself. I decided it wouldn’t be polite to bother him until he gets all his furniture and stuff moved in.”
Carolyn opened the refrigerator and removed a pitcher of lemonade, pouring herself a glass and taking a seat in a wooden chair at the round oak table. “Am I supposed to know this person? The name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“He’s a physics professor at Caltech,” John told her. “Mr. Chang showed me all of the books he’s written. He thinks Leighton is going to be another Richard Feynman, the guy I’ve been studying.”
“Impressive,” Carolyn said, bracing her head with one hand, then kicking her shoes off. “So he’s both a writer and a physicist?”
The boy shook his head in frustration. His mother was an enigma. In the past, she could solve a math problem he’d worked on for days in less than an hour. Since she’d been attending law school, though, she’d turned into a space cadet. He knew she was tired. He could see it on her face. “Leighton doesn’t write novels, Mom, like Dad tried to do. He writes textbooks. Not only that,” her son continued, “he graduated from MIT.”
“Now I’m really impressed,” Carolyn said, smiling. “There are other schools besides MIT, you know. What’s wrong with Caltech? Even Long Beach State is a good school. A California university wouldn’t be as costly.”
“You don’t understand,” John argued. “MIT is the best. Maybe Professor Leighton could write a letter for me. Since I went to summer school last year, I’ll be able to graduate when I’m seventeen. That’s only two years away. All I need to do is ace my SATs.”
“Sounds great,” his mother said. “When I can free up a night, we’ll invite the professor and his wife over for dinner.”
Her son had a sheepish look on his face. “He doesn’t have a wife. He’s divorced. His daughter i
s the same age as Becky. That means she’ll go to the same school. I’ve already talked to Becky and she promised to introduce Leighton’s daughter to some of her friends.”
“Your sister doesn’t like to be called Becky,” Carolyn reminded him. “She says it sounds too babyish now that she’s in junior high.”
“What do I care?” John tossed out. “I do all the work around here. I can call her anything I want.”
“I had a similar conversation with Brad today,” Carolyn told him, finishing her lemonade and carrying the glass to the sink. “Call her Rebecca, okay? I’ve got enough problems without listening to you two squabbling over a name.”
“What did Brad do to make you mad?”
“He called me sweetheart.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not appropriate for a supervisor to use terms of endearment at the office. He also called me baby.”
“I’m glad you stopped seeing him,” the boy said. “He’s a prick, if you ask me. The thought of him shacking up with my mother made me want to puke.”
Carolyn slapped him on the shoulder. “Talking about your mother shacking up is unacceptable, got it? I was lonely. Brad and I’ve been friends for years. We went out to dinner and took in an occasional movie.”
“Right,” John said, smirking. “You can’t feed me that bullshit. I saw you sneaking in at two in the morning.”
“Stop using bad language,” Carolyn corrected him. “Regardless of what Brad and I did, it’s none of your business. It’s over now anyway.”
“Professor Leighton isn’t old and ugly,” John told her, excited. “He might be a few years older than you. Smart guys don’t always look like movie stars. He’s better looking than Dad.”
“Speaking of your father,” Carolyn said. “Has he called or stopped by lately?”
“No,” the boy said, averting his eyes. “Even if he did, I wouldn’t want to see him. He doesn’t care about us. We don’t even have his phone number. The last time we talked, he said he was calling from a phone booth. I’m sure he was lying. I heard some chick laughing in the background. He lies about everything now.”
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