Free Fall ec-4

by Robert Crais

Bone Dee reached across and came up with the Dan Wesson. He didn't look under my jacket when he did it and he didn't look at the Dan Wesson after he had it. He stared at me, and he kept staring even after he had the Dan Wesson.

  I said, "I always thought the AK was overrated, myself. Why don't you buy American and carry an M-16?"

  More of the staring.

  I said, "You related to Sandra Dee?"

  He said, "Keep it up, we see whether this muthuh-fuckuh overrated or not."

  No sense of humor.

  The Beetle started rolling and the guy in the shotgun seat of the Monte Carlo motioned me out. I tucked in behind the Bug and the Monte Carlo eased in behind me. I stayed close to the Beetle, and the Monte Carlo stayed close to me, too close for another car to slip between us. There was so much heavy-bass gangster rap coming out of the Monte Carlo, they shouldn't have bothered. No one would come within a half mile for fear of hearing loss.

  We went west for a couple of blocks, then turned south, staying on the residential streets and avoiding the main thoroughfares. As we drove, Bone Dee looked through the glove box and under the seats and came up with the Canon. "Thought you liked to buy American?"

  "It was a gift."

  Bone Dee popped open the back, exposed the film, then smashed the lens on the AK's receiver and threw the camera and the exposed film out the window. So much for visual evidence.

  The Bug drove slowly, barely making school zone speeds, and staying at the crown of the street, forcing oncoming cars to the side. Rolling in attack mode. Kids on their way home from school clutched their books tight to their chests and other kids slipped down driveways to get behind cars or between houses in case the shooting would start and women on porches with small children hurried them indoors. You could see the fear and the resignation, and I thought what a helluva way it must be to live like this. Does South Central look like America to you? A short, bony man in his seventies was standing shirtless in his front yard with a garden hose in one hand and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the other. He glared at the guys in the Bug and then the guys in the Monte Carlo. He puffed out his skinny chest and raised the hose and the Pabst out from his sides, showing hard, letting them have him if they had the balls to take him and saying it didn't scare him one goddamn bit. Dissing them. Showing disrespect. An AK came out of the Volkswagen and pointed at him but the old man didn't back down. Hard, all right. We turned again and the AK disappeared. With all the people running and hiding, I began to think that running and hiding was a pretty good idea. I could wait until we were passing a cross street, then backfist Bone Dee, yank the wheel, and probably get away, but that wouldn't work too well for James Edward Washington. Not many places to hide inside a Volkswagen Beetle.

  Two blocks shy of Martin Luther King Boulevard we turned into an alley past a '72 Dodge with no rear wheels and stopped at a long, low unpainted cinder-block building that probably used to be an auto repair shop. The alley ran behind a row of houses along to a train track that probably hadn't been used since World War II. Most of the railroad property was overgrown with dead grass, and undeveloped except for the cinderblock building. The houses all had chain-link fences, and many had nice vegetable gardens with tomato plants and okra and snap beans, and most of the fences were overgrown with running vines so the people who lived there wouldn't have to see what happened in the alley. Pit bulls stood at the back fences of two of the houses and watched us with small, hard eyes. Guess the pit bulls didn't mind seeing what happened. Maybe they even liked it.

  The guy in the long coat got out of the Monte Carlo and went to one of four metal garage doors built into the building and pushed it open. No locks. There were neither cars nor signs nor other evidence of human enterprise outside the building, but maybe inside was different. Maybe this was the Eight-Deuce clubhouse, and inside there would be pool tables and a soda fountain and clean-cut kids who looked like the Jackson family playing old Chubby Checker platters and dancing like the white man. Sure. Welcome to The Killing Zone.

  When the door was open the Bug drove into the building.

  Bone Dee said, "Follow him."

  I followed. The Monte Carlo came in after me and then the guy in the long coat stepped through and pulled the door down. Nothing inside, either. The building was as empty and as uncluttered as a crypt.

  When the door was down Bone Dee reached over, turned off the ignition, and took the keys. The guy in the long coat came over with the double-barreled twenty. There were no lights and no windows in the place, and the only illumination came from six industrial skylights built into the roof. No one had washed the skylights since they had been installed, so the light that came down was filtered and dirty and it was hard to see. One of the skylights was broken.

  The guy in the coat made a little come-here finger gesture with his free hand and said, "Get outta there, boy."

  I got out. Bone Dee got out with me.

  The guy in the coat said, "I like that old Corvette. You get dead, can I have it?"

  "Sure."

  He ran his hand along the fender as if it were something soft, and would appreciate tenderness.

  The doors on the Beetle opened and the two guys in there got out with James Edward Washington and pushed him toward me. The Monte Carlo opened up at the same time and three guys came out of there, two from the front and one from the back. The guy from the Monte Carlo's backseat was holding a Benelli combat shotgun and the two from the front were carrying AKs like Bone Dee. The guy who'd been in the backseat of the Beetle had put away the Taurus and come up with an old M-l carbine. You count the double twenty and figure for handguns, and these guys were packing serious hurt. I spent fourteen months in Vietnam on five-man reconnaissance patrols, and we didn't carry this much stuff. Of course, we lost the war.

  I said, "Okay, are you guys going to give up now or do I have to kick some ass?"

  Nobody laughed. James Edward Washington shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked as tight as a hand-me-down shirt. A fine sheen of sweat slicked his forehead and the skin beneath his eyes, and he watched the Monte Carlo like he expected something worse to get out. Something worse did.

  A fourth guy slid out of the back of the Monte Carlo with the lethal grace of an African panther. He was maybe a half inch shorter than me, but with very wide shoulders and very narrow hips and light yellow skin, and he looked like he was moving in slow motion even though he wasn't. There was a tattoo on the left side of his neck that said Blood Killer and a scar on the left side of his face that started behind his eye, went back to his ear, then trailed down the course of his cheek to his jaw.

  Knife scar. He was wearing a white silk dress shirt buttoned to the neck and black silk triple-pleated pants and he looked, except for the scar, as if he had stepped out of a Melrose fashion ad in Los Angeles Magazine. Bone Dee handed him the Dan Wesson. The other three guys were watching me but were watching the fourth guy, too, like maybe he'd say jump and they'd race to see who could jump the highest. I said, "You Akeem D'Muere?"

  D'Muere nodded like it was nothing and looked at the Dan Wesson, opening the chamber, checking the loads, then closing the chamber. "This ain't much gun. I got a nine holds sixteen shots."

  "It gets the job done."

  "I guess it does." He hefted the Dan Wesson and lined up the sights on my left eye. "What's your name?"

  "Elvis Cole."

  "What you doin' here?"

  "My buddy and I were looking for a guy named Clement Williams for stealing a 1978 Nissan Stanza." Maybe a lie would help.

  Akeem D'Muere cocked the Dan Wesson. "Bullshit." Nope. Guess a lie wasn't going to help.

  I said, "Why'd you force the Washington family to drop their wrongful-death suit against the LAPD?"

  He decocked the Dan Wesson and lowered it. "How much you know?"

  I shook my head.

  D'Muere said, "We see." He wiggled the Dan Wesson at Bone Dee and the other guy with an AK. "Get on this fool."

  Bone Dee hit the backs of my kn
ees with his AK and the other guy rode me down and knelt on my neck. Bone Dee knelt on my legs. The guy on my neck twisted my head around until I was looking up, then put the muzzle of his AK under my ear. It hurt.

  Akeem D'Muere stood over me. "It be easy to kill you, but easy ain't always smart. The people I know, they say you got friends at LAPD and you turnin' up dead maybe make'm mad, maybe make things even worse."

  Something moved across the skylights. Pike, maybe.

  "Still, I can't let you keep runnin' around, you see? Things gettin' outta hand and they got to stop. You got to stop. You see that?"

  "Sure." It was hard to breathe with the guy on my back.

  Akeem D'Muere shook his head. "You say that, but it just talk, so I gotta show you how things are." Akeem D'Muere went over to James Edward Washington, touched the Dan Wesson to James Edward's left temple, and pulled the trigger. The explosion hit me like a physical thing and the right side of James Edward Washington's face blew out and he collapsed to the concrete floor as if he were a mechanical man and someone had punched his off button. He fell straight down, and when his face hit the cement, a geyser of blood sprayed across the floor and splattered onto my cheeks.

  I went as stiff and tight as a bowstring and pushed against the men on my back but I could not move them. James Edward Washington trembled and twitched and jerked on the floor as a red pool formed under his head. His body convulsed and something that looked like red tapioca came out of his mouth. The guy in the long coat who had opened and closed the big door went over to James Edward and squatted down for a closer look. He said, "Look at this shit."

  The convulsing peaked, and then the body grew still.

  Akeem D'Muere came back, squatted beside me, and opened the Dan Wesson's chamber. He shook out the remaining cartridges, then wiped down the Dan Wesson and dropped it next to me. He said, "The fuckin' bitch next. She started this."

  I blinked hard five or six times, and then I focused on him. It was hard to focus and hard to hear him, and I tried to think of a way to shake off the men on my back and get to him before the AKs got to me.

  Akeem D'Muere smiled like he knew what I was thinking, and like it didn't really worry him, like even if I tried, and even if I got out from under the men and past the AKs, he still wouldn't be worried. He looked over at the others. "You got the keys?"

  Bone Dee said, "Yeah," and held up my keys.

  Akeem sort of jerked his head and Bone Dee went to the guy with the carbine and they went out of my field of view to my car.

  Maybe thirty seconds later Bone Dee came back and Akeem D'Muere went over to James Edward Washington's body. He touched the body with his toe, then shook his head and looked at me. "Don't matter none. This just another dead nigger."

  I tried to say something, but nothing came out.

  Akeem D'Muere turned away. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

  Bone Dee and the guy with the carbine got back into the Volkswagen and Akeem D'Muere and the guy with the Benelli riot gun went to the Monte Carlo. The guy on my shoulders stayed there and another guy with an AK went to the Monte Carlo and stood by the open passenger door, ready to cover me. The tall guy with the double twenty opened the big doors. When he did, something outside made a loud BANG and the tall guy was kicked back inside and Joe Pike came through fast, diving low and rolling toward the Volkswagen, then coming up and snapping off one shot at the guy on my shoulders and two shots through the Volkswagen's driver's-side window. The bangs were loud and would've been Pike's .357. The first bullet rolled the guy off my shoulders and the two in the Volkswagen pushed the driver over into the passenger side on top of Bone Dee. Pike yelled, "Down."

  I stayed down.

  The guy standing guard by the Monte Carlo dove into the open passenger door, and the big Benelli came out over the top of him and cut loose, putting most of its pellets into the Volkswagen. Pike popped two fast shots at the Monte Carlo, and then the Monte Carlo roared to life and fishtailed its right rear into the Volkswagen and then into the side of the garage door and then it was gone.

  I ran forward and pulled Bone Dee out of the VW. The driver was dead. Bone Dee screamed when I grabbed him and yelled that he'd been shot and I told him I didn't give a damn. I pushed him down on the cement and made sure he wasn't armed and then I went to James Edward Washington but James Edward Washington was dead. "Jesus Christ."

  Pike said, "You okay?"

  I shook my head. I took a deep breath and let it out and then I began to shake.

  Pike said, "We're going to have company." He put his Python down carefully, so as not to mar the finish. "You hear them?"

  "Yes."

  I think Pike heard them before me, but maybe not. The sirens came in from both sides of the alley and then people were yelling and two cops I'd never seen before leapfrogged through the door. They were in street clothes and were carrying shotguns, and one took up a position in the doorway and the other rolled in and came up behind the Volkswagen's left front fender, much as Pike had. They screamed POLICE when they made their advance and told us to put down our weapons. Habit. Our weapons were already down. I said, "Guy by the Volkswagen is wounded. The other three are dead."

  A third cop appeared in the opposite side of the door with another shotgun. "Keep your hands away from your body and get down on the ground. Do it now." He had long hair tied back with a blue bandana.

  Pike and I did what they said, but they came in hard anyway, like we knew they would, one of them going to Pike and one of them coming to me and the third going to Bone Dee. The one who went to Bone Dee was short. More cars pulled up outside, and you could hear the whoop-whoop of the paramedics on their way in.

  The cop who came to me put his knee into my back and twisted my hands around behind me and fit me with cuffs. You get knees in your back twice at the same crime scene, and you know it's not shaping up as a good day. I said, "My wallet's on the floorboard of the Corvette. My name is Elvis Cole. I'm a private investigator. I'm one of the good guys."

  The cop with the bandana said, "Shut the fuck up."

  They cuffed Pike and they cuffed Bone Dee and then the short cop said, "I got the keys," and went to my Corvette. The cop with the bandana went with him. They moved with clarity and purpose.

  The other cop picked up my wallet and looked through it. He said, "Hey, the sonofabitch wasn't lying. He's got an investigator's license."

  The cop with the bandana said, "Not for long."

  A couple of bluesuits came in and said, "Everything cool?"

  The cop with the bandana said, "We'll see."

  The short cop fumbled with the keys, then opened the trunk and made one of the world's widest grins. You'd think he'd won Lotto. "Bingo. Just where they said." He reached into the trunk and pulled out a baggie of crack cocaine worth about eight thousand dollars and tossed it to the cop with the bandana. What Bone Dee and the guy with the carbine had been doing behind me.

  I looked at Joe Pike and Pike's mouth twitched.

  I said, "It isn't mine." I pointed at Bone Dee. "It's his."

  The cop with the bandana said, "Sure. That's what they all say." Then he took out a little white card, told us we were under arrest, and read us our rights.

  After that he brought us to jail.

  CHAPTER 19

  The cop with the bandana was named Micelli. He put Pike into a gray sedan and me into a black-and-white, and then they drove us to the Seventy-seventh. Micelli rode in the sedan.

  The Seventy-seventh Division is a one-story red brick building just off Broadway with diagonal curbside parking out front and a ten-foot chain-link fence around the sides and back. The officers who work the Double-seven park their personal cars inside the fence and hope for the best. Concertina wire runs along the top of the fence to keep out the bad guys, but you leave personal items in your car at your own risk. Your car sort of sits there at your own risk, too. The bad guys have been known to steal the patrol cars.

  We turned through a wide chain-link gate and rolled
around the back side of the building past the maintenance garage and about two dozen parked black-and-whites and up to an entry they have for uniformed officers and prospective felons. Micelli got out first and spoke with a couple of uniformed cops, then disappeared into the building. The uniforms brought us inside past the evidence lockers and went through our pockets and took our wallets and our watches and our personal belongings. They did me first, calling off the items to an overweight property sergeant who noted every item on a large manila envelope, and then they did Pike. When they did Pike, they pulled off the hip holster for his .357, the ankle holster for his .380, an eight-inch Buck hunting knife, four speed-loaders for the .357, and two extra .380 magazines. The overweight sergeant said, "Jesus Christ, you expecting a goddamned war?"

  The uniform who did Pike grinned. "Look who it is."

  The sergeant opened Pike's wallet, then blinked at Pike. "Jesus Christ. You're him."

  The uniformed cop took off Pike's sunglasses and handed them to the sergeant. Pike squinted at the suddenly bright light, and I saw for the first time in months how Pike's eyes were a deep liquid blue. My friend Ellen Lang says that there is a lot of hurt in the blue, but I have never been able to see it. Maybe he just hides it better with me. Maybe she sees his eyes more often than I.

  Micelli came back as they were finishing and I said, "Play this one smart, Micelli. There's a detective sergeant in North Hollywood named Poitras who'll vouch for us, and an assistant DA named Morris who'll back Poitras up. Give'm a call and let's get this straight."

  Micelli signed the property forms. "You got connections, that what you telling me?"

  "I'm telling you these guys know us, and they'll know we've been set up."

  Micelli grinned at the property sergeant. "You ever hear that before, Sarge? You ever hear a guy we're bringing in say he was set up?"

  The sergeant shook his head. "No way. I've never heard that before."

  I said, "For Christ's sake, Micelli, check me out. It's a goddamned phone call."

  Micelli finished signing the forms and glanced over at me. "Listen up, pogue. I don't care if you've been hamboning the goddamned mayor. You're mine until I say otherwise." He gave the clipboard to the property sergeant, and then he told the uniforms to bring us to interrogation. He walked away.