by Neil Russell
He was on my perp for poppin’ somebody else.
Seemed odd cause the guy was a fuckin’ accountant.
Not the usual DNA for a multiple.
“What happened to him?”
Checked into a hotel in Chinatown,
drank a bottle of Beam and ate a .357,
which Chinks usually don’t do.
Mostly they’re fliers. Sometimes pills.
“The guy was Chinese?”
Yep. Chuck’s stiff was the business partner.
A hit set up to look like a home invasion.
But there was a snitch. He never said who.
I figure once the guy was dead Chuck just dosed his mess out.
I took back some of my earlier applause. Even if Jake were right about the attack on Manarca not being related to the ones on Chuck and Lucille, the two were connected by more than a badge. And there was another home invasion involved. Until I knew if it fit, I’d keep it to myself.
Manarca’s writing was getting difficult to read. He was tired. I started to put the pad back on the table, but he grabbed it.
If Mayweed’s involved,
somebody’s gonna get it in the ass.
“Why? Was he in on the Chinatown case?”
Manarca let out a snort of disgust and wrote angrily.
No, he’s a’ fuckin’ chief, that’s why.
Brass never plays team ball.
Talk to Fat Cat.
“Who’s Fat Cat?”
“That would be me. Saleapaga. LA Sheriff’s Department. Homicide.”
I turned. Hugo “Fat Cat” Saleapaga was coming through the curtains encircling the other bed. Only slightly shorter than me but considerably wider, he looked more like a bear than a cat. I also noticed that as big as he was, he moved easily, like an athlete.
Fat Cat’s skin was dark chestnut, his features Polynesian, and he was expensively dressed in a dove gray suit that took up several bolts of Italian wool. The suit was set off by a pair of smartly shined, tan alligator shoes. Add in a yellow and orange silk tie against a white-on-white shirt, and he wasn’t trying to hide his candle.
“Hard to get any shut-eye around here, what with Dion moanin’ all night and now you jabberin’ away about sand-paperin’ titties.” A broad, noncop smile lit up his face. He extended his hand, and I took it.
“Rail Black,” I said.
“I know,” he said, nodding at Manarca. “Slick Speechless here ran some things by me when that Corsican thing went down. Bothered him there were so many unanswered questions ... leastways on his part.” He looked at me with a pair of coal black eyes that didn’t match the warmth of his grin. I don’t know what he was expecting, but if it wasn’t silence, he was disappointed.
After we’d played a little I-can-keep-from-blinking-longer-than-you, Manarca rattled an IV, and we used it as an excuse to disengage. The detective’s eyelids were getting heavy, and a nurse came in and gave us hard looks while she rearranged his wires and took his temperature. Smart enough to know not to mess with ladies wearing white panty hose, I suggested to Fat Cat that we take our conversation elsewhere. On our way out, Manarca gave me a thumbs-up, which I assumed meant he didn’t have any secrets from his friend.
At the coffee stand on the first floor, Fat Cat got himself some kind of latte that took a paragraph to order, and I grabbed a cold bottle of lemonade.
It was a four-star Southern California day, and we wandered outside.
“You two meet on a case?” I asked Fat Cat.
“Not the kind you’re thinkin’ of. We go back. You ever hear him tell how he’s related to Balboa?”
“Couple of times, but I’m still not clear.”
“Me neither, but that’s his specialty. Tellin’ stories and stickin’ to them. Little prick saved my life with that fast mouth of his.”
We moseyed over to a marble bench under a couple of maple trees and sat.
“Came here when I was eleven. Me and my mother. Samoa to Honolulu to LA, courtesy of the DEA. My old man, David Saleapaga, headed a narco unit in Hawaii and was the first to find the Medellin Cartel movin’ shit through the South Pacific. Once he started bustin’ up their operation, he had the life expectancy of a gnat. We found out later Escobar had made him a Ciento, which meant a hundred grand dead. Double, if you kidnapped him or a member of his family. So some long-forgotten uncle named George took us in because the Justice Department promised him a check every month.
“The Manarcas lived across the street. Dion was a couple years older and the leader of the neighborhood cool guys. He took me under his wing.”
The bench we were occupying was on the edge of a parking lot, and we both noticed a shirtless teenager with a shaved head and too many tattoos walking through the cars, looking in windows. You didn’t have to be a cop to figure it out. Fat Cat held up his shield and whistled. The guy looked, sneered and took his time disappearing.
Saleapaga shook his head. “Back in the day, I’da run like hell.”
“Me too. Every kid had two gears: standard-issue Jesus Fucking Christ and cop-speed.”
He laughed. “Dion always had to wait for the rest of us. Man, was he fast.”
“Where’d Fat Cat come from?”
“One day, these guys come around askin’ for my mother, Nita. Four motherfuckers in suits. Sayin’ they’re from Immigration, but they got Colombian accents, and they’re drivin’ a Mercedes with Florida plates, so I’m bettin’ no. Uncle George tells them she gets home at seven. By this time, money or no money, he didn’t give a shit. We’d been cloggin’ up his house for two years, and he couldn’t wait to see us gone.
“I was gettin’ to be a handsome dude too, and George’s hot-lookin’ daughter, Lola, couldn’t hang around me enough. Probably had as much to do with her old man turnin’ Valachi as findin’ the bathroom locked when he wanted to take a dump.”
He took a long pull on his coffee. “There was this guy in the neighborhood. Gus. Hunted everything. Duck, deer. Went to Montana once for some kinda goddamn sheep. We’d all scoot over when he got back from a trip. See some blood. Maybe score a hunk of meat nobody’s old lady would cook.
“One day, Gus comes home with this big-footed kitten. Said he found it in the desert . . . next to its dead mother. Swore he didn’t shoot her, but since nobody was askin’, why even bring it up unless you had? Little thing was cute, though. Claws sharp as shit, but if you held it in a towel, you could cart it around.
“Couple of months go by, and it’s gettin’ big. Gus said it was a feral mix, but everybody knew it was a fuckin’ cougar.”
“And he had it in the house?”
“Yep, which was startin’ to be a problem. Tearin’ up the furniture, drapes. Then it grabbed the Thanksgiving turkey and held the family off while it ate it—raw. That was the end for the wife. So Gus offers twenty bucks to anybody’ll take it off his hands.”
“And naturally, that’s you guys.”
He smiled, remembering. “We kept it in an old widow-lady’s garage. She never went out there. It was like our clubhouse. And for some reason, I was the only one could handle that goddamn cat. Scratched me up pretty good, but never bit me.
“So the day the Florida dudes show up, Dion sends somebody to intercept my mom at the bus stop. Tells her my dad’s gonna be callin’ her at her girlfriend’s house. He did that sometimes—when he didn’t want Uncle George listenin’ in on the extension.
“By seven, my uncle’s gone. Took Lola and went to the movies. So when the fake INS guys come back, nobody answers the door. Us kids are on Dion’s front porch, watchin’. We give them a minute, then Dion moseys over and says Nita and her kid blew town. Then he gets real earnest. Tells them she left a suitcase at his house. And he peeked inside. Cash and bars of metal. Like maybe gold. Says since the guys look like cops, they might want it. Doesn’t need his family messed up with some drug assholes.”
Now I was laughing.
“I had that cougar in the biggest motherfuckin’ Samson
ite the Salvation Army had, along with half a dozen bricks to give it some heft. Even then, every once in a while, the bag would walk a few feet on its own. Dion gives the signal, and I lug it across the street to the Mercedes. I’m sweatin’ big-time, scared shitless. Dion tells the Florida guys it’s gotta sit upright, cause if the gold shifts, it might tear the sides out.”
“Let me guess, so they load it in the backseat?”
He nodded. “And all the time, I’m prayin’ the cat don’t go into one of his screams. They got a block before somebody couldn’t wait to look at all that gold. Four doors flew open like a half ton of napalm blew. Guys runnin’ in all directions. Driver didn’t get it in park, so the car rolls over a fire hydrant, and next thing you know, there’s water shootin’ half a fuckin’ mile into space. Goes without sayin’, nobody came back.”
I was laughing by then too. “What happened to the cat?”
“Saw it jump a fence between some houses . . . headin’ toward the railroad yard. Probably why I never get a Christmas card from PETA.”
“But you picked up a nickname.”
“I wasn’t heavy back then, but what the hell. It was better than ‘Big Hugo,’ which sounds like somethin’ you get at Nate & Al’s.”
We finished our drinks. “I’m not going to ask why Dion picked the LAPD, and you went with the sheriff.”
“You know anything about the politics in those days, you don’t have to. Shit’s over now, and we both done good. How can I help you?”
“What do you know about Yale Maywood?”
“Knocked him on his ass at a weddin’ once. Got a three-day suspension, and it was worth it. But you probably want more than that.”
“Care to sniff around?”
“For Dion, anything. You got a card?”
* * * *
One of the officers protecting my house met me in the lower-level garage of the Century City shopping center. The official name has been Westfield Shoppingtown for almost a decade now, but I don’t know anyone who would recognize it said that way. In most businesses, people pay a premium for established brands and never fool around with something ingrained in the public consciousness. But it’s been my experience that the life-form with the most ego and least common sense is a developer. NFL owners run a close second.
The cop, an off-duty, fresh-faced rookie named Jarman, brought my Dodge Ram and a leather overnight bag Mallory had packed. His face lit up when he saw the Woodie, even though it was coming off the assembly line when his grandfather wasn’t much more than a notion in somebody’s eye. “Think you can handle this?” I asked.
“Three on the column and a clutch about as subtle as a Jerry Bruckheimer sound track. No problem, Mr. Black. No problem at all.”
Even if he couldn’t, the owner wasn’t going to be doing any complaining, but the kid eased away like he’d done it every day of his life. After bouncing around in the old Poncho, it felt good to be back in the Ram, and as I adjusted the seat to fit me, I put on some Miles Davis for the ride back to the desert.
Before I left, I drove around both levels of the garage a couple of times, but if somebody was shadowing me, they were cleverly disguised as good-looking ladies dressed for a day at Bloomingdale’s.
* * * *
10
Taxi Drivers and Price Cutters
My plan had been to go straight to the Brando place, but it was nearing 3:30 when I came to the Victorville business district exit. There were a couple of bases I wanted to cover, and I decided to do it sooner rather than wait for morning. I was also hungry, and an In-N-Out Burger sign large enough to direct air traffic had gotten my stomach growling. While I gnawed on a Double-Double—heavy on the grilled onions—and sipped a chocolate shake, I thought about Chuck and Lucille. Pretty soon, what their last hours must have been like took away my appetite, and I dumped the rest of my meal and headed downtown.
An hour of combing the archives of the Daily Press for the preceding month didn’t reveal anything even mildly out of the ordinary. Neither did a call to the local television station’s newsroom, where a high-desert Edward R. Murrow ran down every federal crime in the area going back to a bank robbery in 1972.
Intelligence operators know that if you want to find out what’s going on beneath the surface of any town, ask a fireman. They see everything, and unlike cops, they’ll talk to you. And I do mean fireman not firefighter, a designation that matters only to the Cult of the Perpetually Offended, not the men and women who risk their lives running into burning buildings.
LAFD Battalion Chief Anita Watson, who I dated before she was killed trying to rescue of one of her men from an apartment house inferno, once told me that if any of her team ever called her a firefighter, she’d give him a week of desk duty. I’d made that mistake when I first met her. “I didn’t grow up wanting to do this so I could change the name of the proudest tradition in public service. All I ever wanted was to be what my daddy was . . . and his daddy. A fireman, plain and simple.” Anita is how I got involved with Blue Rescue. I miss her. For her aversion to bullshit and a lot of other reasons.
Lt, Del Brockman at Victorville Station 322 was my kind of guy. Crew cut, perpetual smile on his wide, tanned face and slightly hard of hearing, which he said seemed to get worse when the mayor talked. He invited me into the station’s dayroom. where a couple of guys were playing eight ball, and two others were doing their best to disrupt them. “Hey,” Brockman called out, “this guy here used to date a chief.”
“Fuckin’-A,” one of the spectators answered. “Hey, Sweeney, weren’t you and Chief Green an item for a while? Until he found out that two-incher of yours couldn’t reach his fun zone?”
A burly guy with a tattoo of a snake curling up his forearm fired a cue across the room, which just missed its mark before burying itself in the Naugahyde sofa. From the looks of the sofa, though, it wasn’t the first time.
“Enough with the bullshit,” said Brockman. “Listen up.”
The four men joined us, and I introduced myself. After handshakes, I said, “Sorry to interrupt your downtime. I’m trying to get a line on anything unusual that happened around here in the last couple of weeks. Something that didn’t make the papers.”
The guys looked at each other, and I suspected what they were thinking. So I added, “Besides the commotion on the Brando property the other night.”
Whatever they’d been told about Chuck and Lucille, it must have come with a warning, because they noticeably relaxed. Brockman looked at the guy with the snake tattoo. “Sweeney, tell him about the taxi.”
“Shit, man.”
Brockman nodded. “I’d do it, but you were there. If there’s any blowback, I’ll take responsibility.”
Sweeney sighed and went for it. “Two weeks ago Tuesday, a call came in from some lieutenant in homicide. Said they needed a pumper over at the self-storage joint on Route 18. Rent hadn’t been paid on one of the big units, and when they opened it up, there was a car inside. Wanted us standin’ by in case of a fuel leak.”
“A homicide cop for a back rent beef?” I said.
“Didn’t make much sense to me either till Smitty, me and Renner got there. There was like thirty badges comparin’ ball size. Locals, bunch of sheriff’s investigators and a couple of CHR Biggest pair, though, belong to a broad. A Fed. Real knockout, but with an asshole so tight she could squeeze piss out of a prune pit. It was her show all the way, and nobody was happy about it.”
“FBI Agent Huston,” I said. “She was alone?”
Sweeney looked at me suspiciously. “Far as I could tell. You know her?”
“We’ve met, but not dated. Please go on.”
He relaxed. “Like Del said, car turned out to be a taxi. Big ass Ford. Pus green with a yellow plastic toplight. It didn’t fit in the shed, so somebody unbolted the bumpers and stuffed them in the backseat. Then they piled all kinds of shit on top. Lawn furniture, old blankets.”
He stopped and went across to the Coke machine. After he’d guzz
led half a can, I said, “So tell me about the body.”
He was perspiring heavily now. “I didn’t say there was a body.”
“Jesus Christ, Sweeney, tell the man the story.” It was one of the guys who hadn’t spoken, and his voice had command.
Sweeney took a breath. “He was sittin’ in the passenger seat, still belted in. The bugs had got to him pretty good, but even so, you could tell he was an Indian . . . Native American, if that’s better for you.”
“How’d you know?”
“I didn’t, but Smitty’s Pechanga on his mother’s side, and he took one look and said there ain’t no hair on earth like Indian hair.”
“Local cab?”
“No, Vegas. Plates were gone, but it was painted on the side, cactus taxi, las vegas. 24-hour service.”