“I got it. I got it.”
“I hope you do.” I gripped his shoulder. “Be careful.”
Night set in early, making the street twice as dangerous. Al and I followed at a discreet distance. Crews worked the Boulevard like a pro and took down three “B” girls in as many hours. He could’ve done more if the booking process hadn’t slowed us down. We broke for code seven, picked up our food from Lucy’s, and ate in the back parking lot of the defunct library along with the other two teams. Crews ate with the other “Johns,” the trainees, while I ate at the hood of the car with Al and the other detectives.
I ate my tacos, my stomach a little upset from the stress. With the last arrest, Crews acted a little overconfident. I’d told him about it, but he didn’t let it sink. I could tell by his involvement in our conversation.
I listened to the detectives talk about a surveillance. In a couple of days, the detective bureau was going to set up on a heavyweight target, Papa Dee, the main man in cocaine for the entire area. I wanted to be in on that operation in a bad way, but didn’t have the seniority yet or the experience to even ask.
Off in the darkness, over by the shrubs, I caught movement and hoped the others didn’t see it. Grover Porter, an informant I used off and on, lived in the boarded-up library. I needed him on the street and not in custody on some kind of chickenshit trespassing beef.
Fifteen minutes later, we hit the Boulevard. Crews hooked up his fourth of the evening right away. He spotted a thick-bodied black woman in a stretch skirt that left nothing to the imagination and you wished it had. Crews pulled over to the curb with his passenger window down. The hooker stuck her head in the window, said a couple of words, reached inside, opened the door, and got in.
It was Al’s turn to drive. He pulled up and stopped, but not close enough for my liking as I waited for the bust signal.
The brake lights flashed. I bailed out of the car, my attention glued to my trainee. Through the back window of the truck, I could see that an argument had started with Crews and the hooker. Something had happened. The hooker had somehow caught on. I tried to get there and couldn’t make it happen fast enough. Al had parked too far away, not wanting to burn the deal. Up ahead in the truck cab, the verbal argument between Crews and the hooker escalated and turned physical. I yelled, “Crews, disengage! Disengage! Get out of the truck.”
He couldn’t hear. Or didn’t want to.
The hooker opened her door and tried to get out, pulling Crews along with her. Crews, half in the truck and half out, was trying to get her in a control hold, a wristlock. I willed my legs to move faster.
Her free hand disappeared into her shoulder bag and came out with an ice pick. She raised the weapon, ready to plunge it into Crews’ back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MCJ, MEN’S CENTRAL JAIL, DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES CURRENT DAY
MACK STOPPED US at the door to Visiting, the door Marie and I had passed through to come into the jail. “What happened?” Mack asked.
“That woman pulled back to plunge that ice pick into my rookie just as I got there. I cracked her across the head with my flashlight, knocked her out. I didn’t have any choice. She flopped, out cold across the sidewalk.” I chuckled at the memory. “You should’ve seen Crews’ face when he saw that ice pick about to descend on his skinny little rookie ass.”
“Scared shitless, I bet.”
“That’s a good description.”
Mack shook my hand. “Well, this makes more sense now.” He handed me a business card. On one side it read, Captain Robert Crews, Commander, Men’s Central Jail. I turned it over. In perfect printing, Crews had written, We’re even.
* * *
Out in the parking lot by the car, Marie waited for me. She wore a t-shirt with Bauchet Street Gym written on it. Mack must’ve given it to her. When I got close, she saw me and ran. Her joy and love for me struck me like a blow and made a lump rise in my throat. What did I do to deserve this lovely woman? I must’ve done something right in another life. I caught her up and swung her around and around. She buried her face in my neck.
“Oh, Bruno, I thought we’d never get out of that wretched place. I mean it, I thought we were through. Let’s get out of here right now, please?”
I scooped up her legs and carried her toward the car. She lifted her head from my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “What are you doing? Put me down.”
“Not a chance, lady.”
“Bruno, people are watching.” She said it without emphasis and let the last words trail off. With her arms around my neck, she rested her head back on my shoulder. I moved us through the line of cars, headed for our rental. She let her hand wander and caress my cheek. Her hand moved to the other side of my face. I flinched. She jerked back and looked. She saw the swelling from where the gangster socked me.
“Ah, Bruno, what happened?” She gently probed the facial bones, her fingers those of a doctor and not a lover. I flinched again, tried to hold my face still, and continued to walk to the car.
“Stupid, really,” I said. “You’re gonna laugh. I wasn’t watching where I was goin’ and I ran into a door.” I made it to the car and set her down.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” she said, “but it should be x-rayed. What does the other guy look like?” She took up my hands to look. “Ah, Bruno.”
She probed my skinned and swollen knuckles. “I think this one might be fractured.”
“Ouch! Take it easy, Dr. Frankenstein.”
“Don’t be such a big baby. I think it is broken, really.”
“I’m not surprised. The doors in that joint are made of solid steel.” I hit the fob, unlocked the doors to the rental, opened hers, and ushered her in. I went around and got in. I drove back to the hotel while she used the cell and called LCMC to check on Noble. She knew her way around hospital personnel and quickly made it through to the nurse with the information. “Yes, thank you very much,” Marie said, and hung up as I pulled into the hotel parking lot and shut the car down.
“Nothing yet,” she said. “But the nurse I spoke to saw his vitals and doesn’t think it’s going to be that bad.”
I got out, came around, and opened her door. The memory of the jail, the prospect of living in a concrete cell for the next ten or fifteen years without Marie, caught me up short. What a horrible proposition. I suddenly realized I couldn’t get enough of my lovely wife, and I scooped her up again and headed for the hotel. With her close in my arms, the anxiety eased up a little.
She giggled. “What’re you doing?”
“Ma’am, I’ve been remiss in my contractual obligations. Paragraph four, subsection two, line seven: ‘The Lessor shall, as soon as time permits, carry the Lessee across the threshold of said abode described in paragraph two, line three.”
She took hold of my ear, ready to yank. “I was liking it until you got to the part about me being leased property.”
The bellman opened the door for me as I continued on in, headed toward the elevator. He smiled.
“Well, madam, I guess you should’ve read the fine print.”
She yanked. I yelped and hopped around a little, juggling her, just as the elevator door opened to disgorge a load of passengers, aghast at our display. I moved into the car and turned to face them as they continued to watch us. I kissed my wife and she kissed me back while the doors closed.
* * *
We lay naked on the bed, still damp from a shower where we attempted, unsuccessfully, to use all the hot water in the hotel. My legs trembled from the exertion, trying to hold her up for so long.
She rested her chin on my chest, her thigh languidly across mine.
“I don’t want to ruin this wonderful mood,” she said, “but I think we really need to go see your nephew.”
For the last hour, with the hot water sluicing off our bodies, I tried real hard to forget about what lay ahead. I might’ve succeeded if not for the two little people involved, Rebecca and Ricardo.
“What do you
think?” she asked. “Tell me what you make of all this.”
I let all that had happened in the last two days sink in. I tried to put out of my mind the wonderful time playing with the children, the engagement dinner, and the wedding, and focused on the ugliness we’d encountered since our plane touched down in California.
“The way I feel about Noble, the way I remember him, I can’t keep from thinking he’s working us in some way, that it’s some kind of con and that it’s going to jump up and bite us in the ass.”
“How?”
“I was a cop a lot of years.”
“I know that. I know you have some kind of sixth sense when it comes to reading people. I also know that what gets you in trouble most often is that part of you that believes in humanity and keeps you from listening to that sixth sense of yours.”
Jesus, this woman could read me like nothing I’d ever seen. In our time together we’d somehow linked up as one. She now resonated from deep inside me. “So, you’re saying that everyone’s bad.”
“No,” she said, “and you know better than that. What I’m saying is, if you’re getting a twinge in regard to your brother, we better tread easy. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I don’t want to think ill of my brother, really I don’t, but—”
“I know what’s bugging you.”
“You do?”
“Sure, you’re a guy.”
“Thanks for that verification.”
“No, listen, guys don’t believe in love at first sight. They say they do, but they just don’t. You think Noble has some hidden ulterior motive, that motive being greed. You think he wanted to, or did, rip off all those kilos of cocaine. You think that job as a clerk was just a cover, an attempt to make everyone believe a story already far too difficult to believe.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“You’re right,” I said. “We should tread lightly.” I kissed her and continued to feel guilty about not trusting Noble.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AN HOUR LATER, we headed south on Central Avenue, driving toward the heart of South Central Los Angeles and to the old house on Nord. The sense of foreboding continued to shove its way into my thoughts when it shouldn’t have. I had fond memories in that house, too many to count.
Marie sat close, holding my hand as I steered with the other.
I guess I didn’t want to see Bruno, my nephew. How weird was that going to be? Then, on top of that, to see him living in the house where I grew up.
Too weird.
I turned down Nord, the house up ahead now, only a short distance away. Speed just twenty-five miles per hour. I kept going right on past.
“Hey.” Marie pointed out the window. “Wasn’t that it?”
“Yeah, I guess it was. I’ll go around again.”
“Honey, if you don’t want to do this … ”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I made the turns, pulled down Nord a second time, and stopped at the curb.
My childhood house looked the same, except now the exterior sported lime-green paint instead of beige, and the roof needed new shingles. Plywood covered the window on the right side of the front door. Dad never let the place look that seedy. He stayed up on it, tinkering all the time. I hadn’t seen the place in over three years, and now it no longer fit comfortably in any past memory.
We sat and looked for a minute.
Marie pointed to the east, next to our house. “You drove me by this place once to show me where you used to live, where you grew up. I didn’t notice the empty lot before. It just sorta blended in. Now it’s like … it’s like a missing abscessed tooth where Noble’s house used to be.”
I nodded. “Back then, for almost a year I mean, Noble’s house sat gutted and caved in on itself. Transients and heroin addicts infested it. The city came out and condemned it. Another year went by before city workers bulldozed it down. All that’s left is that concrete foundation right there.”
“The city doesn’t usually get involved in things like that, do they? Not this far south, do they?”
“I always thought Dad had something to do with it, that he must’ve called and complained enough times the city got tired of the problem and solved it. But, you see, he never made those calls in front of me and Noble.”
“Did your dad do that because he didn’t want Noble to have a burnt-out hulk as a reminder to his nightmare?”
I looked at her and nodded. “That’s my guess. A little while after they razed the house, on warm evenings, Dad would sometimes set up a table and chairs and we ate dinner right out there on that foundation.”
“Your father’s one smart old man. He wanted Noble to make new memories on that spot to help cover the old.”
“I never thought of it like that, but you’re probably right. I always just thought it was nice to do something different. I never got used to it, though, not with the memory of what happened there. And we sat in our chairs right over the top of it. I’m not superstitious or believe in ghosts, you know that. It just didn’t sit right with me, though. I don’t think Noble got used to it either.”
Without warning, that horrible Christmas morning flooded back on me, replete with all the colors and smells and emotions; too vivid, too much reality all at once, it caused a twinge of vertigo.
Two firemen had carried down Noble’s little brother and sister, wrapped in bed sheets, and laid the little bundles at the base of the tree—a tree no longer there, not all of it anyway. The stump out front now looked like someone had buried an elephant and her one foot stuck up out of her grave, flat and round and gray.
My voice came out hollow. “I don’t think it worked, even though Dad tried so hard. I just don’t think it worked, not on Noble.”
I got out, went around, and opened Marie’s door. We walked hand in hand up across the short yard and mounted the porch. I raised my hand to knock. The door opened before I could.
The young man stood with his body bladed, his hand out of view behind the door. Not an abnormal positioning, not really, but still I sensed he held a weapon. More specifically, a handgun. I slowly tried to ease Marie behind and took a half step in front of her.
She gave me a little shove. “What’s the matter with you?”
The young man said, “Can I help you?” He wore a black t-shirt with the Raiders football emblem, black denim pants, and big sneakers with blue laces. I took a closer look at his features. He did present a striking resemblance to Noble, but with lighter skin and a spray of freckles across his nose. Not as tall either, five-eight or nine and a hundred and sixty pounds, compared to Noble’s six-foot, stocky build. I couldn’t help the regret that came on strong enough to taste, hard and metallic. I’d somehow missed this young man’s entire life. How had that been possible?
“We’re here to see Bruno Johnson.” The words came out alien and strange. I’d never said my own name before, not in that context, requesting to see someone named Bruno Johnson.
The young man kept his frown, “Who’s askin’? State your business or get off my damn porch.”
“First off, you can put that gun away. We’re not here to hurt anyone, and it’s making me nervous.”
“Gun?” Marie said. She quit fighting me and moved behind to where I wanted her in the first place. “Bruno Johnson,” she said, “meet your uncle Bruno Johnson.”
The young man’s frown slowly shifted to a smile, an expression that changed his entire personality, turned it youthful, washing away the seriousness of adulthood prematurely thrust upon him. Just as fast as the smile came, it fled. He stuck his head out the door and looked one way then the next. “Come on in, hurry.”
Some of his paranoia immediately transferred to me. The cops working the kidnap would have the house staked out. They’d be photographing anyone and everyone who so much as walked by the front of the house.
We hurried inside. He closed the door.
I don’t know what I expected. I guess I expected the inside to be the same as
I remembered it.
Not even close.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE AREA RUGS on the highly polished hardwood floors had been replaced with tired, wall-to-wall carpet. The high-traffic area through the living room cut a worn path, in some places right down to the weave. The interior white paint, which used to be beige, now sported fingerprint smudges and Crayola pictures from small tots—dinosaurs and stick figures, houses, and trees with green leaves. And Dad with his cotton-top hair plain as day.
Rebecca and Ricardo’s artwork.
I more easily pictured the children now, and anxiety rose and started to hum inside my body. I wanted them back as soon as possible, back in the cradle of family.
Bruno did have a gun, a chrome 9mm, the cheap kind that tended to jam at the most inopportune moments, like when you tried to use them. He set the automatic on the stand right next to the door. A habit, I hoped, he didn’t employ with the children present.
Marie and I took seats on an old-style divan stained with mac and cheese and purple squeezebox fruit juice.
Bruno picked up a book he’d been reading, walked the few paces into the kitchen, and placed the novel on top of the refrigerator. I liked it that the kid read. I just wondered what sparked his interest: mystery, crime novels, or thrillers?
He came and sat in the wooden rocker and rocked. He looked eighteen or nineteen, but could’ve been twenty or twenty-one, still too young to have children and to raise them without any help.
He looked at us and rocked and said nothing.
“Tell us what happened,” I said. “Start at the beginning.”
I wanted to get to know him, hug him, and welcome him into the family. All of that didn’t work, not with the children in harm’s way. There would be time enough later for tears and anger and apologies.
The Squandered Page 11