The Operative

by Falconer, Duncan

  ‘She called me on my phone. She was screaming. It sounded like a scuffle, a fight, then all I could hear was crying which I think was Josh, her son.’

  ‘She called you at your home?’

  ‘My mobile phone.’

  ‘What’s the number of your phone?’

  Stratton dug it out of his pocket, hit a key, and showed the face to the officer who took it and wrote the number in the file. ‘Do you know anything about her?’ Stratton asked.

  ‘And you flew in from England, you said?’

  ‘No. Austria.’

  ‘You got here pretty quick.’

  ‘There’s a nine-hour time difference between Central Europe and the USA’s West Coast. Look, do you know anything?’

  The officer removed his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers as if he was tired. ‘I’m afraid your friend …’ He paused to check the name on the file. ‘Your friend Sally Penton is dead.’

  The statement hit Stratton like a bolt of lightning although outwardly he remained unmoved. More than a decade and a half of wars and violent conflicts had hardened his reaction to any kind of bad news but this revelation stretched his control to its limits. ‘How?’

  ‘Was Sally into drugs?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Drugs. She was driving through a pretty rough neighbourhood.’

  ‘She was not into drugs. What happened?’

  ‘We don’t know much. Looks like gang-bangers.’

  ‘Was she raped?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it. This ain’t official, but the initial report on the scene was that her neck was broke. Looked like someone bust in the windshield and dragged her outta the vehicle onto the hood.’

  Stratton was shocked. This was very different from a friend dying in combat. ‘What about Josh?’

  ‘The boy’s okay. Shaken up but he wasn’t hurt.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Child-protection agency.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘You gonna be in town long?’

  The thought had not occurred to Stratton but the way things looked the answer was obvious. ‘As long as it takes to get Josh home,’ was all he could think to say.

  ‘Where you staying?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The officer took a card from his pocket, scribbled something on the back and handed it to Stratton. ‘That’s the protection centre. It ain’t far from here. I’m Sergeant Draper. Those are my numbers. Let me know where you’re staying.’

  The officer’s mobile phone rang in his pocket. He took it out and put it to his ear. ‘Draper here.’

  Stratton walked over to a chair where his backpack was, picked it up, and walked away.

  ‘Hey, check back in a day or so and we may have something,’ Draper called after him, but Stratton was already halfway along the corridor and heading for the exit.

  Half an hour later, Stratton climbed out of the back of a yellow taxi, carrying his backpack. He faced a gate in a high fence that ran along the front of an open grassy area beyond which stood a large 1960s-style single-storey building. The taxi pulled away as he approached the gate and pushed it open.

  Lights were on inside the building that had bars on all of the blind-covered windows. But there was no sign of life.

  Stratton checked his watch. It was after six p.m.

  As he approached the wooden entrance doors they opened and a young, conservatively dressed woman walked out, carrying a laptop case over her shoulder and an armful of files. She glanced at Stratton as she closed the door behind her. Then she made a point of checking it was firmly locked, as if she had decided that he was a suspicious character.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Stratton said.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked in a serious tone, looking him up and down.

  ‘I’m here to see a boy who was brought in today or last night, I don’t know which.’

  ‘The facility is closed to visitors right now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you work here?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said, sounding tired and eager to get going.

  She was attractive despite her frumpy clothes. Her fatigued eyes made her look older than she probably was.

  ‘Could you just tell me if you know anything about a young English boy who was brought in today or last night?’ Stratton asked, restraining his temper.

  ‘We get a lot of children brought in every day. Like I said, you’ll have to come back tomorrow,’ she replied, impervious to his persistence. She was not a tough woman by nature but years of practice dealing with hostile parents and guardians had inured her to confrontations.

  Stratton could see that he was up against a wall because of the way he was handling this so he took his attitude down a couple of notches. ‘I know it’s late but I’ve come a long way – is it too much for you to tell me if he’s okay? That’s all I want to know and I’ll go. He’s six years old, English, his name’s Josh—’

  The door to the centre opened and a stout black lady wearing thick bifocals leaned out. ‘Oh, Vicky, you’re still here. Do you know where the DCS 4334 forms are? I’ve looked everywhere.’

  Vicky looked around at her.

  ‘They’re the court medical-consent emergency worksheet forms,’ the black lady said.

  ‘I know what they are, Dorothy,’ Vicky sighed, frustrated at her unsuccessful efforts to get away from the building. ‘Have you tried the bottom drawer of the second filing cabinet to the right of my desk?’

  ‘Uh-huh. They ain’t in there.’

  ‘I’ll come and look,’ Vicky said, heading back to the door.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Dorothy said. ‘It can wait till tomorrow. You run along and have yourself some fun. You spend too long in this building as it is.’

  ‘I’ll look for them,’ Vicky said as she reached the door.

  ‘No,’ Dorothy said, trying to act firm though she was obviously a subordinate. A grin crept onto her face. ‘I didn’t know you had company.’

  ‘Dorothy,’ Vicky said, feigning anger through clenched teeth.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Dorothy said, stepping aside to let her through. ‘Sorry. She won’t be a minute,’ she said to Stratton, the grin remaining on her face as she checked him out.

  Dorothy followed Vicky inside and Stratton considered joining them. But he decided against it and looked out onto the street.

  It was a clean, quiet neighbourhood, the centre surrounded on three sides by well-tended bungalows, the garden dotted with tall, slender palm trees and with a kids’ climbing frame in one corner. It might have been quaint had it not been for the back of a row of unattractive, three-storey non-residential buildings across the street. There was no brickwork anywhere to be seen: all the buildings were less than fifty years old and were made from stuccocoated, earthquake-spec frameworks, wood for the houses, steel for the non-residential places. This was still Santa Monica, some thirty blocks from the ocean and in a nicer part of the sub-city.

  It would be dark soon and Stratton directed a thought to where he would stay. But he couldn’t get Josh out of his mind for long enough to think straight. It was safe to assume that getting the boy back to the UK was going to involve a lengthy bureaucratic battle and at some stage Stratton was going to have to call his boss and let him know what he was doing. He told himself he was going to have to be very patient and work with the system, whatever that entailed.

  He heard the door close behind him and turned to see Vicky walking back down the steps and onto the path.

  ‘You were going to tell me about the boy.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. Look, I’ve had a long day—’

  ‘Nothing compared to his,’ Stratton snapped, practically barring her way.

  Vicky felt the sting of his sudden attack and looked into his steely eyes. Although she did not feel threatened by him his stare had an intensity she could not ignore.

  ‘Are you a relative?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’


  ‘I can’t give information about any child in this centre to anyone other than a close relative or a court-approved guardian. I’m sorry but those are the rules,’ she said, moving past him to open the gate.

  ‘All I want to know is if he’s okay,’ Stratton said. ‘Why is that breaking any rules?’

  It was clear that this guy was not going to give up easily: he was obviously concerned and was not actually asking for very much. ‘There was a young English boy brought in this morning,’ Vicky said, relenting slightly. ‘I don’t know anything about him yet. We’ve had a busy day moving a dozen kids out to new homes and admitting over a dozen more. If he had been physi cally hurt then I would have known about it. Any child brought to us is here for a reason and it’s never good, but I promise you that he’s being well taken care of … Come back tomorrow and I’ll be able to tell you more.’

  ‘What time?’ Stratton asked, his hand remaining on the gate latch.

  ‘Not before nine a.m. Does he have any relatives in this country?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will any be coming over to get him?’

  ‘He has grandparents, but they’re old – I’m all he’s got right now.’

  Vicky nodded, understanding the situation far better than Stratton did. ‘It’s not going to be easy, mister …’

  ‘For him or for me?’

  Stratton saw the irritation return to her face, signalling that he had gone as far as he was going to get. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said as he pushed open the gate for her. ‘Name’s John Stratton.’

  Vicky walked through the gate and down the sidewalk, feeling his gaze on her. She concentrated on putting Stratton and the boy out of her thoughts. It had the hallmarks of another difficult case but there were so many. This was just another in an endless line that she had to deal with every day. After ten years as a social worker in the child-protection agency she had almost managed to do what she knew she had to in order to preserve her sanity: disconnect herself from the job as soon as she left work – almost managed, that was. Had she known that it was going to be such a depressing, distressing vocation she might have chosen a far less ‘noble’ line of work after leaving college. Quitting was always an obvious option but even though she had often thought about it, desertion – for that was what it would really have been as far as she was concerned – was not something that she was prepared to contemplate. Only one other way of life was likely ever to get her away from the centre and that was having a child of her own. But that was so far off her life’s radar that it was almost as depressing to think about.

  Stratton watched Vicky walk around the corner at the end of the block as he let the gate close behind him, shouldered his pack and headed in the opposite direction. There was clearly scant chance of a taxi coming by in this area so he crossed the road and headed for the corner where another street led to Wilshire Boulevard, a main traffic artery that ran east from the coast and into the heart of Los Angeles.

  A few minutes later Stratton was in a taxi, heading for the beach area.

  ‘Any suggestions for a hotel?’ he asked the taxi driver, an old, mellow man wearing a battered straw hat.

  ‘How much you wanna pay?’ the man asked in a relaxed Midwestern drawl.

  ‘What are my options?’

  ‘You new in town?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you got motels. They’re around fifty bucks a night. Then there’s places along the front. There’re some fancy hotels. Don’t know exactly what they cost but it’s a few hundred dollars, easy. There’s others not so fancy that you can get for something like seventy or so. How long you stayin’ in town for?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘If you’re stayin’ more ’n a week, there’s an apartment building that sometimes does short lets. It’s an old building they did up a few years back. You don’t get room service but they have a launderette and Santa Monica ain’t short o’ good eatin’ places, that’s for sure.’

  Stratton was attracted to the idea. The one thing he didn’t like about hotels was the fact that someone came into the room every day. ‘Where are these apartments?’ he asked.

  ‘Ocean Avenue, on the cliff front. Beach is a minute’s walk.’

  ‘Can we take a look?’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  The taxi took a left at the lights on Second Street a block before the end of the boulevard, then second right towards Ocean Avenue, the main boulevard running along the top of the tree-lined cliffs. It pulled over in the middle of the block and stopped at the kerb outside a large pink building with a neon sign advertising Pacific Towers Apartments. Stratton paid the man, climbed out with his backpack, and looked up at the sixteen-storey structure.

  Stratton walked in through the glass doors of the entrance. A Chinese restaurant took up the ground floor on the left side and he went on through a short lobby and out into an open-air courtyard. The building took up three sides of a square and was open on the beach side. An old, dribbling fountain stood in the centre of the courtyard and a modern health club behind full-length glass windows was located on the right-hand side. Stratton crossed to a corner and went to push through another set of glass doors into what was obviously the reception area but they were locked. He could see a reception desk tucked away in the corner of a small lobby but there was no sign of life.

  There was an electronic registry fixed on a wall to one side of the doors with a call button beside a small LED screen. He pushed the button. The screen requested him to enter an apartment number. One of the options he scrolled through was ‘manager’ so he selected it and hit the call button again. A moment later a dial tone purred from the small speaker followed by the electronic beeps of a number being dialled and then a ringing tone.

  Seconds later a click was followed by a man’s voice. ‘Manager,’ it announced.

  ‘Hi. I’m looking for an apartment.’

  ‘We got no full-time apartments available.’

  ‘Short-term would be fine.’

  ‘It’s six-fifty a week plus utilities. How long you want it for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Couple of weeks, maybe.’

  ‘You pay weekly plus a two-week deposit up front.’

  ‘What floor’s it on?’

  ‘Fourth. In the back.’

  Fourth was fine, Stratton thought.

  ‘You want it or not?’ the voice croaked.

  Stratton had an image of a crusty middle-aged man who chain-smoked. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

  The phone went dead and a buzzer in the door sounded. Stratton pushed it open and walked into the lobby that was clean and devoid of furniture apart from the reception desk. A pair of elevators occupied the centre of the lobby with a fire escape opposite and two corridors leading off in opposite directions, disappearing around corners and into the wings. A door slammed along one of the corridors and an overweight man in his forties with a cigarette hanging out of a large stubble-surrounded mouth walked around the corner where a sign indicated the entrance to the health club. He stepped behind the reception desk and produced a sheet of paper from a drawer.

  ‘Fill this in,’ he said, placing a registration form on the counter, a pen beside it. ‘That’ll be nineteen hundred fifty. You get the deposit back minus any damage and breakages when you leave.’

  ‘You take a credit card?’

  ‘Machine’s broke, cash only.’ The man reeled off the phrase as if he’d said it a thousand times.

  Stratton had bought a couple of thousand dollars with his debit card at the airport but the taxis had eaten into it a bit. ‘Can I give you nineteen and the rest tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s fine. Room 411,’ the manager said, placing a ring with two keys on it on the counter as Stratton counted out the money. ‘The small key fits the lobby entrance. You gotta car?’

  ‘No,’ Stratton said, pushing the money towards him.

  ‘If you get one, parking’s fifty more a week. T
he health club’s free for you, ten dollars for guests,’ he said as he deftly counted the hundred-dollar bills. ‘We gotta launderette next floor down or if you want your washing done there’s an old lady lives down the corridor. 103. Barbara. She’s cheap. Been here twenty years and ’cause o’ rent control she pays only two-fifty a week. Can you believe that? Can’t get rid o’ the old crate. We’ll have to wait till she dies,’ the manager said, producing a grin that revealed two rows of brown, distorted teeth.

  Stratton completed the registration form without revealing his true home address and picked up the keys.

  ‘You have any problems, I’m in 116 around the corner.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Stratton said, picking up his pack and heading for the elevator. While he waited for one to arrive the manager left the desk and went back the way he’d come. Stratton looked at the red fire-exit door and pushed it open. A grubby, dark, grey concrete stairwell led up, all the way to the roof no doubt, and down, most likely to the underground parking.

  The elevator announced its arrival with a ding and the doors slid open. Stratton stepped inside and hit the button for the fourth floor. The doors closed and the elevator ascended.

  Stratton stepped out into the fourth-floor corridor that resembled those in the lobby, both ends disappearing left and right around corners into the build ing’s wings. It was clean and fresh-looking, the carpet either new or very well maintained. The number on the door in front of him was 408 so he took a guess and turned right. Large windows on the elevator side of the corridor revealed the dark ocean in the distance beyond the street-lamp-illuminated palm trees that lined the top of the cliff.

  Stratton stopped outside apartment 411, the one nearest the corner. A glance along the brightly lit corridor into the wing revealed that it extended to a fire exit at the far end with a further half-dozen apartments staggered either side. He would check the fire exit later. He unlocked the door, pushed it open and walked inside.

  The apartment wasn’t as small as he had expected. It looked clean and the furnishings, though inexpensive, were functional. There was a separate bedroom and bathroom and a tiny kitchen

  – behind a partition in the living room – had a sink, fridge, cooker and a few cupboards squeezed into it.