Bullet Beth (George Hastings police procedural)

by James Patrick Hunt

  “Yes. I swear it. I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true. The man, the man on the motorcycle, he was a Mexican.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He said, ‘No problemo.’ That’s what he kept saying. No problemo.”

  Hastings exchanged a look with Klosterman. They had both worked patrol. It sounded authentic to them.

  Hastings said, “You’re saying he wanted to leave.”

  “Yes. He was trying to leave. Even though I wanted him to stay until…we could call an ambulance.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Sanjay flushed. He was a good man and a law abiding citizen. Such people aren’t too adept at lying to police officers.

  “I don’t know. It was so fast. I wanted to help him.”

  “You mean help him leave,” Klosterman said.

  “No! I don’t know. I mean, maybe.”

  Hastings asked, “What was Johnny doing during all this?”

  “Nothing! He did nothing. I didn’t even want to be there. He got in his truck and said, ‘Let’s go.’ He wanted to get out of there.”

  “He’d already got out of the BMW?”

  “He was already in his truck! I told you. The Mexican, he got on his bike, the car was gone — Johnny was waiting in the truck. So I ran over there and got in with him and left.”

  “You left.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “You left the scene of an accident.”

  “The guy that got hit left. Johnny was leaving. What was I to do?”

  “Call the police, I’d say.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, we’ll deal with that later. Why are you confessing this now?”

  “The car,” Sanjay said. “The BMW. We damaged the door and we left.”

  “You left without telling the owners?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Even when you got their door knocked off?”

  “That was as much Johnny’s fault as mine. It was more his fault. I didn’t even want to be there. Besides, the door wasn’t knocked off. It was just…jarred loose a little.”

  “How did the owners feel about that?”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. About a week after that, these guys came to my office. My office!”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I’m a software engineer. I work for a small business. They just showed up and said I had to buy the car.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. I don’t know how they found me. I never even met them before.”

  Hastings observed Sanjay for a while. Then he said, “But you recognized them, didn’t you?”

  “Well…yes. I had seen them from Johnny’s car. But I never met them. I never talked to them.”

  “But you did when they showed up at your office.”

  “I had to. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t call the police. Not after — you know.”

  “Did they threaten you?”

  “Yes. Well, sort of.”

  “Were they armed?”

  “No.”

  “Did they threaten to hurt you?”

  “No. They just said I had to buy the car. They wanted six thousand dollars. Well I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to do that. Somehow, I talked them into going outside. And we went round and round and finally I got them to take five hundred dollars for the damage to the door.”

  “You wrote them a check?”

  “No. They wanted cash. They followed me to the bank and I withdrew five hundred from my account. And I gave it to them. Then they said, ‘The fun boy. Where is he?’ I said, ‘Johnny?’ And they said, yes, Johnny. And I told them where he worked. They didn’t know where he worked. And I told them.”

  “You gave him up then?”

  “Fuck yes! He gave me up. They had his phone number and they called him and he told them where to find me. That asshole! He sent them to me. So I didn’t hesitate to tell them, no. Anything to get rid of them.”

  “Did they go see him?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  “Did you hear from Johnny after that?”

  “No. Next thing I heard was that he was dead. I thought he killed himself. He was such a screw up, anyway. But then I heard that his friend was drowned too, and I got so scared. I thought of those two guys at my office, how much they had scared me.”

  “But you said they never threatened you.”

  “They never said it directly. But they came to my work. If you had seen them…they were not going to leave until I gave them something.”

  “You feel five hundred was a fair exchange for the damage you did to the door?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think these guys killed Johnny, is that it?”

  “I don’t know. They were scary fuckers, man.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know their names. No, wait. One of them was called Viktor.”

  “But you know where they are? You know where you went to test drive the BMW, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take us there.”

  Klosterman said, “Is that the BMW?”

  Sanjay said, “No. The car we drove was maroon. That one’s black.”

  The car they were looking at was a fifteen year old BMW with faded paint on the roof and hood. The sign on the windshield, which was cracked, said it would be a great work car.

  They were parked in front of what seemed like a rather small used car lot. Hastings and Klosterman sat in the front of Hastings’s Jaguar, Sanjay was in the back. They had passed the Bevo Mill earlier and were now in the Bosnian neighborhood.

  There are between fifty and seventy thousand Bosnians in St. Louis now, refugees from the Yugoslavian Wars. White skinned Muslims who had been targeted by white skinned Serbians for real and imagined transgressions that were centuries old. In St. Louis, they put their shoes on their porches and they smoked meat in their backyards. Some of the neighbors complained that they slaughtered goats and sheep in their garages. They kept their traditions while they tried to adjust to their new home.

  They didn’t much trust the police. In the old country, the police were part of the military and it was military personnel who had executed their unarmed men and boys at Srebenica.

  A man came out of the building to inspect one of the vehicles.

  Hastings said, “Is that Viktor?”

  “No,” Sanjay said. “That’s the other one.”

  “Okay,” Hastings said. “Let’s go.”

  Sanjay did not like having to follow the police officers into that building. He had hoped never to see these Bosnians again. But the police had told him it would be necessary.

  Hastings flagged the Bosnian down in the parking lot and signaled him to come over. He spoke in a sharp tone and showed him his police identification.

  Hastings said, “What’s your name?”

  The man gave Hastings and Klosterman a sullen stare. He looked at Sanjay and then back at the policemen. He said, “What’s the problem?”

  “Just a routine investigation,” Hastings said. He turned to Sanjay and said, “Is this him?”

  Sanjay hesitated.

  “Don’t fuck around,” Hastings said. “Is it him or not?”

  “Yes. It’s him.”

  Hastings said to the Bosnian, “Your name, please.”

  “Armin Moljevic. What do you want?”

  “We just want to talk. Can we go inside?”

  “I have done nothing wrong. I am a businessman.”

  “No one’s accusing you of anything. Now can we go inside?”

  The man said, “I have lawyer.”

  “That’s fine,” Hastings said. “But we just want to clear something up. No one’s arresting anyone. Okay?”

  Armin said, “I run honest business.” But then he made a gesture for them to follow him in.

  The office was compact. A small waiting area and a smaller office behind glass. There was a desk behind t
he glass, a heavyset man behind the desk. The man behind the desk was reading a local Bosnian newspaper.

  Sanjay said, “That’s Viktor.”

  “All right,” Hastings said. “Sit on the couch, please. We’re going to talk to these gentlemen.”

  Viktor was standing when they walked into the office. Armin said something to him in Serbo-Croat, sounding rather pissed off.

  Hastings interrupted them. “You speak English?”

  “Yes, we speak English,” Viktor said. “What do you want?” He looked through the window, looked at Sanjay. “We didn’t do anything to him.”

  “Just sit down, please. We just want to talk. You too. Sit down.”

  Slowly, they took seats. Viktor behind the desk, Armin in a chair against the wall. Hastings took a seat in front of the desk. Klosterman remained standing.

  Hastings asked for identification from both of them. He examined their driver’s licenses and wrote down their names and license numbers.

  Viktor said, “What is this about?”

  “Just hold on for a minute.” Hastings wanted to slow things down, make them go at his pace. He took his time and then said, “Okay.” Like they should all be relaxed now. “A couple of weeks ago, this gentleman came with a friend of his named Johnny Rodgers. They test drove a 1997 BMW 740iL. A maroon colored one. Do you remember that?”

  “I remember,” Viktor said.

  “They wrecked it!” Armin said.

  Hastings held up a hand. “I’m talking to him now.” To Viktor he said, “You remember him?”

  “Yes. He came here to test drive the car. He brought that guy with him.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why do you want to know? We did nothing wrong.”

  “We got a situation here we’d like to get straightened out. You don’t want any trouble, do you?”

  “No. No trouble.”

  “I’d just like to get your side of it. Okay?”

  “My side of it,” Viktor sneered. He didn’t trust the cop.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. This guy and his friend, they come here to drive the car. We give them the keys, tell them to take a test drive. We treat them nice. They leave and come back and then leave. They don’t bring the keys back in the office. They don’t say nothing to us. They just leave. They leave and we go out to look at the car and the effucking door is hanging off the effucking hinges. I don’t know what the effuck they did. They leave. This fun boy, we got his cell number because he called here to set up the appointment.”

  “Fun boy. You mean homosexual?”

  “Yes.”

  “The guy out there?”

  “No, not that one. The other one.”

  “Johnny.”

  “Yes. I call this asshole and say what the fuck did you do to my car? He say he didn’t do nothing. And I shout at him and he says this other one” — Viktor pointed through the window at Sanjay — “he did it. And tells me where he works. So me and Armin, we go see him. We tell him, guy, you just bought yourself a car.”

  “Because he damaged it?”

  “Yes! He said it wasn’t his fault. And we fight —”

  “You fight? Did you hit him?”

  “No, we didn’t hit him. Fight. You know, argue.”

  “Okay.”

  “We fight, argue. That one, he finally offer us something for the damage to the door.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “For the door?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the car?”

  “We see Johnny about the car.”

  “Where? Where did you see Johnny about the car?”

  “We go to his work. Where he does the women’s hair.”

  “When was that?”

  “About two weeks ago.”

  “You find him there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?”

  “We tell him, you better pay for this effucking car.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or…we tell him he has to buy the car. That’s all.”

  “Did you threaten him?”

  “No,” Armin said.

  “No,” Viktor said. “We didn’t threaten him. We just tell him what he has to do.”

  “We did nothing wrong,” Armin said. “He was the one who was wrong.”

  “All right,” Hastings said. “Did you make it clear to him he needed to buy that car?”

  “Yes. It was right.”

  “And how did he take it?”

  “What do you mean…take it?”

  “How did he respond?”

  “He was scared. He cry. He said he didn’t have the money.”

  “You believe him?”

  “I didn’t care. I told him he get the money because he was getting the car.”

  “Who we going to sell a car to?” Armin said. “With a broken door?”

  Klosterman said, “You could have called the police. Leaving the scene of an accident is a criminal offense.”

  “And what would the police have done?” Viktor asked. “What about my money?”

  Hastings said, “Did he ever buy the car?”

  “No. We find out he killed himself.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “We call shop and they tell us. Some woman.”

  “Where’s the car now?”

  “We sold it to someone else.”

  “You got a bill of sale?”

  “Yes.”

  Viktor got the bill of sale out of file cabinet. He handed it to Hastings. Hastings said, “You sold it for fifty-two five?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the buyer know about the damage to the door?”

  Viktor shrugged.

  Armin said, “It was a good car.”

  They ran an NCIS check on Viktor Kordic and Armin Moljevic when they got back to the station. Armin Moljevic was clean. Viktor Kordic had been arrested on an assault and battery charge. He hired a lawyer who argued mutual combat and persuaded the district attorney to dismiss it.

  Klosterman said, “They said they went to Johnny to talk to him. Talk to him, shit. I bet they threatened to pull his nuts off.”

  “Probably,” Hastings said. “But that doesn’t give us anything. They got their money back on the car. Maybe more than they probably hoped to get. I don’t see a motive for murder.”

  “Sanjay seemed to think they were capable of it.”

  “Sanjay was scared shitless. And right to be. They shouldn’t have taken off.”

  “So what do we do? Arrest Sanjay for leaving the scene of an accident? He helped us out.”

  “He came to us because he was afraid.”

  “Afraid they’re going to kill him next.”

  “Yeah. I don’t see it, myself. But it’s the only fucking lead we have.” Hastings sighed. “Okay. Let’s get em’ down here, put them in separate rooms and Mirandize them. See what we can find.”

  The Bosnians weren’t dumb. Hastings called them and Viktor said, “Do I have to come down to the station?”

  “No. You don’t have to. But it would be a whole lot better for you if you did.”

  “What if I want to talk to a lawyer?”

  “That’s your right. We just want to get this cleared up.”

  “Yeah? I don’t think I believe you. You think I hurt the fun boy?”

  “I didn’t say that. We just want to talk, that’s all.”

  “I think about it,” Viktor said.

  He thought about it. And two hours later Hastings got a call from Morris Friedman, a criminal defense lawyer he’d dealt with before.

  Morris Friedman cut his teeth in the district attorney’s office. He had left them years ago, opened his own practice, and had since started to gather clients from the Bosnian community. Morris liked Bosnians with dubious characters. They got in trouble a lot and they always paid in cash.

  Hastings knew Morris professionally and personally. He had been a friend of Carol McGuir
e’s, Hastings’s ex-girlfriend.

  Morris quickly came to the point. “George, what are you up to?”

  “Nothing special,” Hastings said. “Just a routine investigation.”

  “Nothing special just a routine investigation,” Morris said. “These guys call me, real nervous, and tell me who it was that came to see them. I thought, George Hastings? He’s a homicide detective. Why would he want to talk to these guys?”

  “Just want to find things out.”

  “That’s pretty vague. What have you got on them?”

  Very little, Hastings thought. He said, “They threatened a man who was later killed.”

  “Threatened? They said he damaged their car and didn’t tell them about it. So they were pissed. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Probably. But what’s the harm in them coming in and talking to me about it? We’d just like to get it straightened out. Get their side of their story.”

  “Ah bullshit. I think you already got their side of the story. And they told me you didn’t read them their rights.”

  “They weren’t in custody. I wasn’t obligated to read them Miranda.”

  “Okay, technically they weren’t in custody. But they didn’t know that.”

  “They knew enough to hire you.”

  “After. And now that they have, you know my policy. I advise them to remain silent. And don’t tell me it’d be better for them if they allowed you to question them.”

  “It would be.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. Listen, George, I don’t think these guys killed your victim, and I’m not just saying that because I’m their lawyer. This is Johnny Rodgers, right? The hairdresser guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My understanding is, he was found in the Lake of the Ozarks. These guys, they don’t even know where that is. They never leave their neighborhood. If they were to kill someone, they’d probably cut him up and cook him in their backyard.”

  “That’s a nice thing to say about your clients.”

  “Hey, I love these guys, but I don’t have to like them. If you got evidence against em’, file your charges. I don’t think you do.”

  “They come in, we can clear them. Cross them off our list. It would benefit them too.”

  “Maybe,” Morris said. “But I bring them in, you’ll question them separately, do your nice guy thing and in a couple of hours they’ll tell you every illegal thing they ever did and then we’ve got a whole new set of problems. For them, it’s a no-win proposition.”