Shooters

by Lankford, Terrill Lee; Raphael, Lev; Parker, T. Jefferson

  "That's right. For the third time, I'm Nick Gardner."

  "That's very good," Di Bacco said. "I'm Lieutenant Archibald Di Bacco, Sheriffs Department, Homicide Division. This is my partner, Detective Sergeant Edgar Thompson. It is our duty to inform you that you are under arrest for possession of controlled substances and suspicion of murder."

  A nausea of confusion and fear knotted in my stomach.

  "What?" It was the best I could come up with at the moment.

  Thompson showed me a piece of paper on a clipboard. "This is a warrant to search your premises," he said. "Under this warrant we are mandated to arrest you if we find incriminating evidence. This evidence is in abundance."

  "What the fuck are you talking about?" I asked.

  Thompson looked at the patrolman and said, "Cuff him."

  The patrolman grabbed my arms and cuffed my hands behind my back before I could even respond. Then Thompson began reading me my rights. Di Bacco turned and walked back toward the bed.

  "There's something wrong here," I said. "You've got the wrong person! I didn't kill anybody! What the hell are you trying to do to me? I want to call my attorneys. Someone listen to me for God's sake! I'm talking to you!"

  No one in the room responded to my pleas. Thompson finished reading my rights. "Have you understood everything I have said to you?" he asked.

  I hadn't heard a word, but I said yes automatically. He wasn't speaking Swahili. The patrolman took me by the back of the neck and started to lead me down the stairs. I tried to resist, but the cop held firm, forcing me forward. I tried to get Di Bacco's attention.

  "Will someone please listen to me? I'm telling you you're making a big mistake!" They ignored me as I was forced down the stairwell. I could hear Thompson and Di Bacco laugh as they disappeared from my view.

  "That's a new one, huh?" Thompson said.

  We were joined by a second patrolman downstairs.

  "This the guy?" the new arrival asked.

  The first patrolman nodded and grunted. The second patrolman looked at me like I was the lowest form of slime on the planet and shook his head slowly. They led me out of the house and toward a black and white police car. I wasn't resisting anymore, but my pressure cooker was working overtime.

  The reporters surrounded us like hungry jackals. Video cameras whirred and still camera shutters clicked like machine gun fire. The cacophony of questions that flew at us blended into one loud rushing stream. I could feel the blood boiling in my head. I wanted to be anywhere other than here.

  As the cops put me into the backseat of the patrol car, I looked across the way to the large Dumpsters that the bum had been rummaging through when I left the house earlier in the day. More forensic men were at work there. Yellow plastic bags of varying sizes and shapes were being photographed on the ground next to the Dumpster. Blood was visible on most of the bags. My worst fears were beginning to take tangible form. Someone had been killed and somehow I was getting the blame.

  The homeless guy was sitting in a chair off to the side, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. A lady cop stood over him. He looked happy. This was his moment in the sun, the remainder of the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol had promised him. Whatever he had logged in before he took the streets as a residence was about to be eclipsed. This was better than winning the high school football game or taking a bullet for a buddy in Vietnam and getting the Purple Heart and a twelve-line story in the local paper. He had discovered the key evidence in a murder investigation. The grisly remains of a body, chopped up and wrapped neatly in plastic and loaded into my Dumpster. Well, that wouldn't be enough to get me in trouble. The cops were making a big mistake. You can't just arrest someone for having a body in his Dumpster. The thing was in plain sight on the Pacific Coast Highway. The public has access to it. There was no way they could realistically connect me to whoever was in those plastic bags. After a few hours I would be free and clear and ready to prepare a lawsuit for false arrest.

  The cops got into the front seat of the patrol car and we pulled away. I craned my neck to see my house, trying to figure out just exactly what had happened. My garage door was open now. More cops were surrounding my Lamborghini. They were laughing it up, having a good old time. Guys like that love to see guys like me get their dicks caught in a wringer. But I'd have the last laugh, once my attorneys got on the case.

  Steve, the chauffeur, was still there. Two cops were asking him questions. I wondered if I would still be a favorite customer next time I saw him.

  As my house faded from view in the distance, I began to feel more confident, almost cocky. This was such a huge mistake that I almost felt sorry for the Sheriffs Department. There would be a big lawsuit once I unraveled this mess. I looked at the two cops in the front seat of the car. They were stoic and bored already.

  "Anyone mind telling me who I supposedly killed?" I asked.

  The driver replied without emotion, without even looking into the rearview mirror.

  "Candice Bishop."

  2

  I sat across a table from Lieutenant Di Bacco in a windowless six-by-ten foot interrogation room. A large mirror filled one wall. It was obviously one-way glass with a video camera mounted on the other side in a room where everyone could get together and watch the worms squirm. Two other detectives in disheveled suits stood off to the side watching Di Bacco work. Thompson was not in the room. I presumed he was on the other side of the mirror.

  I was beat. We'd been at it awhile. They had me cold on a drug possession beef and they were using it to explore the murder rap before officially charging me on that count.

  "Might as well make a clean slate of it, Gardner," Di Bacco said, for what seemed to be the hundredth time. "We have a dozen witnesses that say you left the party with the girl last night. Her prints were all over your house. Both your prints were on narcotics paraphernalia found beside your bed. You even had half a gram of cocaine left on your dresser. There was evidence of recent sexual activity in the room. Your semen matched the semen found in her body, which was conveniently located in the Dumpster outside your house, along with the machete used to kill her."

  I scratched my arm nervously. It looked bad, no doubt about it.

  "You're in a lot of trouble, Mr. Gardner," Di Bacco continued. "Why don't you save us all a lot of time and aggravation and just come clean?"

  I looked at him with total frustration. "I've been telling you all night: I didn't do it. I was with her last night, yeah, but I didn't kill her. I didn't even know the girl."

  "You knew her well enough to freebase with her," Di Bacco said. "You knew her well enough to have sex with her. I think you knew her well enough to kill her."

  "Look, I met the girl at the party last night, she was beautiful, she came on to me. Tell me you wouldn't have taken her home."

  "I don't think my wife would have approved."

  "Yeah, well, I don't have a wife."

  A clerk entered the room and handed a thick manila file to Di Bacco, then exited. Di Bacco began reading the file. Finally he looked up at me and grinned in a very satisfied way that made me feel queasy.

  "You may not be married, but you're about to enter a long-term relationship with the state of California, Mr. Bracken."

  I looked at Di Bacco with a level of horror that made my more recent expressions of shock seem tame. Di Bacco flipped a page in the file and began reading out loud.

  "Nicholas Bracken, also known as Nick Gardner, charged with conspiracy to pander in 1981 and 1983—"

  "I can explain that," I protested.

  "Then you left the States in '84. We don't know where you were until you filed for an official name change from London in 1988. You came to New York in '89 and moved back to L.A. a year later. You've been running from something, Nick. And guess what? We just caught up."

  "So I was a shooter a long time ago. So what? That doesn't make me a murderer today!"

  Di Bacco jumped to his feet and put his face an inch away from mine.

&
nbsp; "No, but it makes you a scumbag in any year. You shoot porn. Maybe it's not hardcore anymore, but I've been looking over your recent work and it's still just as sick. You're a twisted, drug-addicted pimp, pervert, and killer, and you're going down for that girl's murder!"

  I stood up and said, "I didn't kill anyone, and I've never been convicted of anything. I'm clean. I don't have anything to do with pornography. I'm a fashion photographer. My work appears in the best magazines in the country, and when my attorneys get through with you and your bootlicking stormtroopers, you'll be lucky to get gigs as meter maids!"

  Di Bacco turned purple with indignant rage and punched me in the face, knocking me backward into, and then out of, my chair. One of the silent detectives grabbed Di Bacco and held him back. The other detective stood over me to make sure I didn't try anything. I wasn't about to make a move on this guy. He punched like he had a steam iron in his hand. I wasn't going to see how his kicking skills matched up by giving him an excuse to treat me like a soccer ball.

  I wiped my mouth and looked up at Di Bacco. My teeth felt loose and tasted salty from the blood, but I managed to speak. "Do you really think I'm so stupid that I'd kill someone and then leave the body in my front yard? Are you such an idiot that you can't smell a setup when it's right under your nose?"

  "That's exactly what you wanted us to believe. Everyone knew you were with her. If she just disappeared or turned up dead in an alley you would be the obvious suspect. This way the case was so simple that it made it look like a setup. You think you're a smart guy, Bracken, but that reverse-psychology shit went out with the hula hoop."

  The clerk entered the room again and approached Di Bacco. He whispered into Di Bacco's ear, then exited the room.

  Di Bacco calmed down a bit and pulled away from the detective who was restraining him, straightening his suit and tie.

  "Your shysters are here," he said glumly. Then he spoke to the detective standing over me. "Get him up and proper."

  The detective helped me to my feet and put me back in the chair.

  The clerk entered the room again, this time accompanied by Martin Smith and Bob Tate, my attorneys-at-large.

  "It's about time," I said. I had called them over four hours earlier and was beginning to lose hope that they were going to show.

  The attorneys looked at the blood around my mouth and then at Di Bacco, whose hair was mussed from the activity, and immediately sized up the situation.

  "Doing a little fifties-style interrogating, Lieutenant?" Martin Smith asked, ignoring my comment.

  Di Bacco said nothing. The clerk handed him a folded piece of paper.

  "What's that, Lieutenant?" Bob Tate asked.

  "Wouldn't be a writ from the DA releasing our client and his vehicle by any chance, would it?" Martin Smith piped in.

  "You know damn well what it is," Di Bacco said. He was pissed. The system was about to fuck him again. Smith and Tate had spent their four hours productively.

  Bob Tate looked down at me and smiled. "Seems these guys got a little carried away, Nick. Their paperwork didn't stick. We got the coke bust tossed out. So someone left a body near your premises? That doesn't give these gentlemen the right to search your house for drugs. That was one weak warrant, Lieutenant."

  "Your client is still a murder suspect," Di Bacco said.

  "Are you ready to charge him?" Smith asked.

  "Think carefully, Lieutenant. You only have one shot at it," Tate added. They were in rhythm now, each coming in on the last word of the other's sentence, trying to tag-team Di Bacco into frustrated submission.

  "Is your case strong enough?"

  "Paperwork up to date?"

  "The DA isn't so sure that Nick makes such a perfect suspect. He doesn't feel that the case is . . . what was the word he used?"

  "Airtight."

  "Right. He thinks caution is not your strongest personality trait."

  "I'd say our client's condition would attest to that. I hope there's not going to be an ugly police brutality suit in this."

  "You mean to go with the false arrest case we already have brewing?"

  "Precisely."

  "Book rights on this alone will be worth a fortune."

  "To say nothing of the TV movie deal."

  Martin Smith looked at Bob Tate as if he had suddenly been engulfed in a fiery epiphany. "Hey . . . We're going to be rich!"

  Di Bacco was seething.

  I couldn't control my smile. These guys were having a lot of fun at Di Bacco's expense.

  "What's it going to be, Lieutenant?" Tate asked.

  Di Bacco crumpled the note and stared down at me.

  "You're free to leave the station," Di Bacco said. "But like they say in the movies, don't leave town. It might look suspicious."

  I stood up and smiled at Di Bacco.

  "Got no reason to go anywhere. I'm innocent."

  3

  Tate and Smith led me out of the interrogation room, down the hall to freedom. We passed the crowded bullpen. Cops were everywhere, filing paperwork, questioning suspects and witnesses, gabbing on the phones.

  Detective Thompson sat with Patti, the redhead that Candice was hanging with at the party, and a black-leather-jacketed tough guy with three days of growth on his face.

  Patti looked over and spotted me. "That's him," she said in her Texas drawl. "That's the guy Candy introduced me to last night!"

  "Are you sure?" Thompson asked.

  "Believe me, mister, I know that's the guy. . . . Nick Gardner—that's the name he gave me. That's the guy! He killed Candice!" She got to her feet and made like she was going to run at me. Thompson grabbed her and held her fast.

  I started to move toward them. Smith and Tate took me by either arm and pulled me away, toward Processing.

  "Recognize him, Angelo?" Thompson asked the guy in the leather jacket.

  "Never seen him before," Angelo said, looking me straight in the eye from across the room. "Never gonna forget him, either."

  I didn't like the sound of that.

  PART VII

  "Looking innocent can be just as important as being innocent."

  —Bob Tate

  1

  Tate and Smith got me through Processing in record time and with a minimum of fuss. They gave me a lecture during the ride to the impound to pick up my car. I had retained them three years earlier to handle my legal for the company that Lou and I started, but I had chosen them not only because Smith had a great rep at contract law but also because Tate was considered one of the finer criminal defense attorneys in southern California. I had a secret agenda in wanting to develop a relationship with these guys and now it was all starting to come out. I had hoped I would never have to play these cards, but I wanted to be ready if the time ever came. Obviously the time was now.

  "Nick, we're very disappointed in you," Tate said. Smith was driving, Tate was in the front passenger seat of the Mercedes looking over the headrest at me in the back. This kind of trouble was more Tate's specialty, so he had the ball and he was running with it.

  "Why didn't you play straight with us? We consider it a breach of trust when one of our clients presents himself as somebody he is not."

  "I never did that. My name is Nick Gardner."

  "Only because you had it changed in 1990. The question is why?"

  "I don't think you want to know the whole story. It may compromise your position while representing me."

  "We are seriously considering not representing you."

  "Why is that?"

  "I told you. We don't like getting into things we don't understand. If you can't be truthful with us, then we can't effectively defend you. We have no idea what other skeletons are going to come rattling out of the closet if we have to go to trial."

  "I didn't kill that girl. I'm innocent."

  "Sometimes that is not as important as you may think."

  "What do you mean?"

  "If a jury gets involved, they will decide whether you are guilty or innocent bas
ed on law and/or intuition. If there is a gray area in the law, intuition will win. Looking innocent can be just as important as being innocent. If you have a shady past that the prosecutors can bring into play, believe me, they will."

  Martin Smith suddenly spoke up. "What's the deal with the porn busts, Nick?"

  I swallowed hard. I was going to have to deal with this. It was time to come clean with someone. It might as well be a couple of lawyers. Considering the moral compromises these guys made every day, they were the last people who should be passing judgment on me.

  "They were simple pandering charges. Since the cops have trouble making porn charges stick with the First Amendment and all, they would try to nail us on prostitution and pimping, claiming that sex for hire wasn't protected by the Constitution, even though the actors were performing on film. I got a suspended sentence the first time, but I did five months in County on the second charge."

  "How did you get wrapped up in porn in the first place?" Tate asked.

  "It's what I used to do for a living a long time ago." I said. "It was how I learned to be a photographer. I worked my way up through the porn world as an assistant, then a still photographer, then a shooter."

  "What's a shooter?" Tate asked.

  "It's slang for cameraman. Any cameraman might call himself a shooter, but the guys who shoot loops were always referred to that way. If you wanted to make a quick loop and didn't know anything about cameras, you hired a shooter."

  "What's a loop?" Smith asked.

  "Short little porn flicks that were popular back in the sixties and seventies. They'd run anywhere from five to twenty minutes long. They used them in the jerk-off booths and sold them to guys who had Super 8 projectors at home. This was all before video hit. I hear the loop business really took a dive after that. Porn went legit once the country could rent the stuff at the local mom-and-pop video store on the corner. It wasn't just for dirty old men anymore. But I got out just as all that was starting to happen."