Runaway Heart

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "I know. I… it's just. It's just that I have to meet with a federal court judge this morning. Her office left a message that I should be in her chambers in an hour, at eleven. 'Don't be late,' she told me. If you ever got a chance to examine this judge, you'd discover a cardiopulmonary first: no heart and an extra lung. So I'd better do what she says and not be late."

  "We'll see you back here no later than two or three, then?" Dr. Shiller said sternly.

  "He promises to be here," Susan said.

  Dr. Shiller signed Herman's release and handed it to him. "I'll get the floor nurse to bring a wheelchair and we'll get you on your way."

  After the doctor left and Susan was alone with her father, she put an angry scowl on her beautiful face.

  "What?" he asked.

  "If you try and get out of this operation… I'll… I'll kill you myself. You promised, Dad."

  "I know, I know… right, I promised, and we both know what a lawyer's promise is worth."

  "Dad." It was a threat, the way she said it.

  "Okay," he grinned. "But I gotta go see Melissa first, and, while I do that, I have a job for you."

  "What?" she said, still suspicious.

  "I want you to find us a new private detective not a computer guy like Roland, but a real gumshoe, somebody with good resources in San Francisco. Resources means friends on the San Francisco Police Department. We need a look at the ME's report, the crime scene evidence. An ex-cop who's now a P.I. might be a good place to start."

  "An ex-San Francisco cop?" she said.

  "Maybe, but I think it's better if the guy lives down here and has worked cases up there, 'cause we're gonna be in L.A., and I don't wanna have to be flying him around, paying per diem, and stuff like that. So, call around. Start with the L.A. Police Department and get a list of ex-L.A. cops who are now in the P.I. business and who worked cases up north. If that doesn't work, try finding one in San Francisco."

  "Dad, we can't investigate Roland's death, the police will do that. And you're going to be out of action until your condition is fixed."

  "We can't not investigate it."

  She looked at him for a long, painful moment.

  "What?" he said, putting a little push on it. But it was just acting, because he couldn't help noticing how concerned she was standing at the foot of the bed, her fists on her hips, trying to figure a way to steer him, to get him to do what she wanted.

  "Dad, if you don't do this, I'm gonna brain you."

  "Can't hurt me if you hit me on the head… nothing much up there."

  A nurse came in and unhooked Herman from the monitors. A few minutes later he was being rolled down the corridor on chrome and plastic wheels and pushed into the elevator like a two-hundred-pound holiday turkey. Susan followed. He was slumped, yet full of stubborn pride, heroic but clumsy, brave but ill-prepared. He was a million dollars in debt, yet headed downstairs to drive away in a movie star's expensive sports car.

  Chapter Twelve.

  Whatta dump, Jack Wirta thought, staring at his

  newly rented office with open hostility. The three-story building was on Santa Monica Boulevard, near Fairfax. He was getting a rate on the rental because the building was owned by the estate of his ex-police-partner's son. His old partner, Shane Scully, had found out two years ago that he had fathered a child with a wealthy woman who had died and left their son the building. Shane agreed to give Jack Wirta, L.A.'s newest private eye and cosmic joke, a deal on the one-room office: twelve hundred a month, no furniture, and utilities included.

  The place was poorly situated, especially for an ex-cop. Everywhere he looked, up and down the dingy third-floor corridor, he saw crime… vice, mostly. A gay male "dating service" that called itself

  Reflections occupied several adjoining offices down the hall. Why it was called Reflections, Jack Wirta didn't even want to guess. He'd already had a run-in with its proprietor, a willowy Hispanic ex-chorus boy named Casimiro Roca.

  "I hope you aren't intending to put chairs out in the hall," Roca said, arching a plucked eyebrow at Jack.

  "Why the fuck would I put furniture out in the hall?" Jack snapped.

  "One doesn't need to use foul language to make one's point."

  "Sorry." Jack didn't really want to start up with this guy.

  "The last people, the ones who had that office before you, they always had ten folding chairs out here with people sitting in them all day, smoking, talking, laughing. One could barely get one's work done."

  "Well, I think that was a casting agency, but I'm not going to be having any casting calls, so I think we can forget about that problem. I'm Jack Wirta," he said, putting out his hand, trying to be nice.

  "Casimiro Roca," the man shook it hesitantly. "But I go by Miro. You look like a cop," he added suspiciously.

  "Used t'be. Not anymore."

  "Well, just try and be quiet. Miro could use a little peace."

  "You're not speaking euphemistically, I hope." Jack said, smiling.

  "Don't be a child," Miro replied, then turned and actually sashayed down the hall more hip action than the cast of Cats.

  Jack Wirta watched Miro until he pirouetted at his door and paused theatrically. "Something else Miro can do for you?" he said. Not exactly an invitation, but not exactly a statement either.

  "I was just thinking… that's some walk you got there."

  "I used to dance professionally," he said.

  That was Reflections.

  At the other end of the hall was some kind of phone-bank boiler room called Herbal World Health Products. They had fifteen or twenty employees, and to Jack's cop eye all of them looked pretty badly tweaked. They scurried like junkies, heads down, carefully watching the ground. Strung-out little cowboys and cowgirls with twitchy movements and criminal eyes who spent the day on phones selling unlicensed health products. If he called Hollywood Vice they would come up here and take down the whole floor. But Jack was into "live and let live" these days. It was his new motto.

  So much for his third-floor neighbors.

  The office was located down the street from the West Hollywood Health Club, situated on the edge of five gay blocks along Santa Monica Boulevard that most Angelinos referred to as "Boy's Town."

  Overbuilt guys in tank tops and muscle shirts strolled the sidewalks in too-tight jeans, swinging their shoulders and looking like they'd kick the shit out of anybody who even muttered the word "faggot." On the job Jack had never had a problem with the gay community. He'd always figured to each his own, but he was beginning to wonder if having his office here was such a good idea. He was ruggedly handsome and he'd been hit on twice already this morning within the half block he'd walked from his parking space to the front entrance.

  By ten o'clock he had set up his desk and moved one club chair in. His old, ink-stained blotter was ready and waiting for that first big career-defining, high-profile case. Bring on a Robert Blake operetta. His new file cabinet was alphabetized but empty, anxious to be crammed full of important revenue-producing, adrenaline-pumping material.

  As he worked, he tried to ignore the pain in his lower lumbar region throbbing at first, then building, as always, until, by late morning his back was on fire. The pain came the same way as it had for almost six and a half years.

  Each morning he had to unroll himself from the fetal position he seemed to be arranged in when he woke up. After half an hour of agonizing stretching, with one eye on his bottle of painkillers, he would finally leverage upright and limp into the tiny kitchen of his duplex, telling himself he wasn't going to pop one more Percocet ever. The little bastards were addictive, and he knew he was badly hooked. But by eleven o'clock he was always in such agony he could hold out no longer. It was pain unlike anything he had ever experienced before he'd injured his back. He would inevitably find himself circling the pills until, finally, he would angrily grab the plastic bottle, shake one of the damn things into his hand, and wash it down, promising himself that this was absolutely the last one he wo
uld take.

  End result: He would struggle back to a pain threshold of plus five which was barely manageable. He would then wander through his day, feeling the pain building ominously until it hit a nerve-jangling nine about four hours later. Unable to find a position or an alcoholic state that enabled him to endure it for even another minute, he would break the solemn promise to himself, grab the bottle, take another, make one more empty promise, and so on. It had been like that ever since he'd stopped the armor-piercing nine-millimeter Parabellum fired by that shithead, Emil Matasareanu, or his buddy, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr., at the North Hollywood bank shootout in February of '97.

  Four surgeries and two bone grafts later, he could finally stand up, but it wasn't easy. A grueling two-and-a-half-year rehab followed before he could reapply for duty. He'd been forced to retake the Police Academy physical, which of course included the dreaded obstacle course. He had eventually crashed and burned doing the wall climb, and they carried him off on a stretcher. One lawsuit and another two and a half years later, he was off the force on a 75-percent disability that paid him $2,800 a month, after taxes. But he was also completely addicted to Percocets. Since it was a triple-hit painkiller, three copies of each prescription were filed with various state agencies to guarantee you couldn't get more without a doctor's approval.

  A year ago, when his most forgiving M.D. would no longer write him a prescription, Jack Wirta became an illegal drug user. He was now buying black market "Cets" from an African American drug dealer with a speech impediment, named "Carbon Paper" a moniker derived not from the color of his skin, but from the fact that he was great at forging prescriptions under a variety of phony names.

  It was past eleven and Jack had just started hanging pictures and plaques in his new office, trying to hide the wall scars, pounding in nails with a hammer, when, suddenly, the door swung open and Miro Roca was standing there again, hands defiantly on his slender hips.

  "Is that supposed to be funny?" he said, lisping slightly. "You're knocking the wall down."

  "Relax," Jack said, trying to talk with a nail between his teeth and lisping slightly himself. "Gimme ten minutes and I'll be done. I don't have that many certificates anyway. My career in law enforcement was undistinguished."

  Uninvited, Miro sashayed into his office the hip motion really was something to watch. Then he dropped theatrically into the one worn leather chair: the spin, the drop, and the smile all executed in one fluid motion. Drum riff. Cymbals. Applause. Like that.

  Miro started chewing at a cuticle, nibbling thoughtfully, picking up one of the four plaques on the desk with his free hand. It was a Certificate of Merit for the North Hollywood bank thing.

  "Help yourself, there," Jack said as he finished pounding the nail in the wall and hung his police academy graduation picture. He was in the third row at the end, ramrod straight, his game face on.

  Casimiro was still looking at the North Hollywood certificate, reading the citation. "This was some pretty serious shit," he said. "Miro saw this crazy bastard on the TV, walking around shooting people."

  "One doesn't have to use foul language to make one's point," Jack smiled.

  "I was being bitchy when I said that. Sorry," Miro conceded.

  "Apology accepted." Jack climbed down from the stepladder, then appraised the pictures and plaques on the wall. "Straight?" he asked Miro, who was now also studying them.

  "Funny thing to ask an obviously gay man," Miro said, and when Jack turned Miro smiled. "Just foolin' with ya, honey. Yes… yes… I think they're straight." And then he wrinkled his nose at the pictures, and for some unknown reason Jack found himself smiling, too. At least this guy didn't take himself too seriously, which Jack noticed was a growing problem among people who hung out west of La Brea.

  "I was thinking…" Miro began, "since you used to be police, and since I have a few old issues there, I was wondering if maybe there would be some way we could help each other."

  "You mean, I talk to somebody for you and get your file erased, and then you give me ten million dollars? Something like that?"

  "Ten million seems a tad high," he replied with mock seriousness. "I was thinking more like I could get one of our boys to answer your phone or something. I have this new one, Jackson Mississippi he doesn't have a place yet. He just sits around waiting for out-calls. Be nice to give him something useful."

  "He's from Jackson, Mississippi?" Jack asked.

  "No, that's his name. Don't tell him I told you, but I think he made it up. Least it's nicer than this other boy I had, named Bangor Maine. So how 'bout it? Wanna trade favors?"

  "No can do." Jack was beginning to wish Miro would just leave so he could take a few more Percocets.

  Suddenly, like in a Bogart movie, the door opened and one of the most beautiful women he had seen in six months was standing in his doorway, briefcase in hand.

  "Is this the Jack Wirta Detective Agency?" she asked hesitantly.

  "Yes, ma'am," he said smiling, giving her his whole grill… the entire sixteen.

  "Well, I guess Miro should go back and feed his ducks." Roca got to his feet and really worked it, heading toward the door.

  The beautiful woman watched him walk away, and as soon as he was gone she smiled. "Graceful."

  "He used to dance professionally," Jack said, and started to clear a space in the office. "Sorry about the clutter. I'm just moving in here."

  She moved over to the cracked leather chair where Miro had been sitting and settled in. "I'm Susan Strockmire," she said, putting her knees together and laying her briefcase across her lap. "I called the LAPD. They gave me your name when I asked for recommendations on an agency.

  "The police department recommended me?" He was puzzled.

  "Yes. I talked to a Lieutenant Matthews. He said you had the qualifications necessary for a job I need done."

  Lieutenant Steve Matthews had been Jack's CO back when he worked the Homicide table at Rampart. Jack had been in the Valley interviewing a witness on a triple drive-by gang killing when the bank shooting went down, heard the call on the scanner, and had rolled on it. He was the second blue on the scene. Not knowing the bandits were already out of the bank with assault weapons and full body armor, he'd walked right into a barrage of gunfire with only his puny little police-issue Beretta. That's how he ended up stopping the Parabellum. It had gone through his oblique and shattered two vertebrae miraculously missing his spinal cord, or he would have finished out his life whizzing around in a motorized wheelchair. When Jack finally retired on a medical, Matthews put him up for the Medal of Valor, but it hadn't been approved. Cops who went down and didn't die or

  manage to neutralize the target rarely won the MOV. Instead he'd gotten the Certificate of Merit. All these years later it looked as if the lieutenant was still trying to even the score and throw some work his way.

  "What qualifications are we talking about?" Jack asked, fully prepared to lie like a street junkie to get his first job.

  "I understand you worked a lot of cases up in San Francisco."

  "More than my share," he said, wondering what on earth she was talking about. L.A. cops hardly ever worked up north. A few extradites, or the occasional nomadic criminal who started here and ended up there, or vice versa. But those were mostly phone jobs. The department rarely sprang to send you anywhere.

  "Could you be slightly more specific?" he asked, his back pain now so bad he couldn't bear to go on for another moment. He reached into his pocket while she was fiddling in her briefcase for something, planning to use this moment to sneak a few more pills. He retrieved the bottle, quickly shook two into his hand then swallowed them dry, but she looked up and caught him. "Allergies," he smiled. "Santa Ana winds really get to me."

  "Oh," she said, and handed him a newspaper article from the San Francisco Chronicle, headlined:

  COMPUTER HACKER FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM

  While he read it he could see her out of the corner of his eye surveying the chipped walls, eyeing the fa
ded furniture, taking inventory. It was a loser's hangout. Jim Rockford only lived in a trailer, but at least he had a nice view of the ocean. Rockford would spit on this place.

  He finished scanning the rest of the article. It was boilerplate reportage, no real info. It told how somebody named Roland Minton, who had a history of computer crime, was killed at the New Fairview Hotel in San Francisco. No details. Typical police

  b.s. Foul play suspected… No suspects… no leads. That sort of thing.

  "Okay," he said quickly, trying to get her to look back at him and stop surveying this sinkhole where he'd set up shop.

  "The lieutenant said you had good contacts on the San Francisco Police Department," she said.

  "Excellent. Among the best." He wondered what the hell Matthews was talking about. He knew no one up there.

  "Roland Minton was working for our legal institute when he was killed. My father, Herman Strockmire, is the director and founder, and he wants to make sure the investigation is adequately pursued."

  Jack liked that word, institute. Institutes were commercially secure, abundantly funded organizations, so Jack tacked another five hundred a day onto his price.

  Then it hit him who he knew in San Francisco. He had told the lieutenant about it almost three years ago. It was one of his old love affairs that hadn't ended well. He'd dated a sergeant who worked the juvie detail up there. He'd picked her up in a cop bar while she was in L.A. visiting her family. It ended like all of Jack's important female relationships with recriminations and threats. Her name was Sergeant Eleanor If I ever see you again› you better run, you prick Drake.

  "I think the lieutenant was referring to my extremely close working relationship with a Sergeant Drake of the SFPD."

  "Do you think Sergeant Drake might be able to help us view some of the official case material related to Roland's death?"

  "If I'm the one to ask her, I think I can say, without hesitation, no problemo." Another lie. But he reasoned now that he was in business that a lie was really just a sales promise.