Street Rules

by Baxter Clare

  Both of Claudia’s children were surly and uncommunicative, until Frank asked Gloria why her brother was making strikes against the LAPD. The question sparked the young woman into a full-blown rage. She slammed her cereal onto the table, spilling most of it onto the floor and demanded Frank leave her house. Frank stayed on the arm of the couch, so Gloria turned her fury on Tonio, ordering him outside in his underwear. Scooping up the babies and dressed only in a sheer nightie, she followed her brother through the front door. Frank sighed, leaving a card near the dripping bowl. There was no one outside and Frank assumed Gloria had gone to a neighbors house. Tonio’s bike had been locked to the porch when she came in, now it was gone. She drove around, unsuccessfully trying to find him.

  Frank dropped by Lydia’s on her way back to the office. She was lucky enough to catch La Reina sitting on the apartment steps with her home girls. They were pissed when Frank told them to leave and Lydia complained, ‘Now what you want?”

  “Nothing. Just tell me who you know that drives a car with beige or tan carpet on the floor.”

  She couldn’t think of any Playboys that did. Most of their rides were GTAs anyway, hot cars wired just for a spree then left abandoned. Frank made a note to check the GTAs twenty-four hours prior to Placa’s death.

  “She ever tell you about any cops?”

  “She told me about you once. How you and that black guy used to be real nice to her when she was little. How the black guy always was wantin’ her to go to art school.”

  “She talk about anybody else? Any other cops?”

  Lydia cracked her gum, wagged her head.

  “Tell me who she was dealing to.”

  “I already tolt you I don’t know. She never said nothin’ to me about that.”

  “I got a lab report says she was handlin’ shit right before she died, and she was with you before she died.”

  “Well, she musta been playin’ with it before she seen me, ‘cause I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no dope.”

  “I understand your man’s out.”

  “Yeah,” she shrugged.

  “That’s not good news?”

  “S’okay.”

  Frank almost smiled at her ambivalence. She was beginning to see how this spunky girl would have appealed to Placa. La Reina was a tough kid, not to be underestimated, but she wore her heart on her sleeve.

  “Did you love Placa?”

  Lydia’s head drooped and she mumbled, “I don’t know. She was different from the boys. She was nice to me. She’d treat me respectful like.”

  “I knew her since she was this big.”

  Frank’s hands made a shape the size of a basketball.

  “I loved her too,” she said simply, watching amazement grow in Lydia’s eyes. Slipping her another business card, she said, “Call if you think of anything.”

  Driving back to the office, a nasty thought skipped around in Frank’s head. After she’d read Luis Estrella’s lab reports, she’d done some subtle snooping around on Hunt. Going through the old Figueroa news letters, she found the issue profiling Hunt’s rodeo exploits. He was a champion team roper and kept a stable of horses in Simi Valley. The article also mentioned John Knowles, Hunt’s equally successful teammate in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and his old partner at Hollywood.

  Hunt was a good old boy from up north, an Okie who’d started out with the Fresno PD. He’d hired onto the LAPD at Hollywood, then been demoted to Shootin’ Newton after a handful of unsubstantiated unnecessary force charges. His transfer from Newton came after another unfounded charge that he’d beaten a handcuffed prisoner badly enough to send him into ICU, followed by clouded allegations about his and Knowles involvement with a kilo of coke missing from the Newton evidence locker.

  She’d snooped around about Knowles too. He was as ugly with his fists as Hunt, and because of it had been busted back to regular patrol. Frank played with the idea that Hunt and Knowles had walked off with the key, and that they were still partners, not in law, but against it. She had a list of things to check — Knowles whereabouts on the night of the Estrella shootings, whether Hunt knew Barracas while he was at Hollywood, what kind of car Knowles drove … she knew she was grasping, but it was about all she had to go and oddly enough her leads were all tying in somehow to Hunt and his partner. Even while she told herself that she was working a SWAG, just some wild-ass guess, the evidence continued pointing toward Hunt. So she followed it.

  At the station she made coffee, figuring it was time to sweat Tonio hard, make him pop a name or too. She didn’t even consider Gloria. Even with kids, she still hadn’t mellowed. She was tough, like her sister, and Frank knew she’d relish going against Frank. No matter what Frank did to her, it would be Gloria’s personal triumph not to break. Claudia seemed the most afraid and the one who knew the most, but she wasn’t breaking either. Tonio was just a boy. Where he wasn’t savvy, he was the most gullible, and Frank had already seen she’d been able to get to him. She pulled his thin rap sheet from Placa’s murder book. It was mostly minor stuff. A B&E, petty theft, public intox.

  The phone rang and she answered absently.

  “Hi,” Gail said. “I tracked you down.”

  “Hey,” Frank said, putting down the rap sheet to give Gail her full attention. “Missed you last night.”

  “I just wasn’t up for the full compliment of Neanderthal’s. Present company excluded, of course. Did anybody get set on fire or handcuffed to the urinal?”

  “Nope. They were good children last night. What are you up to?”

  “Working on my histopathology lecture for next week,” then after a pause, “And wondering if I scared you off.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “We haven’t talked since Tuesday night. Since I told you about the mastectomy. I was just wondering if it put you off.”

  “Not at all. I’ve just been busy following your lead.”

  “My lead?”

  “The cop theory. I like it more and more. I even have a sketchy suspect.”

  “That’s terrific. I probably can’t ask who, can I?”

  “Nope. But once more I stand indebted. Might have to buy you dinner again.”

  “I don’t think so. If anybody’s buying it’s me. I can’t remember the last time you let me buy a meal.”

  “How about tonight?”

  “Really? Do you have time?”

  “I’ll make it. What do you feel like?”

  “I don’t know. Do you want to go back to La Perla? That was awfully good.”

  “Long as you don’t get the veal,” Frank smiled into the receiver.

  They arranged a time and Frank sat back, tapping a pencil to Ella belting out a Johnnie Mercer tune. The pencil beat a mean rhythm as Frank hummed along, eyes closed. She’d gotten to that funky point in a case where there was just a tangled ball of leads in her head. Concentrating on it was confusing and exacting, and she knew if she could just let it alone for a while that the ball would unravel itself. Eventually the leads would fall out into somewhat of a straight line and that line would point her in the right direction. It was hard not to force the unraveling, but when the music clicked off Frank crammed her notes into the briefcase and hit the freeway.

  She drove with one arm hanging in the sun. Ella’s sophisticated arrangements had given way to Dre and Snoop’s thugged out bass lines. Banging her hand against the door, Frank realized she was happy. Brick by brick she was building a case against Placa’s killer, a killer who might very well be a cop in her own house. She didn’t like that her best suspect was a cop, and dreaded the inevitable backlash of theory becoming reality. Still it felt good to have a name to bite into and it didn’t bother her that the name was Hunt. She had to move delicately on this, but at least she was moving and that was a feeling Frank lived for.

  Not only that, she was on her way to dinner with a beautiful woman. Frank wasn’t sure which development was more pleasing, but decided not to worry about it. Her relationship wit
h Gail was fun and friendly, and that was all. It was nice where it was and didn’t need to be poked or probed or prodded. Best, she thought thumping out the beat, to save that kind of effort for Hunt.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Frank answered the phone to hear, “Dang, girl. You’re harder to get aholt of than a greased pig in a stockyard.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Don’t sass me, LT.”

  “Whassup, sport?

  “I done checked around like you asked me too, about the Estrella’s. Lots of little stuff, but not a felony rap since the mid-nineties. Before that there was a whole rash of them, the whole family had ‘em. Like measles or something.”

  Kennedy’s awful drawl faded as she warmed to her info.

  “I thought it was weird that they’d stopped so I talked to a guy who used to work Narco at Figueroa. He said not to worry about it, that it wasn’t my problem. Of course that just got me more curious.”

  A thin smile creased Frank’s face. She felt sorry for any dumb bastard who thought he could give Kennedy the brush-off.

  “I kept at him and he got really pissed. Told me to keep my goddamn Parker nose out of Figueroa business. He said the Estrella’s were pocket change, and that they had better things to do with their resources. And so what if a bunch of spies were just serving to other spies?”

  “So there’s still action but everybody’s looking the other way.”

  “That’s my take on it. But if they’re that obvious, why not bust ‘em for easy stats?”

  Frank squeezed more notes onto a crowded sheet of paper headed COP.

  “You done good, sport. I owe you one.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll make you pay, believe me.”

  “Don’t doubt you for a moment.” To sidetrack her, Frank asked, “How’s our favorite waitress?”

  “Fine. I ain’t busted her heart yet, like you told her I would.”

  “Yet’s the operative word.”

  “You’re just too cynical, Frank. You don’t trust anybody. You know that’s true.”

  “Absolutely,” Frank agreed, the ensuing pause prompting Kennedy to forge ahead undaunted. As usual she knew exactly what Frank needed, and as usual it involved a complicated gymnastic routine in the bedroom. Frank again agreed, glancing at the wall clock. It was already noon and she was determined to talk with Tonio before the day was through. She told Kennedy she had to run and ducked out of the office. In a few minutes she was at Claudia’s, but Tonio wasn’t home. She cruised his most likely hangouts and eventually found him rolling dice in an alley. She made him get in the car despite his sullen protests.

  “You arrestin’ me?”

  “Nope. Just want to talk.”

  “What if I ain’t got nothin’ to say?”

  “Too bad. Get in.”

  They drove around in what seemed like circles until Frank parked across from the 52st Street School. Pointing at a small, elegant tag on a concrete piling, she asked, “Es tuyo?”

  Tonio glared the other way. She cut the engine and slouched down, propping a knee against the panel board. Casually pulling a pack of Camels out of her shirt pocket, she lit one, careful not to inhale too deeply and get dizzy. Frank was going to break Tonio, even if it meant spending the night here and getting hooked on nicotine all over again. But halfway through her cigarette, Tonio’s impatient youth got the better of him.

  “What are we doin’ here?” he griped.

  “Nothing so far. But I got all day.”

  The boy made a disgusted sound and turned back toward his window. Frank puffed, tapped ash.

  “You smoke?” she asked, knowing he did. She pushed the pack at him.

  He sneered, ” I thought kid’s just supposed to say no.”

  “Hey, the way your family’s been catching bullets lately, you’d be lucky to live long enough to get cancer.”

  Frank saw his slight move toward them, then how he caught himself. She studied his slice of profile.

  “I can’t remember. You and Placa have the same father?”

  “No.”

  “You look a lot like her anyway.”

  Frank flicked her stub onto the road. They watched a paramedic truck scream past the windshield.

  “Wonder where they’re going,” she muttered.

  Tonio’s hands flew angrily in the air.

  “What you want?”

  “You know,” Frank said in a friendly tone, almost chipper.

  “I don’t know who did it,” he grunted stubbornly.

  Frank made no rush to speak.

  “What if I told you I knew it was a cop.”

  He looked at her like he hoped she wasn’t playing a really bad joke then he turned his face back out the window. He lost some color and his chest started rising a little faster. Excellent, Frank thought, a direct hit.

  “I don’t know which cop — or cops —,” she said slowly, “but I got a pretty good idea. It’s only a matter of time now.”

  Tonio whirled unexpectedly toward her.

  “It ain’t a chota,” he insisted, and like a bloodhound, Frank picked up the scent of fear. “It ain’t no fuckin’ chota”

  His vehemence confirmed his involuntary physical responses.

  “Why are you covering for him? Or them. That’s what I don’t get. What do they have on you?”

  “Nothin’! Ain’t no one got nothin’ on me. You hear? Nothin’!”

  He was screaming, almost in tears. The weeks of continual harassment were finally taking their toll, finally wearing him down. Watching him desperately trying to hold himself together, she knew this was where he could go either way.

  “Give me a name, Tonio. This is your chance to be a man about this. Don’t be like a dog, running with its tail between its legs. Stand up for your sister, your familia. They need you, Tonio. This is your blood. You’re all they got left.”

  “I can’t,” he choked, letting the tears fall. “I can’t. He’ll kill us. Like he’s killed everyone!”

  Frank’s blood was itchy, her veins suddenly walled with fiberglass.

  “Who’ll kill you?”

  “He will! He killed everybody and then he killed Placa because she was gonna tell, and now he’s gonna kill us if we tell! Don’t you see? I can’t tell.”

  Slipping into his vernacular, she assured, “He ain’t gonna know you told me. Te promete.”

  “No! I can’t,” he pleaded, his face wet, fists balled.

  Frank moved a light hand onto his shoulder.

  “Yes, you can,” she whispered, leaning into him.

  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  She squeezed gently, afraid of losing his attention.

  “Tonio,” she crooned, finding his huge eyes, “Digame.”

  “If I tol’ you, you won’ believe me.”

  “Te juro. On your sister’s grave, I swear I will.”

  “You can’ tell nobody. Not the other cops, that, that black dude, Taylor, and, and that chino. Nobody. You can’t tell nobody ‘cause if he find out he’ll kill us.”

  She believed him. Completely.

  “There’s only me. Right here, right now, just between you and me. Tell me his name.”

  An acrid, bitter smell wafted off Tonio and he gulped air like he was drowning. Frank wooed him, her voice velvety and soft, “What’s his name?”

  He rocked back and forth in the seat, like a much smaller boy. She was afraid of losing him, and stroked him again.

  “Tell me his name, Tonio.”

  The boy said one sharp word. Frank reared back, slapped. The air jammed in her lungs.

  “What did you say?” she finally managed.

  Tonio heaved, “I tol’ you. I tol’ you you wouldn’ believe me!”

  Frank closed her eyes, torn between back-handing him or choking him with his shirt yanked tight under his throat.

  “Just tell me again,” she said quietly, forcing herself into the still spot that she knew was inside her, the place where it was cool and hard and
nothing could get to her.

  He repeated the last name.

  “What’s his first name?”

  After a second, he told her that too.

  Frank looked at the sky overhead. It was blue and clear.

  She could see all the way to the San Gabriel’s today. It was pretty up there. It would be quiet. She remembered that from her hike with Gail. She thought about how she’d like to be there right now. Looking down on the city, watching the few cotton-ball clouds billowing by. The breeze through the window was sweet and she imagined how it would feel up there, the sun hot on her skin, the wind a cool tickle.

  She propped her elbows inside the steering wheel and took a long time massaging the ridge of bone over her eyes. She lit another cigarette, dragged deeply, and passed it to Tonio. He grabbed it.

  “That’s what Placa was going to tell me,” she stated.

  Tonio’s shoulders bowed over his scrawny chest. Drained and defeated, the words came pouring out.

  “Yeah. And about how he kilt my uncles and sobrinos. And about the dope. We been runnin’ it for him since I was little. He and my mother’s uncle was in business. Mostly my uncles ran it but my mom and Gloria did too. Then when Gloria had the babies Placa had to do it. But she hated it. She didn’t wanna do it no more. She was smart. She wanted to stay clean, go to college. But he wouldn’t let her quit. He used to slap her around, punch her a little. She hated him. She used to tell me what she was gonna do to him.”

  He paused for air then plunged back into his confession.

  “Placa was gonna tell you. My mom and Gloria, oh man, they was so mad when you tolt ‘em Placa was gonna meet with you. They don’t mind it, you know? They like the money. They hate him but they like the money. But Placa, man, she hated him like nothin’ I’ve ever seen. She used to fight with them all the time. They’d fight so bad. And she made me promise to never carry. She wanted to get out so bad. She was gonna go to school and live in Beverly Hills and she was gonna take me with her.”

  Tonio broke down into his hands and Frank sorted though his words.

  “How do you know he did it?”