Closing his eyes, he shut his computer and pulled his mother’s rosary out of his inside jacket pocket where he always kept it. Three Hail Marys, for Mama, three more for his wife, and he’d be ready for the Colombians.
And after that, for Willie Baden.
God’s on your side, Luis. He reminded himself of his mother’s mantra. God is always on your side.
‘How much longer?’
Andrés Malvino felt his chest constrict. He longed to loosen his tie, but knew that it would be a mistake to show the slightest sign of weakness, or even mild discomfort, in front of his boss.
‘Hopefully only a few minutes. Control say we’re next up for runway two.’
Working as Luis Rodriguez’s private pilot for the last eight years had made Andrés a modestly wealthy man. But his frayed nerves had paid the price. Señor Rodriguez did not like being disappointed, and had no qualms about shooting the messenger.
‘We’d better be,’ Rodriguez grunted and withdrew, displeased, from the cockpit.
Paola, the G650’s outrageously sexy stewardess, rested a manicured hand on the pilot’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He’s stressed about the whole trip. It isn’t you.’
It doesn’t have to be me, Andrés thought. He’ll turn on the nearest available punching bag.
‘I think he’s missing his wife,’ Paola whispered.
More bad news. Nothing, but nothing, could put Luis Rodriguez in a worse mood than thinking about his broken marriage. Andrés had flown his boss’s wife once or twice when they were together and had always liked her, although she and Rodriguez seemed a strange match to the pilot. Luis was larger than life, a superstar in Mexico City for his generosity and for his championing of the underdog, the common man. His wife was the opposite: shy, quiet. Kind, certainly, but never in a flashy way. She also lacked Luis’s legendary, explosive temper, and spent a lot of time apologizing to staff or others in their inner circle for his outbursts, some of which could be genuinely terrifying. It made you wonder what she’d been through, living with him …
Andrés’ headphones crackled. ‘Piper 175JP, you are cleared for take-off. Repeat, Piper 175JP, you are cleared.’
‘You’d better get back there,’ he told Paola with a deep sigh of relief. ‘We’re off.’
Back in the cabin, Luis Rodriguez leaned back in his custom-made, calf-leather chair and sighed with relief himself as his plane roared along the tarmac and shuddered noisily up into the cloudless night sky. His meeting with the Colombians had gone well, and all was set – hopefully – for some productive business in LA. It was Valentina Baden he needed to focus on, he realized now. Willie might wear the crown, but it was plain that his wife was the power behind the throne.
I must try to focus on the business, Luis reminded himself, and not on her.
He’d been a strong, powerful businessman, full of confidence, when his wife met and fell in love with him. If he were ever going to win her back, he needed to project that same strength now, more than ever.
Never be needy. Never be weak.
Putting his computer to one side, he turned his attention instead to the stack of American magazines the flight attendant had handed him. Opening one at random – the latest edition of Time – he stumbled upon a feature that instantly grabbed his attention.
Michael Marks, the new, hardline Republican US President, had launched a slew of new initiatives in his first hundred days in office. Luis wasn’t a fan of Marks, a tiresome bore of a man who’d taken his predecessor’s anti-immigrant rhetoric a step further and already done much to worsen American relations with Latin America – something that, before the election, few Mexicans would have believed possible. One of President Marks’ splashiest efforts had been his renewed war on drugs, and in particular the opiate epidemic, which he described as his nation’s ‘public enemy number one’. On that point, at least, Luis reflected, he was probably right, although his strategy for solving the problem was doomed to failure.
The Time journalist had begun his piece as an interview with Marks’ new opiates tsar, a man named Richard Grier, but then allowed the article to morph into a broader feature on the latest drug flooding the US market and its devastating impact on users and their families: the Russian desomorphine derivative, Krokodil.
Horrifying pictures of dead-eyed people with gangrenous limbs made Luis’s stomach churn. But the images were not as shocking as the statistics. Already on a par with crystal meth in terms of the number of users, only two years after it was first introduced into the US, within the next twenty-four months Krokodil usage was predicted to outstrip meth, heroin and crack cocaine combined. As the Time writer pointed out, this was bad news not only for the American population, but for the Mexican cartels, who’d seen their business decimated by the Russians. In the long term, however, Krokodil might end up being bad news for all traditional illegal drug suppliers, including the Russians. ‘Because, like the meth from which it’s derived, this stuff is pretty easy to cook up at home.’
The journalist went on to compare the predicted collapse of the drug cartels to the downfall of other traditional businesses like record labels, TV networks and book publishers. ‘Once a consumer knows they can access a product either for free or much more cheaply themselves – whether that’s a Beyoncé song or a hit of narcotics – market forces dictate that the middleman gets pushed out.’
Interesting, Rodriguez thought. Pulling out his phone, he dictated a note to himself. ‘Have Marisol look into drug rehab charities in the US. Who’s focused on Krokodil?’
He had yet to finalize his philanthropic plans for the year, but a splashy donation to the fight against Krok had just made its way to the top of the list. The pictures of those poor wretches were haunting, the sort of thing that would catch the attention of even the most jaded public. Plus, if Luis channeled the money correctly, it might even impress the right people in Washington and President Marks’ administration. As an added bonus, acts of generosity in any form were bound to impress his wife.
It was uncanny how everything came back to her in the end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Detective Mick Johnson scratched at the skin on his forearm till it was red and raw. The itching had started as soon as he got out of the car on Denker Avenue, outside Treyvon Raymond’s family home. It was as if he had hives. As if he were violently allergic to this shitty neighborhood. Westmont. The name sounded so innocuous, even gentrified. In fact, the streets where Trey Raymond had lived his short, brutal life were a human cesspit of violence, drugs, corruption and filth.
A lot of people considered Mick Johnson to be a racist. He used to defend himself against the accusation, but at this point he figured it might be true. And he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Two of Mick’s closest friends, including his last partner, Dave Malone, had been killed on these very streets, both shot to death by young black dealers. The murders had happened in broad daylight, and yet, surprise surprise, not a single witness had come forward to identify the shooters. If it hadn’t been for Dave’s own hated dash-cam, his killers would never have been caught. As it was they were both now on San Quentin’s death row, where they belonged.
It was tough to stay neutral about a community that killed your friends and lied about it. What happened on the streets of South Central LA every day was a war – a war, pure and simple – and black junkies like Treyvon Raymond and his buddies were the enemy. Bleeding-heart liberals like Doug and Nikki Roberts could bleat on all they wanted about reform and rehabilitation and the effects of poverty and gang culture and how ‘the system’ was failing young African American males. But they weren’t in the trenches like the LAPD. It wasn’t ‘the system’ that had executed Dave Malone and stood there laughing about it while he bled to death on the sidewalk.
Johnson hammered on the door of the Raymond house as if it were a raid.
‘Open up!’ he yelled, his corpulent form bristling with hostility. ‘Open the damn door! Police!’
A t
hin, frail woman’s voice answered. ‘I’m comin’, I’m comin’!’
‘Come faster!’ Johnson commanded.
Parked across the street about a hundred yards away, sprawled out in the driver’s seat of his battered Nissan Altima, Derek Williams watched Detective Johnson at work, a deep feeling of loathing lodged in his chest. The utterly unprovoked aggression in Johnson’s body language and manner as a diminutive, elderly black woman – presumably Treyvon’s grandmother – opened the door, made Williams’ stomach turn. Here was a grieving family, victims of crime, guilty of precisely nothing, being treated like criminals in their own home. Williams could only presume because of the color of their skin, and Detective Johnson’s racism. This was what the LAPD called ‘community policing’. It was why people hated them.
Derek Williams hated them too, although not for the same reasons. Derek had applied himself to join the police force, three times in total. But each time he’d been rejected, deemed ‘not worthy’ by the faceless powers-that-be that decided these things. He’d passed the physical. He’d passed all the written exams. And yet three times the letter had arrived: ‘Dear Mr Williams, We regret to inform you … ’
That was twenty years ago now, but it still stung. Especially when ignorant, prejudiced fools like Mick Johnson, or vain pricks like his partner, Goodman, evidently made the grade.
Johnson spent forty minutes in the Raymond household, eventually emerging red-faced and apparently even angrier than when he went in. Williams waited until the detective had driven off before heaving himself out of his car and approaching the house and knocking respectfully on the door.
‘What now?’ the voice of a middle-aged woman, weary and resentful, came towards him. ‘We already told you all we know. Why don’t y’all leave us al— oh!’
A small, attractive black woman in her mid-forties opened the door and did a double take at Williams. Clearly, she’d assumed it was Detective Johnson coming back for more. But her surprise soon gave way to hostility. With narrowed eyes, she asked Williams, ‘You another one? You know your friend just left here. Y’all should be out there catching my son’s killer instead of wasting yo’ morning harassing two innocent women.’
‘I’m not a cop,’ Williams assured her, extracting a slightly grubby business card from his pocket and handing it over. ‘I’m a private investigator. And I am trying to catch Trey’s killer, Mrs Raymond. That’s exactly what I’ve been hired to do. May I come in?’
Ten minutes later, Williams was sitting on the couch in an immaculately clean living room, sipping coffee from a rose-patterned china cup. Opposite him, in matching armchairs, were Treyvon Raymond’s mother and grandmother, both as polite and welcoming as could be.
‘So you’re working for Dr Roberts?’ Trey’s mother asked. ‘I think she’s a good woman. She ain’t as warm or easy to talk to as her husband was. The other Dr Roberts. I mean, that man was a saint on earth.’
‘A saint,’ the older woman echoed, nodding.
‘But, you know, she gave our Trey a job, and she was real kind to him, even after Dr Douglas passed away. So we’ll always be grateful to her. And she hired you?’
Williams nodded. ‘She felt the police weren’t doing enough to catch Trey’s killer. And she herself has been threatened.’
The two women looked at one another, concerned. ‘I did not know that,’ Trey’s mother said. ‘That’s too bad.’
‘And then there was the other young woman who was killed, Lisa Flannagan …’
Trey’s mother pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. ‘Trey was very fond of her, I think. She was one of Doc Roberts’ patients, wasn’t she? Poor girl. The trash they’ve been writing about her in the papers, about her boyfriend and all that. I mean, the poor girl lost her life! It’s not right.’
‘No, ma’am, it’s not,’ Williams agreed. ‘I wonder, would you mind telling me what Detective Johnson was asking you about before? I’m curious as to what lines of inquiry they’re pursuing.’
Trey’s grandmother rolled her eyes. ‘“Lines of inquiry?” He wasn’t inquiring ’bout nothin’. He jus’ came in here to accuse Trey of dealin’ drugs.’
‘Which is a flat-out lie,’ Trey’s mother added, indignation blazing in her eyes. ‘My son had been clean nearly two years when he died. Thanks to Doc Roberts.’
‘I know that, ma’am,’ Williams said reassuringly. ‘So Johnson was asking about drugs?’
She nodded. ‘Who Trey’s dealers were, who his friends were, what “gang connections” did he have. I mean, my God! My son was a good boy, Mr Williams. So we told the detective that, and he got madder and madder, and then he started asking about Dr Roberts, and what exactly Trey’s job was with her.’
‘He felt Trey’s job might be important to the case?’
‘I don’t know what he felt. I think mostly he wanted to yell and cuss. He said some terrible things about Dr Roberts and poor Dr Douglas. Said it was the likes of them that kept this neighborhood full of drugs and crime, that made it impossible for the police to help us. Like they want to help us! He basically implied that Dr Roberts never really cared about Trey, that she might even have had something to do with the people who took him …’ She welled up with tears again, too choked with emotion to go on.
‘Take your time, Mrs Raymond,’ Williams said gently.
Trey’s grandmother leaned over and rested a comforting hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘We told the detective we didn’t believe that,’ the old woman informed Williams. ‘But the truth is, that man didn’t care what we had to say. He’s got his own ideas about Dr Roberts, and about Trey. He doesn’t want to know no truth.’
Collecting herself, Trey’s mother added, ‘He accused us of being obstructive and he said if he found we’d deliberately withheld information he’d throw both our “black asses” in jail. Then he left. He said he could find Trey’s dealer buddies himself. Which is gonna be hard, Mr Williams, as my son did not hang around with any of those guys. I mean, none.’
Williams offered his condolences and left, thanking them both for their time and the coffee. ‘If you think of anything that might be helpful or important for me to know, you can call that number on my card, anytime. Day or night,’ he told Trey’s mother.
‘Thank you.’ She shook his hand gratefully. ‘I surely will. And you say hello to Dr Roberts from us.’
Outside on the street, Williams stopped, considering his next move. He was only a few blocks from the corner where all the Westmont dealers hung out. It was one of the few spots where whites were allowed to pass by the local gang enforcers, because it wasn’t in anybody’s interest to shoot potential customers.
Johnson had probably headed straight there himself from the Raymonds’ place, angry and reckless. The man was an out-and-out asshole, but he also had a reputation for being brave, and less likely than most of his colleagues to be intimidated by Westmont’s notoriously violent dealers. Williams looked at his cheap watch. It was over an hour since Johnson had left Denker Avenue. The coast must be clear by now.
Jumping back in his car, Williams did a slow drive-by first, to get the lie of the land. All seemed peaceful enough, although he knew from experience that in places like this violence could erupt out of nowhere in an instant. Pulling over about fifty yards from the corner, he warily made his way over to a trio of young Latino men.
In perfect Spanish – after his abortive to trip to Mexico City looking for Charlotte Clancy all those years ago, he’d decided to learn the language – he asked them if a cop had been here in the last hour, asking questions about Trey. He was met with three blank stares. Handing each man a twenty-dollar bill and a packet of cigarettes he tried again.
‘The cop was very fat, very white and very rude,’ he elaborated, eliciting a smile from one of the trio. ‘Kind of an asshole.’
‘He was here,’ the smiler confirmed. ‘No one spoke to him though. He was talking to those junkies before he left.’ The man nodded towards a small group of homeless
men sprawled out on a sliver of green at the end of the street, opposite the official city park.
‘Thanks,’ said Williams, handing over another twenty. ‘And I’m assuming none of you guys knew Trey?’
The smiler shook his head. ‘We know who he is, though. The kid who got knifed, right? By the zombie?’
‘There’s no such thing as zombies,’ Williams said quietly.
‘Whatever,’ said the smiler. ‘That kid never hung around here.’
‘Was he a user?’ Williams chanced his hand.
‘Like I say, I never saw him.’
‘Dealer?’
‘Not around here. Maybe on the West Side? I heard he had some pretty fancy friends.’
Williams nodded and headed over to the addicts clustered on the verge. Two of them were asleep or passed out, curled up in sleeping bags that were more dirt than fabric. One poor man, a white guy with a big ZZ Top beard, was rocking back and forth on his haunches, muttering something unintelligible to himself and intermittently bursting into possessed laughter. Which only left one young girl, also white and skeletally thin, in a fit state for conversation. Guiltily, Williams slipped her a twenty, knowing exactly what it would be spent on.
Her face lit up. ‘Thanks! Oh my God … thank you!’
From the depths of his pocket, Williams pulled out a slightly battered Snickers bar. ‘Take this too. You need to eat something.’
He asked the girl the same question he’d asked the dealers. She confirmed that Johnson had grilled her and her friends, threatened to arrest them on the spot for possession. ‘But we could kinda tell he was bullshitting. He wasn’t interested in us. Wanted to know about this boy.’
‘Trey Raymond. What did you tell him?’
‘Nothing.’ She opened the Snickers and began to chew the top half-heartedly. ‘Never heard of him. Then again, this ain’t my neighborhood. I came here with my boyfriend.’ She gestured to the bearded rocker. ‘He’s not usually like that,’ she added, with a blush that was so sweet it broke Williams’ heart. She was somebody’s perfect little baby once.
Sidney Sheldon's the Silent Widow Page 20