Shaker: A Novel

by Scott Frank

  Science put his hand on the gun under the pillow, knew he should have tossed it, but he couldn’t let it go. It was his now and it felt good to wrap his fingers around it. He wasn’t about to lose it, let someone else down the line shoot him with it. It was old, but bigger than the little black .32 his brother carried with him. He knew that he’d go nowhere from now on, he wasn’t strapped. And this funky old piece with the hair trigger was now all his. No one would take it away from him, ever.

  He listened to a car pass by the house and tried to imagine who was driving, where they were going, what the people inside were talking about. He heard a plane overhead on its way out of Burbank and Science made up an itinerary in his head: Hawaii. Tahiti. Buenos Aires. And then maybe San Diego where his oldest brother, Guy, had been stationed for the last two years.

  Guy had written letters to Noel, telling his baby brother how the Navy had saved his life. How if it weren’t for his job as a radioman, he’d probably be dead on the streets like Noel was going to be in a few years, he wasn’t smart. Guy, anticipating Noel’s response, adding that there’s a difference between being intelligent and being smart.

  Smart people don’t become gangsters, live lives measured in dog years, dead by the time they’re eighteen.

  He could hear Guy on the phone barely a week ago: You use drugs, you drink, and top it off, you gangbang. How are you supposed to make it, bro?

  But Noel didn’t want to join the service. This country didn’t do anything for him, why should he fight for it? Worse, he didn’t care to take orders from men he knew more than. And Noel knew more than everyone. He was the Science Man. He knew everything about everything. Fuck, he was smart and intelligent. For Science, school was easy and a waste of time. Knowing who discovered America wasn’t going to help keep his ass from getting shot off. School was a place for hanging and checking it with females, and the distribution of a little product, not learning.

  At fourteen, Science already knew all that he needed to know.

  The dog next door started barking and he could hear Mrs. Montclair pull her old yellow Volvo into the driveway. She was a speech therapist and had helped him with his stuttering when he was six years old. She was the first to say that Science had brains, that he would go far.

  Lying there in bed, with one hand on Roy Cooper’s gun, Science wondered what Mrs. Montclair would think of his actions earlier tonight.

  Listening to the comforting drone of his older brother’s voice just out the window, he played the moment over and over again. The old man on the ground. Science pushing the gun into his cheek, making a mark there, a little red “O.” Science staring at it and thinking yeah, that’s the spot, that’s where I’m gonna do it.

  But then deciding not to.

  Because of the other man. Mr. Freeze. He kept his eyes locked on Science the whole time. Those eyes. On the street, Science could look another dude in the eye and hiccup the motherfucker’s heartbeat. But this man was different. Science looked into this man’s eyes and felt his face burn. Even when he turned his back, he could still feel the man’s eyes on him, making little red “O’s” in the back of his head. He knew that if he wasn’t careful, the man would have killed him. He wasn’t afraid. He was waiting. Science couldn’t think of another soul could step into that situation and act that way. Not in real life anyway.

  No, he knew that if he didn’t kill Mr. Freeze right there in that alley, Mr. Freeze would surely kill him. The problem was, Science didn’t think he could kill the man.

  He wasn’t even sure that he could kill the old Herb. But then the fucking hammer fell on that empty chamber. He hadn’t meant for that to happen. Science was barely touching the trigger, was really just resting his index finger there when, all of a sudden, it came back with the weight of nothing.

  And then that click.

  Science, you played yourself, son.

  For true.

  Science knew that he had to do it for real then. No way he could walk away having almost done it. He could see from the way Truck was looking at him that Truck thought he pulled the trigger on purpose. L and Shake didn’t matter so much, but Truck…

  Truck had killed before. Truck wanted to do it again. If he did it now, for Science, they’d all be looking to Truck for the answers, not the Science Man.

  So Science decided to kill the man for real. If Mr. Freeze made a play, he’d let Truck have him. He could afford that, but only if he wasted the old Herb.

  Funny thing was, in that split second that he made up his mind, Science could feel himself relax. This was his night to cross the line. For that split second, Truck was irrelevant.

  He had thought about it many times, lying in this very same bed; fantasized about different scenarios where it might happen. It was almost always self-defense. Or to save someone. Maybe some shorty he met at a party. His friends. His brother. Someone else he went over the line for. But tonight, looking down at the man, bleeding, soaked in his own piss, Science knew that the first time would be selfish; just for Science and no one else. He would fulfill his name. Be a straight killer, devious, do anything; be bad to the fullest. He’d do this thing and be an instant ghetto star. And from there it was a short hop to OG and then they’d all be his. He could bring them back to where they were before the Mexicans took it all away.

  But then that motherfucker slapped him.

  Goddamn. Out of fucking nowhere. Like the man didn’t give a shit. Like the man wanted to get his ass whacked. Now Science had to step up and do both motherfuckers, Mr. Freeze and the old Herb. He could feel them all watching, waiting like Mr. Freeze, to see what Science would do.

  Cole had always said that there were two kinds of bangers: hustlers and warriors. Shake and L were more the former, but Truck was a real soldier. He and Science were road dogs since they were practically babies. Truck was always gonna be the one to take Science where he needed to go. But Science had to keep his respect. Science knew that respect was one of those nonnegotiable things: you get and you give. And that slap fucked with his getting.

  Science heard Cole’s wheelchair on the wooden ramp outside and knew his mother would be home soon from the Airport Radisson where she worked as a maid. He heard the front door open and then a moment later watched as the dark form of his brother wheeled into the bedroom. Cole hoisted himself onto his bed, and a few minutes later Science could hear his older brother’s labored breathing.

  Cole had been shot in the spine two years earlier after he accidentally stepped on the sneaker of a fifteen-year-old Tiara Street Loco named Smokey at a Clippers game.

  A few days later, while Cole was lying in the hospital staring at his useless legs, his mother was telling Cole’s friends that she wanted justice. She wanted action.

  She wanted headlines.

  That same evening, the gangster who shot Cole was himself shot while he sat in his living room watching television. One of the high-velocity bullets, fired from the street, went through the house and out into the backyard, where it struck the gangster’s eleven-year-old sister in the back while she helped her mother hang clothes on a line.

  The little girl and Cole Bennett lay in beds two rooms apart in the very same hospital and were treated by the very same doctors. A reporter named Harvey Longo wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times Magazine about the two paraplegics called “Poetic Injustice” and won a Pulitzer Prize. Science was mentioned in the article as “The genius younger brother” and “The hope of the family.”

  The Bennett boys’ mother had gotten her headline.

  Science reached once more under his pillow and gripped the oily gun, now warm from the bed, and thought about how, lately, he’d noticed a lot of wooden ramps in front of people’s houses.

  A half hour later, he was still awake, though he pretended to sleep when his mother came into the room, smelling of Lysol and dope. He could sense her standing there between the beds, looking down at her two sons.

  Science wanted to open his eyes, tell his mother that everything
was cool, that he would take care of all of them, that he was still the hope of the family. That tonight was just the first step for him.

  That this time, he would bring home the headlines.

  Roy Cooper thought he was dead.

  He remembered the nice-looking lady cop with the dark hair pulled back tight, the deep green eyes watching him as she touched his hand.

  He remembered her smiling at him.

  He remembered the young cop getting in the back of the ambulance with him, wincing at the sight of all the blood as he sat down beside the gurney.

  He remembered hearing the siren, the young cop’s voice just underneath it…Sir, you’ve been shot. Chances are you’re not gonna live. Would you like to make a statement?…What’s your name?…Where do you live?…Are you married?…Is there someone we can call?…Do you know who it was shot you?

  And then silence.

  And for a minute Roy thought he was dead.

  But can the dead dream?

  If he was dead, how could he have dreamed that he spoke to Harvey on the phone?

  In the dream, Roy asked the old man what he should do now that he had been shot by a bunch of little kids.

  Harvey told him to get the fuck out of there.

  Roy told Harvey that he couldn’t move. He’d been shot three times. How was he supposed to go anywhere?

  Roy could hear Rita breathing on the extension. She was furious with him for putting them all on the spot like this. She said if he didn’t die in the hospital, someone would come out to L.A. and kill him, make sure he didn’t give up anybody back east who didn’t want to be given up.

  Roy said he wouldn’t do that.

  Rita said it didn’t matter. That he should just die, make it easier on everybody.

  Harvey told her to hang up, leave the boy alone. He would think of something. The meantime, he told Roy to get some rest, get his head clear so that he can make sense, the time comes the cops wanna talk to him.

  Roy said, yeah, he’d do that, get some rest. He was so tired. His body felt like it was barely held together, like it might fall apart he made one tiny move. The thing to do was sleep, maybe for a day or two…

  Then he remembered, right before she hung up, that Rita had told him to turn on the TV.

  Kelly had the hiccups.

  She hadn’t expected to be asked to this meeting, so she was in bed when Rudy called a half hour before. She drove through an In-N-Out on her way over, wolfed down a Double Double and a Diet Coke in the car, and was now seriously paying for it.

  She sat way in the back of the room trying to concentrate on what Mike Araki—Rudy Bell’s new partner—was saying while trying to control the noise her body kept making.

  The other detectives were all sitting on top of their desks except for Rudy, who sat in a chair with his suit coat draped neatly over the back.

  “So far, from the brass at the scene, we know at least three weapons were involved. We know one was a MAC 10, the other was the Glock belonging to the security guard, Dooley. The third belonged to one of the bangers, and from Dooley’s description sounds like a smaller automatic, most likely a .25. We should know more by tomorrow afternoon.”

  Dennis Lyles, a blond homicide Kelly had been in the academy with, said, “Are we sure the guard’s clean?”

  “We’re not sure of anything yet.”

  “I say that only because I know a lot of rent-a-cops been dealing out of those quaked-out places, supplementing their twelve-fifty an hour.” Lyles shrugged. “Who knows, maybe the whole thing was a buy went wrong.”

  Rudy Bell asked, “You saying the councilman was there to make a buy?”

  Lyles said, “I’m saying maybe he came along, stepped in something.”

  Kelly hiccupped and they all turned and looked at her and she suddenly felt compelled to comment. “Personally, I think the guard was just dumb, rolled up on something he should’ve just called in.”

  Leo Manning, the division CO, was watching her as she tried to stifle another hiccup. “You spoke with him, did you, Kelly?”

  “Yeah. Guy seemed more like a wannabe to me than any kind of drug dealer.” She glanced at Lyles, saw him smiling at her, nothing sweet behind it.

  Manning said, “That would be your read, would it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kelly hiccupped again and Manning kept looking at her, probably wondering if she was drunk.

  Kelly was amazed at how clean and pressed Manning looked at two in the morning. The little black goatee was trimmed and the bald head shined. The suit was unwrinkled and perfect, with the tie all the way to the throat. Kelly thought the top cops were all starting to look more like haberdashers than police officers.

  “Maybe the whole thing was a hit on Peres,” Lyles was now saying. “I mean, the guy’s been pretty outspoken about the gangs the past few weeks.”

  Kelly hadn’t watched much television lately, but had some vague recollection of the guy at a news conference, standing in front of an apartment building on Lankershim going on about how he’d been living in North Hollywood his whole life and wasn’t about to move now.

  Rudy Bell said, “Then how do you explain the other guy, the John Doe got shot with him?”

  Lyles said, “Just some guy, stepped in the same shit.”

  “Sounds like a lot of people stepping in shit.”

  Kelly hiccupped, said, “I think it was the Pacas or the Vineland Boyz.”

  Again they all turned and looked at her.

  Araki said, “I thought the Mexicans claimed Dehougne, the 18th Streeters, those guys.”

  Kelly shrugged. “They do and they don’t.”

  Manning said to her, “You have any thoughts as to who it might be?”

  “There’s a few names come to mind.”

  “Think you could put some intelligence cards together, show them to the John Doe?”

  Before she could answer, Araki spoke up. “Rudy and I should be there for that.”

  Manning said, “I want you and Bell to take the guard back to Dehougne, have him walk it, get some measurements, find out exactly how it all went down.”

  “We’ve done that.”

  “Do it again,” Manning said, “now that he’s had some time to think about it.”

  “Why not have Maguire do that while we go to the hospital.”

  “Because I want to do it this way.”

  “There’s probably gonna be press at the hospital, too, that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m not worried about anything,” Manning said. “Kelly knows the area and the people better than you do.”

  So that’s why she was here.

  “Fine,” Araki said. “Then have her put the cards together, and we’ll take them to Valley Pres.”

  “I want you and Bell at the crime scene.” Manning gave Araki a look that said, we’re done talking. So for a moment everyone was quiet. Kelly caught Rudy looking at her, making sure she was all right.

  She smiled at him.

  And then Leo Manning slid off the desk and shook his head. “Christ,” he said. “It had to be Frank Peres.”

  The end of Kelly Maguire’s career began on an overcast afternoon in May when an eighteen-year-old Whitsett Avenue Gangster Crip named Ronnie “Streak” Rabidou climbed in the back window of a green, one-bedroom house at the end of Gault Street and found twenty-seven-year-old Martha Gutierrez, a night nurse at Pacifica Hospital, giving her retarded nine-year-old daughter, Carla, a bath.

  Streak had come through the window looking for a nickel-plated tre five seven his sister—who frequently baby-sat Carla—had told him she knew for a fact was hidden somewhere in Martha’s bedroom. Streak needed the gun to do a guy who had turned out a party he was at the week before, then took off with a girl Streak was dancing with. But Streak quickly forgot all about that when he saw Martha and her daughter sitting there in the bathtub.

  Over the next few hours, Streak repeatedly raped Martha in front of the little girl, then killed them both
with a screwdriver after tossing the house for a gun that wasn’t there.

  At the time of the events in the little house on Gault Street, Kelly Maguire was part of a newly formed gang unit, set up to get closer to the female gangsters in Hollywood. In her two years there, Kelly had gotten to know dozens of gang members of both sexes throughout Hollywood, and later, in the neighborhoods around USC. The mayor wanted to try the same thing in North Hollywood and Kelly transferred there to lead the unit.

  She had never met Streak, however, until the night she and her then partner, Rudy Bell, knocked on the door of the house Ronnie shared with his aunt and his younger sister on Hart Street, two blocks away from where he had spent the previous afternoon with Martha and Carla Gutierrez.

  In the days that followed Streak’s arrest, the press would often refer to the swift investigative work on the parts of Detectives Bell and Maguire. The truth was that Bell and Maguire had little if any investigating to do at all thanks in large part to Ronnie Rabidou himself, who, in all his excitement, had left behind a pair of jockey shorts with his name printed in black felt pen across the seat—the way all of the inmates were required to do at the Kilpatrick juvenile detention camp out in Malibu—on the floor beside the Gutierrezes’ bathtub.

  Kelly Maguire’s career as a police officer ended twenty minutes or so after Kelly and Rudy brought their suspect to North Hollywood Division for an interview. Streak calmly confessed to the killings at the time of his arrest, but there were still a few things that Bell and Maguire needed to clear up.

  Kelly remembered Rudy telling her that he was going to the john and that he would be back in a moment. After that, however, all Kelly could remember was picking up the phone book off the edge of Dennis Lyles’s desk as she walked into the interview room to ask Streak one more time where he had dumped the body of Carla Gutierrez.

  Kelly wouldn’t remember the rest of it until a month later when she was sitting in an interview room, not unlike the one in North Hollywood, except that this one was inside the Internal Affairs Division in Van Nuys, and Sergeant Paul Hancock of IA Division played it for her on tape after first reading her rights.