by Philip Cox
‘Yes he is, Wizard. I’m just helping him out for something. Nothing for you to worry about. He just needs some information.’
‘Yeah,’ growled the Wizard. ‘I need something, too. To drink and eat. Maybe smoke.’ He looked over at one of the others warming themselves by the trashcan and laughed. They shared the joke.
Leroy took out a wad of cash and began fingering the edges of the bills. He said nothing.
West’s eyes darted to Leroy then back to the Wizard. ‘Well?’ she asked.
The Wizard’s eyes left West and set on Leroy’s hands. ‘What you want to know?’
‘A bolt of lightning,’ Leroy said.
The Wizard pulled on his coat collars, shivered theatrically, and looked up at the night sky. ‘Seems pretty clear to me,’ he said, laughing and looking at the other trashcan, sharing the joke again.
‘Don’t mess with us, Wizard,’ West said, her voice harsher than before. ‘A bolt of lightning on a pill.’
‘A teal pill,’ Leroy added.
‘Greeny blue,’ West added.
The Wizard said nothing. He frowned, the wide grin gone from his face.
‘Was it Gatos Locos?’ West asked.
The Wizard said nothing.
Leroy took two fifties from his wad and held them up, the Wizard’s eyes following.
‘Gatos Locos?’ West repeated.
The Wizard’s eyes left Leroy’s hundred dollars, and darted around. ‘Yes,’ he said. The bolt of lightning means Gatos Locos. Krazy Kats,’ he added, for Leroy’s benefit.
‘Are they around?’ Leroy asked, looking around.
‘No, they won’t be,’ West replied. ‘We’re done here.’
‘O-kay,’ Leroy said slowly. He passed the fifties to the Wizard, who snatched them from him, and followed West back the way they had come. He glanced back and saw the Wizard, holding the notes a few inches from his face, studying them.
‘We going back to the cars?’ Leroy asked.
‘U-huh,’ replied West looking ahead.
Leroy had to quicken his pace to keep up. ‘Why the hurry? Wasn’t there anything else he could tell us?’
‘He couldn’t have told us anything else. And it’s not a good idea for two cops, one white, to loiter around here. I know we’re carrying, but there’s no need to go looking for trouble.’
‘So we know the pill came from the Krazy Kats, but I need to know who they supplied to.’
Now they were back on 29th, and Leroy could see their car.
‘You’ll have to leave that with me for now, Sam.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Look, you can’t just show up, flash your badge and ask to see their supply records.’
‘They keep records?’
‘Of course they do. Probably even more detailed than the LAPD. Not online, though, otherwise we’d hack into it. We need to speak to somebody on the inside.’
‘You have an informant?’ asked Leroy as they got back into West’s car.
‘Not exactly. I have a man on the ground.’
‘Someone in the gang?’
‘One of my officers has been in the 38th Street gang for two years now. I need to speak to him, but for obvious reasons I have a very specific protocol to follow.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘We had to speak to the Wizard to confirm the pill came from the KKs: now we have that confirmed I can get my guy to work.’
‘Good.’
‘It might take some time, though, Sam. My primary concern is his safety. And his family’s.’
‘That’s cool. It’s just one line of enquiry.’
‘I’ll call you when I have something. But remember what I said: don’t set too high a score on your killers being high. Okay, it’s effective for recreation. The high comes half an hour or so after taking; it lasts three, maybe four, hours; the peak is about 90 minutes after ingestion, but the dose seemed too low for the sort of thing you described to me.’
‘What if they increased their dose?’
West laughed. ‘Took two pills you mean? Might induce a temporary extra high. Most likely outcome is that you get to fish them out of the river. Nobody who knows anything about narcotics would exceed the dose like that. Unless they’re idiots. And I don’t think your guys are that.’
‘No, neither do I.’ As West drove back to East 6th, Leroy stared out of the passenger window, deep in thought.
*****
He was still deep in thought, hours later.
So, what part did Ecstasy play in the Hutchinsons’ murder? He would need to wait until West had spoken to her undercover officer. Not a role he ever relished.
He got out of bed. It was just after four. There was no way he was going to sleep tonight. He double checked his phone: the last item was the text from Julia; no reply from Bill Farmer or Leroy’s own FBI contact. He would give them till noon then follow them up. Next stop: Avalon, Catalina.
He stood up, stretched and walked into his kitchen. Made coffee.
While the coffee was brewing, he reached into his fridge and pulled out two cans of Red Bull.
FOURTEEN
JULIA MOORE TWISTED and turned in bed.
It had been a long day, and surely she would have been tired, and finding it easy to sleep. In fact, she could feel her body was tired, and she had a slight headache, but for some reason sleep was eluding her that night.
She changed her position in the bed several times: first foetal facing right, then on her back, then foetal facing left, but it made no difference. She reached over for the pillow on the other side of the bed - the side Sam would use whenever he slept over - and put it on top of hers. Patted it down, and laid her head on it. She sniffed. It smelt of him. Although nothing was set in stone, she was hoping he would make it tonight, but late afternoon he sent her a text saying he had to work that night and would catch up the next day. This was by no means the first time this had happened, and he had told her that his job would interfere with their love life.
And she had no doubt that he was being honest with her. He had set out his position right at the start of their relationship, but now and again disappointment drifted briefly into doubt.
She was still at work when the message came through, just packing up for the afternoon. The last student had just left.
‘What’s up, honey? Bad news?’ asked Gloria, one of her fellow fourth grade teachers.
‘Nothing,’ Julia said. ‘My boyfriend has to work. We had planned on seeing each other, that’s all. It’s cool.’
‘Cool my ass, honey,’ Gloria bellowed. ‘He’s done that to you before, hasn’t he?’
Julia shrugged. ‘Couple of times, maybe.’
‘Couple my ass. Half dozen to my knowledge, sugar. He’s a cop, ain’t he?’
‘That’s right. Detective. LAPD.’
‘They’re the worst, sugar. When he says he’s out doing surveillance, you can bet what he’s surveilling. My second husband was with the SFPD. I know all about them.’
‘I’m sure he’s doing what he says he is, Gloria.’
Gloria did not answer directly, just continued muttering to herself as she fussed with her locker. ‘It’ll all end in tears, sugar. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
As Gloria gathered up her things and left the classroom, Julia raised her middle finger to her colleague’s back. She was one hundred percent sure that Sam was being straight, but Gloria’s intervention was not helpful.
Ninety-nine percent sure.
There again, last week she had to cry off a date as she had to attend a PTA meeting here. Sam said he understood.
Ninety-nine point nine percent.
She reached back and felt the slight indentation Sam had left on his side of the bed, even though it had been days since he had lain there. He explained he had a new case which was taking up a lot of time, something about Malibu, and she had been busy at work, what with PTA meetings, a couple of interviews with parents and a staff meeting about syllabus changes.
She still missed him though. Missed him lying next to her, either here or in his bed.
Maybe that was why she couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe she needed a release. Maybe it was time to get out the Rabbit.
She reached over to the bedside cabinet, and pulled on the drawer handle. Then lay back down again. That was not the answer.
The problem was, although her body was tired, there was so much stuff running through her mind.
It had kicked off with the PTA meeting last week. Julia had worked at Garfield Avenue, an Elementary School in Culver City, for three years now. She had a class of thirty fourth grade kids, nine to ten years old. Boys and girls with diverse backgrounds and diverse needs, although no what could be termed problem kids. She loved working with them, and loved to see how they had grown during their time with her.
What she hated was what she called non-teaching stuff. For the PTA meeting last week, the Principal had asked her to make a presentation to the parents on how they could help with the kids’ homework. She put together four suggestions: plan dinner or family events around the kids’ homework schedule; allocate a specific homework area in the home, such as a desk or kitchen table; encourage the child to study with other students; look over the finished homework. Her presentation was received politely by the parents, though not enthusiastically.
In the days since the presentation, she also had interviews with three sets of parents to discuss their children’s performance. One child was repeatedly not adhering to the school dress code, only missing off socks, but the code said socks were mandatory; another was continually not handing in homework; the third set of parents were refusing to supply their child an emergency kit. The Emergency Preparedness Kit was required by the school in case of a major emergency such as an earthquake. It contains a small supply of juice, dried fruit, protein, crackers, and a sweater. These items were not a problem; it was the family photograph the father objected to.
In all three interviews, Julia was able to get the issues resolved, but she could have done without the interviews in the first place. To say nothing of the large amount of marking she had to do.
Nothing she had experienced before, so why was it unsettling her?
Something was niggling at her. As she lay in bed, she recalled her conversation with Gloria. After her workmate had left, Julia packed up her own things, made a quick bathroom stop, and walked across the school parking lot to her car. She waved goodbye to another colleague, loaded up her trunk and got in.
The exit from the parking lot was in Braddock Drive, and she had to pause momentarily to pull into the traffic on Braddock. As she waited, she noticed a car - a silver sedan, she couldn’t identify the make - was parked a few feet away from the exit. Being parked ‘wrong side’, the driver’s seat was closest to the kerb. The driver’s window was down, and the driver was sitting casually, one arm draped down the outside. He looked middle aged, had blond hair, one side of which covered part of his forehead. He wore glasses. His head was tilted slightly at angle and he had a strange expression on his face. She must have been mistaken, but it seemed he was watching her leave the parking lot.
As she drove away down Braddock, she checked her rear view mirror, just to make sure she was not being followed. There was no sign of the sedan in the line of traffic behind, but before it receded into the distance, she caught a glimpse of where the car had been parked. It had gone.
Probably nothing, she thought: LA’s full of harmless weirdos, but she had better report it to the Principal in the morning, just in case he was watching the children. No need to bother Sam with it.
Nevertheless, she did find it unsettling, and the image of his face kept recurring that evening.
She did eventually get back to sleep, but awoke again. She checked the time: it was 4:55AM. That man’s face returned again. She got out of bed, and peeked out of the window. The street was empty. She checked her front door: all securely locked. She put her eye to the spy hole: the hallway was clear.
‘Son of a bitch,’ she muttered. She wasn’t going to let a little creep like that spoil her sleep. As soon as she could get to school, she would inform the Principal. Then he would call the police.
The thing was: the guy’s face seemed strangely familiar. Where had she seen him before?
And who the hell was he?
FIFTEEN
‘LA IS A great big freeway.’
When the lyricist Hal David penned those words in 1968 in his tale of a San Jose native who, having failed to break into the entertainment field in Los Angeles, prepares to return to her home town, he would have had no idea how, almost half a century later, prophetic his words would be.
The people of Southern California are in a love hate relationship with their freeways. The logo of Los Angeles could be a number of things, but it might very well be the automobile. There is an intensity and power found on Los Angeles freeways rarely found in other big cities, even London’s infamous orbital motorway, the M25, or the Boulevard Peripherique, which surrounds Paris. The freeways in Los Angeles were among the first and oldest in the country.
Then there are the statistics. Los Angeles has 527 miles of freeway and 382 miles of conventional highway. The longest freeway is the I-405 San Diego Freeway, running from South Orange County to North San Fernando Valley – 72 miles; the shortest is SR90, the Marina Freeway at 2.25 miles.
The exact number of vehicles in LA is not known. Still, at the end of 2008, there were 5,859,407 vehicles in Los Angeles County, according to LA Almanac. Moreover, there were 1,977,803 cars in the city of Los Angeles. Surprisingly enough, though, Los Angeles has a lower rate of car ownership than San Francisco and New York. The highest number of vehicles per person is located in Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, and Norwalk.
But there is an exception to the rule: Santa Catalina Island, 26 miles from Los Angeles.
Santa Catalina is one of the eight California Channel Islands stretching along the Southern California coast. The island itself has a 120 million year geological history. Only 19 miles from the mainland at its closest point, it sits on the Pacific tectonic plate, while the rest of mainland US are on the North American plate. Plate movements and volcanic eruptions are responsible for the formation of the island.
The Indians of the mainland used a descriptive phrase: wexaj momte asunga wow, meaning “mountain ranges that rise from the sea.” Most of the island consists of mountains interspersed with meadows and valleys. Some of the coastal cliffs fall abruptly to the sea, leaving not even a path’s space along the ocean, while in other areas the hills slope gently to sandy beaches below. The island has an east-west orientation: on the western side, the Pacific crashes against the tall, rugged coast; off the eastern coast which faces the mainland, the sea is calm and placid.
A less natural feature of the island of Santa Catalina is that it is the only place in California where the number and size of road-going motor vehicles is regulated by law. For residents of the island who want to bring a personal car, this means signing up at the bottom of a 14-year waiting list. Tourists are not permitted to ferry a vehicle from the mainland, even for temporary use. These policies keep the total car count below one thousand. Because the principal settlement and centre of activity, Avalon, is only about one square mile in size, walking works in most situations. Visitors in need of luggage help find hotel shuttle and taxi services readily available. There are two trolley routes within Avalon, and vans and shuttle buses are available for charter trips outside the city. Golf carts are a popular way of making short trips as well as exploring the mountainous area of the island’s interior. Bicycles are another reliable option.
It had been almost a year since Sam Leroy had visited the Island and, in spite of the reason for today’s journey, something inside him was looking forward to the trip.
If only he had gotten some sleep last night. Just as he was beginning to get tired again, it was time to shower and shave, in readiness for Quinn picking him up. Leroy had asked Quinn to drive, and after a s
pirited early morning drive down the 405, they headed south on the 710. The Long Beach Freeway followed the line of the Los Angeles River, exiting at Shoreline Drive, and heading for the Catalina Express terminal.
While Quinn was driving, Leroy put in his call to Bill Farmer. This time he got hold of his old colleague, who said yes, he had a contact in the Department of Defense, and would see what he could find out.
‘What about your contact in the FBI?’ Quinn asked as Leroy put his phone on the dashboard.
Leroy looked over. ‘What contact?’
‘You told the lieutenant you had a contact at Quantico you would call.’
‘No, I was just putting him in his place. He said he was going to phone someone there. I don’t want him, or them, interfering in this case. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Might not hurt, Sam.’
‘You’re right: it might not. In all my dealings with them, they’ve never been anything but helpful. But I want us to have a stab at it first. Murder’s not a federal crime anyway; so they might not have any more information.’
‘They’ll be able to help with a profile, though.’
‘That’s what I had in mind, but I want us to cover a few angles ourselves first.’
‘Sure.’ Quinn paused. ‘So you don’t have a contact there, then?’
‘No. Neither does he. He was just being…’
‘Lieutenantly?’
‘Lieutenantly.’
Leroy turned away from Quinn to suppress a yawn as his younger partner drove towards the three-level parking garage at the Catalina Express Long Beach Terminal. Quinn paused to let a green and yellow taxicab pass then pulled in to the structure.
‘What time did you say you got back?’ Quinn asked chirpily.
‘You don’t want to know.’
The headquarters of Avalon Mission were in Avalon itself, and the size of the town meant that it was not necessary to take their car onto the island; rather, it was easier to leave it at Long Beach, get the ferry and take the short walk through the town. The voyage from Long Beach to Avalon normally takes an hour, but today it took less. ‘Good timing,’ Quinn remarked, checking his watch.