“Yeah, I get it. Come on, let’s just do this. Let me sign the motherfuckin’ paper.”
Ballard set the waiver form and a pen down in front of Dupree. She then got up and moved behind him, uncuffed his right wrist, and snapped the open cuff closed around the middle bar of the chair’s backrest. She stayed behind him.
“Go ahead and sign, then bring your hand back here.”
Dupree signed the document and did as instructed. Ballard reversed the process and recuffed him, then went back to her seat. She returned her cell phone to her thigh.
“Now you sign a paper,” Dupree said. “Says you drop the gun charge for my help.”
Ballard shook her head.
“You haven’t given me any help,” she said. “You help me and I’ll get the D.A.’s Office to put it in writing. That’s the deal. Yes or no? I’m running out of patience with you.”
Dupree shook his head.
“I know I’m fucked,” he said. “Just ask your questions.”
“Okay, good,” Ballard said. “I’ll start by letting you know we had Elvin Kidd on a wiretap, Marcel—all his phone calls and texts. We got the text to you where he set up the meeting today at Dulan’s. We have you meeting with him there and we have this.”
She opened the evidence envelope and slid out the envelope full of cash.
“He hired you to hit somebody at Men’s Central and you agreed to arrange it. Now that is conspiracy to commit murder on top of the gun charge. So, you are in a bottomless hole here that you are never climbing out of unless you give us something we like better than you. You understand? That’s how this works.”
“What do you want?”
“Tell me the story. Tell me who Kidd wanted hit and why. I need a name to stop it from happening. Because if it’s too late, then it’s too late for you. No deals. You’re done.”
“A guy named D-squared.”
“That doesn’t help me. Who is D-squared?”
“I don’t even know his first name. His last name is Dorsey. Like the high school.”
“Your call in the car outside Dulan’s. You set this in motion, didn’t you?”
“Nah, I was just calling a friend.”
“Clinton Townes? Was that your friend?”
“What the fuck?”
“I told you. We had this wired from the start. We knew about Dorsey and we knew about Townes. But it’s still conspiracy to commit murder and that makes your gun charge look like a walk in the park. Conspiracy to commit jumps you up to life without, Marcel. You know that, right?”
“Motherfuckers, you played me.”
“That’s right—and now you’ve got one path to the light, Marcel. It’s called substantial assistance. That’s you giving me everything. Everything you know. And you can start by telling me why Elvin Kidd wanted D-squared hit.”
Dupree shook his head.
“I don’t know—he didn’t say,” he said. “He just said he wanted him taken care of.”
Ballard leaned across the table.
“Elvin Kidd is retired,” she said. “He’s out of the game. He’s running a fucking construction company in Rialto. You don’t run a hit on one of your own in Men’s Central for three thousand dollars without a damn good reason. So if you want to help yourself here, you’ll answer the question: What did he tell you?”
Dupree’s eyes were cast down at the table. The dread he was feeling was almost palpable. Ballard was looking at a man realizing that life as he had known it was gone. He was now a fifty-one-year-old snitch and would forever be an outcast in the world he knew. He was a violent criminal but Ballard felt empathy for him. He had been born into a dog-eat-dog world, and now he was the meal.
“He say this guy crossed him from way back and now he’s causing problems,” Dupree said. “That’s all. Look, I’d tell you if I knew. I’m cooperating but I don’t know. He wanted him hit, he paid the money, and with an OG like Kidd, I don’t ask no questions.”
“Then why was he mad at you at Dulan’s? He raised his voice.”
“He mad ’cause I gave out his number so D-squared could talk to him. I thought it was legit because D used to be his boy on the blocks, back in the day. I thought they maybe still have business together or something. I didn’t know. I fucked up and gave him the number. E-K was mad about that.”
“So what was the call in the car after Dulan’s?”
“I had to set it up, you know. Get the word to my boy Townes.”
Ballard knew that while there were pay phones that allowed inmates to call out from their modules at Men’s Central, no one could simply call in. But it was well documented that gangs used various methods of getting messages into the jail. Mothers, wives, girlfriends, and lawyers of incarcerated gangsters often carried gang business inside. But the call Dupree got from Townes seemed to have come too quickly for that method. Townes appeared to have gotten the message to call Dupree within thirty minutes of the meeting at Dulan’s. There had long been rumors of gangs using jail deputies to get messages inside—deputies motivated by threat or extortion or just plain greed.
“How’d you get the word inside?” Ballard asked.
“A guy I know. He take the message for me.”
“Come on, Marcel. What guy? Who did you call?”
“I thought this was about Dorsey.”
“It’s about everything. Who got the message to Townes?”
Ballard felt her phone buzz on her thigh and looked down to read the text from Bosch.
Don’t waste time on this. It’ll be on the phone. Move on.
Ballard was annoyed because she knew Bosch was right. A search warrant for the phone would produce the number or numbers Dupree had called after Dulan’s, and that would likely lead to the message carrier. She needed to move the story on to Elvin Kidd.
“Okay, never mind who you called,” she said. “Tell me about Townes. He’s the hitter inside?”
Dupree shrugged. He didn’t want to verbally acknowledge it.
“Yes or no, Marcel?” Ballard pressed.
“Yeah, he does a piece of work now and then,” Dupree said.
“Do you have to get approval from a higher-up to do something like this? You call somebody for approval to hit Dorsey?”
“I tell some people but it wasn’t like ‘approval.’ Just to let them know we had a piece of business and Kidd was paying. Look, you going to take care of me on this, right? Like you said.”
“I’ll tell the D.A. you’ve given ‘substantial assistance to the investigation.’”
“That ain’t shit. We had a deal.”
“If we get Kidd, ‘substantial assistance’ will mean a lot.”
“I’m going to need witness protection after this.”
“That will be on the table.”
Ballard felt another vibration on her thigh and looked down at her phone.
Tell him we want him to call Kidd, say the job is done.
Ballard nodded. It was a good idea. They had the wire up on Kidd for another two days and they could legitimately record the call. It might or might not draw an admission about the Hilton case, but it could sew up the conspiracy-to-commit-murder case. Ballard understood that sometimes you know a suspect is good for one crime but you settle for getting him for another.
“There’s one more thing we’re going to need you to do, Marcel,” she said. “We’re going to set up a phone call between you and Kidd. You’re going to tell him that Dorsey is dead, and we’re going to see what he says. And you’re going to ask him why he wanted him hit in the first place.”
“Nah, I’m not doin’ that,” Dupree said. “Not till I got something in writing on ‘substantial assistance.’”
“You’re making a mistake, Marcel. You bring in the D.A. now to write that up and they’re going to bring in a lawyer for you and the whole thing will blow up bigger than we can handle on this level. We miss our chance to do this with Kidd and it’s ‘Fuck you, Marcel Dupree.’ That’s the opposite of ‘substantial assistance.�
�� I’ll charge you with conspiracy to commit murder for hire and go home happy with just that.”
Dupree said nothing.
“This room stinks,” Ballard said. “I’m going to go out and get some fresh air. When I come back, you tell me whether you want us to make a case against you or Elvin Kidd.”
Ballard got up, pocketed her phone and picked up the envelopes, then started around the table toward the door.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Dupree said.
Ballard looked back at him and nodded.
“Okay, we’ll set it up.”
36
Ballard rolled out of work at six a.m. on Saturday morning after an uneventful shift on Watch Three. She had spent most of the night writing a detailed summary of the events that took place the day before on the Hilton investigation. This was a report she wasn’t turning in to anyone yet. She was operating completely off the reservation on the Hilton case with the hope that it would be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission—especially if she bagged Elvin Kidd. In that case, the summary report might be needed at a moment’s notice.
After leaving the station, she drove out to Venice and did a short paddle through the morning mist, with Lola sitting on the board’s nose like the figurehead on the prow of an old ship. After getting cleaned up, she waited until 8:30 to make a call, hoping she would not be waking anybody up.
When Ballard had worked at RHD, everybody had a go-to in every part of the casework: a go-to forensic tech, a go-to judge for warrants, a go-to prosecutor for advice and for filing charges on the wobblers—the cases that took some fortitude and imagination to pursue in court. Ballard’s go-to at the District Attorney’s Office had always been Selma Robinson, a solid and fearless deputy D.A. in the Major Crimes Unit who preferred the challenge cases over the gimmes.
Because the nature of the midnight beat was to turn cases over to other detectives in the morning, Ballard had gone to the D.A.’s Office few times in the four years she had been assigned to the late show. In fact, she was not sure the cell number she was calling for Selma Robinson was still good.
But it was. Robinson answered in a sharp, alert voice, and it was clear she had kept Ballard’s cell on her contacts list.
“Renée? Wow. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I didn’t wake you?”
“No, I’ve been up for a while. What’s up? It’s good to hear your voice, girl.”
“You too. I’ve got a case. I want to talk to you about it if you have some time. I’m living in Venice now. I could come your way, maybe buy you breakfast. I know this is straight out of the blue but—”
“No, it’s fine. I was just about to get something. Where do you want to meet?”
Ballard knew Robinson lived in Santa Monica on one of the college streets.
“How about Little Ruby’s?” she asked.
The restaurant was just off Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica and just about equidistant for both of them. It was also dog-friendly.
“I’ll be there by nine,” Robinson said.
“Bring your earbuds,” Ballard said. “There’s some wiretap material.”
“Will do. You’re bringing Lola, I hope.”
“I think she’d love to see you.”
Ballard got to the restaurant first and found a spot in a corner that would give them some privacy to review the case. Lola went under the table and lay down, but then immediately jumped up when Robinson arrived and Lola remembered her old friend.
Robinson was tall and thin and Ballard had never known her to keep her hair in anything but a short Afro that was stylish and saved her time every morning while getting ready for battle in the courts. She was at least a decade older than Ballard and her first name had a deep history, her parents having met during the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Ballard and Robinson hugged briefly but the prosecutor fawned over Lola for a full minute before sitting and getting down to the business of breakfast and crime.
“So like I said on the phone, I’m working on a case,” Ballard began. “And I want to know if I have it or not.”
“Well, then let’s hear it,” Robinson said. “Pretend I’m in my office and you’ve come over to file. Convince me.”
As succinctly as she could, Ballard presented the Hilton case, going over the details of the murder and then the long period the case spent gathering dust in a retired detective’s home study. She then moved into the investigation conducted in more recent days, and how it finally focused on Elvin Kidd and Ballard’s theory about the true motive for the killing. She revealed that she had flipped Marcel Dupree, stopped a murder from occurring in Men’s Central, and extracted a confession that could take Kidd off the streets for good. But what she wanted was to close the Hilton case, and with Dupree’s cooperation, she believed she was close. She asked Robinson to listen to the ninety-second wiretapped phone conversation set up between Dupree and Kidd late the afternoon before, assuring her that the wiretap had been authorized by Judge Billy Thornton.
One complication Ballard mentioned in introducing the wiretap was that the men on the call sounded very similar in tone and used similar street slang. Ballard repeated in her introduction to the playback that the first voice belonged to Dupree and the second voice was Kidd’s. Robinson put in her earbuds and plugged into Ballard’s computer. Ballard opened the wiretap software and played the phone call. At the same time, she gave the prosecutor a copy of a transcript she had produced during her work shift.
Dupree: Yo.
Kidd: Dog.
Dupree: That thing we were talking about? All done.
Kidd: It is?
Dupree: Motherfucker’s gone to gangsta’s paradise.
Kidd: I ain’t hear nothin’.
Dupree: And you prolly won’t out there in Rialto. The sheriffs don’t be puttin’ out press releases on convicts gettin’ killed in jail and all. That don’t look good. But you want, you can check it, my n____.
Kidd: How’s that?
Dupree: Call up the coroner. They gotta have him over there by now. Also, I hear they gonna put him out for a full gangsta’s funeral in a few days. You could come over, see him in the box for yourself.
Kidd: Nah, I ain’t doin’ that.
Dupree: I get it, seeing that you put the motherfucker in the box.
Kidd: Don’t be sayin’ that shit, n ____.
Dupree: Sorry, cuz. Anyway, it’s done. We good now?
Kidd: We good.
Dupree: You ever going to tell me the reason? I mean, that n____ was your boy back in the day. Now it come to this.
Kidd: He was putting pressure on me, man, that’s all.
Dupree: Pressure for what?
Kidd: A piece of work I had to handle back then. A white boy who owed too much money.
Dupree: Huh. And he was bringing that up now?
Kidd: He told me five-oh came round visiting him up at Bauchet and asking ’bout that thing. He then gets my number off you and calls me up. I can tell he’s on the make. He going to be trouble for me.
Dupree: Well, not anymore.
Kidd: Not anymore. I thank you, my brother.
Dupree: No thing.
Kidd: I’ll check you.
Dupree: Later, dog.
Robinson pulled out her earbuds when the call was over. Ballard held her hand up to stop her from asking any questions.
“Hold on a second,” Ballard said. “There’s another call. He does try to confirm Dorsey’s death and we had that set up with the coroner’s office.”
The next call was from Elvin Kidd to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, where he spoke to a coroner’s investigator named Chris Mercer. Ballard handed Robinson a second transcript and told her to put her buds back in. She then played the second recording.
Mercer: Office of the Medical Examiner, how can I help you?
Kidd: I’m trying to find out if a friend of mine is there. He supposedly got killed.
Mercer: Do yo
u have the name?
Kidd: Yes, it’s Dorsey for the last name. And Dennard with a D like dog for the first.
Mercer: Can you spell both names, please?
Kidd: D-E-N-N-A-R-D D-O-R-S-E-Y.
Mercer: Yes, we have him here. Are you next-of-kin?
Kidd: Uh, no. Just a friend. Does it say there how he died?
Mercer: The autopsy has not been scheduled. I only know that he passed while in custody at the Men’s Central jail. There will be an investigation and we will conduct the autopsy next week. You could call back for more information then. Do you know who his next-of-kin might be?
Kidd: No, I don’t know that. Thank you.
After hearing the call to the M.E., Robinson asked to hear the first call again. Ballard watched her as she listened. Robinson nodded at certain points as though checking things off a list. She then pulled her earbuds out again.
“The code-switching is interesting,” the prosecutor said. “He sounds like two different people on the two calls. All gangster on the call with Dupree, then light and bright with the coroner’s office.”
“Yeah, he knew how to play it,” Ballard said. “So what do you think?”
Before Robinson could answer, a waitress arrived at the table. They both ordered coffees and avocado toast. After the waitress was gone, Ballard watched Robinson lean forward on the table, furrowing her brow and wrinkling the otherwise smooth, mocha-brown skin of her forehead.
“I always have to look at a case from the defense point of view,” she said. “What are the weaknesses that could be exploited at trial? I think the conspiracy to commit is a slam dunk. We’ll convict on that no problem. That extra call to the Medical Examiner was genius. I can’t wait to play that to a jury and have the defense try to explain it.”
“Good,” Ballard said. “And on the Hilton murder?”
“Well, on the murder, he never says outright, ‘I killed the guy.’ He says he handled a ‘piece of work,’ which in some quarters is a euphemism for murder. He also says ‘white boy’ but doesn’t mention anybody by name.”
“But when you add in the conspiracy, it’s obvious he wanted to kill Dorsey to keep the cover on Hilton.”
The Night Fire Page 22