Swim Move

by David Chill

  “And those crooked refs didn’t bother to tell you about that?”

  “The refs learned right before kickoff of the next game. They found out their officiating was being monitored, so they couldn’t do anything to help us. We lost a huge bundle. Grandpa ordered them to shave points off of a game the following week, but that didn’t happen. I guess the refs didn’t want to risk going to jail. All of a sudden, I’m down fifty thousand.”

  “Decided not to ask Grandpa for a loan?”

  She shook her head no. “He lost a bundle, too.”

  “Okay. Then what happens next is you owe the bookies a pile of money you can’t pay back. Is that the reason those thugs in the white van jumped you a few nights ago?”

  “Yeah. They’re the leg breakers. They try and smack you around as a warning. Pay up or else.”

  “And you nailed them with some pepper spray,” I said.

  Amanda stared at me. “Wouldn’t you? I knew we owed them, and I’d told them they’d get their money. But they didn’t think it was happening fast enough.”

  “Who’s this Mike White?”

  Amanda coughed. “I don’t know, I’ve never met him. I guess he runs the outfit from a distance. He uses those guys in Compton to collect and to pay off. They get a percentage.”

  “All right. So you started trying to hit up men you knew who had some money. Pro football players always have money. Guys like Xavier Bishop and Rhett McCann. But they weren’t thrilled about handing you tens of thousands of dollars just for a few tastes of the honey pot.”

  “Hey,” broke in Phil, louder than was necessary. “Watch your mouth. I’m serious. This is my daughter you’re talking to.”

  “You’re daughter almost got us killed, Phil. Let’s stick with the facts.”

  “Find another way to put it,” he said.

  I gawked at him. “Sure. I’ll see if I can be more respectful to a girl who doesn’t seem to have much respect for you or me. Or anyone or anything. Other than money, that is.”

  “Those players didn’t give me any money,” Amanda said, looking away.

  “No, so you stole some. Rhett McCann told me about it. He wasn’t going to press charges, because he doesn’t need the money and didn’t want to go through the public humiliation for being swindled. Or being slapped around by a girl with a pretty face. But there’s something else here, probably more important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rhett McCann wasn’t about to get roped into whatever illegal activities you’re involved in. The NFL takes a dim view of players even associating with gamblers, much less ones involved in point-shaving. He’d rather walk away from ten thousand dollars than press charges and be caught up in a scandal.”

  Amanda took a deep breath. The waitress came by with my burrito and set it down next to me. Steam rose from it. Phil motioned to the waitress and ordered yet another round of tequila. If I were in his position, I’d have been tempted to order a bottle. All of this seemed new to him and none of it seemed good.

  “So you got some money, Amanda, but it clearly wasn’t enough. You owed fifty large. And your father here overreacted by putting Moose Machado in charge of protecting you. Sounds like he was the one who could have used the protecting. You’re a lot more dangerous than he ever would be.”

  “What are you talking about?” Phil asked, starting to look a little bleary-eyed. “Moose was a monster.”

  “No, Phil,” I said. “Moose was just big. And dumb. He made some bad bets, and he was the one who introduced Amanda to the bookie. Amanda couldn’t just go up to Vegas, where someone might have learned about her gambling and put two and two together. That would have gotten her fired in an instant. No, she got Moose to make the introduction to his bookie. And then when she got in over her head, she and those thugs in Compton cooked up a kidnapping scheme to get daddy to pay the ransom. Guess it came as a surprise to her when you turned down the request.”

  “How did that lead to Moose getting killed?” Phil asked.

  “Moose was expendable,” I said, looking hard at Amanda, who averted my gaze. “He was meant to be an example of what happened if you didn’t cough up the ransom money. But you were right, Phil. Something about all of this really didn’t smell good.”

  Phil stared at me. I continued.

  “What got my antenna up was when I heard they were asking for five hundred grand,” I said to Amanda. “You only owed fifty. You and those grease balls were planning to con your father and then split the rest.”

  Amanda’s face tightened, and she said nothing.

  “But I’ve seen these things go down before. Sometimes the crooks split the money fifty-fifty and sometimes they don’t.”

  “Meaning?” she asked.

  “You might have wound up in the same place as Moose. Figuratively speaking and all.”

  Amanda picked up her glass and bent over. She tugged hard on the straw. After a few seconds a slurping sound was emitted, and she stopped. I cut open a corner of my burrito and took a bite. It tasted pretty good, and it tasted just like it had when I first came here at age nineteen. The world changes, but thankfully a few things stay the same.

  I swallowed and continued. “Tell me something. How did those guys know where Ed lived? You had to have given them the address, right?”

  Her eyes flared. “No. No way. Grandpa was supposed to drop off the money on a side street near USC. Put it in a bag, drop it into a garbage can, and keep walking. But Grandpa didn’t put any money in the bag, it was filled with blank paper. Really ticked those guys off. He tried to follow them back to Compton, but they caught on and lost him. Then they checked him out on the internet and went to his house. I don’t think they meant to kill him, they were going to just threaten him, but they said things got out of hand.”

  I turned away in disgust. Ed Zellis could have called any one of a number of police departments. He could have paid the money. He could have not paid the money. But instead he chose to use his aging detective skills to try and capture some bad guys. He had lost his touch, if he ever had any to begin with, and it cost him his life.

  I glared at Amanda. “And when you heard what happened, you just played along.”

  “I was in too deep. I couldn’t just up and leave. We were trying to come up with another plan. It’s tough to know the right thing to do.”

  “I’m sure you would have gotten to the right thing,” I said. “After you exhausted all of the other possibilities. But let me tell you the only option you’ve got left.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, gulping.

  I looked at her and then down at my plate. Taking a big bite of my burrito, I chewed it slowly. The pork was good, but next time I decided to try the chicken. Healthier and all.

  “Two people are dead,” I reminded her, “as a direct result of your actions. You may or may not have pulled the trigger, but they’re dead nevertheless. If you hadn’t have done what you did, Moose and Ed would be alive. You’re complicit. If you start a fire, you don’t get any credit for putting it out.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m guilty of murder?” she demanded. “That’s outrageous. Me killing two people I was close to? That’s absurd. No one would ever believe that.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. But you’re an accessory, and I’ll bet a case can be built that you were part of a conspiracy to commit murder. You could get sent away for life. True or not, here’s how it’ll play out. You’ll be arrested and charged, along with the rest of that crew. The prosecutors will recognize your father has a lot of money and can buy the best lawyers. He may not do so, all things considered, but they’ll be wary. Unless it’s a high-profile case and they actually want a public spectacle, prosecutors don’t always like a long, drawn-out legal battle. Their goal is to close cases. People like you are an annoyance, you don’t always follow the script because you think your money will buy you freedom. The reality is it will only buy you some extra time.”

  Amanda stared at me. “Just what are you saying?�
��

  “I’m saying there’s a good chance you’ll have the opportunity to turn state’s evidence in exchange for a lighter sentence. You’ll have to work with the police and identify the guys who did pull the triggers. You may even have to testify against them in open court. And for that, you’ll get significantly less jail time. Maybe even none.”

  “I’m not going to be a rat,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’ve watched too many mob shows. You may think you’re being a rat, but you’re not. You’re aiding law enforcement. This is how the game is played.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself,” she managed. “You don’t know that all this can be proven. And good luck trying to convince people I had anything to do with getting my grandpa murdered. That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s not. Maybe you didn’t intend for that to happen, but it won’t matter. Someone who gets into a fistfight may just want to give the other guy a fat lip. But if the other guy hits his head on the ground and dies after being punched, it suddenly becomes a homicide. Best laid plans and all.”

  She stared at me. “Well, that’s not fair.”

  “The world isn’t always about being fair. But it’s just. And as to being able to prove this, remember, if I can unravel this, the police can, too. I just do it a little faster, is all. And trust me, there will be proof. They will have access to identify every phone call you made and everywhere you drove. There is no privacy any more. Everyone’s life is an open book these days.”

  “That stinks,” she said and sunk down into her chair.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think it makes for a more honest society,” I said, and focused on my burrito, working to spear more pork and less tortilla. I used the knife to maneuver some rice and beans and what might have been guacamole onto my fork. I shoveled it into my mouth and once again marveled at the flavor. I finally turned back to Amanda. “Don’t you think that’s true?”

  “I don’t know what to think any more. Look, I just saw a way to make some money. Making money’s the American way, isn’t it? I didn’t shoot anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. I’m a victim here.”

  I sighed. The burrito was hitting the spot; waffles at five-thirty in the morning can only take you so far into the day. The waitress came by with Phil’s next shot of tequila. He tossed it down and smacked the shot glass on the table a little harder than he should have.

  “Let me ask you something,” Phil bellowed, his voice starting to slur. “What about that punk, that Wyatt. That Wyatt Angstrom.”

  I looked over at Amanda, who shrugged and looked away. “He’s nothing,” she said.

  “Nothing?” Phil asked.

  “He wasn’t involved in all this. He was just a guy helping me in my career. He gave me what I wanted, I gave him what he wanted.”

  Phil and I both gaped at her for a long minute, not needing to ask for more details. At that point, my phone buzzed. I looked down and saw that it was an LAPD headquarters number. I wasn’t sure who it was from, but I decided to take it. If you don’t feel like answering the phone when the LAPD calls, there is a chance they may show up on your doorstep when they feel like it, usually at an ungodly hour.

  “Hello.”

  “Burnside, it’s Juan.”

  “My old pal. We just saw each other this morning. Say, did you change your mind? Put in a good word and ask the chief for a meeting?”

  There was a long pause on the other end. “No. I did not. But funny things happen in life, you know?”

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “The chief. He just stopped by my office. He wants to see you. I don’t know why and I don’t know what for. But he wants to see you. Like now. How fast can you get your butt over here?”

  *

  I briefly thought of making a citizen’s arrest of Amanda Zeal. But that was complicated, and having her woozy father nearby did not help matters. The difficulty in making a citizen’s arrest is that detaining a culprit opens the citizen himself up to a host of potential criminal charges, including false imprisonment and kidnapping. And while I could justify that I had reasonable cause for suspecting Amanda Zeal was involved in a conspiracy to commit blackmail, fraud, and murder, my evidence was little more than a trail of breadcrumbs that I mixed together into a shaky pile. I was confident I was right, but I was not confident it could be proven. And even after our conversation at El Tepeyac, the only person witnessing her response was her father, who had just lost his own father to gun violence, and who was well on his way toward getting himself seriously inebriated.

  As I drove over to LAPD headquarters, I admonished Amanda not to do anything rash and not to leave the car. I would be away for maybe half an hour. I told her that since she was a TV personality and well known, there was no place for her to run to, no way she could hide. Her best move, really, her only move would be to stay in the car and let me try and make arrangements. Phil groggily agreed to get her a lawyer, and I told her she had the opportunity to get out of this with a minimum of damage. If she ran, however, she’d be looking at spending the better part of her life in federal lockup. I didn’t get her to verbally agree, but I did think some of my admonition sunk in. When I asked her and Phil for their phones, they handed them over without an argument. I walked to the back of my Pathfinder and surreptitiously stowed my weapon. Neither Phil nor Amanda seemed to notice.

  After taking the elevator up to Chief Bates’ office, I waited for fifteen minutes to see him. His assistant was disarmingly pretty, a well-proportioned girl wearing a business suit. But there was a lump under her arm, and I saw the slight hint of a handgun. I guess if you work for the chief, you’d better be fully invested in law enforcement.

  The door to the chief’s office swung open, and out walked Pete Bates, looking a little thicker than I’d remembered. The chief was solidly built, with a mass of salt-and-pepper hair, and small, dark eyes that felt like they could bore a hole right through you. He still kept his bushy cop mustache, a nice touch from bygone days when nearly every cop on every beat seemed to have one. He did not wear a uniform; instead, he had on a dark gray suit, blue button-down shirt, and a pink tie. He looked more like an executive than a cop. Appropriate, yet I still remembered him when he was a detective in the North Hollywood Division. He had come a long way.

  “The famous Mr. Burnside,” he declared, shaking my hand and leading me into his plush office with soft carpeting and comfy-looking chairs. Once inside, he closed the door and pointed to a seat facing his desk. He made a spectacle of slowly walking around his desk and taking a deep sigh before sitting down and staring directly at me for a good ten seconds without saying a thing. I finally broke the silence.

  “I never knew you to be at a loss for words, Pete,” I finally managed. “Unless you’re just trying to intimidate me. Or set up a dramatic moment, after which I fall on the floor crying.”

  Pete Bates gave me an exasperated look. “Still with the smart remarks. And you can call me chief, not Pete.”

  “Sure. But I’m just trying to get the conversation going,” I said. “I don’t think a busy guy like you would bring me in just to have a staring contest.”

  “No, I didn’t bring you up here for that. And I am a busy guy, and I don’t have time to waste.”

  “Good. Me neither. What’s up?”

  “What’s up?” he exclaimed. “Suppose you tell me. I walk in this morning and learn my friend Ed Zellis has been shot to death in his own house. The chief at Culver called me, he knew Ed and I were poker buddies. I asked for some background and your name came up. I’m hearing your name a lot lately.”

  “I do get around,” I shrugged.

  “More than you should. Last I saw you, you were working vice out of North Hollywood. Over a decade ago. That was around the beginning of the end of your checkered career.”

  “I remember.”

  “Uh-huh. Reputations are earned and you’ve got one. Tell me what else you remember. How about explaining why I got a call from the county sheriff this a
fternoon. It seems like you were involved in a shooting in Compton.”

  “Mostly getting shot at,” I pointed out.

  “Mostly?!”

  “Look, it’s a little complicated,” I started.

  “Well unpack it for me. None of this is in my jurisdiction, but since I know Ed, I’ve got an interest here.”

  “Well, it started a few decades ago. Ed was a dirty cop down in Largo Beach PD.”

  Chief Bates glared at me. “Dirty cop? No, he wasn’t. Not at all. Ed was a good man.”

  “Maybe the Ed you knew. The other Ed made a living out of ripping off drug dealers. You ever wonder why an ex-cop was living in such a great house up on Culver Crest?”

  Pete Bates looked down at his mahogany desk and continued to shake his head in disgust. “Ed told me he made a fortune betting on tech stocks when the internet got red hot. I don’t see why it’s that hard to believe. And I’m a little tired of hearing about corruption every time a cop has some financial success outside of his work. This is America, after all.”

  “Land of opportunity,” I agreed. “But be that as it may, Ed found a new hobby in retirement. Betting on football games.”

  “Well, there’s something you never hear of. People betting on sports. Yeah, I know it’s not legal, not yet anyway. But I’m not going to worry about minutia like that when I have robberies and homicide cases on my watch that I need to clear.”

  “He wasn’t just betting on games. He was fixing them.”

  Pete Bates froze, and he stared at me for a long moment. It did not seem staged, and it did not seem to be a tactic. He seemed genuinely at a loss for words. I continued.