by David Putnam
I followed my Smith and Wesson in and checked the only bedroom and bathroom before I put the gun back in my waistband and returned to the main room. My adrenaline leveled out and allowed me to view the scene as a professional cop. The furniture was overturned, some of it broken.
In the kitchen, everything on the one granite counter—dirty dishes, water glasses, a box of cereal, pizza boxes, and beer bottles—had all been swept off to the floor. Streaks of smeared blood led from the counter edge to the sink.
I looked closer at the unconscious owner to see if I recognized him, but didn’t. Bad luck. But I did recognize a familiar injury. Imprinted high on his cheek under his left eye, he carried a mark only I might recognize.
Wicks.
Wicks had been here. He was running hard without me. Good. It didn’t matter who got to La Vonn first, as long as someone got him.
The mark on the guy’s cheek came from a custom-design LAPD SWAT ring, the one Robby Wicks always wore on his right hand. Wicks worked Los Angeles County Sheriffs, not LAPD. The ring was yet another souvenir from a previous hunt he wanted to remember.
Wicks and I had hunted down an ex-LAPD SWAT member who’d gone on a killing spree. A guy named John Singly, a sergeant upset over a recent divorce and child custody. He killed his wife and then went to his in-laws and killed them for having the nerve to produce the daughter that did him wrong. As we followed Singly’s trail, getting closer by each hour, Wicks’ anxiety grew. This killer was highly trained in the same art that Wicks practiced. The killer would be difficult to take down. In the quiet moments, Wicks talked about a prolonged firefight once we caught up to him.
We’d been on Singly for five days straight, gaining on him with each contact. We stopped to get gas and went inside for snacks. We stood in line, me with corn nuts and a Jolt Cola for the sugar and caffeine, and Wicks with his Tallboy beer and two Slim Jims. John Singly, as it turned out, stood in line in front of us. Singly had shaved his head. Wicks was too tired to recognize him.
I simply said, “Excuse me, sir.” Singly turned. I said, “Would you please hold this?” Before he could answer, I handed him my Jolt Cola. When he took it, I yanked out my .357 and chunked him over the head. Wicks thought I’d lost my mind until I fell onto Singly’s back and handcuffed him.
Not all the criminals we chased ended in blood and bone.
Back in the apartment, I turned to the kitchen. The cleared-off sink confirmed that it had been Wicks. When he wanted information from an obstinate witness, he’d punch the guy in the face with his LAPD SWAT ring and then drag him and his hand over to the garbage disposal. Wicks would turn on the disposal and tell the guy he’d grind his hand down to his wrist if he didn’t talk. It worked every time.
I took a pitcher down from the cupboard, filled it with water, and tossed it on the fat man’s face.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
THE FAT BLACK guy, flat on his back with too-tight white briefs, sputtered and coughed but didn’t come around. Not good. Concussion. Probably a skull fracture.
“Sweet Baby Jesus, Karl.” Nigel came into the apartment. “What did you do to him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, he was like this when I came in.”
Nigel came closer. “Geez, would you look how big this guy is? Where’s the harpoon?”
“Stay back. It’s better if you wait outside so you don’t leave any evidence.”
“Who did it?”
“Doesn’t matter. You know this guy?”
He moved closer, with short steps as if approaching a sleeping bear. “Nope.”
A noise came from the only closet in the living room area, a muffled clunk, like shoes being shoved around. I yanked out the .357.
Nigel’s eyes widened as he stumbled backward to the front door. I moved over to the closet and didn’t hesitate.
“Karl, I don’t like guns. I told you, I don’t like guns.” He put his hands over his ears, closed his eyes, and hunched over like a cartoon character waiting for the dynamite to explode. He’d be a real asset in a gunfight.
“Next time you’ll do what I tell you and stay with the car.”
I jerked open the door. A young black girl not more than fifteen huddled under the hanging coats. She yelped and tried to crawl deeper into the shallow closet, clawing at the back wall.
I put the gun away and got down on one knee, extending my hand. “It’s okay, sweetie, it’s all over. You can come out. No one’s going to hurt you.”
She didn’t move.
“Really, it’s safe now,” I said. “Those bad guys are gone.”
I flashed on a memory from three years ago, when Olivia huddled scared in the clothes closet of a rock house and called me for help. That was really when all the problems had started. She’d gone to the rock house with Derek Sams to pay his dope debt. Later I found it to be at the behest of a murderer I was chasing named Borkow, who wanted me distracted and used Derek and my daughter to get it done.
“I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”
“We have to go, Karl, the police are going to be here any minute.”
I turned and scowled at him. “Get on the phone and call 911—tell them a man is down and needs paramedics. Tell them what the guy looks like.”
“That’ll bring the police for sure.”
“Do it, Nigel.”
He jumped.
The girl heard the part about 911 and must’ve realized I was telling the truth. She ventured out.
“Here, give me your hand.” She crawled on hands and knees. She wore only a sheer see-through red negligee. I reached up behind her and pulled down a black and gray Pendleton shirt-coat that belonged to the child molester unconscious on the floor. It was big enough for five girls her size. Tears streaked her pretty face. She wore too much makeup. It made her into a life-size Barbie doll.
I wanted to console her with a hug, but that’s not what she needed at the moment, especially not from a male. She tried to walk by me, headed for the door. “Wait.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “The police are coming. They’ll take care of you. They’ll need to talk to you, get your statement.”
“No. I can’t be here for the police.”
She lived on the street, a runaway, probably wanted for property crimes committed to support her rock coke habit.
Nigel finished talking and hung up the phone. “They’re on their way. Now we really have to skedaddle.”
The young girl needed to stay so the deputies from Lakewood Sheriff station could hang a child molest case on the fat slob on the floor. But she wouldn’t stay unless I did, and I couldn’t afford to have Nigel hear me tell the deputies that I was an undercover detective. It would risk the viability of the TransWorld sting and ruin the roundup of all the criminals already in our net, a great loss of man-hours and money. It would also tip off the Johnny Sin and Jumbo gun deal.
“Where are your clothes? Did you come here on your own or did he force you to come here?”
She didn’t answer and moved to the couch, where she grabbed up some clothes mingled among other discarded ones and again headed for the door. The Pendleton came down to her knees and wouldn’t draw too much attention out in the public eye.
Nigel hurried past. “Come on, my friend, we gotta roll.”
In the quad area, the apartment complex started to come back to life. Doors opened a crack, and people peeked out curtains. They would have our description, a broken-down white guy with a black truck driver escorting a half-naked black girl from the premises.
Outside at the sidewalk, she didn’t say a word when I opened the door to the Opel. She got in the back and Nigel got in the front. We took off, headed west on Lakewood Boulevard. Five blocks down, a black-and-white sheriff’s car whipped by with his overhead rotating red lights, no siren. Silent running, shark-like.
I missed working in a black-and-white responding to calls, not knowing what I’d find when I arrived on scene. The threat of the unknown was a huge adrenaline rush. This time they’d find no act
ion in apartment 102. Only cleanup. And a go-nowhere assault investigation on a victim who really wasn’t a victim, with a description of three people they’d never be able to track down.
I caught movement in the rearview as the girl, unabashed, took off the shirt coat and negligee and put on her clothes. Nigel leered at her over the seat. He didn’t do it on purpose; he couldn’t help himself in his drunken state. I shoved his face around.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. I didn’t realize. Geez, what’s the matter with me? Thanks, Karl.”
He meant it.
She finally sat back and watched my eyes. I asked, “Where can we drop you?”
“You know Greenleaf and Atlantic?”
“Sure.”
“That would be fine, thank you.”
“When’s the last time you ate something?”
She shrugged.
“We’ll go to Lucy’s first on Long Beach if that’s okay with you?”
She shrugged again.
Nigel said, “Can’t we go someplace that serves a libation with a little kick, or, you know, at least beer?”
“No.”
“Okay, take it easy. For a minute there I thought we were friends.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
TEN MINUTES LATER, I pulled into Lucy’s parking lot. We ordered at the walk-up window and took our food to an outdoor picnic table among others under a patio awning. The other patrons continued to talk and eat and paid us no mind.
Until the girl dug into her beef enchilada plate shoveling down the food. People at other tables whispered and threw sideways glances, pretending not to notice the spectacle.
“Careful,” Nigel said. “Don’t get your hands near her mouth, you’ll lose a finger.”
Nigel, all skin and bone, was the one who needed to eat, but he only nibbled at his bean-and-cheese burrito.
“What’s your name?”
She paused in her food shoveling. “Why?”
I held out my hand. “My name’s Karl.”
She stared at me for a moment. “No it’s not.”
My heart rate shot up. “Nigel, go wait in the car. No arguments.”
“But I—”
“I said no arguments.”
He stood, leaving his burrito on the table. “You know, you treat your dog better than me.”
I waited until Nigel closed the Opel’s door, then turned back to her. “Do I know you?”
“Who really knows anybody? All of us swirl around and around in our own lives doing our own thing not giving a damn about anyone else. We come into this world alone and that’s the way we go out.”
She’d been on the street longer than I thought.
“That’s an awfully pessimistic point of view for someone so young. Please answer the question—what’s your name?”
She put down her plastic fork. “You really don’t recognize me? I went to school with Olivia. You’re her father, Bruno Johnson, the deputy.”
Oh my God, how could that be?
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
“Jessica.”
I sat back on my bench seat, stunned. “Jessica Lowe?”
She nodded.
She used to be one of Olivia’s best friends and had been over to our apartment in South Gate many times hanging out and doing homework. She always had a bright expression, a light in her eyes that nothing could extinguish. At least that’s what I thought at the time. I hadn’t seen her in a good long while. When Derek came on the scene, he pushed away all of Olivia’s friends. Then with the twins, Albert and Alonzo, our lives sped up and they filled every available minute with happiness and joy that blurred the lines between hours and days and months. Those two boys left little time to ponder the past. I had not thought to even ask Olivia what had happened to her best friend.
Jessica stirred her beans and rice around. “I’m sorry about O. I only just heard about it the other day. She had so much going for her. Those wonderful kids. You know, she never used drugs. Never. It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
Jessica was asking if Olivia did it on purpose. That’s what the establishment had determined.
A lump rose in my throat. But it wasn’t a suicide, and when I had the chance, I’d sweet-talk Derek Sams the same way I had the last time. I’d get him to tell me that he had a hand in it. That he’d done it to get even for what I’d done to his fingers. First he’d hurt Albert, then Olivia.
I reached over and lifted Jessica’s chin for a better look. Tears filled her eyes. She wore too much makeup now, kept her hair long when I had always seen it short. Still, I should’ve recognized her. She wasn’t fifteen like I thought back at the Lakewood apartment. She had to be a youthful nineteen. She had one of those childlike faces that never aged. But that wouldn’t be true much longer. On the street, every dope year equals five regular ones.
“Where are your parents?”
She shrugged and went back to eating, her face hovering over the paper plate, tears dropping into her enchilada sauce.
I didn’t ask her how she came to be in the apartment. I knew how easy it was to fall prey to the glass pipe. It happened to a lot of good people. Even so, I wanted to go back and kick that fat slob a few more times.
“I’d like to help you if you’ll let me.”
“If you have a few dollars you could spare, that would be great.”
To give an addict money is the same as handing them another nail for their coffin. Until they hit rock bottom and were ready to call it quits, there wasn’t much anyone could do. I took out all the folding money I had and handed it to her. She grabbed at it. I pulled it back. “Where are you staying? For real, don’t lie to me.”
“At the Jacaranda.”
“On El Segundo off of Willowbrook?”
“Yes.”
I handed her the money.
“Thanks, Mr. Johnson.”
“Now tell me, who came into the apartment and did that to … What’s his name?”
“Turk. I just know him as Turk. I think you already know who came there and did that. You’re just testing me.”
“Please tell me.”
“It was Derek. There’s something wrong with that boy. He wanted to take me right there, said he wanted to bend me over the couch and yank down my panties. But the cop with him wouldn’t let it happen. The cop shoved me in the closet, closed the door, and told me not to come out.”
“Then what happened?”
“You saw. They tore the place up fighting. Took both of them to take down Turk. I really didn’t think they’d be able to do it.”
“Did you hear anything they were saying?”
“They were yelling. The cop wanted to know where to find a guy named La Vonn.”
“Did Turk tell them where to find La Vonn?”
“I don’t think he knew or after all of that he would’ve told them. I … I heard the garbage disposal running. I didn’t look before we left. Did they use the disposal on him?”
“No.”
“Too bad. Why does everyone want La Vonn?”
“You know him?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
I SWIVELED MY head, checking out the environment yet again in the patio of Lucy’s restaurant. Nobody looked out of place. Nobody could hear our conversation, at least not enough of it to matter. Nigel got out of the Kadett and walked over to a pay phone. With all the traffic on Long Beach Boulevard, he wouldn’t be able to hear us either.
I turned back to Jessica. “How do you know La Vonn?”
She’d gone back to eating and paused to swallow. “Couple of years ago—that’s when I got hooked on rock—I used to go down to this place on El Segundo. He hung out there.”
“Where?”
“You know those burnt-out apartments? They’ve been there forever. Nobody ever does anything with them.”
“I know the place.”
“Okay, right down from there on the same side of the street is this auto body shop, the ki
nd that specializes in crashed cars.”
“What’s it called?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t put a whole lot of time or imagination into the name. It’s called The Body Shop.”
That was the place. It all fit now. When I’d talked to Little Genie in the jail, he had it wrong. He must’ve gotten bits and pieces of the info from someone else. When that someone told Genie the Body Shop, Genie assumed, since two guys hung out there—La Vonn and Jamar Deacon—that it had to be a gym. I would have been wasting my time looking for the gym Genie described.
“This Body Shop, is it still open for business?”
She took a bite of rolled-up corn tortilla dipped in refried beans, and shrugged.
“Do you know La Vonn’s first name?”
“That is his first name.”
“What’s his last name?”
“The one that goes with La Vonn, or his real name?”
“Please, tell me both.”
“La Vonn Lofton.”
“That’s an aka he goes by?”
“If you mean his fake name, then yes.”
“And his real name?”
She let out a half smile. “That’s the reason he changed it. His real name wasn’t serious enough for his image on the streets. It didn’t have a hard edge like he wanted. Folks would’ve laughed at him. He only told me because I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. His real name’s Billy Butterworth. Can you imagine a hard-core thug named Billy Butterworth?” She used the tortilla to mop up the rest of the enchilada sauce on the plate as she smiled. It was good to see her smile. She muttered again, “Huh, Billy Butterworth.”
Without asking, she reached over and took my plate and slid it in front of her. I hadn’t touched it. I’d lost my appetite seeing how far this beautiful girl had backslid. She talked and acted like an experienced street person when she should’ve been in college having fun, dating, and enjoying everything life had to offer.
She started to unwrap the yellow paper around the gargantuan burrito.