Tramps and Thieves

by Rhys Ford

  Twelve

  “NOW HE remembers this?” O’Byrne paced off the length of her sedan, turning around to face Dante and Hank when she reached its trunk. As early as it was, the park had foot traffic. A pair of young Hispanic women dressed in hotel uniforms gave her a filthy look when she crossed the sidewalk in front of them, but the badge at her hip and the glare they got back probably kept them moving. “I’ve got Vicks’s file burning a hole on my desk and West LA screaming for your boyfriend’s head, and now he remembers something from the time he broke into the victim’s house?”

  It was early enough on a muggy Los Angeles morning for a trio of cops to get a cup of hot coffee and some freshly baked conchas from a food cart set up on the edge of MacArthur Park. The park was a vibrant, busy place before the sun hit, a far cry from the cesspool of violence it’d been a few decades ago, but there were still tense moments to be found. The park had a history with cops and not all of it good. Memories were long in Los Angeles, especially in the surrounding Latino and Korean neighborhoods. Sitting on the edge of a mixed plate of cultures and diverse incomes, the park anchored the district, providing a place for concerts and fairs as well as attracting more than its share of cops from the nearby beats.

  Dante liked MacArthur Park, despite Manny’s incessant need to break out into song every time they passed by the stretch of green with its massive fountain and lake. It was a good place to spend an evening listening to music, and he’d been meaning to drag Rook to one of the afternoon events but hadn’t gotten around to it, if only for its food trucks rooted to prime sidewalk spots and battling for customers on a Saturday afternoon.

  As for the concha seller’s coffee, it was magnificent, and Dante gulped at his cup. It was black, sweet, and strong enough to burn Dante’s nerves, but he welcomed its stinging hit, especially since he’d rather have been curled up around the warm, naked Rook he’d reluctantly left in a tousled bed to meet up with O’Byrne and Camden after only a few hours of sleep.

  By the time they’d gotten to Archie’s house, Rook was nearly insensible, and he’d been too dead on his feet to do more than strip off all of his clothes and fall into bed. He’d woken up to Manny and Archie in the kitchen attempting to master the espresso machine before Rosa showed up and a weary Rook lying on his back, staring up at their room’s gaudy painted ceiling, then confessing he’d recalled something about the morning he’d found Harold lying dead on the floor.

  “Montoya, I’m talking to you.” O’Byrne now stood only a few inches away, passing over a handful of bills for a cup of coffee and a plastic sleeve of arroz con coco. “Did you tell Stevens to stay put where he is for a couple of days? I’d like to be able to get my hands on him after I see what the auction house has to say.”

  “It’s cute you think Stevens is going to do anything someone tells him to do, O’Byrne.” Camden sipped at his coffee, his eyes on the early-morning joggers and dog walkers streaming past them. He took a few steps to put their food on a bench, then took O’Byrne’s cup to set down next to the paper bags so she could eat. “Dante might have a bit of sway, but Stevens is the kind of guy who’d pitch himself off a building just because someone tells him not to jump.”

  “He’s not that bad.” Dante’s protests were met with snorts and eye rolls. “Look, Book said to keep you informed on what we find since we’ll probably all be working parallel to you. West LA is good with Hank and I chasing down our own leads, but their captain wants to know what we find, and Book agrees to yank us if we get in the way.”

  “We’re doing this on our own time,” Camden grumbled at him. “And they get to tell us when to pull back?”

  “If we want to keep our badges, then yes,” he shot back at Hank, who grimaced ruefully. “Besides, Book said he’s putting us back on the clock. If we’re going to chase down a murderer with West LA, then he wants everything official.”

  “Makes sense. No minimal conflict of interest since, really, Stevens is pretty much cleared, even if the wife’s still sketchy. I’ve got one of theirs coming over later to partner with me on Vicks. We’re all crossing a lot of lines in this shit storm, but whatever’s getting the job done,” O’Byrne replied. “I think we’ll all feel better if we can find out where Vicks’s body is. Man’s probably got family, and his house wants to do right by him.”

  “Good they’re letting you keep the case.” Extracting a concha from one of the bags, Hank asked, “Do you know what you’re going to do first on Vicks?”

  “I’ve got to do an in-person interview with the head of that auction house and his staff. Then I want to hear what Stevens thinks about what I find out. The big question is, was Vicks a message for Rook, and what were they saying? I’m not sure I buy this whole did-this-for-you thing, but as warnings go, it could have been stronger. Sure, your boyfriend’s cute, but if someone’s obsessing on him, I think he’d know. He’s sharp.” O’Byrne ripped the sealed plastic top of her container open, then dug into the cold sweet rice with a plastic spoon. “Did you talk to Book this morning or before you went to bed?”

  “This morning. He was the second phone call I got. First was you.” Dante held a napkin out to Hank as his partner bit into a concha, sending a spray of pink-tinted sugar crumble everywhere. “The West LA captain is a good friend of his. They’re kind of in shock over there right now and said they’re grateful for any bit of help they can get. Since Sadonna’s still on the hook, I’ve been asked to keep tabs on her. She’s not talking and apparently filed a relocation notice with the state and the LAPD for her mother-in-law’s. I didn’t think they’ll let her go, but she’s bailed for non-Martin pastures. Odd place to go since everyone, including Sadonna, says Margaret Martin isn’t too fond of our widow.”

  “She doesn’t want to stay at Archie’s?” Hank’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “It’s a damned castle. With hot and cold running coffee. With beer. And all-you-can-eat bacon.”

  “Archie’s hard to live with, even when he’s on his best behavior. He and Rook went at one another last night in the loft, and I thought it was going to go very bad very quickly, but they worked it out.” Another sip of coffee and Dante felt the knot in his chest unravel a little bit. “Sadonna stepped wrong. She might not have meant to, but she did. Rook’s one of his favorites, so him getting caught up in this goes ugly in the old man’s book. I don’t know if Archie actually likes her, and I think deep down inside, he believes she had something to do with Harold’s death.”

  “What do you think?” O’Byrne prodded. “So far, Stevens is clean, and the only one West LA has to hang the murder on is the wife, but that’s shaky. Somebody got to a cop. That’s the person I want to get my hands on. I think he did Vicks to take the heat off of Sadonna and push it onto Stevens, but that’s not how it reads to anyone in blue. If anything, the timeline clears Stevens, and I can’t find anyone who’d do a cop for him. Not even Montoya.”

  “Thanks.” Dante sent her a flat smile, and she grinned around a mouthful of rice. “Glad I’m not a suspect.”

  “Hey, consider any angle,” she responded with a chuckle, then swallowed. “I eliminated you because of timing too, but there was a long second when you were right at the top of my list. I see how you look at Stevens. If you’d been there when Vicks bum-rushed him, we’d be having a conversation down at Central.”

  “She’s not wrong, Montoya. You get kind of gooey and sick when Stevens is around. Now what I think we need to find out is who was in that room with Harold’s body when Rook found him,” Hank cut in. “And take a good hard look at which Martin has odd eyes. From what we know about Harold, he was pretty offensive. Someone else in the family could have wanted him dead.”

  “Not a lot of the Martins have complete heterochromia, but it definitely runs strong in the family. Rook and Archie both have distinctive shifts, but some of the others have partial or central. I haven’t paid much attention to them because, well, they try to make Rook feel shitty,” he confessed. “One of the boys has it, full shift, but he’s about
ten, so I think we can rule him out. But I wouldn’t put it past the little brat. He’s a piece of work.”

  “So asshole runs in the family too?” Hank teased.

  “Learned trait, not inherited. A couple of them are okay, but I couldn’t even tell you their names.” Dante shook his head. “I don’t even know how many kids Archie has. It was a hell of a time to figure out Alex’s mom is Archie’s kid and her husband’s a second cousin so they’re both Martins. Or at least that’s what Rook told me.”

  “And you believed him because he’s so trustworthy.” O’Byrne snorted. “Could have been playing you to yank your chain.”

  “O’Byrne, let’s get something straight… I trust Rook. Hell, with my life if I had to.” He eyed Hank, daring his partner to make a joke, but Camden turned his head, suddenly discovering something interesting about the lake’s spouting water feature. “He didn’t like Vicks. No one did, but Rook didn’t want him dead. Or Harold. He remembered something and told me, knowing we’d work with it. The heterochromia is a maybe. It could have been a trick of the light, but it’s definitely something to watch for. Rook said he couldn’t make out the exact colors, just that one was much brighter than the other. He’d thought blue or gray, but it was too fast. All he got was an impression.”

  “Might be something we’d chase after because we’ve got nothing,” O’Byrne agreed. “I don’t want to go looking for zebras just because we hear hoofbeats. I’d like you there when I question Rook. He’ll be more likely to talk if you’re around. How long is it going to take you to get to the housekeeper’s place?”

  “Not long. Her name’s Jennifer Martinez, and she lives out in Pasadena, but she’s house-sitting her sister’s place over on South Westview and Seventh. I called her about five times last night and got nothing, so I thought she was blowing us off, but I got a text at about five while I was taking the dog out for its morning poop tour. She asked for a meet at the sister’s place. Set the time and gave me the address. I texted back an affirmative, and that’s the only reason I’m up this early.” Hank balled up his napkin and tossed it toward the trash can. It hit the rim, sliding in easily. “Still got it. Anyway, she’d agreed to talk at nine, so we’ve got to get going soon. People get grumpy when the cops leave them waiting.”

  “We can probably be at Archie’s place in a couple of hours. Maybe tag me before you head over and see if we’re close?” Dante suggested, tucking his own trash into the bin. “Lot’s changed since last night. Might shift again before noon. If you don’t need us, let me know. Martinez might lead us to something else.”

  “Yeah, I’ll tap you either way. I need to find out where he was killed. Maybe someone saw something. The killer knows Stevens does business with the auction house and about Vicks allegedly tossing those Molotovs into the shop, so it’s got to be someone close to him. It’s the why we don’t have.” O’Byrne squinted at the sun pushing its way through the trees. Pulling her sunglasses out of her jacket, she was careful not to flash her gun, angling herself in toward Hank. “West LA is working on reconstructing where Vicks went after he left Bergan’s, but I don’t want to wait on that. He called going in to interview someone but didn’t mention it was Stevens he was shaking down. What he did after he left, I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  “You know, we could have done this all on the phone,” Hank grumbled at them. “Yeah, I know… best conchas in Los Angeles and it’s close to the housekeeper, but I could have gotten another half-hour of sleep in.”

  “It’s good to have a huddle, Camden. Builds teamwork and all of that.” O’Byrne slid her sunglasses on, Hank’s reflection shimmying over her mirrored lenses. “Now let’s go see if we can catch a bad guy today and not die trying.”

  “CAN’T BELIEVE you made me walk over here,” Hank groused, lumbering beside him. “It’s like… what? Two blocks? That’s a marathon for a Californian. You wouldn’t understand, coming from Texas.”

  “We don’t walk there either. Not in Laredo,” he replied, reading the street numbers on the buildings. “Well, not in the summertime or the spring sometimes. Good way to get heatstroke.”

  “You miss it?” Camden stopped walking, and Dante pulled up short, turning around to look questioningly at his partner. “I wonder sometimes if you miss it. I mean, I know you’ve got Manny, and well, Stevens, but you’re the kind of guy who likes family. You let my kids climb all over you and call you uncle. You said you’ve got a lot of family back home, and I wonder if you miss them.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He never gave a lot of time to thinking about his parents. He deeply missed his mother, and it was hard sometimes to see her in Manny’s expressions and in his laughter. His father—that was complicated—and he knew he didn’t have it in him to talk about it while standing in the middle of a Los Angeles sidewalk, but he gave Camden a smile, knowing his partner—his best friend—meant well. “I miss them, but there’s no going back there. Not with how they feel. So yeah, I’ve got Manny and Rook, but I’ve also got you. And the wife and kids.”

  “And the damned dog. Don’t forget the dog,” Camden said, slapping him on the back. “If I could pull it off, I’d pawn that thing off on you so fast your head would spin.”

  “You love that dog. Besides, I don’t know if Rook even likes dogs.”

  “He seems more like a cat person to me.” Hank stopped in front of a red stucco two-story building, thick white security panels covering its windows. Two of the apartments had flower boxes, one with real blooms while the other sported a clutch of faded plastic pinwheels. An enormous calico stared back at them from its perch behind the whirling toys, its tail lazily twitching against a sheer curtain. “Looks like this is it. Apartment 104. Told me it’s on the ground floor. No need to buzz her because the intercom’s broken, but so’s the front security door, so we should just go in.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I like people knowing the cops are about to knock on their door, especially since most of these buildings have tight hallways.” Dante looked around, trying to get a feel for the area. He’d been around these streets before, usually quick stops to verify accounts or to pull in an arrest. People in the area were more prone to look the other way than call a cop. “Want to ring her up again before we go in, or do you think we should surprise her?”

  “Think there’s going to be trouble? She’s the one who wanted to do it here ’cause she’ll feel more comfortable. She’s expecting us.” Camden’s easygoing mask slid from his face, and he scanned the street, openly gauging the situation. “I say we just go in. What’s your gut tell you?”

  The street was relatively quiet, but there were signs of life. A bit of music flowed out from a nearby open window, brassy and sharp with spatters of LA Mexican crooning over it. Not more than a few feet away, a pair of men huddled over the open hood of a Honda, their faces screwed up in serious contemplation while a third banged at something with a wrench. It was a normal on-the-edge-of-poor neighborhood, a little too run down to spruce up and packed with people living too tightly against each other but nothing either one of them hadn’t walked through before.

  But there was something lingering on Dante’s mind, an elusive, skittering thought he couldn’t quite nail down.

  “I’m probably overthinking it since I got no sleep last night,” he confessed to his partner. “Book wanted me to talk to one of the outreach guys about Vicks, but I put it aside. I don’t have time to deal with it. Maybe later, but—”

  “You saw a cop’s head roll out of a box, Montoya. In your bedroom. After you’ve just… well, you know what you did,” Hank reminded him. “That’s going to eat at a guy, especially since he was a cop and we wear a badge. Listen to Book. Find some time, because I don’t care what O’Byrne says, that was a message to someone. Maybe it was Rook. Hell, maybe it was for you, or it could be for the aliens who abducted the sick fuck when he was fourteen and wanking off in a field of cows somewhere. For good or for bad, you don’t do that to a man without something wrong go
ing on inside of your head, and the asshole who did it is just trying to spread his sickness to you.”

  “Cows?” Dante snorted. “And the thing with Vicks, I can’t let it crowd me in. I can’t second-guess everything.”

  “Look, I saw the cow and went for it,” Hank said, shrugging. “If your gut is telling you this is hinky, then we go in like it’s hinky. Wouldn’t be the first time your gut’s saved our asses. Question is, do you still want lead?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Let’s see who she responds better to. We need to get the names of who was at that party Harold threw—if she knows—and who he hung out with. He and Sadonna didn’t mingle a lot outside of casual social stuff, typical Hollywood crowd, and Archie said he kept apart from anyone at the office. If she coughs up the name of this boyfriend, even better.”

  “A party says social, but no one in the family knows who his friends are? That’s a sad kind of life. Morgue came back with him killed that night or early the next morning, right?”

  “Yeah. So either he knew the killer—still holding out for that boyfriend—or the guy slipped in and hung around until everyone left, then came out when he was sure it was clear.” Dante nodded at Hank’s thoughtful murmur. “Harold was knifed. A lot. That says angry to me. Then someone came in to hit him on the head with that statue. The timelines are just weird. Maybe Martinez might not know who was at the party, but she might know who he felt comfortable enough with to let stay.”

  “It’s a stretch, but we don’t have a lot of choices.” Camden sighed. “Let’s go in and see what she’s got to tell us.”