Romeo's Town (Mike Romeo Thrillers Book 6)

by James Scott Bell

  “But in the last year, you know,” Aoki said, “there’s homeless camps all over the city. And a new one under the bridge. That’s what this was all about.”

  “The graffiti is back, too,” I said.

  Aoki shook his head. “Yep. All over. All over those great murals downtown on the 101. Can’t be stopped.”

  “Won’t be, you mean.”

  My driver said nothing. We took a circuitous route up to Los Feliz Boulevard, then headed back toward Ira’s. Other than the flying bottles and chains, it was a lovely day in L.A.

  We pulled up in front of Ira’s. Officer Aoki got out street side, opened the door, had me lean forward. He unlocked the cuffs and I stepped out to join him.

  He closed the door and faced me. “Interesting day.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “In case you need to follow up…” I fished for my wallet to get one of Ira’s cards. My hands were a little numb from the cuffs, and I dropped it.

  I bent to pick it up.

  And heard a distant crack.

  I stood.

  Aoki went down, blood spattering.

  Another crack, and a bullet pinged the police car an inch from my arm.

  I grabbed Aoki’s shirt collar and dragged him around the SUV.

  “Michael?”

  It was Ira, with his braces, standing at the front door.

  I waved my arm. “Shooter! Officer down! Call it in!”

  He didn’t need to be told twice.

  I looked at Aoki, who was face up but with lights out. I ripped his shirt open. There was an ugly red hole in the heart area. I whipped off my shirt and balled it up and pressed it to the wound.

  “What goes on here?” It was Ira’s neighbor, the widow Mrs. Morgenstern, standing right outside her front door.

  “Go back inside, Mrs. Morgenstern! Back inside now!”

  “Don’t you tell me what to do.” She shook her finger at me.

  “Somebody’s shooting!”

  “Who?” she said. “Why is there a police car—”

  “Get inside now or I’ll rip your dress off!”

  Who knows where inspiration comes from? Why that perverse phrase came out of me I don’t know, but I’m sure it had something to do with my previous knowledge of Mrs. Morgenstern’s personality, and what would likely cause her the most shock.

  Whatever, it worked. She huffed once and retreated indoors. I was reasonably sure she’d call the police, too.

  “Hang on.” I didn’t know if Aoki could hear me, but it was worth a try. I was knocked out once, early in my cage career, and three days later woke up in a hospital. During the blackout I thought I heard my manager say, “Don’t leave me, Mike. We’ve got too much money to make.” When I asked him about that later, his mouth flopped open. “Those were my exact words,” he said.

  To Aoki I said, “Help is coming. Stay with me.”

  From just inside the screen door, Ira said, “Where’s the shooter?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Across the street, maybe.”

  “How’s the officer?”

  “Hole in the chest.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “No—”

  But there was to be no argument. A police officer was critically wounded and that’s all Ira needed to know.

  Keeping one hand pressing on his chest I unholstered Aoki’s sidearm, a Glock. The extractor was above surface, indicating a round in the chamber.

  Ira’s screen door swung open, and out he came, moving fast on his braces and holding a first aid kit.

  No shots fired.

  Ira got to me and lowered himself to his knees. He opened the kit and ripped open a packet, took out a small cloth.

  “Take away your shirt,” he said.

  He used the cloth to clean around the wound. Blood wasn’t gushing, a good sign.

  Then he took out a larger packet and opened it. He peeled off a backing and placed what looked like a piece of plastic over the hole.

  “Chest seal,” Ira said. “Keeps air from being sucked in.”

  He put his ear to Aoki’s mouth. Then he touched the neck. “No jugular vein distension.”

  “What about the shooter?” I said.

  “Stay right where you are,” Ira said.

  “He wasn’t after the cop.”

  “I know.”

  Five minutes later the first black-and-white arrived, lights and sirens. It took up a position on the street, ready for threat assessment.

  They called Ira.

  “South side of the street,” Ira said.

  An officer got out of the passenger side and knelt beside the unit, gun at the ready. His partner joined him.

  Officer Aoki breathed steadily. And opened his eyes.

  “Don’t move,” Ira said. “You’ve been shot.”

  “Chest,” Aoki said.

  “Missed the heart,” Ira said.

  Aoki moved his eyes to mine.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Soon the neighborhood was locked down. Mrs. Morgenstern was reduced to shouting various forms of Get off my lawn from her front window.

  A couple of medics took over the care of Aoki. A two-person field unit from LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division arrived.

  Officers canvassed the homes.

  One of the SID investigators was named Monica Helberg, fiftyish and fit. She had me walk through the shooting from the moment I got out of the vehicle.

  She examined the bullet hole in the passenger-side door.

  She turned and traced a line in the air with her finger.

  “Downward,” she said. “Most likely it came from that parking structure.”

  The top of which we could see, but it was one heck of a long way away.

  “Sniper level,” I said.

  “And you think you were the target?”

  “Certainly not Officer Aoki. This took planning.”

  “And what would be the motive?”

  “Some people want me dead,” I said.

  “And you know this how?”

  “Experience,” I said. “It’s happened before.”

  She cleared her throat. “Is there a place we can talk?”

  We went into Ira’s and sat at the kitchen table. Ira made tea and told her she didn’t have to wear a mask in here. She took it off with a relieved smile, and explained her role in performing scientific field investigation and the taking of statements from relevant witnesses. She’d been a detective with Central Division.

  Which is why she led with, “First off, who exactly are you thinking of when you say some people want you dead?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “people I can’t ID. Well, maybe one. I’m chief witness against a guy named Sammie Sand. It’s a knife attack case. I’ve been told he’s from a family of wastrels.”

  “Of what?”

  “He talks that way sometimes,” Ira said.

  “Thugs,” I said. “Criminals. No-goodniks.”

  “I get it,” Helberg said.

  “The prelim’s coming up,” I said.

  Helberg nodded. “Other than that case, who else can you think of?”

  “Mr. Rosen and I have a juvenile client. It’s a drug beef. We were warned to drop him.”

  “By who?”

  “We don’t know,” I said. “Whoever it was hired somebody to deliver the message. This messenger brought along an enforcer.”

  “A very big enforcer,” Ira said, “whom Michael dispatched.”

  “What do you mean, dispatched?” Helberg said.

  “I had to knock him out,” I said.

  “With your fist?”

  “No, with Poseidon. I have a statuette of Poseidon in my petunia garden.”

  Helberg blinked a couple of times. “Continue.”

  “Whoever it was who hired the muscle, we don’t know. Even he doesn’t know.”

  “You questioned him?”

  “I brought him to his crib and put him to bed.”

  Shaking her head, Helberg
said, “I’m having trouble following this.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Ira said.

  “What I mean,” I said, “is that when he came around we had a chance to talk.”

  “He just talked to you?”

  “Well, I had him handcuffed to a pipe, but he was reasonable. And hurt. I had a doctor look at him.”

  In a motion that implied extreme interest, Helberg raised her eyebrows as high as they could go.

  “She lives in my mobile home park at Paradise Cove. She gave him some first aid and told me I was responsible for him.”

  “O…K,” Helberg said.

  “He took this on as a freelance job, and doesn’t know who did the ultimate hire. So it was planned out, like the snipe that just took place.”

  “So no theories on who it might be?”

  “I’ve interviewed some people on this case who were not exactly friendly.”

  “Any names?”

  “I’ll give you a list,” Ira said.

  “Fine,” Helberg said. “But you probably surmise that without more we won’t be able to get a warrant on anyone. And resources and time factor into any questioning.”

  “What about the bullet?”

  “We’ll analyze it, of course, but won’t get much from that unless we can match it to a profile in the data banks.”

  “If only this were TV,” I said. “You’d have a pristine lab and solve the whole thing in fifty minutes.”

  Helberg sighed.

  After the interview I sat at Ira’s window and watched the activity outside dying down.

  Dying.

  Down.

  The whole city was circling the drain. And everybody knew it, even the people pulling the levers of power. They just put on blinders and spoke sweet nothings into microphones.

  “You seem gloomier than usual, Michael.”

  I turned to Rabbi Rosen. “Me? Gloomy?”

  “Tell Uncle Ira what’s burdening you.”

  “Other than the state of mankind, madness unleashed, and nihilism in the air?”

  “Pish. Read Genesis again and you’ll have no surprises on any of that. But you will have the beginning of an answer.”

  “Burn me a bush,” I said.

  “That’s Exodus,” Ira said.

  “You’re our new Jeopardy champion,” I said.

  “The air has grown cold.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Because I have an ice ring around my heart?”

  “We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”

  “It’s no better now than the first time,” I said.

  “I think you like having it,” Ira said.

  I didn’t respond.

  “Keeps you from getting close to people,” Ira said. “Or people getting close to you.”

  “You’re four feet away from me.”

  “You’re not going to clever your way out of this one,” Ira said.

  “Time for me to go," I said, and stood.

  “Don't act as if you don't care."

  "Do I?"

  “Very much. You care about Sophie. You care about Clint Cunningham.”

  I went to the door.

  “We have an appointment to see Clint tomorrow,” Ira said.

  “Good luck with that,” I said and shut the door behind me.

  I took three steps.

  And stopped.

  I went back, opened the door, stuck my head in and said, “What time?”

  I drove away wondering if I was being followed. When an assassin misses you, it’s only a matter of time before the next attempt.

  Unless you do unto him before he does unto you.

  I was tired of everything. Which made me a little loopy driving down the mean streets. Like I was hyperventilating. You don’t see straight. You don’t clearly see the guy in the crosswalk you almost hit. You do hear him cuss you out, and that brings you back to your senses.

  It was heading to later afternoon. Schools—the ones that were meeting on-site, that is—would be getting out. Most public schools were locked down tight. The teachers’ union wasn’t interested in having their members do any on-site work. Better to Zoom from home in their pajamas and collect the paychecks.

  But Elias Hall would be having classes.

  So that’s where I went. It was located in the foothills above Sherman Oaks. A school for movie stars’ kids and other high-end offspring. It had an old California, hacienda-style design, with manicured lawns and gardens. Climbing ivy covered the encircling wall. The driveway entrance was guarded by a security kiosk.

  I cruised a little further. On the opposite side of the street was a parking lot, enclosed by a wrought iron fence. Since there were no retail outlets around it had to be for the school. And what a collection of fine automobiles the kids got to drive.

  I spotted Gavin McGuane’s car there. I went up another block, turned around and parked. I turned the radio on to the news. It was cheery stuff. An ex-con from Sylmar who was being charged with killing five and wounding three others during a shooting spree in Chatsworth was pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. One of his victims was a woman who was shot while waiting to pick up a friend to go to church. He left paralyzed a Chatsworth teenager who had just dropped his girlfriend off at home.

  Then there was the unnamed woman who was killed after being struck by a Metrolink train in Burbank. An investigation was ongoing. And another one of those high-speed chases L.A. is famous for, finally ending after a record-breaking six hours. Seven patrol vehicles had been in on that pursuit. When they finally nabbed him he turned out to be one of our fine, upstanding citizens with two felony warrants out on him.

  At least the weather report was nice. It was 73 degrees downtown, which would make it about 78 or 80 out here in the Valley.

  When it was announced that sports would be next, I clicked it off. Who cared about pro sports anymore?

  Soon enough Gavin McGuane and Bianca Aiken came out of the gates of Elias with some other students. He had his arm draped over her like she was a giant stuffed pet won at a carnival. They crossed over into the parking lot. When the happy couple pulled out and headed toward Ventura Boulevard, I followed.

  Gavin had the top down on his Porsche, as I did with Spinoza. We could have been in a video about the Southern California lifestyle. Just leave out the politicians, taxes, and crime stats, and you’ve got yourself a reason to move here.

  Ten minutes later Gavin pulled into a Chick-fil-A and got in the drive-thru line. I parked at the curb and waited. As usual, there was a long string of cars. But it advanced with crisp efficiency. One thing this fowl enterprise knew was how to move customers. It wasn’t too long before Gavin emerged and drove two minutes to Johnny Carson Park. That’s a neat little green space across from Burbank Studios, where “The King of Late Night” did his show for so many years.

  Gavin parked at the curb. I hung back as he and Bianca got out and made their way to some picnic tables. Then I parked and watched.

  There were parents with kids in the play area, which was a good thing. For too long the city had cordoned off playgrounds. The experts figured keeping kids cooped up indoors was better for them than climbing around in fresh air. Gosh, how did we ever get along without experts?

  I went back to watching the exciting scene of Gavin and Bianca eating their sammies. But then they were joined by a kid with long, stringy hair. He didn’t sit. It looked like they all knew each other. The kid had a backpack slung over one shoulder. More talking, then the kid dug into his pocket and pulled something out. When he handed it to Bianca I saw it was a few bills, folded. Bianca handed the kid something. He put it in his pocket and hurried away.

  I kept my eye on the kid. He was heading toward me, toward the cars parked along the street. I waited to see which one he went to. A white Corvette. He got in. I started up Spinoza and did a quick U and put my car next to the Vette so he couldn’t pull out. I got out and walked around to his door.

  He lowered the window and said, “
Hey, man.”

  “Going to have to ask you to give it up, son,” I said.

  His doe eyes widened. “Huh?”

  “You were under observation. I saw the transaction.”

  “Wait…what…”

  I have found that clichés often work wonders. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Are you security?”

  “As far as you’re concerned, I’m insecurity. Let’s have it.”

  “Please don’t tell my mom, please!”

  “No intention of telling your mother anything, son. But I will take the contraband. Or there will be consequences.”

  I put out my hand.

  He looked at it for a second, then back up at me. “Oh, man. If I give it to you, will you just let me go?”

  “I’ll certainly consider it.”

  Tears pooled in his eyes. He reached into his pocket and handed me… a thumb drive.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “Come on.”

  “What’s on it?”

  “What do you think?” he said. “Math tests. Papers.”

  “You’re cheating?”

  “Come on, it’s hard.”

  “What is?”

  “Elias.”

  “You’re buying test answers and papers from Bianca Aiken?”

  He muttered the F-word.

  “How much you pay for this?” I said.

  “A hundred,” he said.

  I whistled. “I could have played a lot of Super Mario Bros. with that, back in the day.”

  He blinked a couple of times.

  “Now give me the drugs,” I said.

  “The what? No way! No drugs!”

  “Going to have to search your backpack.”

  Defiant now, he said, “Go ahead!” He grabbed it from the passenger seat and held it out for me.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Here you go.”

  I gave him the thumb drive.

  “You’re letting me keep it?”

  “You paid for it. But let me tell you, in the long run, it’s better if you do your own work.”

  He frowned. “Not if I’m gonna get into Harvard.”

  “Tell your mom to save her money. Go to a trade school. Become a plumber or an electrician. Then you won’t cheat because you can’t. A clogged toilet has a way of keeping you honest.”