by E. E. Giorgi
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled again, but he was no longer listening.
I don’t speak Spanish, and he never asked me if I did. Some things don’t need translation.
A thirteen-year-old had shot and killed Ricky Vargas in a drive-by. In South Central, where life is survival, your first shooting marks your entrance to adulthood, and your first step toward the tomb.
In South Central, young lives were expendable, debts were paid through retaliation, and gangs haunted the streets, looking for a deal, a rock, a buck. Looking for trouble. Somewhere in South Central, somebody tonight was celebrating and Maria was crying. Somewhere in South Central, good and evil blurred, hunters and prey mingled, and today’s killer became tomorrow’s victim.
That’s the soul of L.A., the city of angels and devils, of richness and poverty, of fires and mudslides. The city of opposites.
I walked back to my truck feeling the heaviness of defeat against a faceless enemy. I longed for revenge and yet I had nobody to hate but myself.
Ricky Vargas. Courtney Henkins. Charlie Callahan.
The bell stopped tolling. I started the engine and let it idle. My eyes strayed to the glove compartment. I popped it open and slid out Callahan’s photo. After they’d ramped my house and I’d found the Byzantine’s tiles in my backyard, I’d hidden the photo in my truck. I still didn’t know what it meant, but I was fairly sure Charlie’s killer knew.
I stared at the photograph.
Talk to me.
It didn’t. Charlie Callahan smiled his happy, innocent smile. The beige couch, the meaningless poster behind him, the side table with the lamp, the ashtray, the reading glasses.
The reading glasses.
Red, with a famous logo on the temple. I knew I’d seen them before. And the ashtray. I brought the photo to my nose and inhaled. It wasn’t just passive smoke. It was expensive passive smoke.
My thoughts rewound back. How did it all start? Callahan’s dead body, a suspect, a conviction. The wrong conviction, yet after the incarceration of Malcolm Olsen, the case was closed.
Malcolm Olsen.
You hate it here, Detective, don’t you? You hate it just like me, he’d said.
And then he’d given me a clue. Nail polish.
Something clicked at the back of my head.
Menthol. Kool cigarettes. Gas exhaust. Nail polish smell.
Reading glasses with a famous logo on the frame.
I placed the photo back in the glove compartment, backed out of the lot, and left the cemetery. Blood was pulsing to my head. I wanted revenge. I’d failed Ricky Vargas and I wanted revenge. And I knew exactly where to find it.
THIRTY-FIVE
____________
Sunday, August 2
Runyon Canyon Park sprawls at the top of the Hollywood hills, above the growling belly of the city. From the south entrance, the main trail snakes up to Inspiration Point where people sit and watch the sun rise behind the San Gabriel Mountains. The sky turns pink and the clouds tumble over the basin like lost shreds of happiness. Noises are muffled and the air is crisp and smells of eucalyptus and sage and yucca. The steep incline is mottled with scrub oaks, toyon, red shanks, and sugar bush.
Not that Detective John Sakovich cares. He likes to come up here before anyone else does, so he can jog without worrying about his boxer getting into fights with other dogs. On his way home, he buys flowers for his wife. He showers and heads to work, stopping at Dunkin Donuts for his free coffee first. Such is the life of Detective John Sakovich. A date, from time to time, to be kept strictly secret among his own circles. Circles of people like him, people who understand.
Like Captain Zoltek. He understands. Of course he does. Because Captain Zoltek has his own little problems that need to be fixed. Problems like Charlie Callahan. A mistake, rather. And Sakovich can take care of such mistakes. Tit for tat, one hand washes the other. A little harder when Henkins had to go too. The timing was perfect, though. Should things turn murky, the stupid RHD dick will go down. He’ll make sure of it. No more mistakes.
The stupid RHD dick who’s watching him now.
Only, he doesn’t know.
I donned latex gloves and followed. One last star twinkled in the sky. A pale moon close to the rim of the mountains smiled. Detective John Sakovich hiked up the dirt road, his headlight headband bobbing in the last remnants of darkness. His boxer scuttled ahead, sniffed, peed, left his trace of odors for me and Will to follow. Covertly, unseen.
By the time Sakovich reached the top of the ridge the first light of dawn had started rimming the mountains. Scraped by palm treetops, the Hollywood hills blinked. The freeways hummed in the distance. Just out of LAX, an airplane scratched the sky.
The boxer barked.
Will leaped ahead and off the trail. I followed Sakovich’s acrid sweat, impregnated of the one too many beers from last night, his menthol aftershave, his pack of Kools.
Nail polish.
There was a car that night. I saw it when I walked the dog. An Oldsmobile Alero, black, one of the older models. A guy was inside, smoking. When I walked back he was still there. Rolled up his window and left. And I smelled nail polish after the car.
Only somebody with a refined sense of smell would notice. I’d stopped at a Seven Eleven the night before, purchased a pack of Kools, lit one cigarette, left it burning on the pavement, by the car exhaust. The engine ran, the cigarette burnt. Combined with the gas exhaust, the menthol contained in the Kool cigarette, as it burnt, took on an acrid, synthetic tang.
Nail polish.
The boxer kept trudging behind.
“Come on, Max. Move on, buddy,” Sakovich called.
Some persistent scent nagged Max’s nostrils. Sakovich stopped to wait. The boxer didn’t budge, his nose pointed to a bush off the trail. He sniffed, barked, then delved down the incline and disappeared in the brush.
“Fuck. Max!” Sakovich jogged back to the edge of the trail and looked down, the beam from his headlight lost in the vegetation. The incline was steep, an intricate mess of wild bushes, scrub oaks, and laurels.
“Max! Come back!”
Somewhere down the hill Max growled.
Sakovich bristled. “Coyotes!” he muttered, unholstering his revolver. “Fucking coyotes!” He left the trail and sauntered down the incline, gingerly at first, his path blocked by branches and twigs. Max yelped, Sakovich broke into a run, his large body wobbling over a rugged terrain of rocks and twisted roots.
It wasn’t coyotes. It was Will, growling and gnarling, he and Max going in circles, flashing their teeth. I snapped on latex gloves. Sakovich raised his gun and aimed.
I pounced on him from behind, slammed him on the ground and crunched my boot over his hand. “Let go of the gun! Now!”
He squealed in pain. The minute he let go of the gun I picked it up and dug the barrel in the middle of his forehead right as he was trying to get up. He froze.
“Presius… What the hell you think you’re doin’?”
“Avenging a fellow cop, you bastard! Get down!”
I made him lie down, face on the ground.
Eat dirt, piece of scum.
The dogs barked. I flew one round on the ground to scare them away, then got on Sakovich’s back, knees planted on his ass and legs, and sunk the gun barrel in his neck.
The dogs scrammed.
“You’ll pay for this, Presius,” Sakovich spat.
“Did you look up my package, Sakovich?” I hissed.
“I—what?”
I twisted his right arm, pressed the gun harder. “My package!”
Dry leaves stuck to his mouth as he spoke. “I’m gonna ruin you, I swear. I’m gonna have you destroyed. Your career—”
“Did you look up my package?”
“Yes! I did! Fucking mental you are!”
“So then you know what I did to Danny Mendoza.”
He didn’t reply this time. His muscles tensed. I’d killed Mendoza when I was sixteen, carved the eyeballs out of hi
s skull with a penknife.
I bent over and whispered in Sakovich’s ear: “I’m gonna do the same thing to your pretty little dick.”
He froze. I smelled a little bladder release. “You won’t get away with it, Presius.”
“You’re a cop killer, Sakovich. You deserve to die.”
Once a killer, always a killer.
The voice echoed in my head and gave me a chill. For a moment, the gun in my hand faltered. Sakovich sensed it and tried to buck. I kept him down and sunk the barrel deeper into his neck.
His voice cracked. “What—what the hell do you want, Presius?”
I stared at the gun in my hand. “Smart ass,” I said. “You didn’t bring the one you used to whack Henkins. Course not. Did you dump it in the riverbed? Or better even—down at the harbor?”
“What—I didn’t—argh!”
“You bastard. You killed a fellow cop, fucking traitor.” I pressed the barrel so hard the vein in his neck almost popped. “I wanna hear the whole story. Nice and slow, we got time. Sun’s not even out yet. Start from Callahan and don’t stop until I hear where you dumped the gun you used to whack Henkins.”
He spat, almost choked on his words.
“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t hear you. I believe we were talking about Callahan. Your Captain, Zoltek, found him on Craigslist. Nice find. Or were you the pimp? Whose screen name is mr_kam, yours or Zoltek’s?”
KAM is the radio code for “end of transmissions.” Only a fellow LAPD would’ve come up with that one.
Sakovich grunted. “That’s bullsh—ARGH!”
I twisted his arm harder. “You saying?”
“H-how did you—”
“I did my homework, Sak. You see, there’s a certain photo of Callahan in my possession, a photo taken at your boss’s house. Nice red couch with the Niagara Falls hanging on the wall behind?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Fine. I’ll give you a few hints, then. I’m gonna guess mr_kam was Zoltek’s screen name on Craigslist. He hooked up with Callahan, had fun while it lasted, then Callahan got laid off and things went a little sour. Callahan needed money and decided to ask for some financial help from Zoltek. When Zoltek refused, the request turned into blackmailing. Zoltek complied for a while—pouring about five hundred bucks into Callahan’s pockets every other week—until he got tired and hired you to get rid of the problem. Am I doing well so far?”
He squirmed. I held him down, gun pressed nice and hard to his jugular vein.
The bastard kept his mouth zipped, so I went on talking. “Getting rid of Callahan turned out to be fairly easy,” I said. “You made sure Callahan’s cellphone disappeared and planted a little meth in his pockets just to muddle up the waters. Even got the perfect suspect to nail—the homophobic neighbor Malcolm Olsen. You forgot the picture, though.”
“W-what picture?”
“The picture that connects Callahan to Zoltek. Let’s assume Zoltek’s wasn’t as stupid as to bring Callahan to his house. He still made a mistake. He left his glasses on the coffee table next to Callahan. Extravagant glasses, the expensive kind. The kind I couldn’t help but notice when I offered my condolences to Zoltek the day you guys interrogated me at Pacific Station. I’m sure the Captain appreciated the gesture, given he was the one who ordered you to shut Henkins up.”
“Oh, come on. All this based on some glasses that anyone could—”
“I blew up the photo, Sakovic, and got a serial number on the frames. Did you know glass frames had serial numbers? Nice feature. Had to make about a dozen phone calls, but I finally found the legitimate owner of the glasses.”
Sakovich screeched. “You can’t—I don’t believe you. It’s private information, you need a warrant for—”
“Zoltek’s glasses are in a photo with Callahan. Callahan gave the photo to a friend when he started fearing for his life. Zoltek fucked Callahan. Maybe you both fucked him, wouldn’t be surprised by that. You both had fun while it lasted, then dumped him when you found out he was HIV-positive. And when Callahan threatened to become a problem, Zoltek ordered you to get rid of the problem.”
“Can’t prove it.” He swallowed. “You’re nuts, Presius. You’re gonna pay for this.”
I held him down at gunpoint and twisted his arm until the collarbone cracked. “I don’t give a fuck, Sakovich. You’re done. Say bye-bye to the world, you don’t deserve to live a minute longer.”
“No,” he cried. “No, please. I’m sorry. I really am, Presius, I swear. What I did was wrong. Now don’t be stupid and let me go. I’ll turn myself in. I promise.”
Now he was talking.
“Did you kill Callahan?”
He hesitated. I cocked the gun. His bladder released completely this time. The smell repulsed me.
“Yes! Yes, I killed Callahan. I strangled him that night. Snuck up from behind and strangled him.”
“What did you do next?”
“What d’you think I did next?”
I clicked my tongue. “Did you look into his eyes, Sakovich? Did you watch him die as he—”
“Shut up! Fuck, Presius, he was a fag. Just another stupid fag who—”
“Who died looking straight into your eyes?”
He groaned, his forehead scrunched in pain. “I couldn’t stare at his face, okay? There was a bottle of drain opener right there next to the trash. I grabbed it and poured it on his face. I—I just couldn’t… I couldn’t stand staring at his face.”
His police badge was tucked in his arm sleeve, together with his cell phone. I yanked the strap off his injured arm, making him roar in pain.
“You don’t deserve an LAPD badge, you bastard.”
“I’m going to turn myself in! I swear! Just let me go and—”
“Not until you tell me where you dumped the firearm you used to kill Henkins.”
“What? I didn’t—”
I slammed his face down and pressed the gun harder against the back of his neck. He whimpered, bits of dead leaves stuck to his lips.
“Fine,” he croaked, and then he told me. He’d sawed the barrel off the gun and then dumped it in a septic tank. The bastard. I thought of Henkins, slouched on her couch, sunken in her failures and her pride; Henkins who’d helped cover up a murder and then regretted it; Henkins who’d falsified evidence but never admitted her own mistakes.
You’ve been too harsh on her, Ulysses.
And now she’s dead.
“Fucking bastard you are, Sakovich,” I said. “She was drunk and unarmed. What kind of vicious snake are you to kill a fellow cop like that?”
His body tensed under mine. The reek of his perspiration peeked, his rage overcame his fear. “The vindictive bitch,” he spat. “She deserved to die.”
I inhaled, pulled the gun away from his neck.
“Finally,” he said. “Now, gimme back—”
He never finished the sentence. I squeezed the trigger and shot him in the head. A single round, straight to the temple. His body jolted. His muscles twitched for a few more seconds and then slackened.
The roar of gunfire ebbed off and all I could hear was my heart, thumping.
A strange calm took over me. I looked down on Sakovich’s body, his nose plastered with dirt, and a trickle of blood wiping down his temple.
“I was going to turn you in, Sakovich,” I said. “But you made one mistake.” I got off his back and snuggled his gun back into his right hand. “Next time show a grain of remorse.”
I slid off the latex gloves and plucked my cell phone out of my arm strap.
“You still there?”
I’d dialed Satish’s number one second before pounding on Sakovich. I had no idea if he’d picked up, no idea if he’d stayed on the line the whole time. I squeezed the phone against my ear, heart thumping in my chest, and only heard static.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“I’m here,” Satish finally replied.
I exhaled. “Did you hear everything?�
��
“I did.”
I breathed heavily, pain coiling around my lower back. “Then my task is done,” I said, and hung up. I left it up to Satish to call the Force Investigation Division and turn me in.
Once a killer, always a killer, I thought, bitterly.
Maybe the shrink was right after all.
I heard the dogs howl in the distance. The sun had finally come out, and the golden light of sunrise twinkled through the leaves and whispered in the breeze.
The piece of scum had killed a fellow cop. He didn’t deserve to live another day. He didn’t deserve to live another hour, another minute.
I didn’t look back. I just left.
THIRTY-SIX
____________
Diane’s breath had the intoxicating aroma of the Barolo I’d served over dinner. A shaft of yellow streetlight sneaked through a crack in the curtains and pooled over her face. She was beautiful, her hair spread over the pillow and her eyes tainted with a note of sadness. I sipped her lips and inhaled her breasts, my hands on a mission to untangle the bra clasp. One by one, I undid the front buttons of her shirt and kissed her skin as I uncovered it, little waves of goose bumps rising and falling along my path.
“You sure you don’t want to go with me?” she whispered.
Traitor of a bra clasp bit my finger. “Where?”
She turned and looked away. “You know where. To Boston. To help me look for a new place.”
It was midnight. Her flight was leaving in six hours.
“I’m not an East Coast kinda guy.”
She sighed and slid a hand down my chest. “What kind of guy are you, Track Presius?”
“The kind that doesn’t like to talk while making love.”
I kissed her and she kissed me back and we stopped talking and made love instead.
We didn’t talk while she made coffee, four hours later, or when she closed her suitcase. We didn’t talk much along the drive to LAX, either. Small talk. The weather, how expensive it was to rent a place in Boston, where she was going to start looking. Cambridge, most likely. I nodded and said nothing. I walked her to the terminal just so I could kiss her one more time.
