The Reckless

by David Putnam

  I put my department issue four-inch model 66 .357 Magnum in a pancake holster on my hip and a second gun, a model 60 .38 caliber Chief, in my waistband, both of them under the shirt and out of view.

  In the living room, Ned’s arm hung off the couch as he continued to snore. I put the coffee on just as Mrs. Espinoza knocked at the door. Ned still hadn’t stirred.

  Dad came from the back of the house wearing his postal uniform, carrying Beth and Olivia, one under each arm. He set them down. Olivia ran right to Mrs. Espinoza and jumped up into her arms. Mrs. Espinoza said, “Hola, mija.”

  “Ola, Mamie.”

  I wished Olivia had run to me and jumped in my arms. I promised myself to cut back on my time on the job, to be home more often.

  Beth saw her dad on the couch, let out a little yelp, and ran to him. She patted his face with both her hands. “Papa. Papa.” He woke, sat up, and smiled hugely. “Well, hello there. How’s my little girl?” He stood, scooped her up, swung her around, and gave her a big hug.

  I poured two cups of coffee and handed him one. “You better get yourself a shower. We’re going to be rollin’ out soon.”

  “Why you dressed like that? You goin’ trick-or-treatin’?”

  I ignored him and kissed Olivia on the cheek. She stuck her arms out. It made me smile and warmed my heart. I took her from Mrs. Espinoza and bounced her a little. Ned handed Beth to Mrs. Espinoza. Olivia leaned out to her, so I handed my daughter back.

  I walked to the phone and dialed a number from memory, a friend from school, who now worked at the county department of welfare.

  Ned came over sipping his coffee. “Who are you calling at seven thirty in the morning?”

  “Angie. She works … yes, hello, is Angie there? Yes, I’ll hold, thank you.” I put my hand over the phone. “You better jump in the shower.”

  He nodded and sipped his coffee, his hair in disarray, his face still heavy with sleep.

  “Angie, it’s me, Bruno. Can you run a name for me, please? Yeah, yeah, I’ll owe you another dinner. Her name’s Bea Holcomb. She’s a BFA about twenty-three or twenty-four. She used to reside on 115th Street. Yes, I’ll hold, thanks.”

  Ned hadn’t moved. “Ned, get going.”

  Angie came back on the phone. I said, “Okay, thanks,” and hung up.

  “Well?” Ned asked.

  “That was a no-go.” I hadn’t realized how much I wanted that to work.

  Ned said, “You’ve used that before, going through welfare?”

  “Yeah, they always have the most recent address because the social workers monitor the home and the people on the dole want their checks. Man, I really wanted that to come out differently.”

  “Was that LA welfare?”

  “Yes it was.” His question gave me an idea. Dad had said Bea might have moved to Moreno Valley or Hemet. I picked up the phone and dialed the same number. “Angie, it’s me again. Hey, do you have a number for a contact who I can call to run that name through San Bernardino and Riverside Counties? Uh-huh. Yeah, that’d be great. Thank you.” I hung up. “She’s going to call them and then call me back. You better get in the shower. I’m not kidding here, Ned.”

  “We don’t even know if this is the Bogart Bandit’s girlfriend,” he said. “Your snitch only told you it might be, right?”

  “Her name’s Ollie—don’t call her a snitch.”

  The phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello?” I grabbed a pencil and started writing.

   CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  NED STOOD CLOSE enough to read what I wrote, and whispered, “I’ll be a son of a bitch.”

  I elbowed him for his language in front of the children.

  “Thank you,” I said into the phone. “Yes, and if this works out, I’ll owe you ten dinners. No, I’m absolutely serious. Thanks again, Angie.”

  I tore the paper off the pad. “Come on, let’s roll.”

  “What about my shower?”

  “Too bad. How many times did I warn you, huh? If you’re going with me, we’re rollin’ right now.” I went over and kissed Olivia good-bye. Ned kissed Beth and followed me to the door. I stopped. “Really? You’re not going to shower?”

  “You just said you weren’t going to wait. I don’t care if I smell me because it’s just me. I can’t tell the difference. You’re the one who’s going to suffer all day.”

  “Okay, hurry, go.”

  “You’ll wait?”

  “Yeah, I’ll wait.”

  He rushed off to the bathroom, yelling over his shoulder. “You better be out here when I get done.”

  Twenty minutes later, we turned onto Century Boulevard, headed east to the freeway, Ned’s hair still dripping.

  “It’s opposite traffic,” I said, “so we should get there by ten or so.”

  Ned said, “Did you call that dickhead Jim Turner, our brave and wondrous liaison with the FBI?”

  “No, did you?”

  “No, I was in the shower. You call Chelsea, that sexy girlfriend of yours, to brief her?”

  “No. And she’s not my girlfriend, so knock it off. We’ll call them if and when we get a viable lead.”

  Ned clapped his hands together. “Hot damn. This is going to be great.”

  “Don’t jinx it. This is still a long shot.”

  “No it’s not—not when I’m riding shotgun with the great Bruno the Bad Boy Johnson.”

  “There. You just went and did it. You jinxed this whole thing.”

  The drive to San Bernardino took an hour and a half. Ned had the Thomas Guide open on his lap navigating, feeding me directions. But I knew the way. In the past, the team had chased other violent offenders back to San Bernardino. The farther south we drove, the drier the environment became. Not much remained green. Shrubs and ground cover along the sides of the I-10 freeway burned brown when the state turned off the water, to conserve. The bright summer sun rose higher in the sky washing out most of the blue with blending variances of yellows and whites. Nine thirty in the morning and the air-conditioning was working hard to keep us cool.

  I exited at Waterman and took it north. After a few miles, I set up to make a right turn onto Third Avenue.

  “Hey, hey, wait. Not here,” Ned said. “Keep going north, to Baseline, and turn left.”

  “We need to make notification that we’re working in San Bernardino’s area.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously. What if we knock on the door of this apartment, and it goes to guns. We just violated our department policy for failure to notify the agency with jurisdiction. Then, when the cops respond to shots fired, they don’t know we’re out here capering. When they roll up, they won’t know us from Adam, and they might shoot us.”

  “A white guy and a black guy in an all-black area. I think they’ll figure it out.”

  “We’re making notification.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, someone has to be the adult in this relationship.”

  Two long blocks from Waterman on Third, I turned into the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department parking lot and dumped the Ranger in a visitor’s slot.

  We went in and approached the front desk. Ned grabbed my arm and moved ahead a little as he reached into his back pocket. He pulled his ID and showed it to the young woman wearing a white blouse with sheriff’s emblems. “Deputy US Marshals.” Ned smiled and turned to me. “I always wanted to say that.”

  “Can I help you?” the clerk asked.

  I showed her my sheriff’s flat badge. “Yes, thank you. Don’t mind him, he’s a twit.”

  She smiled.

  “Yes, can I please speak with your detective sergeant?”

  “Just one moment, please.” She dialed.

  Ned whispered, “Man, that smile of hers made me want to—”

  I elbowed him. He grunted. “Hey.”

  “We’re guests.”

  “I was just gonna say, what a difference. Not like the reception we get at the FBI office.”<
br />
  “No you weren’t. You were going to say something vulgar.”

  He smiled. “Okay, I was.”

  The cute clerk hung up. “He’ll be right out.”

  The door to the side opened. Out stepped a man wearing a green polo shirt with a bright yellow sheriff’s star embroidered over the breast, and black utility pants. He wore a gun in a black pancake holster on his hip. He extended his hand. “Sergeant Samuelson.”

  I shook. “Detective Bruno Johnson, and this is Detective Ned Kiefer. We’re with LASD’s violent crimes team.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I just wanted to make notification that we’re going to be in your area tracking a fugitive.”

  “Great. What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing,” Ned said. “We got this.”

  “Could you spare a couple of guys to go with us, for communications and backup?”

  “We have our own operation going—a multiple jurisdiction, multiple search warrant service—and I’m kind of tight on manpower right this minute. Can this wait a couple of hours, maybe three?”

  “No problem, we can handle this,” Ned said again.

  “This guy we’re after,” I said, “he’s a pretty heavy dude, a bank robber, who’s been evading law enforcement for two years.”

  Samuelson hesitated. “Right. I understand. I can give you two guys but—” He hesitated again, and looked from side to side. “Ah, they’re really great guys, good street cops, but they’re a little green. They’re brand-new detectives.”

  “No problem, we can use them.”

  “Be right back.”

  The clerk buzzed the door. He went back the way he came.

  “Bruno, I got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Why? You were green and new once.”

  “But like you said, this is a heavyweight we’re going after.”

  “He said they were great street cops. I’ll take a great street cop over a veteran detective any day.”

  “You got a point there.”

  The door opened and out stepped two deputies, both wearing green polo shirts and black utilities.

  “You the detectives from LA? My name’s Tony, and this is my partner, Mike.”

  We shook. “My name’s Bruno, and this is Ned. Do you two have street clothes you can change into? We don’t want this guy to see us coming.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Great. We’ll meet you out front in the parking lot.”

  Ten minutes later, a white Toyota Camry drove around the side and stopped. Tony and Mike got out wearing denim and long-sleeve work shirts. They looked like construction workers.

  I put the Thomas Guide on the hood of their car. “We’re going to an address right here looking for a girl named Bea Holcomb.”

  Tony said, “Sergeant told us you were looking for a badass bank robber. Is this girl a bank robber?”

  “No. We think it might be the bank robber’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh, I gotcha. Good idea.”

  Ned put the Bogart Bandit file on the hood and opened it. “We’re looking for this guy. He’s listed as armed and dangerous and has a no-bail warrant out for him for multiple bank robberies.”

  Tony said, “Now we’re talking.” He picked up the file and looked closer at the photo. Tony looked younger than Mike by almost ten years. Mike didn’t say much.

  Mike said, “What do you want from us?”

  “You guys have radios?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Then because of the communication issue, we’re going to split up. Tony will come with me.”

  Ned shot me the stink-eye.

  “And, Ned, you ride with Mike in their car.” I pointed to the map. “We’ll pull up and park right here and walk in.”

  Tony said, “Sound’s great, let’s roll.”

  I smiled at Ned, who gave back a forced grin.

   CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  TONY SAT IN the passenger seat, his body humming with excitement. “Your department issues you guys trucks to drive?”

  “No, this is my truck.” I didn’t want to tell him how cheap the SO was when it came to cars. His question also made me decide to pick up the cars the FBI had offered us, as soon as we finished out the day. There wasn’t any reason to drive our own vehicles.

  Tony said, “That getup you got on is really cool. I bet you can go anywhere wearing that. I’m going to ask my sergeant if I can do the same thing.”

  I didn’t want to tell him to wait until he had some time under his belt as a detective. If you penetrated too far, too fast undercover and didn’t know how to handle yourself when you got there, it was usually too late, and the street ate you.

  I only nodded and looked up in the rearview. In the car right behind us, Ned and Mike sat in the white Camry, neither of them speaking. Mike stayed right on my butt, giving me the Blue Angel treatment: a patrolman kind of move. I turned right onto Waterman, still headed north. I asked, “So how long have you been with the Sheriff’s Department?”

  “Five years.”

  “You made detective pretty quick, then.”

  “Little better than average for time in grade. How about you?”

  “Been with the department about five years, two with the violent crimes team.”

  “Very nice. I’d give my left nut to work a team like that.” He pointed. “Your turn’s coming up right here, make a left.”

  I knew the route having memorized it from the map.

  Tony said, “I know this area, and if it’s the apartment complex I’m thinking of, it’s a derelict, with no one living in it.”

  “Ah man, you could’ve said something earlier … no, sorry, I’m wrong. We need to check it either way.”

  “Couple of months back, might’ve been three or four, I went there on a call for service, a 415 domestic. The guy there said most of the apartments were vacant. The owner just didn’t rent them out again after somebody moved out. He wants to renovate so he can charge more. Like I said, though, that was months back. Here. Take a left right here, on Wall. That’s it, about halfway down there, on the right, that big white and light blue two-story apartment.”

  I pulled to the curb. “We’ll walk in from here.”

  “All right by me.”

  We got out. Ned and Mike parked behind us. Mike reached back in and pulled out a shotgun. He racked one in the chamber and held it down by his leg to be less conspicuous. On the sidewalk, I said to Mike, “That’s the target location, and it’s a two-story. The apartment we’re looking for is number 213. It’ll be one of those on that top row. Since you have the gauge, you stay outside and watch the windows, in case our boy, if he’s in there, decides to jump.”

  Mike nodded, and with his free hand, took his aviator sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on as we continued to move.

  A few pedestrians walked on the sidewalks on both sides of the street, and watched us. A couple of cars drove by and slowed to peep the intruders in their neighborhood.

  Two houses away, a machinelike noise echoed off the neighborhood house fronts, and a white chalky powder billowed into the air over our target apartment building.

  We left the sidewalk and stayed on the cracked concrete walk leading to the complex. Without a word, I looked at Mike and pointed to the long row of apartments on the second story. He nodded and took cover by a tree in the parkway.

  We had to move fast now. People would be talking and passing the word. A white guy—Mike, standing by a tree on the street with a blower—couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than the law come-a-knockin’.

  The noise grew louder as we entered the quad area of the semi-defunct Sycamore Arms Apartments. Three painters, dressed in white and wearing industrial-grade breathing masks, used a sandblaster to take the paint off the stucco walls inside the quad. The dust obscured everything, the same as a light fog. Chain-link fencing surrounded a pool now filled with dirt and weeds tangled around an overturned kid’s tricycle. The g
rit and dust immediately invaded my nose and mouth and lungs. I suppressed a cough and headed for the exterior steps that led up to the cantilevered walkway on the second floor. A door opened next to us and out stepped a black gang member tattooed and dressed in blue, representing the Crips. He didn’t look surprised. He looked angry.

  Ned automatically grabbed him, put him on the wall, and patted him down. We couldn’t leave anyone on our flank. Ned knew that and hung back. Tony stayed with me as we ascended the stairs. Two more gang members came out of the apartment. Ned took a step back, hand on his gun in his holster, and pointed for them to grab the wall. He waved for us to keep going.

  Halfway up the steps, I leaned out to look at the cantilevered walkway above us. A short male, black with a white slingshot tee shirt, black pants, and bare feet, stood outside an apartment farther down the long row of doors. The cord from an electric shaver snaked inside, and he continued shaving his gleaming and semibald pate.

  His stature matched the Bogart Bandit’s description. Sort of. The same height anyway, but if it was him, he’d put on a few pounds, maybe twenty or thirty. He looked a lot rounder, fleshier than in his photo. His whole body was chubby, including his face. I wished I could see his chest, to confirm the tattoo of a woman’s naked breasts. My heart rate accelerated until it pulsed in my throat. I continued to move toward him, concealing my excitement, as I fought the urge to reach under my shirt, draw my weapon, and start yelling.

  We made it up the stairs. I slowed and whispered to Tony, “Let me take the lead, you just back my play.”

  “You got it, chief.”

  The guy shaving his head kept his back to us, unaware of our presence. I hoped he stayed that way until we got right up on him. Ten apartments to go.

  Seven.

  Five.

  He must’ve sensed something. His shoulders stiffened, and he stopped shaving. If this really was Deforest, he’d been hunted hard and heavy for two years, and his instincts had to be honed to a fine edge. He slowly turned, saw us, and smiled. He looked back to see how far he stood from the open apartment door, where, if he was the Bogart Bandit, he’d have his gun stashed, probably several.

  I kept walking at the same speed, unperturbed, and nodded to him.