by David Putnam
“Let’s move. But don’t go up to Rosecrans; stay down here in the side streets. Keep heading west.”
She took off again driving fifty in a twenty-five. “What’s going on, Bruno?”
I said, “Tell me what happened with Ollie.”
Chelsea took her eyes from the road and looked at me. “I’m not sure I like your tone. What’s going on?”
“Tell me your side of the story.”
She yanked the steering wheel, took us over to the curb, and stopped with her foot on the brake. “Talk to me. My side of the story? What are you trying to say?”
“Ollie’s dead. Gadd stabbed her in the back with an ice pick.”
To give suspects information during an interrogation, to expose your hand, was taboo, but this was Chelsea, not a suspect.
“Ah, Bruno, I’m so sorry.” She reached over and gripped my hand. “I know how much you liked her.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Chelsea pulled away from me. “I lost her. Ollie took off before Wicks and his team came up on her. I tried to follow her, but she knew what she was doing. She did counter surveillance. Right at the end I said screw it and didn’t care if she saw me. And she still lost me. I tried. I really did. I guess I should’ve tried harder. I’m so sorry.”
“Why didn’t you answer all those pages I sent you?”
“What’s with the third degree? What’s eating at you?”
I said nothing.
“Okay,” she said. “I was trying to find her, and by the time I found a phone to call you back, you were already gone. What is this, an interrogation? Do you think I did something wrong?”
“No, I don’t.”
She hesitated a long time staring at me, searching for the truth in my expression.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Where to?”
“To get Gadd.”
She smiled. “You know where he is?”
I waved my hand. “Go on, head to 213th Street and Avalon in Carson.”
She took off as my mind went back over her responses, her reactions to the information I’d given her. Maybe Whitney was right, maybe I was too close to look at this thing objectively.
She didn’t know the way and asked several times for directions. Otherwise, neither of us spoke.
In the dead of night, three o’clock in the morning, nothing moved in the predawn silence.
“Right there. Pull up and stop right there.”
She did, stopping under the deep shadow of a huge tree. She shut off the headlights. “Which one is it?”
I pointed. “That one right there, first floor, third from this end. We should call in for backup.”
“Why? You and I can handle Gadd. What’s with you? Come on, let’s go get this son of a bitch.” She got out and eased her door closed so it clicked shut. I waited and watched her. She bent down, looked in through the driver’s window, and waved for me to follow.
I got out and eased my door closed. I came around to her side and stopped.
She pulled her gun. “Well, come on, big man, what are we waiting for?”
I reached in my back pocket and took out the folded photo of her and Gadd and held it out, just a white folded square.
“What’s that?” The light in her smile went out.
And then I knew for sure.
I tried to hand it to her. She wouldn’t take it. Her eyes turned sad, her shoulders sagged, her voice barely a whisper. “How much do they know?”
I let the folded photo drop to the ground and shook my head. “All of it.”
“Bruno, you don’t know what it was like working in that hellhole. All that boring, mundane bullshit, day after day. I couldn’t take it. I was a rising star out here and working big cases, interesting cases. Cases that mattered, that made a difference. Then they go and banish me for no good reason. I didn’t deserve that. You know what happened, you were there. Do you think I deserved that?” She spoke waving her gun around for emphasis, forgetting her gun safety training. Why not? She’d forgotten the meaning of integrity and honor and truth.
I said nothing and stared at her. Who was this person I was so attracted to? How could I have been so wrong about her? But I hadn’t been wrong. The system ground her up and spit her out. It could do it to anyone. At that moment the system had me torn in three different directions. Even so, I could still see the correct path.
She read my thoughts. She pointed her gun toward the apartment. “They don’t have shit on me if Gadd can’t testify. You understand me, Bruno? We can fix this right here and now. Then we can take a long-deserved vacation.”
I said nothing. A large hole opened up in my chest and grew larger by the second, making it harder to breathe.
“Bruno, Gadd killed Ned.”
The sadness in me shifted to anger. “Don’t you dare bring his name into this.” She’d tried to tarnish his good name, use it as a distraction, an excuse for what she’d done. No way did she know who pulled the trigger, D’Arcy or Gadd. But Gadd had been responsible for the whole mess so it didn’t matter.
She was about to say something else and shut her mouth. Then she said, “Bruno, please? Please, you owe me.”
I froze. All the air left me. I wanted to wilt to the ground. I did owe her. No truer statement had ever been uttered to me. I owed her my life.
I’d been teetering on the fence about what to do with her until she said that. I reached out and took her left hand, pulled her into me, and hugged her, my face buried in her hair. She started to cry. Her whole body shook. She tried to pull away. I held on tight.
“Bruno”—her voice was muffled against my chest—“Come with me. Please, I’m begging you.”
I swallowed the large lump that was growing in my throat. “I don’t think I could take the cold where you’re going.”
“I’m not going to prison. I won’t go.” Her body convulsed as she sobbed. “Bruno?” With her right hand she stuck her gun in my ribs hard enough to hurt.
I closed my eyes and thought of Olivia.
“Bruno?” she said a little louder.
I held on tight and said, “Run. That’s all you got left. Run.” I let her go.
She took a step back, wiped tears from her cheeks and nose. “Okay. Okay. But you have to promise me you won’t be the one to come after me. I couldn’t take it if you showed up one day and—”
“Chelsea, run.”
She nodded, holstered her gun. She got in her car, started it up, and took off without turning on the headlights.
I watched her go until she turned a corner at the first block. Once she was out of sight, I questioned whether I’d made the right choice.
I drew my gun and went after Gadd.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
THE SEMI-DERELICT APARTMENT complex, the Catalina Arms, looked one step away from condemnation. At least a third of the windows sported plywood with gang graffiti. Some of the doors stood ajar, those apartments dark and vacant, a perfect hidey-hole for a slimy crook of Gadd’s ilk. The woman from the Harbor Town bar Gadd picked up and brought back there had looked better heeled than having been reduced to living in a hovel like the Catalina. Splotches in the sea-green stucco made the building look diseased.
A sliver of dim yellow light peeked out from the crack in the curtains of number 17. I didn’t dare stick my nose up to the window to see inside for fear of getting it shot off. I carefully put my hand on the doorknob and turned. It wasn’t locked. I pushed the door open an inch and stopped just before it cracked open to the light inside. I stepped back out of the “window of death,” my gun up and pointed. With my foot I slowly eased the door open, holding my breath, waiting for the gunfire.
I smelled burnt gunpowder.
The door continued to open more and more, exposing the small living room a little at a time: a large chair, an end table, a love seat, and a long-necked lamp with a cheap shade, the only light for the entire apartment. Too little light that cast too many shadows. On the floor next to the
lamp lay a .380 automatic pistol with the slide locked open, which meant it was empty.
With the door open at the halfway point, I froze. Over on the couch sat Leroy Gadd. I’d recognize him anywhere. He looked right at me, his eyes tented, half-open. He wore pants and a slingshot tee shirt. A bloody Kotex taped to his shoulder wept blood down his chest.
He held a blue-steel .38 pistol in his hand, loose, about to drop to the floor. I’d waited too many years for this. Since that night I’d seen him in the dark alley, I’d dreamt and hoped that I’d catch him with a gun in his hand. And here he sat, my dream come true.
I pointed my gun and stepped inside. “Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s Department. Drop it. Drop it now, Gadd.”
His hand didn’t move. A grin crept across his ugly face, exposing bloody white teeth.
“I give up, Deputy Dog. Call me an ambulance. I need to get ta hospital. I’m bad hurt.” He coughed; a little blood rolled out of the corner of his mouth. “That dumb fat bitch went and stabbed me with an ice pick when I wasn’t lookin’.”
I moved in closer, my total focus on him and that gun. If it moved an inch, I’d gun him. Just move it an inch. Come on, move it.
Wicks’ voice rose up in my ear. “You pussy, shoot. Shoot. There aren’t any witnesses. This is the man who killed your best friend, Ned. Bruno, shoot him. He’s got a gun in his hand. Shoot. Give him a little bit of that blood and bone.”
“Hey, I know you,” Gadd said. “Where do I know you from?”
“I said drop the gun. Do it now.”
He let it slip from his fingers and plop on the floor. My breath caught. He’d gone and done it. I couldn’t shoot him, not now. No matter how much I wanted to, I just couldn’t do it in cold blood.
“It ain’t loaded anyway. Crazy old peckerwood came at me with a gun that wasn’t loaded. You believe that shit? I don’t. Seems to me like he wanted to die.”
“Put your hands up.”
“Take it easy, my brother, I said I give up. Get your black ass over ta that phone on the wall and call me an ambulance. Big man, you ain’t gonna shoot me, I kin see it in your eyes. You ain’t got the balls for it. Now call me that ambulance.” He put his hand to his side, then pulled it away to show a slime of wet blood. “Bitch stuck me good.”
I moved over, went down on one knee, and recovered the .38 revolver, one with a worn black rubber grip. I took my eyes off Gadd for a quick second and looked at the gun in my hand. I thought I recognized it but couldn’t place where, not right at that moment anyway. I popped open the cylinder. Empty just like he said. Not even any empty shells. Then it locked in my brain. I’d held that same gun and it wasn’t all that long ago. It was … it was in the house where Ned had been shot and killed.
I jumped back, my head whipping around.
Over by the large chair, and half-concealed by the love seat, lay a body facedown.
“Nooo. You son of a bitch, nooo.” I took the two long steps over to Sergeant Coffman. I eased him over onto his back. His arm flopped over, exposing his faded Marine Corps tattoo.
Tears filled my eyes and I choked on the lump that rose up in my throat. “Why did you come here all alone, old man? Why?”
Multiple bullet holes covered the front of his shirt without much blood. His mouth hung open. His eyes stared back at me as if trying to impart the obvious truth.
“Tolt ya,” Gadd said, “that crazy ol’ bastard came at me with a gun with no bullets in it. It’s still self-defense, loaded or not. I know that much. You cain’t hang that one on me, no sir, you cain’t.”
I screamed, turned, and ran to the couch. I put my knee in his chest and pistol-whipped him again and again.
He tried to put his hands up to fend me off, but he was too weak. “Hey, hey, nigga, stop. Stop.”
I pulled back and stuck my gun in his mouth. “Shut up. You hear me? Shut up or I swear to God I’ll pull this trigger.”
We were both breathing hard. He didn’t move. The moment hung long and fat. The rage gradually subsided. I pulled my gun out of his mouth. He stared at me with crazed eyes filled with fear. He knew how close I’d come to pulling the trigger.
I didn’t know what to do. I was torn. I needed to call it in, have dispatch send a couple of patrol cars to take over the scene.
But now Gadd had shot my patrol sergeant. Killed him just like he did Ned. At what point did justice step in and right those wrongs?
Gadd saw my weakness as it consumed me. I couldn’t shoot him in cold blood, or I already would have. That terrible, ugly grin worked its way across his face. He raised his hand and flipped me off.
I nodded. “Oh, is that right?”
He grinned and said nothing. I went to the phone on the wall and dialed.
* * *
Less than an hour later I stood next to Coffman’s truck in the rear parking lot of the defunct Sears on Long Beach Boulevard in Lynwood as two sets of headlights pulled in and panned across me. I held up my empty hands. The headlights approached to within twenty feet and stopped. I picked up the tails of my shirt to expose my waistband and slowly turned all the way around.
The four doors on both cars opened at the same time. The headlights kept me from seeing them. I walked closer.
“Stop,” the voice said.
I held up my arm to shield my eyes. “Turn off the lights.”
The lights went off. Shadows danced in my vision as my eyes adjusted.
Out of the four gang members, three held guns on me. The leader said, “Baldy here says you’re a cop. He recognizes you. Says you beat his ass over some rock.”
“If I beat his ass it was because he had it coming. Ask him if that isn’t true.”
“So, you are a cop?”
“That’s right. Are you Scab?”
“Depends, is this some kinda weird setup? You trying to entrap me?”
“No.”
“Prove it.”
I turned to walk back to the truck.
“Hold it.”
I froze, held up my hands. “You’re just going to have to trust me.” My eyes adjusted to the dark. I continued to the truck and reached for the tarp.
“Hold it.” I froze again.
“Baldy, check it.”
One of them moved over and looked in the truck bed. “He’s got some mayate in here all taped up.”
Scab came over and peered in. “Who is it?”
“It’s the guy who killed your sister and your two nephews four years ago.” In the truck bed, Gadd tried to scream through the duct tape. It came out more of a moan.
Scab’s eyes narrowed and turned hard. He said, “How do you know he did it?”
“Because that night four years ago I saw him come out into the alley from behind your sister’s house. I’ve been looking for him ever since.”
His mouth shifted to a straight line and his jaw muscle knotted. “You swear ta God this ain’t some kinda trick?”
“You have my word. Ask Baldy if my word on the street is good.”
Baldy nodded.
Scab asked, “Why are you doing this? What do you want? You want the hundred thou I put out on the street for this puto? Is that it?”
“I want nothing in return.”
He stepped forward and offered his hand. “Then I will owe you a great debt.”
I took his hand and shook. He nodded to his men. They jumped in the back of the truck, lifted Gadd out, moaning and struggling, and dragged him over to their cars. The whole time Scab stared at me. Once loaded, they mounted their cars and drove off into the coming dawn.
CHAPTER SIXTY
THREE DAYS LATER, on the way to Ned’s funeral, I steered the black-and-white patrol car in the wrong direction. I headed south deeper into the ghetto rather than east into Downey to the church and cemetery where they would lay my friend to rest. I’d allowed plenty of time to get there. I wore my best class-A uniform, the creases razor sharp, the leather on my Sam Brown and shoes polished to a bright sheen. The star on my chest g
leamed and winked when it caught the light.
Clouds filled the sky, and for the first time in two years the dry air smelled of ozone. Off in the distance the summer storm let loose with a peal of thunder.
The swelling in my face had started to go down, but there still remained a faint throb that matched my heartbeat. A constant reminder of the fight with JB in my front yard and of what had happened at 11431 Willowbrook and also on Avalon Avenue.
I pulled to the curb and parked in front of the shop. I got out and looked around. Somehow this place where I’d grown up, South Central Los Angeles, looked different now. I opened the glass door painted over in black and, as I entered, immediately started unbuttoning my uniform shirt. Jacko Marx, the shop owner, a skinny guy with a ponytail and pierced ear and acne-cratered face, locked the door behind me. I’d called ahead, told him I didn’t want anyone else present, that this was deeply personal. He’d said he understood.
He went over to the chair mounted in the floor and stood ready. I carefully took my uniform shirt off, put it on a hanger, and hung it on the coat tree. Without a word, I sat down in the chair in front of Jacko.
He said, “You sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
“Plain, no frills? Right? That’s what you want?”
“Yes,” I said. “All I want are the letters ‘BMF.’”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One of the most emotional times in my career had nothing to do with the death and mayhem I witnessed while working the street. All the murder victims, the abused children, the carnage left in the wake of car accidents, all of these life-changing incidents that created unwanted memories and nightmares for everyone involved, their lives ruined forever. No, the most emotional incident in my career came in the form of a phone call late one night, a phone call from a good friend who told me “Ned” had been killed during the service of a search warrant. Shot by a fifteen-year-old kid, a rock coke dealer. Ned was struck in the vest by the first bullet, which spun him around; he took the second bullet to the back of the head. I don’t mention Ned’s real name in this Author’s Note, because I in no way want to exploit his death.
