by Randy Alcorn
The room erupted in applause. It startled Clarence. He didn’t remember the last time he’d felt his voice had been so well received.
Rod Houck took the mike again. “Most of you know a group of us have been working on Neighborhood Watch Patrols. You’ve seen these orange hats, right?” He put one on his head. “Well, to get one of these cool hats, all you have to do is sign up. We go in groups of five. We just carry flashlights and walk around. Hang around the drug dealers and the hookers, drive away business just by being there. We write down license numbers of the johns and drug buyers. Sometimes we take pictures. We see people casin’ out a house or hangin’ in the shadows, we scare ’em off. We tell the young kids to get home before we call their parents.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” a voice asked from the back.
“How much more dangerous can it get?” Rod asked. “Actually with five of us in a group we haven’t gotten pushed around or shot at once yet. I heard about this woman down in L.A., South Central. She’s got one block; they call it Mama’s Block. She gets out there with a broom in the morning. She sweeps stuff up, tosses the garbage, harasses the drug dealers. She has this slogan—‘Not on this block.’ It’s working. And we can do it here, block by block.”
This went on for another hour. Afterward people stood and talked and shared their vision with fervor and excitement.
When Clarence escorted Geneva and Daddy onto the street, he saw in the moonlight leafless trees, too few of them—stark, barren, lifeless. This part of the city wasn’t upbeat yuppie flower boutiques and espresso bars, but cold merciless pavement. Under the streetlights, the asphalt looked bleak, gray, and colorless, like hardened layers of addiction, abandoned enterprise, crime, and hopelessness.
As Clarence walked, still hearing the voices spreading out from the church back into the neighborhoods, block by block, he stopped and pointed out to Geneva and Obadiah the oddest thing with his flashlight, right there on the side of the street First, one strand of grass, then another, then a few inches away a whole patch of grass, living and vibrant, growing up right through the asphalt, breaking it apart, threatening to take over. The patch of grass grew stronger the more territory it claimed, becoming more entrenched by the day. How could these living blades of grass grow up through what appeared an impenetrable surface in an inner-city winter? Yet here they were, doing exactly that.
Before meeting with Ollie, Clarence popped two Advils. He hadn’t slept again. The boy in Cabrini Green wouldn’t let him sleep.
“Your evidence gathering was a nice piece of work,” Ollie said to Clarence, “for a journalist.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“The DNA in the envelope’s saliva matches perfectly the DNA in the tissues you gave me. And the gum to boot.”
“Carson Gray?”
“Yep. He’s our man. Of course, Norcoast is probably in on it too, but the trail leads right to Gray at least. He made the payoffs. Probably didn’t hand deliver them, of course. Too smart for that. Bet he never thought licking an envelope would nail him.”
“So what happens now?” Clarence asked.
“Well, unfortunately we can’t hang him just for sticking gum under his desk. There’s no law against being tacky or Gray would have been arrested years ago. All we can prove is that a girl who died of a drug overdose had some money she kept in an envelope that had once been licked by Carson Gray. It makes a connection, it gives us a little leverage, but it doesn’t give us enough for a murder charge, not even close. But at least it tells us we should put the bead on Gray.”
“So,” Clarence said, “Carson Gray was behind Gracie’s attempt to frame me. That fits with what Shadow said.”
“On Gracie, yeah, but what about Leesa? Don’t forget the fax was on Norcoast’s computer. Why wouldn’t Gray use his own computer? But if Shadow’s telling the truth, Gray called for the hit on Gracie. If he did that, he was capable of calling the hit on Leesa that killed Dani and Felicia. In any case, Carson Gray stinks more than this lousy sweatshirt and these disgusting tissues.” He handed Clarence a very worn and gamey brown paper bag. “I think it’s time we paid a visit to Reggie Norcoast.”
“Hello, Clarence…Detective Chandler.” Norcoast smiled warmly, extending his hand to Clarence. “I’m so glad you’ve been cleared.” He looked uneasy when Clarence didn’t offer his hand in return.
“Councilman,” Ollie said, “I’ll get right to the point. What if I told you Leesa Fletcher died of a drug overdose?”
“Leesa? But…I thought it was heart failure. She had a disease, didn’t she?”
“It was heart failure all right. Take enough cocaine and any heart will fail.”
Ollie and Clarence both studied Norcoast, trying to detect if this was old news to him.
“Something else you should be aware of, Councilman. We know you had sex with her.”
Norcoast sat quietly, measuring his response. “That’s not true. And you can’t prove anything.”
“What if I told you Leesa kept a diary?” Ollie asked. “And that it says you had sex with her?”
Clarence stared at the nervous twitch of Norcoast’s left cheek.
“There must be some mistake. I mean, she was my daughter’s friend, close to our family. Maybe she was just using her imagination. Adolescent girls do that sometimes, you know.” Norcoast wiped away a bead of sweat.
“What if I told you,” Ollie said, “that when she died she was carrying a baby?”
Norcoast flushed, his facial expressions wavering between anger and fear. He said nothing.
“And what if I told you,” Ollie said, “that you were the father?”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Norcoast said.
“Apparently you aren’t aware, Councilman, that when an autopsy is done and the woman is pregnant, they always do a DNA test on the baby in case paternity becomes an issue, for instance as a homicide motive. So we have the baby’s DNA. All you have to do is submit to DNA testing and you can prove the child wasn’t yours. It’s that simple. What do you say, Mr. Norcoast? We can all go down together to the lab, and you can give the blood sample so you can clear your name on the spot. Or I can even have someone come here right now and take the sample. That way we’ll know conclusively if there’s a DNA match. How about I just make a call and order a medical tech?” He reached for the phone on Norcoast’s desk. The councilman put his hand on the phone, holding it down.
“No. I need to talk to my attorney.”
“All right, you do that,” Ollie said. “But I’ve got some other things we need to discuss. Like the fax you sent to Matthew Harper.”
“Harper? What fax?”
“This one.” Ollie handed him the fax. Norcoast looked at the words: “Harper: Counting on you to take care of the job. Make it soon.”
“What job?” Norcoast asked.
“We thought you might know,” Ollie said, “since you’re the one who sent the fax.”
“Me? When? I don’t remember sending a fax like that, to Harper or anyone else. If I did…I don’t remember.”
“It was composed on your computer and sent to Harper from your fax machine on August 29.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s my business to know things,” Ollie said. “Four days after you told Harper to take care of the job, two Los Angeles gang members he hired came up to murder Leesa Fletcher. But instead of hitting her house, on 920 North Jack Street, they hit Dani Abernathy Rawls’s place on 920 Jackson Street.”
“What are you saying, detective? You can’t possibly be accusing me of attempted murder.”
“Not attempted murder, Councilman,” Ollie said. “Murder.”
“This is outrageous,” Norcoast said. “It’s not true. You can’t prove anything. It just didn’t happen. Please…do you know what a false accusation like this could do to my reputation?”
Ollie and Clarence looked at each other. “Yeah,” Ollie said. “I’d say we both have a pretty good idea what false accusation
s can do to reputations. Now I don’t know how much of what you’re telling us is true, Councilman—probably not much—but your relationship with Leesa is enough to end your career. So you might want to consider cooperating with us. We have proof Carson Gray made payoffs to people for dirty tricks, including Gracie Miller, who set up Clarence. And we can also link him to Gracie’s murder.”
“Carson? I don’t believe it. He’s tough, sure, but he’d never do anything like that. And he’d certainly never put me at risk. I trust him. He’s too loyal. No way. I’m going to talk to our attorney.”
“Good idea,” Ollie said. “But you might consider getting a different attorney than Mr. Gray’s. And tell both of them to cancel their vacation plans. They’re going to be real busy.”
“I didn’t know Leesa kept a diary,” Clarence said to Ollie as they walked out the door.
“She didn’t,” Ollie said.
“But you told Norcoast—”
“You weren’t listening. I never said she kept a diary.”
“And what about the DNA? Can you really prove whether Norcoast was the father? How come you never mentioned that? I didn’t know they ran a DNA test on the unborn child.”
“They didn’t. I never said they did. I said, Apparently you’re not aware’ they do. Well, the reason he’s probably not aware of them doing a DNA test on unborn babies is because, unless the death is suspect, they don’t. But none of that really matters. Because now we don’t need a DNA test, do we?”
Clarence went to bed that night, telling himself he finally had reason to sleep through the night. But being cleared of the charges, seeing the investigation progress, experiencing the encouragement of the church service and the community meeting—none of it was enough. None of it brought back Dani and Felicia. None of it brought back his tarnished reputation. None of it gave him confidence that justice would ever be meted out to the killers. Norcoast and Gray and Harper, and maybe the shooters too, would be protected by layers of lawyers having civil discussions and making backroom deals. He couldn’t stand the idea. His thirst for justice was becoming insatiable. He felt little hope justice would ever be satisfied by a corrupt and incompetent legal system.
Ollie flew into LAX four hours after getting the call that LAPD had found a Nine Deuce Hoover named Spider who currently drove a tricked-out blue Mercedes.
When he arrived at his old precinct, LAPD Lieutenant Tucker escorted Ollie into a dark, empty observation room with a view through a two-way mirror into a holding room. Ollie studied the young man seated alone in the room. He appeared to be in his early twenties. He wore a black Raiders jacket. Hanging out from under it was a knit shirt buttoned to the top, draping down a foot over his creased Levi’s. He wore Air Jordans with Crip-blue shoelaces, unlaced and dangling. His hair had a fresh fade cut, a highly styled flattop with geometric designs etched into the sides.
“That’s Spider,” Lieutenant Tucker said. “More a.k.a.s than you can shake a stick at, but the fingerprints tell us the real name’s Earl Banks. Here’s his rap sheet.”
Ollie looked over both pages and whistled. “What’s he doing walkin’ the streets? Sorry,” Ollie said, seeing the pained look in the lieutenant’s eyes. “I know I’m asking the wrong guy. I really appreciate your cooperation.”
“We’re on the same team, detective. I’d do this for you anyway, but the possibility you could link us to the cop killer who stole the weapon makes me feel even more hospitable.” He gestured at the window. “He’s all yours. Let me know if we can help. Think I’ll stay and watch you work awhile.”
“No problem.” Ollie smiled, welcoming the chance to perform for an audience. He walked out in the hallway and down to the holding room. He stepped in and made himself at home in the chair across the table from the contemptuous gaze of Spider.
“Hey, Spider, what’s happening?”
Spider wasn’t talking.
“How’s the Mercedes runnin’? Like it better than that dumpy old Lexus you traded in?”
No response.
“I’m down here from Oregon just to see you, Earl. Nice part of the country, Oregon, isn’t it?”
“Never been there.”
“Really? Never stolen a license plate from Woodburn? Never hung out at a Taco Bell on Martin Luther King? Never met with Gangster Cool of the Portland Rollin’ 60s? Never wear a red sweatshirt so you’d look like a Blood instead of a Crip? Never pulled over for speeding by a cop in Southern Oregon on your way down to Sacramento where you got your Mercedes?”
“Never.”
“What’s with the false IDs, Spider? Robert Rose and Jerome Rice? You and your buddy assumed the identities of dead guys. How come?”
Spider shrugged.
“We know where you were midnight September 2—920 Jackson Street. You thought it was Jack Street, didn’t you? Well the sign had been graffitied, and you got the wrong street. You shot the wrong people. You killed an innocent woman and a five-year-old girl. Nobody’s happy with you, Spider. I think they’re all turning on you. You shot up a Crip family. Took all that money from the guy that hired you, but you wasted the wrong people.”
Spider stared at him blankly.
“What if I told you we found the license plate you stole, the one you tossed over to the side of the road near Salem?”
Nothing.
“What if I told you your fingerprints are on that license plate?” Spider’s eyes darted.
“Or that your prints are on a disassembled part of the murder weapon we found?”
Ollie studied his eyes, looking for uncertainty. He thought he saw some.
“Tell you what, Spider. Let me get you a soda or something. Does a Pepsi sound good?”
Spider nodded, looking at Ollie with surprise, as if he wasn’t used to this kind of treatment. Ollie went to the door and called out to the hallway “Hey, bring Earl a Pepsi, would you? And maybe a donut or something.” In a few minutes a Pepsi and donut showed up at the door, and Ollie set them down on a small table in front of Spider.
“Here. Relax. I’ll be right back.”
Ollie returned a few minutes later carrying a boom box. “I know you’ve been cooped up in here for a while. Thought you could use some tunes. Go ahead, choose your favorite station.”
Spider flipped the knob, found some music incomprehensible to Ollie, and turned it up loud. Ollie reached for the volume and turned it down.
“You can rock out on it later. Right now let’s keep it at background level, okay?” Ollie smiled. He took a packet of colored markers out of his briefcase and chose a dark blue. He went to an erasable wallboard and started writing. First line: “Fingerprints on license and murder weapon.” Next line: “Positive ID on Lexus and Mercedes.” Next line: “Testimony of Medford police officer.”
“Now, I’ll throw in a few more. I haven’t got the results of the print they took of your shoes a couple hours ago, but I’m betting it’s a perfect match with the shoe print at the murder scene. Wear size eight and a half Air Jordans, don’t you?” He wrote, “Matching footprint.”
“And then we have a convenience store owner who saw you come to the door, saw your face close up and even saw the gun in your car because you had the door open. Remember the store you went to, the one that was closed, before you went to Taco Bell? He was looking out the shades.” Ollie wrote “Positive ID from: store owner, Taco Bell manager, eyewitness at the scene.”
“Whatchu mean, at the scene?”
“We’ve got you from every angle. A witness saw you screeching away from the murder scene. Even know the guy that paid you thirty-five thousand, give or take a few bucks, in Sacramento. Matthew Harper. Ring a bell? Now, Spider, lots of guys have had their lights put out for half the evidence we’ve got against you. What we’ve got so far could earn you, oh, about seven to ten years or the electric chair.”
Spider unconsciously wrung his hands and glanced side to side.
“Just one more thing, some friendly advice. I guess you know the weapon you used i
n Portland was the same one stolen from an L.A. cop in a street battle last spring. And of course, LAPD figures whoever had the rifle—that would be you—also killed the cop. If I were you, I’d talk to me since I’m an amiable Oregon cop and all the fresh air up there makes us generally nicer than L.A. cops. I’ll be headed home before your lawyer gets here. If you don’t talk to me, once I leave, you’re in the hands of LAPD. And I can’t vouch for them being nice—especially since they think you’re a cop killer.”
Ollie turned his back on Spider for a moment and looked toward the mirror, winking at the lieutenant he assumed was still on the other side. He turned back toward Spider.
“I’ll let you think about it, Earl. Anything I can get you? More Pepsi?”
Spider shook his head. Ollie started to go out the door, packet of markers still in his hand. He turned around. “I know it’s got to be boring in here. I’ll leave you these.” He tossed Spider the markers, noting he caught them in his left hand.
“Don’t draw on the walls, but feel free to use the boards up there.” Ollie pointed to the erasable wallboard he’d used, and a blank one next to it. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll check back with you one more time. In case you want to talk with me before LAPD takes over.”
Lieutenant Tucker took Ollie across the street to a sandwich shop. “It’s official,” Tucker said. “Spider’s footprint’s a positive match with the copy of the cast you brought us. Just like you said it’d be. Still no lead on Robert Rose’s real ID. Thought it’d be easy to nail him—assumed he’d be Spider’s close friend, but looks like he’s not even in the same set. Maybe that was deliberate, so if one got caught the other wouldn’t go down with him. Sure wish we could get Spider to cough up his name.”
Tucker handed Ollie a family Christmas photo. “This is Rob Tallon, the SWAT officer who was killed—the one whose HK53 was stolen.” Ollie’s eyes went to Tallon’s wife and three children. They appeared an idyllic family, whose lives, Ollie knew without asking, had been shattered.
