Smile Now, Cry Later (Chuck Restic Mystery Book 1)

by Paul MacDonald

  “What happened?” Detective Ricohr said, snapping me out of my half-sleep. He immediately noticed the blood on my shoe. “How’d you get that?”

  I started to explain, but he waived me off and beckoned me to follow him back into the alley. This was Glendale P.D.‘s scene but Detective Ricohr waddled into it like it was his own.

  “Who shot him?” he asked one of the patrol officers.

  “Detective Alvarado.”

  “Temekian had jumped into my car —” I started to explain, but Detective Ricohr interrupted me.

  “Get a lawyer before you talk.”

  We walked into the alley together. Detective Ricohr stopped and surveyed the scene. People were everywhere. Some searched the area with flashlights but most congregated in small circles and just sort of milled around. At the far end of the alley a news van ran a live feed with a 1000 foot zoom lens. Detective Ricohr sighed heavily enough to be heard over the thumping of the helicopter blades.

  “We have ourselves a fine mess, don’t we?” he said.

  * * *

  The Southland as a whole is very accepting of police-involved shootings. Los Angeles sports a dramatically higher total number of incidents than other American cities. It also sports a very high kill-ratio. The area’s police and sheriffs are effectively quick to pull their weapons and do so with accuracy.

  Umbrage with a shooting was muted and often limited to a smattering of minority groups who already denounced the entire department as racist and any shooting was further confirmation of their beliefs. By and large, the people of the city accepted the violence as a necessary by-product of the work required to keep them safe. The shooting of Temekian was met with the same apathy. Only dedicated readers of the LA Times Crime Blog got any details around the incident. By the limited number of comments posted under the article, they were a small group.

  Standard procedure dictated Cheli be put on paid administrative leave pending an internal review. She sequestered herself in a cabin up in Big Bear for most of the investigation. I took my own form of administrative leave from the office but my sequestration was self-imposed and didn’t range far from my apartment in Lincoln Heights. I let the litany of friends’ emails and voicemails remain unanswered.

  The first few weeks were filled with long sessions with investigators from Glendale’s internal department. They asked the same questions again and again to the point where I no longer had to think of answers. The words jerked out of me as a leg jerks when prodded mercilessly with a reflex hammer. At first the investigators were curious about my involvement in all three murders. It wasn’t common to have someone so closely linked to all three victims. Eventually they chalked it up to what it was — a bored corporate hack got himself into water way over his head. Behind their summation was an indictment, not officially stated in their report but implied in the conversations with me. I should have stayed in my nice, safe office job and never started stirring up questions around Ed’s disappearance in the first place.

  Cheli and I spoke just a few times since the incident. At first we were advised to avoid each other until the investigators had time to work through each of our stories. We did have to admit to an intimate relationship — another issue investigators dug at mercilessly. I told them everything. They eventually saw our relationship as nothing more than a harmless tryst with no relation to the actual case. We were cleared to communicate again but for some reason our phones remained silent. Something happened in those few weeks that followed the shooting.

  Our relationship was based on the investigation and followed the peaks and troughs of each new development. It started with Ed’s disappearance and was put to rest with Temekian’s death. I started to wonder if the vulnerability between us sprang more from our own personal doubts about bringing the case through to its conclusion, rather than any kind of real intimacy. When it all came to its violent conclusion in the alley behind the motel, there was no more oxygen for the fire to feed off and it eventually just petered out. Phone conversations were reduced to exchanges of pleasantries. They grew shorter and shallower with each one and eventually stopped altogether.

  The final report issued a few weeks later came with no surprises. It was heavy on the formality and light on the personal. Detective Alvarado was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in the death of Ardavan Temekian. She had properly conducted herself under the rules of engagement outlined in Glendale’s code. Temekian was a wanted criminal and considered armed and dangerous at the time of the incident. Detective Alvarado’s actions were justified and she showed great courage in helping to apprehend the wanted fugitive.

  The police officially named Temekian as the perpetrator of three murders — Bedros Vadaresian, William Langford, Michael Wagner. Ballistics confirmed that the bullets that killed all three victims were shot by the same gun. That gun was recovered during an initial search of the alley where Temekian had been killed. He apparently had the murder weapon on him and dumped it during the pursuit with Cheli. Temekian was linked to Langford but it never went further than that. Neither McIntyre nor Valenti — nor anyone associated with them — was ever interviewed or considered involved.

  I met the official conclusion with something akin to indifference. Nothing added up. Vague threads leading back to Valenti and higher powers persisted. The idea that Mike would have stopped in that area of town and allow himself to have Temekian walk up to him was hard to swallow. Details on the identity of the owner of the Holcomb properties beyond the name Salas were still missing. Why McIntyre went to such great lengths to revise the zones was again a mystery. Temekian’s prophecy that he would die at the hands of the police came true but what he meant when he uttered it in my car was not clear. There were so many things to iron out, so much more work to do, so much light to shine on the dusky details of this investigation. And yet, I no longer cared.

  I was weary and afraid of what would happen were I to continue searching for answers. I was fully resigned.

  THE UPWARD TURN

  The distractions of work had a healing effect. I found solace in the minutiae of my human resources duties and jumped back into my old role with a laser-like focus.

  Our operational group had recently run a cost analysis on the back-office units in Phoenix and decided that there were sizable cost savings if we outsourced the accounting duties to a third party. That third party, naturally, outsourced to another party and so on until they reached a firm which was so low on the pole that there wasn’t anyone below them they could send the work to. This decision meant a staff of a hundred and fifty people was to be laid off.

  I organized a seminar for division managers on “Dislocation Management” which was an overly-sophisticated way of describing how human beings dealt with change in their lives, which was itself another euphemism for losing their jobs. The seminar was our effort at making that transition as smooth and least stressful as possible for the terminated associates. It also was our effort to limit lawsuits from the terminations.

  The sessions were led by an overly-enthusiastic female duo who parlayed an undergraduate psychology course and a natural gift for hucksterism into a lucrative consulting career. The formula they followed was pretty standard in their line of work — they took some widely-understood formula, repackaged it with psycho-babble and pithy catchphrases to make it more accessible, positioned themselves as “experts” in their narrowly-defined field, then let corporations pay thousands of dollars for them to impart their wisdom. Their expertise in dislocation management was a very good skill to own in the post-financial crisis.

  Human beings, they preached, will react in one of seven ways to losing their job. Each reaction required a unique approach to helping them overcome the difficult period they were facing. And lo and behold, they had all the answers, along with a half-day course replete with breakout sessions and exercises, a few cheap worksheets, and a bill for twenty-five thousand dollars. No wonder they were so chipper.

  It sounded good until you realized that all they had done
was plagiarize the very famous seven stages of grief and rewrite them for the corporate world. “Shock & Denial” became “Why Me?” and for “Pain & Guilt” they settled on the more personalized “What Did I Do Wrong?” They liked rhetorical questions. The experts explained how someone dealing with death was very similar to how they dealt with losing their jobs. For example, Stage Three — “Anger & Bargaining” — manifested itself in the terminee who would rattle off a laundry list of inappropriate activity conducted by numerous associates who most certainly deserved the axe more than they did and if we needed any help building a case against said associates, this individual was more than willing to assist. When confronted with this reaction, it was on the human resources professional to refocus the discussion back to the individual and how they are going to deal with this life change. That usually took a long time. Fortunately, many terminees leapt straight to Stage Seven, “Acceptance & Hope.” These folks generally adhered to the “love what you do” manifesto and ended up receiving their termination with open arms. They were actually grateful for the gentle shove that would set them on that path of a “new opportunity” developing customized herbal tea medleys out of their spare bedroom. You promised to look for them at your local farmer’s market and felt guilty for setting them on this course, like nudging a hatchling out of the nest before it knew how to fly.

  I sat in the back of the seminar room and resented the success of this dynamic duo. Their Dislocation Management seminar was no Stoplight System but as far as these things went, their effort was a home run.

  “I’m really excited about today’s seminar,” my co-manager Paul said, selecting the seat next to mine. “This rightsizing process is going to be very challenging,” he stated solemnly but with a gleam in his eye.

  “Terminations are always tough,” I replied, purposely using one of the words the duo had explicitly advised us to avoid.

  “Oops, that was on the ‘no-no’ list,” Paul warned.

  “Yeah, it’s hard to remember to use these made-up terms when we have all these standard ones that fit so well.”

  I was rescued from another laborious discussion with Paul by my administrative assistant. She was out of breath and annoyed at having to walk down the three flights of stairs to the seminar room.

  “The girl won’t leave,” she huffed. “I told her to drop the package off at the mail room but she insisted on bringing it directly to you.”

  “Who won’t leave?” I asked.

  “Some bike messenger.”

  * * *

  “How have you been?” Rosie asked as she tossed a package across to me. She had her feet up on the table again. Her messenger bag sat on the floor. Rosie scanned my office and made a face like she disapproved.

  “I didn’t expect I’d ever see you again,” I told her.

  “Well, it’s been quiet out of that office but this package came through yesterday and I thought I’d see if you were still interested. Same deal as before,” she added.

  I looked down at the package with the respective addresses for Claire’s and McIntyre’s firms. It seemed so long ago when I first intercepted their correspondence. Here was another but it didn’t have the same excitement attached to it as the previous one. I slid the package back to Rosie.

  “No thanks,” I told her. “I’m no longer interested.”

  “Would you be interested in a discount?”

  “No,” I laughed, “not even at a discount.”

  “You look like you could use some weed.”

  “Nice try.”

  “Oh well,” she said, getting to her feet. “Worth a shot.”

  She gathered her bag and headed for the door.

  “You forgot your package,” I called out.

  “It’s a copy,” she said. “I got no use for it. You should try and incorporate some color in here,” she commented on her way out. “It’s too depressing.”

  The package sat, unopened, on my table for three days. But I never threw it out, either. It was a staring contest between curiosity and closure. The former won.

  The package contained a four-hundred page contract for the sale of the Deakins Building. There were several other official-looking documents with language that required a commercial real estate broker to translate. I did my best to review the material but the jargon made it nearly impossible to discern anything of value from it. I took to thumbing through the pages when I saw the signature of an unlikely person.

  “What’s shaking?” my co-manager Paul asked. I had requested a quick catch-up in my office but didn’t tell him the reason for it. He plopped himself into the chair and tugged at the scraggly ponytail he had worn for the last twenty years. “This is coming off next week,” he announced.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I’m going buzz cut.”

  “That’s a big change for you,” I told him.

  “I know. This is my buddy,” he said and gave his hair a caressing touch. “This little guy reminds me to keep it real.” Somehow the ponytail symbolized his closeness with nature and his love for fellow man. “But, it’s for a good cause.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m donating my hair to Locks of Love. They’re this great non-profit that gives free wigs to kids fighting,” he choked up for a second, then finished his thought with all the earnestness of a wake, “cancer.”

  “That’s admirable,” I said but didn’t mean it.

  “We do what we can,” he intoned, “So, what’d you need from me?”

  I had spent the earlier part of that morning poring over Paul’s personal transactions file and discovered some surprising information. In the prior month, he was part of a consortium of buyers who negotiated an agreement with the lien holders on the Deakins Building to purchase it for a reduced amount. He then sold the building to another set of investors at an amount slightly less than the one he paid for in the original sale. It was a curious course of action, one that I debated internally on how to broach.

  “Paul, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, off-the-record, as they say.”

  “Uh oh,” he joked, “this sounds serious.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Tell me about the Deakins Building.”

  That wiped the smirk off his face.

  “Deakins?” he repeated, trying to buy some time. All the nuances he was trained to pick up on during his daily functions failed Paul at that moment when he was in the cross-hairs.

  “Yeah, that building you bought and sold within a month,” I shot back aggressively.

  “How did you hear about that, Chuck? You snooping around my personal files?”

  It was another classic deflection technique.

  “No and yes,” I told him. “I heard about the sale and then confirmed it with the official records.”

  “I wish you would have come to me first. This is very inappropriate.” He was reverting to corporate lingo instead of answering the question.

  “Paul, this has nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me.”

  “I mean, my interest has nothing to do with you personally. You know my involvement with Ed Vadaresian’s family and all that ensued. A lot of it centered around the building you purchased and I am just looking to tie up some loose ends.”

  “I don’t have any involvement with that,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied, even if I wasn’t so sure I believed him. “Can you tell me about this deal?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “For starters, why did you purchase the building and then immediately sell it for a loss?”

  “You’ll appreciate this,” he said, implicating me in whatever deed he was about to describe. “This wonderful government and their complicated tax system!” He went onto to describe a convoluted tale of a series of tax incentives and tax write-offs he got for investing in the Deakins. It involved distressed properties, manufacturing zones, brown field zones, and many more kinds of zones. The sale for a loss added further to h
is side of the ledger as he could write that amount off. I understood there was some benefit to the numerous programs the government was offering to revive a sluggish commercial real estate market but I didn’t understand how selling a building for a loss could actually result in Paul making money. “You’re forgetting that I stripped out the occupancy rights,” he said.

  There was that phrase again. I remembered the assessor Arshalouys using it when he first spoke about the Deakins Building. He had said it like it was a desirable asset.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “The city assigns every property a maximum occupancy. They literally give you a number. This is different than those signs you see at restaurants or in elevators. Those are fire codes to keep people from being trampled. These occupancy figures are done by the city planner. It’s one way they can manage density. Naturally, you don’t want people building willy-nilly on every inch of land,” he explained, even though that seemed exactly what was done. “You want to be able to control it somehow so you don’t end up with these high-density areas that everyone complains about. Nobody wants more gridlock,” he added. Gridlock in their neighborhood was what they really meant.

  Paul went on to explain how the process worked. If a developer wanted to build a condo on your block, he had to comply with the occupancy figure already assigned to the piece of property he wanted to build on. If his assigned number was less than the one he eventually wanted on the land, his permit would be denied. “But here’s the beauty of this system,” Paul said, leaning forward. “You can sell them.”

  “Sell what? The occupancies?”

  “Yeah, I’ve done them a few times now. It’s not very well known outside of the commercial real estate world. Even people who own property don’t know it. I was just buying distressed properties from motivated sellers. But when I learned about these vouchers and that you could sell them, I lined up my investors and brushed up on the rules. You can sell them at any time to anyone you want — they are completely transferrable. The only stipulation is that they have to come from the same zone as where you plan to use them.”