“Bon appétit.”
“No French, don’t have the patience, today. Mon ami.”
“No cooperation from C.Y.A.?” I asked.
“You’d think,” he said, “that wardens and all those other prison types would be simpatico with cops, seeing as we’re both committed to the public safety.” He wiped his lips. “But you’d be wrong. Our job’s putting bad guys away, they’re chronically overcrowded, get buckets of shit tossed in their faces and all sorts of other indignities. So their goal is moving miscreants out. They made me feel like a germ, Alex.”
“No counseling?” I said.
“What?”
“That’s what they call C.Y.A. guards. Counselors.”
He laughed. “There was a squirrelly feel to the place, Alex. Lots of silence, no mistaking the tension. Later, reading the local paper, I found out there’s all sorts of rumbling about an investigation of the whole C.Y.A. system by the legislature. Too many dead wards. Top of that, their record-keeping’s even worse than the department’s. But all was not lost— got any more yogurt?”
“Mi fridge es su fridge.”
“Now it’s Spanish? Go get a gig at the U.N.”
“Talk about miscreants.”
He created a second concoction using honey as the sugar source, consumed it at a more measured pace.
Four gulps, sitting down.
“Say what you want, but sometimes gluttony pays off,” he said. “I hadn’t had a thing to eat since the night before, the dive I was staying at didn’t have room service, and by the time I got outside, I was feeling pretty mean. First place I spotted was a bar and grill two blocks from the prison. Bartender got the kitchen to microwave a plate of spareribs, and we started talking. Turns out he used to work as a prison cook, left seven years ago.”
“A year after Troy’s murder.”
“Ten months to be exact. He remembered Troy’s murder clearly, was there when they took the body out. Couple of counselors carried it right through the kitchen out to a loading dock. Didn’t even bother to wrap it, just put the kid on a board and used belts to keep him from sliding off into the soup. Bartender said Turner didn’t look much bigger than a plucked turkey, was about the same color.”
He strode to the fridge, pulled out a beer, popped the top, sat back down.
I said, “Bartender had a good eye for detail.”
“It helped that there was no love lost between him and the prison. He claims they fired him for no good cause. His other clear memory is that there was a prime suspect for the murder. Not a Vato Loco, an independent freelance knife-boy named Nestor Almedeira. The V.L.s and the other gangs used him and guys like him when they wanted to keep a low profile. And guess what? Said prince got out a few months ago and his last known address is right here in L.A., the Westlake District.”
“Almedeira ever work for nongang clients?”
“As in Barnett Malley? Who knows? As far as I can tell, Malley never visited. Ditto for Rand. All Troy got was three personals, one from his mother and two from Drew and Cherish Daney. No phone logs were kept.”
“What put Nestor Almedeira in Chaderjian?” I said.
“He knifed two other kids to death in MacArthur Park when he was fifteen. Served six years for manslaughter and got out.”
“Two dead kids is manslaughter?”
“It is when they’re packing blades themselves and their sheets are as bad as the guy who did them. Nestor’s P.D. claimed self-defense and got it pled down.”
“And Nestor promptly went freelance in prison,” I said.
“So what else is new? Bartender said Nestor was a very bad boy. Short fuse, everyone thought he was nuts. I guess that squares with the way Troy got done.”
“Nestor have a drug connection?”
“Heroin.”
“If Malley was selling, they could’ve known each other.”
He ambled back to the fridge, retrieved the milk carton, finished it.
I said, “Heading over to Westlake soon?”
“I was thinking now. Nestor got himself a job at a food stand on Alvarado. Ain’t that a pretty thought? Bloody hands stuffing your chimichangas?”
* * *
An L.A.-bound tourist plugging “Westlake” into one of those computer-map services could get confused.
There’s Westlake Village, on the far western edge of the Valley, a wide-open bedroom community of meticulous industrial parks, high-end shopping centers, tile-roofed vanilla houses perched prettily on oak-studded hills, and multiacre horse ranches. People with money and scant interest in urban pleasures move to Westlake Village to get away from crime and congestion and smog and people not like them.
All of which abounds in the Westlake District.
Set just west of downtown and named after the man-made water feature created from the swamp that was once MacArthur Park, Westlake has the population density of a third-world capital. Alvarado’s the main drag and it’s crammed with bars, dance halls, check-cashing outlets, discount stores, and fast-food joints. A few of the once-grand apartment buildings erected in the twenties remain, sprinkled among the hideous postwar instaboxes that pushed out history and architecture and destroyed Westlake’s identity as a high-rent destination. Some of the structures had been sectioned and resectioned into dorm-style rooming houses. Official residency statistics didn’t begin to explain things.
For a couple of decades after its birth, the park was a pretty place to go on Sunday. Then it became as safe as Afghanistan, overrun with dopers and dealers, strong-arm specialists and pedophiles and wild-eyed people who talked to God. Wilshire Boulevard bisects the green space and a tunnel connects the halves. Walking through the gray, graffitied conduit used to be life-threatening. Now murals have covered the gang braggadocio, and the mostly poor Hispanics who populate the district picnic near the water’s edge after church on Sunday and hope for the best.
Milo had taken Sixth Street from its inception at San Vicente. He made a left and traveled south onto Alvarado. The thoroughfare was crowded, as it always is, intersections teeming with pedestrians, some purposeful, some aimless. Better to be outdoors, sucking in grimy air, than sitting alone in the single, fetid room you share with eight strangers.
The unmarked crawled along with the traffic. Spanish on the signs, cut-rate merchandise hawked on the sidewalk. Plastic bags of fruit and bunches of carnations dyed in unnatural tones were displayed by small, cinnamon-skinned men who’d bargained with death to get over the border. Behind us was the park.
Milo said, “Is it melting in the rain?”
“Not much rain in awhile,” I said.
“Melting in the smog, then . . . well, look at that.” He cocked his head toward the passenger window.
I turned and saw nothing out of the ordinary. “What?”
“A heroin deal just went down in front of that photography studio. Lowlifes not even bothering to hide it— okay, here we are.” He pulled up in the red zone. A line of people curled at the takeout window of Taqueria Grande. The building was blue stucco chipped white at the corners. An expansion would’ve made it the size of a single-car garage.
Milo said, “I’d like to see Taqueria Pequeña,” adjusted his harness holster, slipped on his jacket, and got out.
We waited in line. The smell of pork and corn and onions blew through the window and out to the curb. The prices were good, the portions benevolent. Customers paid with soiled dollar bills and coinage and counted their change carefully. Two people worked the stand, a young man at the deep fryers and a short, round, middle-aged woman handling the public.
The fry cook was twenty or so, thin and sharp-chinned. He wore a blue bandanna on his head. What was visible of his hair was clipped to the skin and tattoos explored his arms. All around him, grease arced and spattered. No screen guards, and I could see airborne specks land on his arms and face. It had to hurt. He worked steadily, remained expressionless.
The customer in front of us collected his tamales and rice and agua de tam
arindo and we stepped up. The round woman had her hair pinned up. The makeup she’d put on that morning was doing battle with sweat. Her pencil poised without looking up. “Que?”
Milo said, “Ma’am,” and showed her his I.D.
Her smile was slow to settle in. “Yes, sir?”
“I’m looking for Nestor Almedeira.”
The smile closed up instantaneously, like a sea anemone reacting to being prodded. She shook her head.
Milo eyed the man in the bandanna. “That’s not him?”
The woman shifted to one side and peered around Milo’s bulk. Several customers had queued up behind us but now they were drifting away. “Carlos.”
“Could we see Carlos’s I.D., please?”
“He got no driver’s license.”
“I’ll see whatever he has, ma’am.”
She pivoted and shouted something in Spanish. Bandanna tensed up, drew his hand away from the fryer, and eyed the back door.
Milo said, “Tell him if he’s not Nestor, there’ll be no problem. Of any sort.”
The woman shouted louder and the young man froze. She covered the four feet between them with three choppy steps, talked and gesticulated and held out her hand. The young man drew a yellow scrap of paper out of his pocket.
The woman took it and handed it to Milo. Western Union receipt verifying that Carlos Miguel Bermudez had wired ninety-five dollars and fifty-three cents to a money-transfer office in Mascota, Mexico. The date of the transaction was yesterday.
Milo said, “That’s all he’s got?”
“He not Nestor,” said the woman.
“Nestor got fired?”
“No, no.” The woman’s eyes got heavy around the lids. “Nestor got dead.”
“When?” said Milo.
“Few weeks ago,” said the woman. “I think.”
“You think?”
“Nestor din’t show up much when he was alive.”
“How’d you find out he’s dead?”
“He sister tell me. I give him the job because I like her, nice girl.”
“How’d Nestor die?”
“She don’t say.”
“How long did Nestor work here— officially?”
She frowned. “Maybe a month.”
“Bad attendance, huh?”
“Bad attitude.” Another glance behind us. No customers. “You no want to eat?”
Milo returned the yellow scrap to her and she slipped it into her apron. Carlos the cook was still standing around, looking nervous.
“No, thanks,” said Milo. He smiled past her. Carlos bit his lip. “What’s Nestor’s sister’s name, ma’am?”
“Anita.”
“Where does she live?”
“She work at the dentista— up three blocks.”
“Know the dentist’s name?”
“Chinese,” she said. “Black building. You wanna drink?”
Milo ordered a lemon soda and when she tried to comp him, he left a five on the counter and made her smile.
By the time we got back in the unmarked, the lunch line had resumed.
CHAPTER 22
Drs. Chang, Kim, Mendoza, and Quinones practiced in a one-story building veneered with shiny black ceramic tile. White graffiti stuck to the bottom of the facade like food-fight pasta. The sign above the door said, Easy Credit, Painless Dentistry, Medi-Cal Accepted.
Inside was a waiting room full of suffering people. Milo marched past them and tapped the reception window. When it opened, he asked for Anita Almedeira.
The Asian receptionist lowered her glasses. “The only Anita we have is Anita Moss.”
“Then I’d like to speak with her.”
“She’s busy but I’ll go see.”
The waiting room smelled of wintergreen and stale laundry and rug cleaner. The magazines in the wall rack were in Spanish and Korean.
A pale woman in her late twenties came to the reception desk. She had long, straight black hair, a round face, and smooth, sedate features. Her pink nylon uniform skirt showed off a full, firm figure. Her nametag said A. Moss, Registered Dental Hygienist. Lovely white teeth when she smiled; the job had its perks.
“I’m Anita. May I help you?”
Milo flashed the badge. “Are you Nestor Almedeira’s sister, ma’am?”
Anita Moss’s mouth closed. When she spoke next it was at a near whisper. “You’ve found them?”
“Who, ma’am?”
“The people who killed Nestor.”
Milo said, “Sorry, no. This is about something else.”
Anita Moss’s face tightened. “About something Nestor did?”
“It’s possible, ma’am.”
She looked out at the waiting room. “I’m kind of busy.”
“This won’t take long, Ms. Moss.”
She opened the door and walked through, approached an old man in work clothes with a collapsed jawline and an eye on the racing form. “Mr. Ramirez? I’ll be with you in one minute, okay?”
The man nodded and returned to the odds.
“Let’s go,” said Anita Moss, sweeping across the room. By the time Milo and I reached the exit, she was out of the building.
She tapped her foot on the sidewalk and fooled with her hair. Milo offered to seat her in the unmarked.
“That’s all I need,” she said. “Someone seeing me in a police car.”
“And here I thought we were camouflaged,” said Milo.
Anita Moss started to smile, changed her mind. “Let’s go around the corner. You drive a bit and I’ll catch up with you and sit in the car.”
* * *
The unmarked had taken on heat and Milo rolled down the windows. We were parked on a side street of cheap apartments, Anita Moss sitting stiffly in the back. A few women with children strolled by, a couple of stray dogs wove from scent to scent.
Milo said, “I know this is hard, ma’am— ”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Moss. “Ask what you need to.”
“When was your brother murdered?”
“Four weeks ago. I got a call from a detective and that’s all I’ve heard about it. I thought you were following up.”
“Where did it happen?”
“Lafayette Park, late at night. The detective said Nestor was buying heroin and someone shot him and took his money.”
“Do you remember the name of the detective who called you?”
“Krug,” she said. “Detective Krug, he never gave me his first name. I got the feeling he wasn’t going to put too much time into it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Just the way he sounded. I figured it was because of the type of person Nestor was.” She straightened her back, stared at the rearview mirror.
“Nestor was an addict,” said Milo.
“Since he was thirteen,” said Moss. “Not always heroin but always some kind of habit.”
“What else besides heroin?”
“When he was little, he huffed paint and glue. Then marijuana, pills, P.C.P., you name it. He’s the baby in the family and I’m the oldest. We weren’t close. I grew up here but I don’t live here anymore.”
“In Westlake.”
She nodded. “I went to Cal State L.A. and met my husband. He’s a fourth-year dental student at the U. We live in Westwood. Dr. Park’s one of Jim’s professors. I’m supporting us until Jim gets out.”
“Nestor got out of the Youth Authority three months ago,” said Milo. “Where did he live?”
“First with my mother and then, I don’t know,” said Anita Moss. “Like I said, we weren’t close. Not just Nestor and me. Nestor and the whole family. My other two brothers are good guys. No one understood why Nestor did the things he did.”
“Difficult kid,” I said.
“From day one. Didn’t sleep, never sat still, always destroying things. Mean to our dog.” She wiped her eyes. “I shouldn’t be talking about him like this, he was my brother. But he tortured my mother— not literally, but he made her life miserable. T
wo months ago she had a stroke and she’s still pretty sick.”
“Sorry to hear about that.”
She frowned. “I can’t help thinking Nestor living with her contributed to it. She had a history of high blood pressure, we were all telling Nestor to go easy on her, don’t stress her out. You couldn’t tell him anything. Mom wasn’t naive. She knew what Nestor was up to and it really upset her.”
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