The Innocents

by David Putnam

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Nothing really, I mean—”

  “Are you okay staying here with Blue? Is there a problem?”

  “What? Oh, no. It’s not that at all. It’s just that . . . I was wondering if I could meet you later.”

  “What?”

  “No, no, it’s not like that.” She shot a quick glance back over her shoulder at the mobile home. “I just want to talk about some work stuff.”

  “Sure, of course, no problem. Page me later.”

  “Thanks, Bruno, maybe in an hour or so. Maybe I’ll just come by your house.”

  “Page me first.”

  “Oh, okay, I will. Thanks.” She turned and walked back to the office slower than she had come out. I watched her go and shouldn’t have. Blue would be watching me from the office, watching her.

  Why had I insisted that she page me before she came over? Was I worried Sonja would snap out of her funk and right out of the blue show up at Dad’s? Try and pick up where we’d left off over seven months ago? Start up again as if nothing had happened?

  I stood in the parking lot a moment longer trying to check my feelings for Sonja and realized I didn’t think I loved her anymore. Not after what she’d done. She didn’t tell me about her pregnancy. She hid out from me and didn’t leave any way to contact her. I’d worried about her night and day for months, until that worry finally started to fade. Millie had been the first woman I’d dated after Sonja. If Sonja truly loved me as I’d loved her, how could she do those things? And the worst part was how she’d treated little Olivia at a time when Olivia needed her the most.

  No, I didn’t think I loved Sonja anymore. Didn’t think I could if I wanted to.

  The bad little Bruno on my shoulder rang in: Or, are all of these new negative feelings about Sonja bullshit, because you got eyes for this new girl, Chelsea?

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said to no one at all. But even I didn’t believe my own words.

  I drove over to Stops, a barbecue joint on Imperial across from the Nickerson Courts housing projects. On the way, I made a couple of abrupt turns into culs-de-sac, stopping and waiting to see if anyone followed. I didn’t know anything about countersurveillance. They hadn’t trained me for it. In fact, they hadn’t given me any training at all for this undercover job.

  Finally, I drove around back, parked, and went inside. My stomach growled when it caught a whiff of the heavenly aroma that wafted on the air. I closed my eyes and stuck my nose up.

  I ordered a hot-link sandwich with extra sauce, some chili fries, and a Coke from Nancy, the nice girl at the counter. She wore her long black hair down and always had a smile for me. After Sonja, I’d thought about asking Nancy out, but before I had the chance, she slipped into the conversation that she was married to a fireman.

  I took the food to a table outside.

  Dad used to bring Noble and me to Stops for special occasions. Those memories of the good times, before Noble slipped over to the dark side, came flooding back and caused a little ache in my chest. An ache for something lost forever that could never return. Those times had also been so much simpler, without all the drama and stress. More and more, it seemed like life added higher levels of conflict and complications. Would it ever level off and stay constant?

  Wicks showed up ten minutes later, just as I ate the last fry and wiped my mouth one last time with the napkin. He didn’t wave or even acknowledge my presence and walked into the take-out restaurant to order. I got up, threw my trash in the can, and moved to a picnic table on the south side, out of view of Imperial Highway, out of view of any prying eyes in the cars driving by.

  Wicks came out, looked at the table where I’d been sitting, looked around, spotted the new location, and came over. He stood next to the table and took a bite of his sandwich. He leaned over to keep the sauce from dripping on his suit. He spoke around the food in his mouth. “Where’d Thibodeaux go today?”

  “You have a surveillance up on the narco office?”

  How hard would that be? Put a car on the street behind the station, you could see right through the chain-link fence—see the narco trailer, the parking lot, the whole thing.

  He said nothing. He chewed and looked at me.

  “Thibodeaux’s carrying some kinda grudge against me. We had words. He got in his car and split about eight o’clock this morning and never came back. He never said where he was going and Blue didn’t let on if he knew either.”

  Wicks nodded, swallowed. “Did you ever think that this dustup between him and you is nothing more than a ruse so he could get away from the office?”

  “What are you talking about? Why would he—?”

  My mind spun at this new wrinkle. Why would he need a good reason to leave the office?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  I SAT ON the picnic table and put my feet on the bench as the summer sun dropped lower in the sky. “No, I hadn’t thought of that.” I played back from memory the little snit Thibodeaux threw in the office. I shook my head. “If he did use the argument as a ruse, he’s a pretty good actor. I didn’t see it that way at the time.”

  My pager went off. I checked it. It was the code for Dad; he wanted me to come home for something. He probably needed more diapers or formula. Or maybe he’d just gotten tired of caring for such a small child.

  Wicks took another bite and said, “Tell me about yesterday. How’d that go down?”

  “You know about the stash house?”

  He took another bite and gave me the eye.

  “Blue sent me and Chelsea out to watch this house in Fruit Town.”

  “The one on Peach?”

  “That’s right. We took down a woman named Ollie Bell who made a delivery. We called Blue and Thibodeaux on the radio. They came out, we hit the place and took it down.”

  “Yeah, and I bet your butthole really puckered when you went inside that birdcage, didn’t it?”

  He’d seen everything, knew everything that went on. My God, had he seen my fear when Ollie and I walked up to that metal door on Peach? Seen it in my body language?

  I suppressed my embarrassment. “If you already know all of this,” I said, “why are you asking me?”

  “Keep talking.”

  I watched him for a moment. He nodded for me to continue as he took another bite.

  “We missed Mo Mo. His real name’s Lucas Knight. So we waited for him.”

  He pointed his hot-link sandwich at me. “Selling rock and yanking the good citizens of Fruit Town into the house. That was a good caper, very creative. Blue really knows how to think outside the box.”

  He said it as if he admired his adversary. Our adversary.

  “What exactly is it that you want to know?” I asked. “Why’d you risk calling this meeting if you already know all of this?”

  He took another bite and wiped his mouth with a napkin, eating the hot link way too fast. “Because I think you already have the information, the probable cause for the search warrant.”

  “What?” My mind whipped back over all that happened yesterday, and I still didn’t see what he could possibly be talking about.

  “You mean because Blue left his desk against direct orders from the captain?”

  “Nah. Come on, Bruno, you’re better than that. Violation of a direct order is human resources shit and in no way rises to the level of criminal probable cause.”

  “What then? Tell me.” I didn’t like the way he talked down to me. I’d tell him about it soon, give him an ultimatum.

  “No, you tell me about the money.”

  “The money?”

  He nodded and took another bite. He ate like a ravenous caveman.

  “Ollie Bell dropped off the coke. Least that’s what we assumed. They rock it up right there in the house.”

  Wicks waved at me to keep going.

  “We stopped her going away from the location. She had a bag of . . . money.”

  Wicks wagged his finger at me. “Rii
ight. How much?”

  “We didn’t count it.”

  “Ah, man, you’re kiddin’ me.”

  I shrugged as the guilt for screwing up started to sour my stomach. “How was I supposed to do that?”

  “Did you try to count it and Blue or Thibodeaux stopped you?” He winked, as if he wanted me to lie to attain the probable cause.

  “No. I really blew it, didn’t I? Blue told Thibodeaux to run the money into narcotics headquarters to get a hard count.”

  Wicks shook his head. “Just take it easy. Maybe this can be salvaged. Did you get a look at the money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Estimate. How much would you say was there?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up the scene. I opened my eyes. “No chance. I couldn’t even come close to guesstimating the amount. That’d be like guessing how many jelly beans in a pickle jar. No, no chance, I’m sorry.”

  Wicks smiled and shook his head. “You buy him books, send him to school, and he eats the covers. Well, it was a shot anyway.”

  Dad paged again. I checked the readout. This time he added the code “911.” An emergency.

  With this new distraction, my mind relaxed on the other problem about the money screwup and locked in on something said the day before on Peach. “Wait a minute. I went with Ollie to the door.”

  I paused as I ran it back in my head to be sure.

  “Yeah, and—”

  “She was the one who got us in on a ruse. She told Tark that his bag came up short. She used that as an excuse to get us on the other side of the birdcage gate.”

  “Yeah, what did she say exactly?”

  “She said the bag only had fifty thousand in it.”

  “And what did this Tark say?”

  “He said that he’d already called in the amount to Mo Mo.”

  “How much?”

  “He said that he told Mo Mo there was sixty-two five.”

  Wicks clenched his fist and jerked his arm back. “Got you, asshole.”

  “Why? How much money did Thibodeaux log in?”

  “An even forty K.”

  “They skimmed twenty-two five? You’re kiddin’ me! Right in front of us like that? In front of me and Chelsea?”

  “Looks that way. Even if they didn’t really do it and there really was only 40K, there’s still probable cause to legally start up the investigation. But there’s no doubt in my mind that they took it. Now we can get the wiretap up and running. Listen, now they’re going to figure you’re suspicious about the money. They’re going to assume you know. That’s what I’d assume. And that makes you a liability. They’re probably going to—”

  My pager went off again. Dad. This time with two “911s.”

  “Am I keeping you from something, Deputy?”

  “Sorry, I really need to go.”

  He locked his jaw and stared at me.

  “It’s my kid.”

  “I figured. What I was saying is that they’re going to come at you now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They need to get you dirty more than ever. They’re probably going to offer you a chunk of that skim. If they do, you hem and haw a little, just enough to make it look good. You say something about having a new kid, and all the added costs. Yada, yada, like that, and then you take it. You understand you take the skim and report it to me as soon as you can. Without risking your cover.”

  “Okay, I got it. But I’m sorry. I really have to run. My dad doesn’t put 911 in the pager lightly. Something’s really wrong.”

  He slapped me on the shoulder. “Okay, go, go. Let me know what’s goin’ on with your kid. If you need me to help with anything at all, and I mean anything, you call me. I’m here for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  His offer didn’t sound too genuine, as if he’d only said it as a manner of etiquette. I ran to my truck.

  He yelled at my back. “I need the supplement report on what you just told me, ASAP. So I can get that tap up and running.”

  “Got it. Will do.”

  I got in, started up, and spun the tires leaving the parking lot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MY MIND SPUN in all directions as I wove in and out of the neighborhood streets where I’d run barefoot as a youngster on hot summer afternoons, dodging in and out of alleys on full alert for gang members who continually tried to recruit me. Happy times for the memory, not so much back then living the reality of it.

  Of course, I worried about what could possibly be going wrong at home with Dad and Olivia. But important thoughts of the job also horned in. The things Wicks said about Thibodeaux putting on an act and that I’d somehow missed the read on him. How could Wicks possibly know that Thibodeaux wasn’t truly angry with me, and was putting up a façade? Wicks wasn’t there when Thibodeaux threw his fit. And Wicks didn’t know Thibodeaux well enough to guess either. Not on that kind of personal level.

  I did though. I sat in the cop car with him during the robbery surveillance on Mona. He and I went through a harrowing officer-involved shooting where someone got gunned down mere feet from us. I’d worked the caper on Peach Street with him where we’d arrested sixty-seven suspects. You tended to learn about someone during these types of events, during the hours and hours they involved.

  Then my mind all of a sudden clicked over to Chelsea. I’d fully intended to tell Wicks what I’d learned about her, that I thought she wasn’t who she said she was. Tell him about how she used the term “dog heavy” and ask him to look into her background. Ask him to try and confirm her story as to why she now worked on the Lynwood narco team.

  Why didn’t I tell him about Chelsea?

  All of that went through my head on the short ten-minute drive.

  Until I turned onto Nord Street.

  Then my mind went crazy with panic. Two black-and-white sheriff’s cars sat in front of Dad’s house.

  I hit the gas, wound out the engine on the Ford Ranger, and skidded to a stop, the tires smoking. I jumped out and ran as the truck still lurched forward and jerked to a stop. On my way to the open front door, a muffled yell caught my attention. I stopped and looked back toward the street. Dad sat in the back of one of the black-and-whites, his face partially mashed up against the window as he yelled to me for help.

  Dad, arrested?

  “What the hell? Dad?”

  I ran back to the street and to the back door of the cop car. I pulled it open just as two uniformed deputies appeared out of nowhere and grabbed my arms. They pulled me away and kicked the door shut. The deputy named Good Johnson got me in a wristlock and wrestled me to the ground with the help of his trainee, who grappled my knees and moved up to put his knees in my back to hold me down.

  I worked patrol with Good Johnson. I became the second Johnson assigned to Lynwood. Two Johnsons at the same station became confusing. Cops called each other by their last names. The other Johnson, a prejudiced bigot, called me Boy. All the other regular deputies christened him The Good Johnson and me The Bad Johnson. Only Good was anything but.

  Anger like I never experienced surged. Using my knees, I lifted them both off the ground in a one-armed push-up.

  Another set of shoes appeared on the ground in front of my face, black wingtips. Lynwood detective Sergeant Kohl yelled, “Johnson, get up off of Johnson.” Two more detectives jumped in and separated us. I struggled to my feet and lunged at Good, wanting to rip his throat out for arresting Dad. They restrained me.

  Good stood, his sheriff’s star torn loose and hanging from his uniform as he yelled, “Let him go. Let the son of a bitch go. I’ll give him what he’s got comin’. Let the bastard go.” He stood with his black baton in his hand, his face bloated with rage.

  “That’s enough,” Kohl said. “Stand down or I’ll write your ass up.”

  Good’s wild-eyed expression gradually calmed. He bent over and scooped up his handcuffs from the ground where he’d lost them in the melee. He’d tried to handcuff me as well, to make it
a family affair.

  Kohl said to him, “Go sit in the car. Now, Johnson, do it.”

  Good hesitated, giving me the stink eye, then turned and did as the sergeant ordered. His trainee stood there looking confused. Kohl said to him, “You, too, FNG.”

  I tried to control my breathing and jerked my arm out of Kohl’s grasp. “Why’s my father under arrest? What happened? What is it you think he did?”

  “Take it easy, Bruno.”

  “Don’t you tell me to take it easy. Tell me what happened. And then let him out and take the cuffs off. Whatever it is you think he did, he didn’t do it.”

  Kohl straightened up as his expression turned angry. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do, Johnson. You understand?”

  He’d always been a friend, and I’d just disrespected him. I calmed even more, took in some deep breaths. “I’m sorry. This is a crazy situation. Please, tell me what’s happened. Hey, where’s my daughter?”

  “She’s okay. She’s in the house with a neighbor lady, Mrs. Espinoza.”

  I looked back at the house. Mrs. Espinoza stood in the doorway, gently bouncing little Olivia in her arms. I waved. “It’s okay, Mrs. Espinoza. I’m here now. I’ll get this all straightened out.”

  She didn’t smile as she usually did. She just went inside and closed the door. Closed the door as if she didn’t want little Olivia exposed to this type of embarrassing family degradation.

  I took another couple of deep breaths. “Okay, now tell me.”

  “Bruno, your father’s been accused of rape.”

  “What? No way. No chance. That’s not possible.” I turned to head to the cop car with Dad in the back. Kohl grabbed my arm. I tried to shrug him off.

  “Bruno, you need to calm down and listen to me. We’re friends, but I’ll arrest you if you try to intercede. You understand? You won’t give me any choice.”

  “Let me talk to him. Just let me talk to him.”

  “I will if you promise to control yourself.”

  “Okay. Okay, let me go. I’ll be good, I promise.”