by David Putnam
“Mrs. Bingham?”
That didn’t make sense at all. The Bing’s mother? She was black. “J. D. Bingham, the Ham, the guy I went to school with? That Bingham?”
“No, no, you know who I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t. I—”
Then I did know. An old memory came bubbling up. Mrs. Bingham, the wife of the owner of Bingham’s grocery store chain. Oh, my God. The first woman I’d ever seen naked way back when I was only a kid. And Dad was now dating her?
The memory came flooding in, making the air turn thick.
Christmas morning, years ago, I awoke to the smell of smoke. Noble, at that time my neighbor and best friend, had spent the night at our house over the protests of his father, Eli. Dad had talked Noble’s father into it, kind of strong-armed him into it, and probably saved Noble’s life.
Noble wasn’t my brother yet.
With the smell of the smoke I got up and ran outside to find Noble’s house fully engulfed in flames. Noble’s father and Mrs. Bingham sat on the outcropping on the second story. Both of them buck naked.
Mrs. Bingham’s skin was white and overly freckled, her naked breasts, her long, long legs, her—
Noble’s dad yelled, “Xander, get the children, save the children.”
But Noble’s brother and sister perished in the fire that Christmas morning. Days after, Noble’s dad just disappeared. Noble came to live with us, and Dad adopted him.
“Do you know who I’m talking about, now?” Dad asked.
“Yes. Ah . . . is she . . .”
“No, no, she’s long divorced now. I would never do that. You know me better than that. I never told you because of . . . well, you can understand. I didn’t know how Noble would take it.”
How would Noble find out? He was sitting in jail awaiting a prison term, the longest kind.
“It’s okay. Of course, I understand.”
Dad now dated the woman who broke up Noble’s family. Dad had his reasons; the biggest one had to be loneliness. I’d been too busy with my life to recognize it.
I wanted to ask him one more question: How long had it been going on? But since it didn’t pertain to the Mrs. Whitaker incident, it was none of my business.
We stood. I hugged him, looking over his shoulder at the woman in the beige AMC Ambassador. I hugged him a little harder, and a little longer.
I didn’t hold any animosity toward the CPS woman. She was only doing her job—the most important job in the county, by my book. She watched over the children. It was a duty often overlooked by society. And when we do finally pay attention, the regular rules don’t protect the children well enough and come too little, too late.
I walked Dad over to his car, closed the door for him, and stood in the street and watched him drive off. I turned and waved to the CPS worker. She nodded, started up, and left.
I got in my truck and started it up. I headed out to violate a direct order from two supervisors, Lieutenant Wicks and Sergeant Kohl. A policy violation I could lose my job over.
I went to find Mrs. Whitaker.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
I DIDN’T KNOW where Mrs. Whitaker lived, not exactly, and found my way based on Dad’s description. Long lines of pink crepe myrtle trees in bloom and the deep driveway set the house apart from all the others.
I drove the Ford Ranger down the driveway and tried to imagine Dad delivering the mail day after day. I couldn’t do a job with that sort of routine. I’d go stir-crazy. I needed the constant threat of the unknown, going from call to call, interjecting myself into problems people couldn’t handle themselves, people who’d called for help.
But I didn’t work the street anymore and had chosen a different path where I chased the worst of the worst. Only at that moment, those worst now chased after my family and me.
I parked under a tired old porte cochère that needed paint ten years ago, turned off the truck, and stepped out. On occasion, Dad had parked his mail truck in this same spot to visit with Mrs. Whitaker. From pure nervousness, I stuck my hand in my left pants pocket. My fingers touched a folded-up piece of paper I didn’t remember putting there. I pulled it out.
A yellow, grease-spotted piece of cheeseburger wrapper. What the—?
I’d seen it before, only my mind couldn’t put together where. How did this get in my pocket?
Ah, Chelsea.
She’d put it in my pocket yesterday evening while standing on the threshold of the hotel room, right after the shooting. The note I’d forgotten about. I hadn’t seen her do it, only felt her put it in my pocket. But a cheeseburger wrapper? Not what I’d expected at all. Somehow my mind imagined white scented paper, with little hearts drawn over the i’s, nothing more than sappy high-schooler thinking.
Once the paramedics arrived at the Park View, along with the homicide shooting team, coupled with the admonition from Chelsea not to let Blue or Thibodeaux see me look at it, the note just stayed in my pocket and eventually slipped my mind.
Then the other memory kicked in. Before we’d left for the hotel, Blue stepped onto the stoop outside the office mobile home and Ollie slipped him the paper, the cheeseburger wrapper.
I fell back against my truck, leaned into it. That meant that when Chelsea hugged Blue, the time when I’d thought Blue had won over the girl, at that moment Chelsea had the presence of mind to pick Blue’s pocket. After she took the paper from Blue, she slipped the paper into my pocket when Blue and Thibodeaux weren’t looking.
What the hell?
Right after the shooting, I thought Chelsea had been too distraught to think straight. She’d gone and really pulled off something amazing.
That’s what Blue had been looking for in the hotel room when he made up that bullshit story about losing his badge on an earlier caper.
“Hello? Can I help you?”
A Caucasian woman with a pleasant face and black hair going gray stuck her head out the huge front door, ready to slam it closed at the first sign of trouble. Her expression was that of someone afraid to come outside even during daylight hours.
“Yes, I’m Deputy Sheriff Bruno—”
Dad had the same last name. I didn’t want to spook her.
“I’m a deputy sheriff from Lynwood Station and I just have a few more questions for you if you don’t mind.”
She steeled herself and stuck her head out a little farther to look each way. “Where’s your police car? Sheriffs don’t drive trucks.”
I held up my hands. “It’s okay, here’s my badge.” I stuck my hip out so she could see the sheriff’s star clipped to my belt. “You’re Mrs. Whitaker, right?”
“That’s right.” She opened the door a little more.
“Would you mind if I came in to talk with you? Or we could talk out here if that would make you more comfortable.”
She hesitated while she tried to decide.
“I can wait right here while you go in and call Lynwood Station to check on me.” A bluff. If she made that call, I’d be in the grease for sure.
I stuck the paper back in my pocket still folded, the relationship with Mrs. Whitaker too tenuous to risk the slightest unnecessary movement.
She still said nothing.
“If you’re busy,” I said, “I can come back later.”
“No, no, please. I’m acting like a stupid little scaredy cat. Please come in.” She stood back and opened the door the rest of the way.
I pasted on my biggest smile and went in. “Thank you for seeing me.” She closed the door.
The inside looked better cared for than the outside. In days of yore, a house of that size would have required at least one full-time servant to keep it up. Mrs. Whitaker obviously lived alone and did the best she could.
I followed her off to the right into a huge dining room with dark-brown hardwood floors that would be difficult to maintain, all the buffing, the waxing. She pulled a chair out at the head of a long wood table, one with twelve chairs. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you some sweet tea?”
“No, thank you.”
Dad said he’d come in and sit with her to drink tea and talk. Thibodeaux must’ve set up on Dad, followed him on his mail route and seen that he went inside this house to talk with this gracious lady. Thibodeaux saw this as his opportunity to create havoc in our lives. This poor woman became a random victim of violence for no other reason than to forward a treacherous agenda.
I took a seat to put her more at ease. She sat two chairs over with her hands in her lap. She wore a pleasant and trim off-the-shoulder floral dress that made her breasts appear large and prominent. I tried not to look at them, tried not to call up the image of the Polaroid photo Sergeant Kohl showed me in our front yard moments before he hauled Dad off for the crime of attempted rape. The photo of Mrs. Whitaker’s naked breast that Thibodeaux, with malice and forethought, had crimped down on like a vise with his strong hand, causing pain and fear and tyranny.
The ugly, purple, finger-sized bruises.
She must’ve read my mind, as she brought her arms up to cover her breasts.
“I know this is a delicate matter,” I said. “And I won’t take up very much of your time.”
I was stalling. I really didn’t know how to get at the information without spooking her, without embarrassing her or myself.
We both sat there quietly waiting. For what, I had no idea.
She said, “I grew up in this house. My parents both died here.”
I nodded.
“This used to be a grand neighborhood, with great people,” she said. “I have pictures that show nothing around this house except acres and acres of orange groves. Before my time, of course. Then Los Angeles just continued to expand and expand until it ate up everything and then these little cities incorporated until, pretty soon, this wonderful place turned into . . . turned into this horrid little corner of the world.”
One tear filled her eye and rolled down her cheek.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I grew up in Willowbrook, over in the area called The Corner Pocket.”
She nodded, as if acknowledging that I knew what she meant.
“I know you went through an awful experience and I don’t in any way want to make it worse. I just—”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re Xander’s son. He told me his son was a sheriff.”
I said nothing.
“Oh, my God, I can see him in your eyes.” Now tears rolled down her cheeks in earnest. She shook her head and said, “I am so terribly sorry. Please tell Xander I’m so terribly sorry.”
I got up and moved to the chair closest to her. “That’s right, my name is Bruno, and I came here to try and get to the truth.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t talk about this. I can’t.”
“I understand, I do. I know what really happened. I know the man who did this awful thing to you and—”
“Then if you know him . . . then you know, I cannot, will not, tell you anything.” She stood, hugging herself even tighter. “Please leave.” She raised her arm and pointed toward the door.
I got up but hesitated.
“Please go.”
I turned to leave. I walked with heavy feet and in possession of confirmation that Thibodeaux had done this awful thing.
At the door, I turned. She’d followed and stopped a few steps back in the hallway next to the entrance to the dining room, half her face in shadow. “Please tell your father that I am so sorry and that if there was anything that . . . well, just tell him I’m sorry.”
I slowly raised my open hand. “Please, it’s not your fault, and my dad understands. He really does.”
She nodded. “Thank you for that.”
I moved my hand to my hair. “Did the man have a tuft of white hair, right here?”
Her hand flew to her mouth. She shook her head. “I won’t answer any of your questions. Now it’s time for you to leave. Please leave.”
I nodded. “Just so you know, his name is Claude Thibodeaux, and I’m sorry it happened to you. I’m going right now to make sure he never hurts anyone again. You’ll never have to be afraid of him, not ever again. You understand? I’ll make it right.”
She reached out with one hand for support of the wall, her eyes hopeful.
I turned and left.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
OUTSIDE AT MY truck, I watched the door to Mrs. Whitaker’s house, hoping she’d change her mind and come running out ready to recant her accusation about Dad. That wouldn’t happen, not until Thibodeaux came off the balance sheet and I had paid him in full what I owed him.
I reached into my pocket and took out the folded piece of cheeseburger wrapper Ollie had given to Blue and Chelsea then stole from Blue. I no longer had any illusions about the note being romantic prose, though I still didn’t know what I’d find when I opened it.
I unfolded the paper to find an address written in an uneven hand and difficult to decipher at first glance. I had to turn the paper this way and that to read it in and around the grease spots:
Bof
DoubleD
Aqua Glasshouse
Downey
An address. Well, a location anyway. Oddly, I knew what Ollie meant by her shorthand. I tried to visualize the place, an exclusive neighborhood of condos and new custom homes on the other side of the river, in Downey.
Mo Mo.
Ollie had slipped Blue what Blue wanted all along: how to find Mo Mo. The misadventure in Huntington Park at the Park View Hotel didn’t need to happen. He’d only taken us there as a cover, as a misdirection. He didn’t want anyone else to know that he knew where to find Mo Mo. The way it all went down, the way Ollie gave Blue the paper out on the stoop, the way he’d tried to conceal it, the way he frantically looked for it in the hotel room and then made up the lame excuse, all of that convinced me that Blue intended to go after Mo Mo himself and kill him. That’s why Blue had been so hot after Mo Mo. That’s why he’d targeted Mo Mo, the number-two dealer in LA, and not Papa Dee.
And Chelsea had given me the paper from Blue’s pocket. Did she know what the note contained? I didn’t think she did. How could she? I stood too close to her from the time the shot went off to the time she slipped me the note. She never had the opportunity to read it. Still, I needed to talk with her and ask her why she gave it to me.
I folded the note up and put it back in my pocket. I got in my truck and drove back to the station.
I parked in the back lot two rows over from the narco trailer, got out, and headed that way. Something didn’t feel right . . . the door to the narco trailer was closed. Anytime someone worked in the hot trailer, they left the door open for ventilation.
Sergeant Kohl, in a dark brown western-cut suit, came out of the patrol unit service area, walking with deliberation right at me. I stopped and girded myself for a verbal thrashing, the one I more than deserved.
He stopped in front of me and spoke in a calm and controlled voice that made it even more painful. I respected the man too much and I’d gone and put him in an untenable situation. I wanted him to yell and scream. He said, “I just got off the phone with Mrs. Whitaker. I told you, Bruno, not to stick your nose into this thing. I warned you.”
I said nothing.
“Now you’ve forced me to do something I didn’t want to do. I’m obligated to turn it over to IAB. You’re gonna get racked up on this one. If you’re lucky, you’ll keep your job, but you’ll be sent back to the jail where you’ll never get out. You’ll work there the rest of your career.”
Working the jail again? What an awful prospect. I couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it.
I said nothing. To have said I was sorry would only patronize him and make it worse.
“I also came back here to tell you to call Lieutenant Wicks ASAP.” Kohl turned and left.
I slapped my left hip where I normally kept the pager. Not there. In my rush this morning, when Dad woke me, I’d gone off and left it on the nightstand. Wicks must’ve been going crazy when I didn’t answer
. And Blue might’ve been trying to get a hold of me as well.
I turned back to the trailer. Blue was peeking through the blinds by his desk and had seen the entire exchange with Kohl. The blinds went back to normal. I headed for the trailer door that for some unknown reason was closed.
“Bruno?”
I stopped.
Kohl headed back toward me.
I waited.
He came up and stopped, closer this time. He said, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes, I’d like to think so . . . yes, we are.”
“Then man to man, not sergeant to deputy. Just man to man. Tell me what’s really going on. I want to understand it. I can help. You can trust me.”
I opened my mouth to spill it, to tell him all of it. He’d be able to stop this mess right then and there. He wouldn’t let it go any further. Based on what happened to Mrs. Whitaker, he’d be able to hang a conspiracy case on Thibodeaux and Blue, shut down their little game without any further risk and without anyone else getting hurt.
I opened my mouth to say the words, but Blue opened the door to the trailer and yelled, “Bruno, you’re late. Get your ass in here.”
I looked at Kohl and then back at Blue. For what Blue and Thibodeaux had done, a simple little conspiracy charge wasn’t good enough. Besides, conspiracy was one of the hardest charges to prove in court. And no way would Mrs. Whitaker testify against Thibodeaux. Blue and Thibodeaux knew that.
I shook my head at Kohl and headed toward the open door to the trailer where Blue stood.
Kohl said, “Wrong choice, Bruno. You’re not making the right choice here.”
I didn’t turn around. I just waved my hand over my head as if I really didn’t care what Kohl had to say. But I did. I just couldn’t look at him anymore for fear of giving in to the easiest path and asking him for help. Stepping away from the fire I was playing with and letting him handle everything.
I made it to the bottom of the steps and looked up at Blue.
Blue grinned. “Where you been, big man? You were about to miss out on all the fun.”
He stepped back out of the doorway so I could see in from where I stood on the ground. Jaime Reynosa sat in a chair by the filing cabinets, just inside the door, handcuffed behind his back. Sweat ran down his face, and he blinked rapidly to keep it out of his eyes. He looked scared, real scared, and he had a right to be. I went up the steps and inside.