The Pain Scale

by Tyler Dilts

  “No way to do that sooner?”

  “I could access them, but that’s way dicey. We leave a footprint with the feds, and we’re going to be in way deeper than anything we’ve been digging into so far. I don’t think we’re ready to go there, are we?”

  That was the first time since we’d started down this path that Patrick had hesitated. He was much more familiar with the territory than I was. I deferred. “You understand the implications of what we’re doing a lot better than I do. You’re in the driver’s seat on this.”

  “I like the sound of that,” he said, smiling in the blue light of his computer display.

  Jen and I were back at our desks when I described him. “Dark hair, short beard, features on the sharp side. Hard to be much more specific.”

  “Could you pick him out of a lineup?” she asked.

  “Depends on who else was in it. Maybe.”

  “Patrick thinks the techs will come up with the same image?”

  “He seemed confident of that.”

  “How long did he think they’d take?”

  “Couldn’t say. Depends on how they’re prioritizing things.”

  “So we’ve got an indefinite window until it goes into the reports.”

  I nodded. “I thought about talking to the techs, see if we could slow things down, but I didn’t want to get anyone else involved.”

  “Might not be so bad.”

  “It would give us access to more data and make coming up with a match a lot more likely.”

  “What would we lose?” she asked.

  I’d already considered that question and had an answer ready for her. “If he’s still around, and we match him, he’s likely to disappear.”

  “How do we know he hasn’t already skipped?”

  “Only Anton.” There were a few angles to consider, but I was confident I’d figured them all out. “He might already be gone. If Anton was the contractor, the middleman, then he was probably the last loose end. The shooter and whoever’s calling the shots might figure the mess is completely cleaned. Move on to whatever’s next.”

  “That assumes a lot,” Jen said. She was right.

  “I know. That our theory is a slam dunk and that we’ve foreseen every possible variable.”

  “Think we have?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Me too.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “With another needle in another haystack.”

  We talked briefly about tipping off the techs to the image on the iPhone, the exact opposite of what I had considered earlier, but decided to wait to see if Patrick could come up with something.

  I dug back into the files and started looking for loose ends. A few minutes later, when I extended my hand toward the ceiling and pulled my raised elbow toward my head in an attempt to relieve the pain rising in my shoulder, Jen said, “What?”

  “I hate this.”

  She waited for me to go on.

  “Waiting. Every solid lead we’re getting is coming from the fucking driver’s iPhone and from Patrick’s computer. I want to do something. I need to do something. I can’t just sit here and wait. It’s killing me.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Yogurtland?”

  “You love Yogurtland,” Jen said.

  “I know. But it’s not what I thought you had in mind.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe we’d be kicking in a door or something.”

  We were sitting in lime-green chairs at the table closest to the window, looking out onto Second Street.

  “You know,” I said, “something exciting.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re sitting there eating vanilla frozen yogurt topped with vanilla wafers and you honestly expect me to believe you want excitement?”

  She had a point. So I used the pink plastic spoon to shovel another bite into my mouth and didn’t say anything else.

  “How are the schools?” I asked the real-estate lady. She had shoes with heels so high they made my calves hurt, shoulder-length blonde hair that didn’t move when she turned her head, and smelled like a Sephora store. Her name was Shelly.

  We’d stopped by a property on Fifth Street in Belmont Heights. They called it a duplex even though it really wasn’t one. I didn’t know what style it was—maybe a little bit Craftsmany mixed in with contemporary suburb? I did know it was a really nice three bedroom/two bath with a guesthouse in back, but it was way out of Jen’s price range. Which was why I was having some fun with Shelly.

  “Excellent schools,” she said. “Fremont is only a few blocks away, and that’s the best elementary school in Long Beach. Do you have any children yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  I couldn’t tell if Jen’s examination of the insides of the kitchen cabinets was out of genuine interest or just a way to pretend that she didn’t hear me.

  When we had introduced ourselves and told Shelly we were LBPD detectives, she’d seemed pleased and asked if we had met on the job. I told her we had and decided to see how far Jen would let me go.

  She hadn’t acknowledged anything yet. She seemed too engrossed in the inspection of the house.

  “How long have you two been together?” Shelly asked.

  “We’ve been partners for more than five years,” I said.

  Jen, still oblivious to our conversation, ran her hand across the marble countertop and took a look inside the stainless-steel dishwasher. Then she squatted down and looked at the tile work where it butted up against the bottom of the cabinets.

  Shelly and I let her go. “And what’s your current situation?” she asked.

  “Oh,” I said, “we’re renting.”

  “Where?”

  “Here in Long Beach.” I was enjoying the vagueness game I was playing with Shelly and wondered how long I could string her along without actually telling a lie.

  “So this will be your first house?”

  “Neither of us has owned before.”

  Jen moved on through the laundry room, one of the baths, and all of the bedrooms before she said anything at all to us. When she was finally ready to talk, she said, “I like it. Can we take a look at the guesthouse?”

  Shelly and I let our conversation drop and followed Jen through the rest of the property. The one-bedroom rear unit was every bit as nice as the front house. “How much do you think this would rent for?” Jen asked.

  “It’s so hard for people to buy right now,” Shelly said. “The rents are going up. I think thirteen hundred would be a conservative guess.”

  Jen nodded, apparently in agreement. She seemed genuinely impressed with everything she’d seen. She traded contact information with Shelly and told her she’d call soon.

  In the car, I said, “Are you really thinking about that one?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It’s almost seven hundred thousand. Isn’t that way out of your price range?”

  “If I could come up with a bit more for the down payment, with the rental income I could probably swing it.”

  “Do you really want a place so big?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “My dad’s not doing too well. With Johnny gone to med school, they have a lot more house than they need. They could maybe use a smaller place.”

  I knew she was also thinking about the possibility of her mother being left alone in the big Gardena house she grew up in. She wouldn’t say that out loud, though. Neither would I. Not surprisingly, I felt like a dick for joking around with Shelly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Why do you think I didn’t give you any shit?”

  We were in the car headed back downtown when the throwaway cell phone rang. I recognized the number.


  “Good news, I hope,” I said.

  “Maybe. With the new software and enhanced photo recognition, we’ve got three possible matches in the Sternow and Byrne personnel files on the pic from the iPhone.”

  “Three? How many did you search it against?”

  “As many as I could get my hands on. Over four thousand. Most of those were clerks and attorneys and paralegals. About seven hundred of those were the former PMF employees.”

  “Were all three matches from the mercenary pile?”

  “Two were. We’ve got one air force vet and one with no military record who was already on the security payroll when S and B made the acquisition. Third guy’s one of the mercs, former Army Ranger, no apparent air force connection.”

  “What do we do with the info?” I said. “How do we check these guys out and stay off the radar?”

  “I’m working on that,” Patrick said. “I’m trying to find out if I can get pictures of these guys through any other sources. Facebook, Flickr, anything online.”

  “Because then we don’t have to worry about anybody asking how we made the connection.”

  “Bingo.”

  After we detoured by Patrick’s loft, where we picked up hard copies of the info on the three possibles, we headed back to the squad room.

  “How much do you want to know?” Jen asked the lieutenant.

  “You’re going to have to be the judge of that.”

  “How come she gets to be the judge?”

  They both went on as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

  “We found some data in the phone,” Jen said. “We can use it. It might lead us to the Seal Beach shooter. And it’s going to be good info. Stuff we can use.”

  “Going to be?” he asked.

  Jen nodded but didn’t go into any more detail.

  “It won’t be long before you have to move on some of this, will it?”

  “No,” I said.

  He gave us a look weighted with concern. It was clear he wanted to say more, but we’d gone too far to talk openly about our information-gathering techniques to be any more forthcoming about things without implicating him as well. None of us was comfortable with the situation, so he told us to be careful and went back into his office.

  “Only one of the three was in the air force,” I said. “Patrick put it on a Post-it.” I held up the file for Jen to see. “Should we start with him?”

  I flipped open the file on Aaron Baker and started reading. Patrick had done all the background he could on him without going through any of the government databases like NCIC or ViCAP. With those, there would be the possibility of leaving traces that the FBI might be able to find. Still, he was able to come up with quite a bit of information. Baker had dropped out of community college in Arizona and joined the air force in the wake of 9/11 and had served for four years before deciding not to re-up and accepting a position with a private military company that specialized in airborne surveillance and security, called SkyHawk.

  “SkyHawk?” Jen asked. “As opposed to what? LandHawk?”

  “Redundant,” I said. “He didn’t have to deal with the name for long. Six months after he signed on, they merged with DefCorp International. Been with them ever since.”

  “What else? Any record?”

  “Unmarried. Has a Corvette, a Range Rover, and a Kawasaki registered with the DMV. One drunk and disorderly charge in 2004. Looks like it was pled down from an assault beef. Did some community service. Spent most of the last decade in the Middle East. Only has a US address going back to ’09. Moved to LA when Sternow and Byrne snapped up DefCorp.”

  “What do you think?” Jen asked.

  “This isn’t a lot to go on. Patrick included a bit more. Mostly Google hits. He’s got a Facebook page with no pictures, says he likes Metallica. Can we bust him for that?” She smiled, and I handed her the open folder.

  “What’s this? ‘The Kawa-Kazes’? Some kind of rice-burner biker club.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I thought we couldn’t say ‘rice burner’ anymore.”

  “No, you can’t say ‘rice burner’ anymore. I can say it all I want.”

  “Oh, it’s one of those things.”

  “Yeah. Get over it.”

  “Think this could be our guy?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t even know if he was Pararescue.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “How about the other two guys?”

  “Let’s see,” I said. “We know neither one of them was a PJ. One’s a former Ranger.” I shuffled the folders. “This one. Roger Bell.”

  “What else is in there?”

  “Records similar to Baker’s. Although, he was already in the army. Joined in ’98. Re-upped in ’02, again in ’06. Signed on with DefCorp in 2010. Sounds more like career military. Ex-wife and two kids. No criminal record. He was delinquent on his child support twice—second time, the year before he went private.”

  “Maybe he just needed the bigger paycheck.”

  “Think he needed an even bigger one? Signed on for some private wet work?”

  “Wet work?”

  “Yeah. It means assas—”

  “I know what it means. I thought you gave up on Tom Clancy novels.”

  “The old ones are pretty good.”

  “Sure. How about number three?”

  “Peter Jarman. No military service for him. Degree in political science from UCLA in ’94. Looks like a pretty normal guy.”

  “How long has he been with S and B?”

  “Twelve years.”

  “What did he do in between graduation and the law firm?”

  “Don’t know. Nothing in the file on that.”

  I spread the three folders on the table between us like giant playing cards and considered them. There didn’t seem to be anything at all that would lead in one direction or another. We could dig deeper and start using some of our other resources to check them out, but that would be likely to tip off Young and Goodman.

  “Should we talk to them?”

  “How do we do that without tipping our hand?”

  “We make some shit up.”

  Aaron Baker lived on the top floor of a condo complex two blocks in from the beach on the southern edge of Santa Monica, just north of the city’s border with Venice. We parked on the street, and just as we were deciding if we wanted to buzz Baker’s unit, a tall balding man in a Radiohead T-shirt led an energetic golden retriever out of the gate, and we slipped in behind him. He looked over his shoulder at us, but I gave an authoritative smile and an officious nod, and his dog pulled him down the street. It’s surprising the kind of thing you can get away with if you act like a cop.

  We got out of the elevator on the third floor and caught a few glimpses of the sun setting on the Pacific Ocean as we walked to Baker’s door. I gave the door a triple rap with the knuckles on my left hand. My right was resting on my belt in front of my right hip. After a few seconds, I repeated the knock and said loudly enough for the next-door neighbor to hear, “Aaron Baker?”

  The door opened on a safety chain, and an eye peeked around the edge. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Baker? We’re with the Long Beach Police Department. Could we have a few words with you?” We held up our badges.

  “Just a moment,” he said and shut the door. I heard him move away and then come back. We had known he’d be armed and might even answer a knock at his door with a weapon in his hand. Jen and I couldn’t blame him—we’d both done the same thing more times than we could count. At least more than I could count. She’s better at math than I am.

  I whispered, “Stashing a gun?”

  She nodded.

  We heard him behind the door and saw a shadow move across the glass bricks to the right of the door, then the knob turning and a very soft squeak in the bottom hinge as he opened the door, keeping most of his body behind it. His manner was friendly, but he was being cautious, ready to slam the door and head back to wherever he’d hidden the gun.

  “Hel
lo,” I said, amiably. “I’m Detective Danny Beckett, and this is Detective Jennifer Tanaka.”

  Baker nodded. “What can I help you with?” He stepped back, giving us as wide a berth as he could without it seeming obvious, and gestured toward a black leather sofa in the living room. The walls were eggshell, the floors hardwood, and the view was even better than it had been from outside. Sternow & Byrne was paying him well.

  We settled onto the couch, and he took a seat in a matching chair. “You’re a member of a motorcycle club,” Jen said. “Is that correct?”

  He looked puzzled.

  “The Kawa-Kazes?” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. “I suppose you could call it that. It’s really just a bunch of guys with motorcycles and a Facebook page. Haven’t even ridden with anybody for a while.”

  “Do you know Larry Yamagata?” Jen asked.

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “He was shot a few days ago, and his bike, a Kawasaki Ninja”—I made a show of checking my notes for the model designation I’d copied off the motorcycle company’s website—“Ten-R was stolen.”

  “That’s a good bike. I can see somebody killing for one.”

  Of course you can, I thought. You’re a fucking mercenary. “Would you mind looking at few pictures?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. The more he realized we weren’t asking about anything he was connected to, the more relaxed he became.

  I flipped open a file folder and showed him a photo of a man’s chest with a tattoo that read KAWA-KAZE, in a font that had been modeled on Japanese kanji. It was easy to find with a Google search. We had dozens to choose from. Apparently, helmet-head Kawasaki fans lack imagination.

  “Guy was serious, I guess,” Baker said.

  “Look familiar at all?” Jen asked.

  “Nope. Turned out there were other guys calling themselves that, too. We weren’t as clever as we thought we were. Never seen that tattoo.”