“This task force is just a crock a sixth-floor bullshit. But maybe you and I can get past that and turn it into something worthwhile if we work together.”
“But we are working together, Brendan. That’s what task forces do.”
“Don’t shine me up, pal.” He motioned toward the room. “This is a five-car accident. Still, there might be opportunity in all this chaos if we work it right.” He leaned closer. “What if you and I trade everything we’ve got, but just with each other? These other humps can fend for themselves.”
“You mean hoard shit?”
He smiled, “I know you’re the original primary on these murders and you probably know stuff the rest of us don’t. But if you team up with me, you’re getting a skilled homicide guy with a seventy-percent clearance rate. If we end up with a book or a movie, we cut it right down the middle.”
“Can I get back to you on that? My voice mail is loaded and I’m sort of obligated to evaluate all my offers before deciding.”
His expression hardened. “I’m not going to let this opportunity get away. My partner is the buffalo in the checked coat over there.” He pointed at Bart Hoover. “He’s Captain Hoover’s brother. They’re filling his jacket with sexy stuff, hoping he catches this peril so he can make the lieutenant’s list. But trust me, that jerk couldn’t catch a cold in Alaska. It’s also no secret your partner is a world-class alkie. Since we’re both stuck working with lames, maybe we should unofficially team up. This funeral thing of yours has possibilities. I’m just saying, let’s cut our losses and go in on it together.”
“Interesting idea,” I said. “But I’m not sure about the fifty-fifty book and movie split. I’ll have to run that by my creative affairs advisor. I’ll get back to you.”
He wandered off looking dissed. Since I hadn’t scored a chair yet, I sat on my broken desk and made a few calls.
At noon I drove out to Forest Lawn and met with Bryna Spiros, a short, dark-haired woman with a bright smile. She’d helped me on two similar occasions, knew what I needed, and led me to the small wood-framed North Chapel.
12:15 P. M.: My photographers, Doreen and Kyle, arrived in separate L-cars. They checked out suitable camera positions. I bought some leafy flower arrangements from the worship center florist to provide them with better photo blinds.
12:30 P. M.: The polished mahogany casket arrived on a rolling gurney and was placed in the front of the chapel. I really love the names they give these coffins. I actually saw one in the display room called the Sky Lounge. This one was a Heaven Sent. Since I have a less formal streak, when I die I want to get hammered into a That’s All Folks!
I opened the half-lid and propped it up. Forrest was festively turned out in a black suit and gray tie, resting on white satin, all ready for his heaven-sent ride into the great beyond.
The embalmer did a reasonable job of cleaning him up. They taped over the gunshot wound and covered it with plastic skin, although his head still showed the lopsided trauma of the wound. He had that red-tinged robust complexion found only in wax museums and on the chalky faces of the dead. His eyes were closed and someone had decided to put heavy pancake over his eyelid tatts, covering the Russian Cyrillic symbols that said: “Don’t wake up.” This time he wouldn’t.
“I’m gonna get this guy, Forrest,” I whispered somewhat foolishly to the waxy corpse.
12:45 P. M.: Agent Underwood arrived and sat in the back, holding his ostrich briefcase, which undoubtedly had some kind of huge exotic, square-barreled automatic inside.
1:00 P. M.: Stewart and Campbell, dressed as grieving parents, walked into the church and were seated in the front row.
Members of the task force started to arrive, pulling into the parking lot in their personal vehicles. A few minutes later, they wandered into the church and spread out, everyone stylin’ and profilin’. No polyester, white socks, or Kmart ties.
Some tactical ops like to use catchy radio code names, but I always feel like an asshole triggering my mike and saying, “This is Dogcatcher to Handy-Wipe,” so I just assigned numbers. Underwood was One. I was Two. Bola was Three, and so forth.
There were a half a dozen people in attendance who I’d never seen before. The long-lens team was busy shooting close-ups of all of them. Kyle was inside the church, behind the viewing area. Doreen was in the trees, halfway between the chapel and the parking lot with a 350-mm lens. A CD of harp music played as a few more people ambled in and sat in the uncomfortable, wooden pews.
There was a very attractive, well-dressed, middle-aged, blonde woman in a stylish suit sitting in the back of the church looking as out of place as a debutante at a monster truck rally. Ice blue eyes, flawless skin, great shoes, and a single strand of pearls.
At one point, before the service started, a gray-haired, pear-shaped, three-hundred-and-fifty-pound man in a brown tweed coat entered the chapel, waddled up the aisle on swollen ankles, and looked into the casket. He reached down and rubbed the pancake off of Forrest’s eyelids, then leaned close and checked the tattoos. Satisfied, he turned and limped back up the aisle and right on out the front door of the church. I triggered my mike.
“This is Two to Six,” I whispered to Kyle using my Handy-Talkie. “You get that?”
“Roger, Two. Got him,” Kyle’s voice answered in my earpiece.
“Seven, this is Two. You got a huge bogie dressed in brown burlap coming out the front of the chapel.”
“Roger, Two,” Doreen McFadden said. “I’m photogratizing his sagging ass even as we speak.”
I moved out the side door of the chapel and watched from the steps as she tracked him from a safe distance using the line of trees for cover, gunning off shots as he got into a black Lincoln Town Car, driven by another man. The car quickly exited the park.
“Two, this is Seven,” Doreen’s voice came back in my ear. “That town car has diplomatic plates.”
“Get outta town … ,” I murmured, wondering what the hell was going on.
A few minutes later, the attractive blonde got up, walked to the casket and looked at the body. Then she also left. Right after that, a medium-built bald man in a blue blazer did the same thing.
1:30 P. M.: The funeral started and the priest Bryna provided said some oft-used words. “God has seen fit to call his servant home.”
The guy had a timid delivery and the short service droned unmercifully. By then the only people left in the congregation to hear it were all packing badges and creaking out yawns.
2:10 P. M.: Six members of the task force carried Forrest’s Heaven Sent casket out of the church and loaded it into the hearse for the short drive to our gravesite two hundred yards up the hill. We had to keep up the charade until it was over. It was a good thing we did, because just as the priest was sprinkling holy water on the coffin, I saw a black guy in a Forest Lawn uniform taking pictures of the burial with a long lens from a grounds truck parked a hundred yards from the gravesite.
“Six, this is Two. African American in a park maintenance outfit behind the white truck.”
“Roger. Already got him and his partner,” Doreen answered.
I hadn’t seen his partner.
2:50 P. M.: The funeral was over and everybody was gone. We retrieved Forrest from the elegant, silk-lined Heaven Sent and returned him to the harsher environs of the morgue refrigerator. Then we hurried to ,task force headquarters to look at the digital shots Doreen and Kyle had taken.
When I arrived, I had a surprise waiting.
Chapter 20
Zack was standing with his back to the window. He looked awful. Bloodshot eyes, purple nose, saffron cheeks. His swollen jowls were flush with the tropical colors of sunset. Making it worse, he was holding forth in front of six detectives on the worthlessness of task forces. “You bunch a ass-wipes couldn’t find dog shit at the pound.”
I walked over and grabbed him by the elbow. “Hey, Zack, come here. I need to show you something.”
He pulled away. “Juss’ splainin’ what lam
e shit this is,” he slurred.
Agent Orange was only a few minutes behind me. If he saw Zack in this condition it was over. But my partner was a big man who wasn’t easy to corral under normal circumstances. Drunk, he was impossible. So I screwed my heels into the floor and let him have my best right cross. He wasn’t expecting it and at the last second, turned into the punch. The sound bounced off the walls in the squad room, cracking like a leather bullwhip.
Zack fell forward, landing across somebody’s new window desk, scattering pencils, pictures and a charging cell phone. He was stunned, but not out. I reached around behind my back, grabbed the cuffs off my belt, and slipped them on his bandaged wrists. Then, with a throbbing right hand, I straightened him up. A line of bloody drool was coming out of the corner of his mouth. These last few days had taken a heavy toll. I’d just added to the mess by splitting his lip.
I turned to the room full of startled cops wearing various expressions of jaw dropping disbelief.
“This guy is a vet with an outstanding record. I’m begging you people to forget what you just saw. He’s going through a rough time. A divorce, a bankruptcy … cut him some slack.”
I helped Zack to his feet.
“Why’d ya hit me, man?” he mumbled.
“To shut you up. Come on, we got people to see.” “Wha’ people?”
I led him out of the temporary task force area into the bathroom across from the elevator, getting him inside just seconds before I heard Agent Orange in the lobby. I leaned Zack against the sink, his hands still cuffed behind him. Then I wet some paper towels and held them up to the fresh cut on his lip.
“You gotta get outta here, Zack. Don’t come back till you’re sober.”
“‘S my new unit,” he said dully. “Don’t wanta get gigged on some bullshit nonperformance write-up.”
“You’re drunk. The fed running this detail’s a total nutsack.”
“Don’t wanta stay at my place, can’t stay at Fran’s or my brother’s. Hadda borrow his Harley. Fucker ‘said he’s gonna report it stolen.”
“Zack, will you shut up and come with me?” “Get these damn cuffs off,” he finally said, softly.
I reached around and unhooked them with my key. “Where we going?”
“To throw ourselves on the mercy of the sixth floor. His big Irish face creased into a frown.
I found my wife in her office and left Zack sitting outside, breathing scotch on her assistant, Ellen.
“What is it?” Alexa said, looking up at me as I came through the door.
She was going over the monthly crime reports for the five detective bureaus. It was not an encouraging picture. Violent crime categories were up and clearance rates were down. That could largely be explained because there were not enough detectives to adequately cover the growing number of homicides. But commanders and deputy chiefs are notoriously deaf when it comes to down-trending job performance numbers. Alexa had to attend the bimonthly COMSTAT meeting and defend her clearance record. That meeting was scheduled for tomorrow. She looked impatient and worried.
“How’d the funeral go?” she said, her eyes still on the printouts, not giving me her full attention.
I pushed past that question, closed the door, and crossed to her desk.
“Honey, I haven’t asked you for anything since you got this job but I’m about to break that rule.”
“Please don’t,” she said looking at me with new, hard-edged determination.
I was her husband, and at home, there wasn’t much we couldn’t find a way to agree on. But we had carefully defined our two worlds. On the job she was my boss and we always found a way to keep it completely professional.
“Zack?” she asked, wearily.
I nodded.
She pushed the stack of crime stats aside and rubbed her eyes for a minute before looking up. The expression that formed when her hands came away was polite disinterest. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” I started by saying. “I owe this guy. We both owe him.”
“How do I owe him? I never really knew him all that well until you two partnered up, and I’m just finding out he was already a big time lush by then. He needs a twelve step program.”
“You owe him because he saved me. If he hadn’t been there for me in the Valley, then there would be no us. I know he’s behaving badly and something is going really wrong inside him, but I can’t just walk away.”
“Let’s get something straight. Zack Farrell is only one of two hundred detectives under my command. If I give him a pass, or look the other way, how in the name of God, can I drop the hammer on the next drunk who Ambles through here? We have citizens to protect. This is a violent city.” She pushed the crime stats across the desk toward me. “I’m supposed to be a firewall between all this and the law-abiding citizens we protect. How do I do that if I don’t maintain guidelines and standards?”
“Honey, don’t preach the police manual at me.”
She just stared.
“Okay, look. It’s complicated, but here’s my problem. I’m not sure I really knew Zack back then. I was so out of it, I wasn’t focused on much. Now that I am, I’m not sure I like what I see. But as a man, I can’t accept what I accepted from him back then and not give something back. This is a debt and I’ve got to find some answer I can live with or it will change the way I view myself.”
She considered this, then sighed loudly. “Where is he?”
“Right outside your door. He’s drunk. Just got through cussing out half the task force. For all I know, one of them has already given him up to Underwood. The whole thing is out of control, but I’ve gotta try. He might be suicidal. I can’t just stand around and watch him auger in.”
She looked at me for a moment before picking up her phone and dialing a number.
“This is Lieutenant Scully in the Detective Bureau. Notify the Psychiatric section I want a two-man team to come to my office and pick up one of my detectives. I’m ordering a three-day hospital evaluation.” She waited, then said, “He’s undergoing extreme stress, both marital and financial, possibly suicidal. I want him held in the secure wing at Queen of Angels until you can make a determination. All reports on his condition are to be released only to my office.” She waited again, then said, “Thanks.”
She hung up and fixed me with one of her no-bullshitall-business stares. “This puts him in the system, Shane.
If he flunks the psych review, he’s gonna get flagged. All this does is take him out of action for three days and keep him from doing something foolish. Maybe he comes back to us or maybe he gets marked unfit for duty. If that happens, he gets the gate.”
“With a medical waiver he could go out on early retirement without affecting his pension.”
“That would be up to Tony, the Commission, and the Bureau of Professional Standards,” which was our new media-friendly name for Internal Affairs. I could see she was angry. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work,” she added.
Thirty minutes later, two psychiatric paramedics arrived. Zack was led into the elevator. Just before the door closed, he turned and looked at me, a stunned, betrayed expression on his swollen face.
Chapter 21
What’s with all these embassy cars? Where’s our Intel on these people?”
Underwood was pissed, studying the digital photo blow-ups from the funeral. Brendan Villalobos, Mace Ward, Ruben Bola and I were crowded in his office.
The idea that foreign embassies might lodge a career-ending complaint in the federal hierarchy, definitely had Underwood worried. It was no fun being bait at the bottom of the political aquarium. While Underwood bitched about our inefficiency, I tried to get the image of Zack’s swollen, disillusioned face to retreat to some dark place in the back of my mind.
“We gotta find out who these fucking people are,” Underwood said.
“This big guy dressed in the tweed jacket left in a car from the Russian Embassy,” Villalobos said, poi
nting at the pictures.
Ruben Bola followed his lead and picked up two photos. “This bald guy in the blue blazer left in an Israeli embassy car. The foxy blonde in the business suit was in a silver Jag. We ran her plates but they came back to a company called Allied Freight Forwarding. Answering machine, post office box address. Probably a phone drop.”
Brendan Villalobos picked up photos of the guys wearing Forest Lawn jumpsuits. “Anybody been able to identify these two cream machines?” he asked.
The African American was implausibly handsome. The shot of his partner showed a thin, narrow-waisted white guy with tattoos. He had an uneven, sandy flattop that looked like he’d done it himself with hedge shears.
“Where’s their car?” Brendan asked.
I rummaged around and found a shot of an old Dodge Charger pulling out of the lot. Darleen and Kyle had printed several blow-ups of the rear bumper giving us a readable view of the license plate. “California plate IdaMae-Victor three-seven-five,” I said. “It came back to somebody named Leland Zant.”
“And?” Agent Orange had lost patience with us. “Extensive drug record,” Ruben added quickly, keeping his eyes on his notes. “Guy changes addresses a lot. Sally’s trying to dig through the clutter and get a current.”
As if on cue, there was a knock on the door and Sally Quinn stuck her head in. “Zant is doing a third strike in Soledad. He’s been up there since last August.”
“So if he’s in the cooler, who’s driving this Charger?” Underwood barked. “Come on, don’t make me pull it out in scraps.”
Sally continued, “Zant went down for moving forty kilos of cut. With that much weight, we popped him for felony dealing and the car became an LAPD asset seizure. The registration just transferred.”
“This Charger is an LAPD undercover?” Underwood frowned.
“Looks like it, sir,” Sally answered.
“So keep going… . Who was driving it? Getting a full report outta you is worse than dental surgery.”
Cold Hit (2005) Page 10
