by Miles Corwin
Kind of blue
( Ash Levine - 1 )
Miles Corwin
Miles Corwin
Kind of blue
PROLOGUE
Lieutenant Frank Duffy trudged up the five flights of stairs from the Felony Special squad room to the tenth floor, where the LAPD command staff was based. By the time he had walked down the long hallway to Assistant Chief Vincent Grazzo’s office, he was already wheezing from exertion and beads of sweat speckled his brow. He knew he should have taken the elevator, but his doctor had ordered him to get some exercise and these days walking the stairs at the Police Administration Building-Los Angeles Police Department headquarters-was his only opportunity.
“I got something for you,” Grazzo told Duffy, who dabbed at his brow with his knuckles.
Grazzo sat upright in his chair, tightly gripping a pencil in one hand. Short and pudgy, his midnight blue LAPD uniform fit him like a wet suit, and rolls of flesh spilled out over his collar. Duffy always thought that overweight police officials in their fifties and sixties looked as absurd in their uniforms as tubby baseball managers waddling to the mound.
“Last night, an ex-cop by the name of Pete Relovich got clipped at his house,” Grazzo said. “Looks like a B and E.”
“The name is vaguely familiar,” Duffy said with a faint Irish inflection.
“When he was a young cop, he saved his partner’s life in Watts.”
“That was a long time ago, but I remember hearing something about it.”
“They were on a robbery stakeout in the projects. Just about to take down a gangster pistol-whipping an illegal with a pocketful of cash, when a few homies fired on them. The partner took one in the gut. Pete was hit in the nose by a fragment. It traveled through his fucking nasal cavity and ended up in his mouth. He spit the hot metal out, shielded his partner with his body, then carried him to the squad car. And Pete still had the balls to return fire and drop one of the cocksuckers.” Grazzo shook his head with admiration. “He was one macho cop.”
“Wasn’t his father a captain in Newton years ago?”
“Yeah, that was his old man,” Grazzo said. “He retired a while back. Pete had thirteen in and pulled the pin last year.”
“Why not wait for the pension at twenty?”
“Who knows.”
“Anything interesting in his package?”
“He’s got a handful of excessive force complaints. But as far as I could tell he was just a hard-nosed street cop who was doing his job and ran into some whiners.
“Anyway, the chief’s got a hard on for this case. He and Relovich’s old man go way back. They were young boots together at the old Venice station. This one’s personal for the chief.”
“The father still alive?”
“Naw. Heart attack five years ago. But the chief wants this case cleared. He owes the old man that at least.”
“Where did Relovich live?”
“San Pedro.”
“Why isn’t Harbor Homicide handling the case?”
“Why did the chief bring back Felony Special after the unit was shitcanned in the nineties?”
Duffy wondered if a prerequisite for being named assistant chief was learning how to answer a question with a question-and then answering your own question.
“Power,” Grazzo said. “He now has the power to take any case from the divisional dicks-from a jaywalking to a homicide-and give it to the Felony Special guys. They’re supposedly,” Grazzo said, pausing for a moment, “the best detectives in the city. And the chief wants the best detectives handling this case.”
“Major Crimes,” Duffy said.
“What?” Grazzo asked.
“Back in the nineties, they called the unit Major Crimes.”
“Who gives a shit what they used to call it.”
“Okay,” Duffy said. “I’ll give it to the on-call team right now.”
“The chief doesn’t want it going to the on-call team.”
“You know that’s how we do it,” Duffy said.
“The chief doesn’t want this case going to the luck of the draw. He wants your best detective on the case. The best of the best, so to speak. So who do you wanna put on it?”
Duffy stroked his neck. “Let’s see. Saito is my best scene man. McKay’s my best interviewer. Griego used to work at Harbor Division and knows all the gangbangers and pipeheads down there, so he might be a good choice. Raymond’s a bulldog and he’ll-”
“Chief wants your best guy-overall.”
“My best guy overall quit eleven months ago.”
“Who was that?”
“Ash Levine.”
Grazzo tapped his index finger on his chin. “Asher Levine? The guy involved in that Latisha Patton fiasco?”
Duffy nodded. “That’s right. I hated to lose him.”
“You suspended him, didn’t you.”
“I did. But I never thought he’d quit over it.”
“Quitting the department just because he loses a wit and gets suspended? The guy sounds fucking unbalanced.”
“I don’t think so. He just was in very deep on that case.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Sitting on his ass. Doing a little gofer work for his brother’s law firm.”
“Jew?” Grazzo asked.
Duffy nodded.
“What was a smart Jew doing working as a street cop?”
“Levine’s an odd duck. He’s a combat vet, too.”
Grazzo lifted his Semper Fidelis coffee mug in a mock toast and took a sip. “Don’t tell me he’s a fellow Marine.”
“No. IDF-Israeli Defense Forces. Dropped out of college, moved to Israel, and joined up. I’ve known him since he was in patrol and I’ll tell you, he’s a hell of a detective. He doesn’t think like a normal person. He sees things other guys miss. I remember a time when we were both at Pacific Division and he was just a young patrolman at the time. We were working the crime scene when-”
“You’re a chatty fucking Irishman,” Grazzo said.
Duffy shrugged.
“You want to bring him back?” Grazzo asked.
Duffy grabbed a Kleenex off Grazzo’s desk and mopped his brow. “He’s a pain in the ass. But yeah, I’d love to have him back.”
“The chief wasn’t happy when the Latisha Patton hit stirred up all that bad press for us, but he didn’t want to lose Levine over it. He thought Levine’s work on the Spring Street Slasher case was outstanding.” Grazzo tugged at his collar. “What was it-four, five vics before he scooped up that psycho?”
“An even half dozen,” Duffy said.
“I say go get Levine.”
“How about the background checks, shrink visits, and all that other LAPD bullshit?”
“I’ll fast track the paperwork and put him on temporary. You get him an appointment with the shrink. He can finish the rest of it next week. Can you run him down now?”
“Today?”
“Yeah, today.”
“I don’t know if I can find him this afternoon.”
Grazzo checked his watch and frowned.
“But I know where he’ll be tonight.”
“Where’s that?”
“Where else would a divorced Jewish cop-with no life and no kids-be on a Friday night?”
Grazzo frowned. He didn’t like it when someone else-especially someone lower on the LAPD chain of command-answered a question with a question and then prepared to answer it.
Duffy chuckled and said, “At his mother’s.”
Duffy could not find a spot in front of Mrs. Levine’s duplex, the duplex where he knew Levine was raised, so he parked two blocks away and strolled down the sidewalk, crunching across dried palm fronds that carpeted the street after the breezy afternoon. He re
called cruising down this street when he was a young patrolman in the Wilshire Division. The other cops called the area-east of Fairfax and south of Pico-the Borscht Belt because of all the elderly Eastern European Jews who clustered there. The neighborhood was modest, filled with duplexes and small apartment buildings, but the places were tidy then and the landscaping was well tended. Now, Duffy saw how it had deteriorated. Slabs of stucco had crumbled from a number of the apartment facades, tufts of crabgrass peeked through the cracks in the asphalt driveways, and the narrow lawns in front of most of the duplexes were dusty patches of weeds. Rusty air conditioners teetered from a few windows and metal shopping carts were abandoned in the gutters.
There were still some elderly Jews left-like Levine’s mother-but Duffy noticed a number of Hispanic kids in diapers playing in front of the apartments and several surly black teenagers wearing blue nylon do-rags leaning against cars. On a few garage doors, he saw the spray-painted tags of the Mansfield Family Crips. Duffy walked up the brick path to the duplex Mrs. Levine rented, which was squeezed between two small apartment buildings, beige boxes with water stains beneath the rooflines. The duplex, with its red-tiled roof, wrought iron light sconces, and small courtyard, once must have had a stately elegance. But Duffy noticed that many of the tiles on the roof were split, the sconces were bent and nicked, and the wooden steps leading to the upper unit sagged in the middle.
Duffy glanced at the side of the duplex and noticed that all the windows were shielded with thick black security bars. He wiped his feet on the mat and, before ringing the doorbell, paused for a moment, rehearsing a few possible approaches, trying to decide which would be the most effective.
CHAPTER 1
I just finished mumbling my way through the Bir Mat Hamazon — grace after the meal-when I heard the doorbell ring and Lieutenant Duffy call out, “Open up, Ash, I know you’re in there.”
My mother padded across the room and peered through the peephole. Then she quickly glanced at me with a pained expression, her eyes filling with an amalgam of anger and dread, and opened the door.
“Shabat Shalom, Mrs. Levine,” Duffy said, smiling. He reached for her hand and then patted it gently.
She glared at him.
“I learned a little Hebrew in the seminary when I had a class in comparative religion.”
“Very little, I assume.”
While he prattled on, trying to charm my mother, I sat slumped in a dining room chair. My temples felt like they were being squeezed in a vise. In an instant, I was transported right back to that street corner at 54th and Figueroa, where I saw Latisha Patton splayed on the sidewalk, her head encircled by a pool of blood, brain tissue and skull shards blown into the gutter. Why? Because of my stupidity. Or incompetence. Or carelessness. Or all of it. I felt as if I had killed her myself. For the past year I had been trying to bury the agonizing memory of that afternoon. And now, seeing Duffy brought it all back again. When I set my hands on my lap, I saw that I had left sweaty handprints on the wooden arms of the chair.
My mother glanced over at me for a moment. She could always read me better than any suspect. Turning to Duffy, she said in a loud whisper, “I wish you’d just let him get on with his life.”
She looked particularly small and frail at that moment. Pale and freckled, her bright red hair was so lacquered and spherical it looked like a football helmet. She had an energy that made her seem physically imposing, but when people stood next to her and realized she was only about five feet tall, they were always surprised. Of course, standing next to Duffy would make anyone look small and frail. He was six foot five and somewhere between burly and fat, like an offensive lineman a few years past his playing days.
“I just need a few minutes with your son,” Duffy said. “Then I’ll be on my way.”
I could see that my mother looked painfully confounded, torn between the desire to berate Duffy and the compulsion to offer him food. “You eaten?” she muttered through clenched teeth, as if the words escaped from her mouth against her will.
“Just had a delightful supper with my own dear mother.”
Duffy eased into a chair-encased in a protective plastic coating-across from me. When I smelled his breath-beer laced with Tic Tacs-I knew he had spent the past hour-not with his mother-but downing beers at El Compadre in Echo Park, a Felony Special hangout.
“But,” Duffy added, “I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee and perhaps a slice of your challah.” A loaf of braided egg bread was centered on the dining room table between a pair of dripping candles. “Sometimes Ash used to bring in sandwiches made from your delicious challah and he’d occasionally be kind enough to share them with me.”
She rolled her eyes and trudged off to the kitchen. I crossed the room and slumped on the sofa.
Duffy looked around the monochromatic living room, everything a pale celery green, including the walls, carpeting, porcelain lamps, faded silk lampshades, and chintz sofa. “Your mother must like green.”
“You must be a detective,” I said sarcastically.
“I guess she’s the obsessive type-like you,” Duffy said, smiling.
This was just like Duffy, I thought, to ignore my mother’s discomfort and my glare, and just make himself at home. I had always admired Duffy’s ability to strut into a South Central living room, filled with cop-hating gangbangers and, with complete confidence, toss off a quip, ease a tense situation, and begin asking questions. Maybe it was his size. He was a presence that demanded attention. Maybe it was because Duffy, with his ruddy complexion, empathetic sky blue eyes, wispy silver hair, booming voice, and hale, voluble manner reminded people of the friendly parish priest. The Irish lilt enhanced the impression. I had always thought that Duffy’s two years at a Catholic seminary when he was a teenager gave him a great advantage. One Salvadoran murderer who confessed later told me that talking to Duffy in an interview room was like whispering in a confessional to un padre con placa. A priest with a badge.
I first met Duffy at a homicide when I was a young patrolman in the Pacific Division and he was a detective. While the other cops were drinking coffee beside their squad cars, I wandered around outside the yellow tape and found a flattened. 40-caliber slug imbedded in a wooden porch column next door to the crime scene. Duffy was the primary detective on the case and the slug led him to the murder weapon, which led him to the murderer. After that, at homicide scenes, Duffy always asked me to help him conduct the searches and, on a few occasions, he let me interview peripheral witnesses. When he took over South Bureau Homicide-a division based in South Central-he brought me in as a detective trainee. When I got my shield, he threw me a party at the academy. Years later, when he made lieutenant, was promoted to Robbery-Homicide Division, and put in charge of Felony Special, I was one of his first hires.
It was pretty predictable that I would have a weakness for father figures, and Duffy was an obvious choice. My father, after surviving Treblinka, was so consumed with his own demons, so remote and tormented, that there was not much emotional capital left for his sons. But after the Latisha Patton debacle, when I really needed some paternal guidance and support, where was Duffy? All I got from him was a two-week suspension and a bureaucratic rebuke stuffed in my personnel file. Seeing Duffy now didn’t make me angry, just very sad, the betrayal so strong that I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Many times during the past year I had envisioned how I was going to curse him out when I saw him again, how I was going to denounce him for caring more about covering his ass than taking care of his people, how loyalty meant nothing to him, how he was so consumed with ambition that he’d sell out every detective in the squad room for a promotion. But now, when I had the chance, I was too enervated to utter a word.
“I like your mother,” Duffy said. “I like her honesty. In the past, whenever we talked, she always said what was on her mind. Very different from the women in my family. Everything was always fine. No matter what. My older brother would show up for dinner, night after night, dead drunk
, and almost pass out on the kitchen table. My mother and aunt would always manage to avoid seeing what was right in front of their faces.” Duffy, in a high-pitched brogue, impersonated them: “‘Our poor Brendan must be a bit sleepy again this evening. The poor lad is working too hard.’”
Duffy rose and walked over to the mantel and studied my parents’ wedding picture. “You don’t resemble your mom much.” He pointed to my father, who had wavy black hair, an olive complexion, and stared into the camera with an unnerving gaze. “You look a lot like your father. You’ve even got his Charlie Manson stare. How long’s he been gone?”
“Seven years.”
“He looks a lot older than your mother.”
“More than twenty years.”
“You ought to take a page out of your dad’s book and find yourself a young babe.”
“She wasn’t that young when she got married.”
“Aren’t you the baby of the family?”
“Yeah. My brother’s eleven years older than me. When I was kid, and my parents would take me to the park, people thought they were my grandparents.”
Duffy edged his chair across the room until it was only a few feet from me.
“I learned that in detective school, too,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Cut the distance between you and the suspect. Get in his space. Make him feel uncomfortable. Get leverage over him. Persuade him to do what you want.”
Duffy laughed-a deep, hearty belly laugh. “I’ve been shuffling paper too long. I need to get back on the streets. I’m losing my edge.”
“So you want me back.”
Duffy looked genuinely startled. “How’d you know?”
“No other reason for you to be here.”
“Yeah, I want you back. I never wanted you to leave.”
“Then why’d you suspend me? Why’d you stick that chickenshit letter in my package.”
Duffy crossed a leg and carefully straightened a sock. He fixed me with a solemn look and said, “Had no choice. And if I hadn’t-”
