Kind of blue al-1

by Miles Corwin

  “Maybe someone would have questioned you, questioned your judgment, questioned how you run your unit?”

  “Look, Ash, you may not understand now, but one of these days you might be running your own unit, and you’ll have to make difficult decisions that will-”

  “I doubt that,” I interrupted. “And I don’t want to listen to any more of your bullshit. I worked my ass off for you. I cleared a hell of a lot of cases for you. Made you look damn good. Whenever you caught some loser case that no one else wanted, you’d never hesitate to call me at three in the morning. And I’d always come running. But when I got into some trouble and really needed you, you left me swinging in the fucking wind.”

  “You done?” Duffy asked.

  “No. I’m not done. I want to ask you a question: After the way you turned your back on me, why should I come back?”

  “Because you want this job. Because you need this job. Because you’ve missed being a detective every single day since you quit.”

  I took a deep breath and expelled the air with a loud spurt. Typical Duffy, I thought. When it came time to manipulate you into doing what he wanted, he always knew how to cut right through your resistance and arrive at some essential truth that left you sputtering without a comeback. That’s how he was able to lead a unit of cocky, know-it-all, prima donnas, each one of whom thought he was the best detective in the city.

  I had been lost this past year. Duffy was right about that. But I had been too angry and too proud to come slithering back. I thought I was punishing Duffy and punishing the LAPD when I quit. But I soon realized that the only one who was being punished was me. There are more than nine thousand cops in the department. One less or one more cop, I quickly discovered, didn’t seem to matter much to anyone. Except me. I discovered that I had lost everything. Without the job, I felt as if I didn’t exist.

  But I also wanted to return to the department because of the Patton case. As long as the murder book was moldering in the bottom of some dusty file cabinet, and her killer was roaming the city, I knew I’d always feel that I’d failed. Failed Latisha Patton. Failed myself. I simply didn’t do my job and a woman was dead because of it. If I returned to investigate Duffy’s case, I could-on the side-pursue Patton’s killer. I knew I could never properly track the case on my own, as a civilian. I had to get my badge back.

  Now, watching Duffy cross his arms over his sizable gut and stare across the room, eyes half closed, looking like a giant Buddha, I was immensely relieved that he’d offered me a way to come back. But I wasn’t going to let him know that. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

  “Why should I come back and work for someone who doesn’t back his detectives?”

  “I don’t have time to play this game now. You going to take this case or not?”

  “Tell me about the homicide and I’ll think about it.”

  Duffy scratched his eyebrow with a thumbnail. “A retired cop by the name of Pete Relovich was piped last night in his house in San Pedro. His dad was a captain in Newton years ago. Looks like a B and E. Did you know Pete?”

  “No. But, but I crossed paths with the old man at a crime scene years ago.”

  “I want you to come back and take over the investigation.”

  “Why’s Felony Special handling a B and E hit on a retired cop? Sounds pretty routine.”

  “The chief was friends with his old man.”

  “So why me?”

  “Chief wants my best detective. So I’m asking my best detective to come back. Grazzo’s given me the okay. He’s fast-tracking you. You can start right away and finish up the bureaucratic crap over the next few days.”

  My mother returned carrying a tray with two mugs of coffee, a bowl of sugar, and nondairy creamer. She grabbed two pieces of challah from the table and set them on a plate in front of Duffy.

  “Many thanks, Mrs. Levine,” he said. “Can I trouble you for some butter on that challah?”

  “Didn’t they teach you anything in your seminary class about our prohibition of mixing dairy and meat?” she said in an accusatory tone. “We had brisket for dinner.”

  Duffy laughed and said, “Maybe that’s why I ended up at a police station instead of a parish.”

  “Thank God for small favors, they must be saying in the parishes,” she grumbled as she padded off to the kitchen.

  I sipped my coffee and said, “So you worked Grazzo and got him to take me back. It’s a twofer: you’ve expiated some of your Catholic guilt and you get another body at Felony Special. You’re always complaining about not having enough detectives. Now you get a freebie without the fight with personnel. You probably told Grazzo I was the only detective who could solve this crime.”

  “You are too smart to be a humble civil servant.” Duffy slowly stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee and said, without looking up, “I did tell Grazzo all that-in essence.” He held his hand over his heart. “But listen to me, Ash, my boy, everything I told you was still the God’s honest truth,” he said, his brogue thickening with each word. I do think you’re the best detective that I’ve-”

  “When did your family leave Cork?” I asked.

  “When I was ten, why?”

  “When you’re trying to appear sincere, you really lay on that fucking accent.”

  “I resent-”

  “You know that when your countryman, Brian Callaghan, was promoted to assistant chief-and he came over when he was nineteen, not a kid like you-your accent suddenly got a lot thicker.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “And when he retired, your accent quickly faded.”

  “That’s a load of horseshit. And it’s got nothing to do with why I’m here. Let’s stop wasting each other’s time. I’m asking you to come back. So make your decision. What’s it going to be?”

  When my mother reappeared, I realized she’d been eavesdropping. “Why can’t you leave him alone?” she asked Duffy.

  “Because the LAPD needs him. Because I need him.”

  “Hasn’t the LAPD hurt him enough already?” she said. “That Latisha Patton business was devastating to my son. He’s risked his life so many times for your department. He’s solved so many cases for you. He’s given up everything for the LAPD. And how do they-how do you-treat him? Like dirt! Anyway, he’s considering going to law school. He’s been studying for the LSAT test.”

  “Does the world really need another lawyer?” Duffy asked. “You’ve already got one lawyer son. Why do you need another one? I admit, Ash probably would be a fine lawyer-for someone starting out so late. But he’s already a magnificent detective. A brilliant boy. Truly gifted. Why not let him do what he does best?”

  She pursed her lips for a moment and said to me, “You know how upset your father was when he first saw you in uniform? He saw the uniform and thought of one thing, those SS officers who-”

  “Enough!” I shouted. “Why does everything in our family have to lead back to this? Why does every discussion in this house end in hysteria?”

  “You’re meshuga if you go back,” she said. “You don’t need the tsoris. I don’t need the tsoris. Remember, your brother said as soon as you finished law school he’d hire you.”

  “Marty’s got to get out of rehab first,” I said, disgusted. “Why is it more honorable to have a son who’s a drug addict lawyer than a son who’s a sober cop?”

  “A goyishe parnosseh,” she muttered. A gentile trade. “It was the dream of your father that you and Marty open the law offices of Levine amp; Levine.”

  “You’re really bringing out the heavy artillery tonight.”

  “Me, I’m just worried about you getting hurt,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to spending my nights worrying that some shvartzeh in Watts is going to shoot you.”

  “Mom, I haven’t worked South Central for years.”

  Duffy clasped her hand in both of his and said, “We’ve got an excop murdered. He’s got a mother grieving for him. The killer may kill again if he’s not st
opped. This is honorable work, Mrs. Levine. You know that. That’s why Ash cares so much, why he puts so much of himself into each case-”

  I held up my hand. “Save the speeches for El Compadre. I want a few things.”

  “I’m listening,” Duffy said.

  “I pick up my pension benefits from the date I left.”

  “I think that can be arranged.”

  “I don’t care what you think. I want a guarantee.”

  “Okay. I’ll make sure it gets done.”

  “On this case, I don’t want to wait months for fingerprint and trace results and a year for DNA-the typical LAPD bullshit. I want you to call in your chits, lean on Grazzo, and promise to get everything back to me within a few weeks.”

  “You know I can’t promise that.”

  “Then find someone else.”

  Duffy stuck a hand in his pocket and fiddled with his keys. “Okay. Cutting through the bureaucracy of the LAPD is like moving mountains. But I’ll get it done.”

  “After that Latisha Patton crap, I don’t trust many people in that room. If you’re going to give me a partner, give me Oscar Ortiz.”

  “He just partnered up. Can’t split them up now.”

  “Then I’ll work alone.”

  “I don’t like that idea and it won’t-”

  “If you want me back, that’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “Just on this first case,” Duffy said.

  I walked across the room and grabbed a brown leather jacket out of the closet. “I want to go to Relovich’s tonight.”

  My mother wagged a forefinger at me. “Chasing a murder on Shabbes. That’s a shanda. You should be ashamed of-”

  “What about Pikuah Nefesh,” I interrupted.

  “What’s that mean?” Duffy asked.

  “To save a life,” I explained. “Jewish law allows you to break the Sabbath to save a life. Like if I was a doctor.” I turned toward my mother. “And I could be saving a life. If I don’t catch this guy soon, he could kill again.”

  She swatted the air. “I don’t approve of-”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I interrupted.

  She sighed heavily. “I just want you to be happy. I know you haven’t been happy this past year. So if going back will make you happy, then go back. You’ve got my blessing.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She kissed me on the cheek and said, “ Gay Gezunt.”

  CHAPTER 2

  As we strolled down the brick path toward the sidewalk Duffy complained, “I had to park two blocks away. Not a single spot on this street. I guess there’s still enough Jews left in this ‘hood who can’t drive again until sundown tomorrow.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to chitchat with Duffy; I would have preferred to hit the crime scene alone. But I knew that since I was returning to Felony Special, I would have to keep it civil with him and maintain a rapport. If I wasn’t able to do that, there was no point in returning. He was my boss and there was nothing I could do about it. There would be a time to confront Duffy. It just wasn’t now.

  Duffy kicked an empty Old English 800 malt liquor can into the gutter. “This street has hit the fucking skids. You ought to get your mom out of here.”

  “I’ve tried. But she can walk to the synagogue. Her Hadassah chapter’s only a few blocks away. And one of her yenta friends still lives down the street. So she won’t budge.”

  Duffy slapped the back of my head. “She’s stubborn as hell-just like her son.”

  We walked the rest of the way in silence, past dozens of families on their way to shul, the men in dark suits and yarmulkes, the women wearing imposing hats and pushing strollers, the boys with their long side curls. We passed a duplex on the corner-Mrs. Pearl’s place, my mother’s last remaining friend in the neighborhood-with the only other garden that was still lush. The hibiscus in the front yard sprouted blood red blossoms and the flowers on the thick stands of oleander were so milky white they appeared to glow. The breeze carried the scent of gardenias.

  We climbed into Duffy’s unmarked Crown Victoria, raced down Fairfax, pulled onto the Santa Monica freeway, and then headed south on the Harbor Freeway, toward San Pedro.

  “So what’s happening with the Patton murder?” I asked. “I assume if someone had cleared it, I’d have read about it in the paper.”

  “Still unsolved.”

  “Who at Felony Special is working it?”

  “After all the hubbub surrounding the case,” Duffy said with a sour expression, “I had to ship it out. It’s being handled by South Bureau Homicide.”

  After Duffy and I left the unit, they changed the name to Criminal Gang Homicide Division, but everyone still called it South Bureau Homicide. “Christ, I mumbled. “They making any progress.”

  “I have no idea. I’m out of the loop on that one.” Duffy flashed me a sly look. “I know you’re probably figuring that while you’re working Relovich, you’ll have time to track the Patton homicide, too. Squeeze in some interviews, check out some suspects. Well, get that out of your mind. I want a full-court press on Relovich. I don’t want you distracted. That Patton case has caused you enough grief. Let South Bureau handle it. Leave it alone.”

  “I was thinking-”

  “I want you thinking about the case at hand. Forget Patton. Concentrate on Relovich. I called the Harbor Division lieutenant before I came over and he gave me a quick rundown. Homicide was last night. Coroner investigator gives time of death at around twenty-three hundred. The knucklehead busted out a back window. Probably a junkie hot prowl. Relovich’s wallet was open with cash missing. Ex-wife said Relovich always wore his father’s lapis ring and old Hamilton watch. Both were ripped off. Neighbors already been canvassed. No one heard the shot. No one saw anybody suspicious on the street. The next morning a neighbor looking for a lost dog knocked on the door, didn’t hear an answer, looked through a window and saw the body. Detectives recovered a. 40-caliber slug. No casings at the scene.”

  I nodded, but didn’t ask any follow-up questions. I don’t like entering a crime scene with too many preconceived notions. If I become fixated on one particular theory, I’m afraid I’ll develop tunnel vision and I might miss the nuances of the true murder scenario.

  After Duffy snaked through downtown, the traffic thinned and he zipped through the southside-South Central to the west of the freeway and its more depressed neighbor, Watts, to the east-then past the oil refineries of Wilmington that belched clouds of acrid smoke, white against the black sky, the horizon resembling a photographic negative.

  I leaned back on the seat, closed my eyes, and recalled that afternoon when my paratroop unit was searching a terrorist’s house in the West Bank. While I waited in the living room, I leafed through a Koran with Arabic on one side of the page and English on the other. I still remembered one of the passages, although it hadn’t meant much to me at the time: Does there not pass over every man a space of time when his life is blank? That’s how the past eleven months had been, I thought. An utter blank. Serving subpoenas, tracking down witnesses, and shepherding people to depositions for my brother’s law firm was a bore. I occasionally studied the LSAT prep book, but with little enthusiasm. I felt lost, drifting in a miasma of self-flagellation and anger. I was angry at Duffy. Angry at the department. Angry at myself.

  Now I realized how much I had missed this part of the job: riding to the crime scene, adrenaline pumping, not knowing what I would find when I arrived, what clues would be apparent, what evidence would be discernible, what traces the killer left behind. I missed the unpredictability of the call-outs, how they came at any time, any day, any hour, and how they would immediately send me hurtling into the unknown. I missed encountering the parts of the crime-scene puzzle; they were always different and I never put them together the same way.

  Most of all, I missed the life, the life of a homicide detective in which the stakes of a case are always high and everything else seems unimportant by comparison. This all-consuming nature of the job h
ad always been a balm for the bullshit in my life; the challenge of the chase demanded so much from me, I simply did not have the luxury of dwelling on anything else.

  Duffy pulled off the freeway in San Pedro and parked behind the Harbor Division station. We nodded to a group of cops smoking in the parking lot and traversed a long, scuffed linoleum hallway that smelled of vomit and urine and unwashed bodies, past detention benches with burglars, rapists, wife beaters, gangbangers, psychos, crackheads, and muggers cuffed to the metal rings; past drunks blowing into breathalyzer machines; past vice officers wearing jeans and Hawaiian shirts pushing screaming hookers into interview rooms. We entered the watch commander’s office and greeted the p.m. shift lieutenant, who sifted through his desk drawer and handed Duffy an envelope with the key to Relovich’s house. We left the station, drove toward the water, and then climbed a steep hill.

  Relovich lived near the end of a cul-de-sac, in a ramshackle pale blue clapboard bungalow with peeling paint and a sagging roof. When I was a kid, this had been a working-class neighborhood, populated mostly by Croatian fishermen. But now, homes with a view of the water were at a premium in Los Angeles and property values had soared. Most of the fisherman had sold to investors, who viewed the modest homes as teardowns, replacing them with mammoth two- and three-story monstrosities, spanning lot line to lot line. Relovich’s house, which was encircled by yellow crime-scene tape, was flanked by two gray and white clapboard Cape Cod-style McMansions that could sell for more than a million dollars.

  I pulled out a pair of latex gloves, a few small Baggies, and a flashlight from a wooden box in Duffy’s trunk, stuffed them in my pocket, and walked to Relovich’s front porch, which faced the harbor. Lingering for a moment, I looked out at the inky black water laced with streaks of silver from the three-quarter moon. Lights atop the graceful span of the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which connected San Pedro to Terminal Island, twinkled in the distance. An offshore wind, brisker here than in the central city, blew off the water, carrying the smell of seaweed, brine, and a hint of diesel fuel.