by J. L. Abramo
“Yes?” he said.
“Ricky, open up.”
Diaz pointed the weapon to the floor and opened the door.
“Jesus, Ricky, what’s the gun all about?”
“What the fuck are you doing? I told you to wait in the car.”
“I have to use the bathroom, Ricky, stop yelling.”
Diaz let her pass and shut the door behind her.
“Why didn’t you use the back entrance?”
“Because the gate is locked,” Angel said. “If I stand here answering twenty questions I’m going to wet my pants.”
“Fuck. Make it fast and then go out the back way and wait in the fucking car.”
“You don’t have to be such a fucking asshole,” Angel complained as she rushed off to the toilet.
Diaz jumped when Angel slammed the bathroom door and jumped again a moment later when the doorbell rang.
Fuck.
“Yes,” Diaz called.
“It’s your favorite law enforcers, Ricky,” Raft said from the hall. “Come to wish you bon voyage.”
“The door’s unlocked,” Diaz said, raising the weapon.
“After you, Bobby,” Raft said to Tully.
Tully turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. He took a step in and Diaz shot him in the chest. Tully went down hard.
The silenced .38 made a popping sound that Angel Rivas heard just as she was about to flush the toilet. Then she heard the body fall. She came out of the bathroom and she moved silently up the hallway.
Angel stopped across from the kitchen entrance and took a quick look into the front room.
Diaz and Raft stood side-by-side looking down at Bob Tully, their backs to Angel. Tully looked only at Raft.
“Finish it,” Raft said.
“Frank?” Tully said.
Diaz put a bullet into Tully’s head.
Angel stifled a scream and slipped into the kitchen.
“Is he dead enough for you?” Diaz said.
“Just drop the fucking gun and get the fuck out of here,” said Raft.
Diaz let the .38 fall to the floor.
“How do you justify killing your own partner, Frank?”
“Just business, Ricky, nothing personal,” said Raft. “It’s all about money.”
“Speaking of which, where’s mine?”
“I’ve got it right here, pal.”
Raft pulled out his service revolver and shot Ricardo Diaz twice.
Angel screamed and ran through the sliding glass door. She fumbled with the gate latch and ran across the parking lot, leaving the Camaro behind. Raft raced out after her. By the time he made it through the patio, Angel was out of sight.
Fuck.
Raft walked back to the front room and he stared down at the two bodies. He took a few minutes to get his story straight. He went to the phone and called it in.
“Jesus Christ, Frank, how the hell could this happen?” Commander Jefferson asked when Raft told him that Detective Tully was dead.
“The guy was supposed to be a harmless snitch, Chief. He invites us in like we were his long lost cousins. And then the maniac starts blasting and he put two into Bobby before I could take him down.”
“I sent a unit over to you when you called me earlier, they should arrive any minute,” said Jefferson. “Keep the uniforms out of the place, Raft. Its Woodland Hills, I’ll fucking need to call Parker Center. Wait there until LAPD takes over.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Raft. “I’m staying right here with my partner.”
DINNER BREAK
“Are you hungry, Jake,” Jimmy asked, interrupting his story without ceremony.
“I could eat,” I said.
“Let me buy you dinner, we can talk about baseball or the weather. We’ll get back to Raft, Tully and Diaz later.”
Jimmy Pigeon could talk sports for hours, and he loved to talk cases, but in all the time I knew him he never had much to say about himself personally. What I did learn about Jimmy’s life, I had put together from bits and pieces picked up here and there.
A patchwork biography.
Jimmy had been raised in West Los Angeles, a half mile from where Vinnie Strings grew up. If the two had anything else in common, it was that both were teenagers when their fathers died. Nicolas Pigeon had been a Los Angeles police officer, killed on the job. Nick and his partner responded to a call, a robbery in progress at a neighborhood grocery. When they arrived the perpetrator was holding the clerk at gunpoint, threatening to shoot the man if the police didn’t back off. Nick asked his partner to call for backup and he slowly approached the store entrance.
At the door, Pigeon called to the gunman, asking for permission to come in and talk. He said he would come in unarmed. The gunman told him to come ahead. Nick placed his service weapon on the ground near the door.
Nick Pigeon had talked criminals down dozens of times before. He had a way of calming them, appealing to better judgment, controlling a potentially volatile situation.
All it took for Nick was a few compelling words, some sensible advice, an empathetic appeal. Give it up, before someone gets hurt. Don’t turn an ill-fated hold-up into a capital crime. Let’s work this out together.
It had never failed.
It was the late fifties. When the heat had you cold, you gave it up and cut your losses.
Pigeon walked into the grocery store, arms held above his head, smiling, unthreatening, just about to speak when the perp turned the weapon on Nick and pulled the trigger. Four times. Then he killed the clerk and ran out the rear door as Pigeon’s partner was coming in the front.
The gunman was never caught.
Jimmy was fifteen years old.
After losing his father, Jimmy couldn’t stay out of trouble. His mother had her hands full with Jimmy’s two younger sisters and the boy was often left on his own.
His father’s partner, LAPD Officer Charles Lake, tried reaching out to the boy. Jimmy was unreceptive; he blamed Lake for letting his father go into the grocery store alone and refused to listen to reason.
It was Nick Pigeon’s commanding officer, Captain Roger Rollins, who ultimately managed to get through to Jimmy and provide a substitute father figure and positive role model, in much the same way as Jimmy would for Vinnie Strings many years later. Under Rollins’ influence, Jimmy settled down and began to excel in school; waiting for the day he would be old enough to join the police department. It was Roger Rollins who convinced Jimmy he could look forward to a much more successful career in law enforcement if he had a college education. Jimmy graduated high school with honors and began studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the fall, majoring in Criminology.
During his last year at UCSB, two events occurred that would change the course of Jimmy’s life.
A serious viral infection left Jimmy deaf in one ear. It spared him from Vietnam. Then Jimmy met Hannah Sims, a fellow UCSB Senior from northern Colorado. The two became inseparable. Sims was active in the anti-war movement and Pigeon tagged along. In the middle of their last semester, they were both arrested at a campus peace rally.
After graduation, Hannah was determined to return home to teach school. Realizing his hearing impediment and arrest record had ended his hopes for a career with the Los Angeles Police Department, Jimmy followed Hannah Sims back to Colorado. They were married in July, at a small chapel in the foothills of the Rockies. What happened in Colorado was something no one seemed to know about, or cared to talk about. What I did eventually discover was that three years later, at the age of twenty-five, Jimmy had quit the marriage and was back on the streets of Los Angeles.
When Jimmy had knocked around aimlessly, for far too long, he decided to look up Roger Rollins. Rollins had retired from the LAPD and gone private. Jimmy found Rollins in a one-man PI office on Wilshire Boulevard. Rollins said he would be glad to give Jimmy some work, Jimmy jumped at it. To celebrate the reunion, Rollins took Pigeon for a drink at the saloon where Roger had often share
d a shot of whiskey with Jimmy’s father.
It was there at the bar that they ran into former LAPD Officer Charlie Lake. Lake was in sad shape. That was the night Jimmy Pigeon learned the identity of the man who had murdered his father.
“They let him go, Jimmy,” Lake moaned. “He killed the best friend I ever had and they let him walk.”
“What are you talking about, Charlie?”
“Cady. Will Cady,” said Lake, tripping on every word. “They let him walk out of San Quentin two weeks ago.”
“Who is Will Cady?” Jimmy asked.
It took a while to make sense of what Charlie Lake was trying to say. The man was very drunk and looked as if he had been that way for weeks.
Then, finally, Rollins and Jimmy understood.
On the night Nicolas Pigeon was killed, Al Linger and Steve Gold were arrested for the armed robbery of a jewelry store in Santa Clara; a third man got away. The perps were masked and couldn’t be identified by shop employees but the two in custody had been caught with the goods when they ran from the scene. The next day, William Cady turned himself in to the SCPD claiming he was the third man on the jewelry job. Linger and Gold concurred. The three were convicted and sentenced to a dozen years each at San Quentin and all were granted early release, eleven years later.
Charlie Lake saw the TV news report.
“They were all lying, Jimmy,” Lake cried. “I swear on my mother’s grave. I watched Cady walk out of prison and I swear he was nowhere near Santa Clara that night, because I saw him that same night in Los Angeles. Saw Will Cady kill your father in cold blood.”
“I believe you, Charlie,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy wanted to talk to the others before approaching Will Cady. With Rollins’ help, Pigeon found Al Linger and Steve Gold in Oakland. He visited them separately. Jimmy surprised Linger at the door to his flophouse room. With a .357 magnum pressed to his ear, Linger quickly confessed to Pigeon that the third man on the jewelry heist was Will Cady’s brother. Cady had told his younger brother he needed an alibi and would take the rap for the robbery in Santa Clara; the brother didn’t argue. And when Will Cady turned himself in the next day, Linger and Gold went along. Using similar methods of persuasion, Pigeon heard the same story from Steve Gold. As a bonus, Gold told Pigeon where in Los Angeles he could find Cady.
A week later, Will Cady’s body was found in an orange orchard east of the city. Cady had been shot in the chest four times. The homicide was never solved.
Jimmy worked with Roger Rollins for seven years, up until the day Rollins called it quits. Pigeon kept the office and worked investigation in Los Angeles for another fifteen years before taking up Archer’s offer to join him in Santa Monica. Three years later, Pigeon was hunting for Lenny Archer’s killer.
We had dinner at a Mexican joint on Main Street.
I was a little disappointed Jimmy didn’t take me to Meg’s Café. I found myself wanting to meet Meg Kelly. But the food was red hot and the Mexican beer was ice cold. Pigeon paid the tab and we hit the street. It was a cool, clear night and the sky was sunset red.
“Mind walking to the Pier, Jake?” Jimmy asked. “The office is beginning to feel too small.”
“Sure,” I said.
We found an empty bench and sat looking out at Santa Monica Bay and the Pacific Ocean beyond.
“Where was I?” Jimmy asked.
“The condo in Woodland Hills. Raft, Tully and Diaz.”
“And then Ray Boyle got pulled into it.”
“I’ll bet he loved that,” I said.
“The funny thing is, Ray wound up thanking me,” Jimmy said. “It spared him that mess over in Brentwood three days later.”
Part Two
HARD BOYLE
“If you do the deed in my back yard,
you’re going to be dealing with me.
And trust me, it is definitely not
Mister Rogers’ neighborhood.”
—Ray Boyle
RAY BOYLE
Ray Boyle sat at his desk, praying the telephone wouldn’t ring, trying to forget the three files sitting on the desktop, three open homicide cases getting absolutely nowhere.
“Ray.”
Boyle looked up to find Captain Tanner wearing his no nonsense demeanor. Ray tried to think only good thoughts.
“Phil and Ron are back and I can finally get out of here,” Boyle said, just to hear the sound of it.
“Phil and Ron are still on the liquor store shooting and we’ve got two dead bodies out in Woodland Hills.”
“And I’m one unlucky son of a bitch.”
“Here’s the address,” said Tanner.
Boyle stood up, threw his jacket over his arm, moved to Captain Tanner and snatched the address slip.
“I fucking knew this would happen,” Boyle nearly shouted. “Woodland Fucking Hills.”
“Take a few deep breaths, Ray,” said the Captain, “and then do us both a favor and go do your job.”
Boyle arrived at the scene thirty minutes later. He surveyed the landscape before leaving his vehicle.
A marked unit in front of the building, two uniforms standing at the building entrance, an LA County Sheriff’s patrol car parked across the street, two uniforms sitting in it. Ray walked up to the two officers at the entrance, chose the older of the two and took him aside.
“Detective Boyle, LAPD,” he said. “Were you first on the scene?”
“Yes, sir. Officer John Billings, sir. West Valley Station.”
“Drop the sir, Billings. What’s with the car across the street?”
“They were here when we arrived, but they haven’t been inside.”
“I’ll be right back,” Boyle said.
Boyle walked over to the LASD cruiser and he tapped on the driver’s window. The patrolman behind the wheel rolled the window down.
“LAPD Homicide,” Ray said, showing his shield. “We’re not going to need you this evening. I’m anticipating more than enough support; it would be better if you took off.”
Boyle headed back to the building without waiting for a response. When he reached Billings, the LASD patrol car was already gone.
“Who’s in there now, John?”
“Two detectives from our station, Cole and Williamson, a County Sheriff’s Detective and two males DOA,” Billings said. “One of the victims was also a detective, LASD.”
“Okay, John,” said Boyle. “I want you and your partner glued to this door. No one gets in except the Crime Scene Unit and the Medical Examiner. No one. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to call for two more uniforms, whoever is nearest to our location, LAPD only. I would like the four of you to keep all civilians and reporters away. At least a hundred feet away.”
“Got it.”
“Good,” Boyle said. “Which way am I going?”
“When you get in turn right, it’s at the end of the hallway on the left.”
Boyle entered the building. When he reached the end of the hall he found the door to the condo open. He went in. The two West Valley detectives stood in the middle of the room, hands in pockets to control any urge to touch a thing. They knew better, but Boyle had to ask anyway.
“Touch anything?”
“No,” they said in harmony.
Ray ushered the detectives into the kitchen, ignoring Raft and the two bodies for the moment.
Boyle turned to the two men and got right to it. This was homicide; these guys would only get in his way. Having Sam Stephens along would have been preferable, but the ball bounced the other way. It was his back yard, he would deal with it.
“I don’t want to offend anyone,” Boyle said, not even asking their names. “I’d like you to leave. I’ll take it from here. We could use you outside; do some door-to-door canvassing. Someone may have seen or heard something.”
“Sure,” said one.
“Glad to help,” said the other.
They walked back through the front room and out of the condo. Boyl
e watched them leave and then went over to talk with Frank Raft.
Detective Raft was sitting in a stuffed chair close to Bob Tully’s body.
“Tough break, Frank.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not even close to being okay, Boyle.”
“Can you tell me how it happened?”
“How it happened?” Raft said. “It happened too fast.”
“Let’s take a walk, Frank. Get some air.”
“I don’t want to leave him alone.”
“We’ll put a uniform on the door, Frank. The ME is on the way. We need to talk,” Boyle said. “We have an officer down and you shot and killed a civilian. Internal Affairs is going to be all over this, Frank, and I need to hear it from you first. For your own protection. Come on.”
Raft stood and moved to the door. As Boyle followed, he finally stole a quick look down at the two victims. He knew the dead detective was Bob Tully, though he had never met Tully before. It was the other victim that took Boyle by surprise. Ray recognized the dead man instantly. Detective Boyle had known Ricardo Diaz very well.
Boyle and Raft stood leaning against Ray’s car. Raft lit another cigarette and offered the pack to Boyle. Ray reminded Raft again that he was trying to quit.
Boyle had put Billings on the front door of the condo and had sent Billings’ partner out back to the patio gate. A second LAPD unit had arrived; two uniforms were keeping rubbernecks from crossing over the police line. The West Valley detectives were questioning bystanders and jotting notes. Crime scene investigators and the Medical Examiner had finally arrived and were beginning their work inside.
“Where did this tip come from, Frank?” asked Boyle, trying to make sense of what he had heard so far.
“I don’t fucking know,” said Raft, losing patience. “Tully picked it up, he didn’t say where. He asked me to come along for the ride.”
“It looks as if Tully never got his weapon out,” said Boyle.
