by Bill Bernico
“What is this?” Johnny demanded. “You gonna shoot me over a little road rage?”
The kid reached into his jacket and pulled out a picture of Johnny and held it up. He had confirmed the identity of his target. “Yup, it’s you, Banta. Sonny sends his condolences.”
He turned the picture toward Johnny. It was grainy at best but it showed Johnny Banta sitting up in the back of an ambulance. It looked like a screen capture from a video camera. The last thing that went through Johnny’s mind, besides the .45 slug, was the realization that Dean Hollister’s word, like Banta’s own life, wasn’t worth a plug nickel.
The following day I during my lunchtime, I stopped by Dean’s office. Dean was sitting at his desk and reading with apparent interest from a newspaper article. Several times he chuckled and finally broke out into full laughter.
“Reading the comics?” I said, as I entered his office.
“Funnier,” Dean said, handing me the paper.
Page two, column six,” Dean said.
He waited as I wrestled the paper open and folded it back. I broke out in laughter at the sight of the story of Johnny Banta being found dead on the side of the road with a single bullet in his brain.
When I finally caught my breath and settled down, I said, “Now that’s justice.”
“Know anyone who wants to take over a lawn care business?” Dean said, and the laughter started all over again.
47 - Diplomatic Immunity
Lieutenant Dean Hollister got the call at eleven forty-five on a Thursday night. Patrolman Paul Sanders found the body during his regular patrol along Lexington Street and had called it in to the precinct. The call was relayed to Hollister a few minutes later. He was on the scene in less than ten minutes.
“What do you have here, Sanders?” Dean said, looking down at the body of a young woman clad in a gray skirt and white blouse. One shoe was lying several feet from the body. The victim’s hair was a tangled mess, obscuring most of her face.
Patrolman Sanders flipped open his notebook and recited from his hastily scribbled notes. “Caucasian female, approximately twenty to twenty-five, blond, blue, a hundred and…”
“Skip the grocery list,” I said in a monotone voice. “What’s the cause of death?” I had been friends with Dean almost since birth. Dean’s father, Dan Hollister had been on the police force with my grandfather, Matt Cooper for several years, prior to Granddad leaving to start his own private investigations business. Dean, like my dad, Clay Cooper, was approaching retirement age. Ever since I began working with my dad in the investigations business I had occasion to work with Lieutenant Hollister when the case called for it. We worked together like two cogs in the same machine and I enjoyed the exposure to police work every now and then.
The uniformed cop put his notepad back in his pocket. “Strangled,” he said, kneeling next to the body and pulling back the collar of the girl’s blouse to expose the bruises about her throat. “Looks like she couldn’t have been here long, either.” He pointed to the couple seated on the park bench. “They were walking through the park around eleven and passed by this way. She wasn’t here then but when they came back on their way home half an hour later they found her lying right here.”
Dean motioned me over to the body. “Well, Elliott, looks like the time of death is narrowed down to sometime between eleven and eleven-thirty, according to the couple’s statement.”
“Got a positive I.D. on her yet?” I said.
“Laurie Peterson,” Dean said. “According to the cards in her wallet she worked at the United Nations as a secretary. It’s anybody’s guess what she was doing out here alone at this time of night.”
I looked again at the marks on the girl’s neck. “She wasn’t alone,” I said.
Friday morning Dean and I drove to the U.N. building and began our investigation. By nine-thirty we’d talked to four of Laurie Peterson’s friends and fellow workers. They all gave us pretty much the same story. Laurie Peterson had been seen with Ralah Abu, a diplomatic courier from the Middle East. Once we had enough information and background on Mr. Abu, it didn’t take us long to locate him and bring him in for questioning.
Two hours into our interrogation we had gotten enough information from Ralah Abu to convict him of first degree murder. Two hours and five minutes into the session, Abe Armstrong strolled into the precinct with a writ and a representative from the State Department. Dean and I were called out of the room while Captain Blaine spoke with the two men. We hadn’t even had time to finish our coffee when Armstrong and the State Department man left with Ralah Abu walking between them. Abu smiled at me as he passed. I made a move toward him, but Dean held me back.
“What the hell’s going on here, Captain?” Dean said. “Abu’s our man. He did it. There’s no doubt. He even confessed, for cryin’ out loud. What more do we need?”
“My hands are tied,” the captain said. “It’s out of our jurisdiction. Forget it and get on with the rest of your caseload.” The captain turned to leave.
Dean grabbed the captain’s shoulder and spun him around. It immediately dawned on him who he was manhandling. He straightened up and apologized to the captain and then softened his tone. “What’s this guy got, a special dispensation from the pope?”
“Next best thing,” Blaine said. “Diplomatic immunity. As long as he’s part of the U.N. we can’t touch him for his crime, something about bad relations between the U.S. and the Middle East. I know it stinks. I know it’s not fair, but that’s the law, so let it be. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
He was right. Ralah Abu returned to his job at the U.N. while Dean returned to the pile of other murder cases he still hadn’t solved. I drove back to my own office, frustrated and angry. The other cases were all just as important as the Abu case, but none of them hounded Dean the way this one did. Dean had him dead to rights and couldn’t touch him. It began to eat at Dean. He had trouble sleeping and his appetite had diminished substantially.
I fared no better. Between the two of us, it seemed Ralah Abu crept into our conversations just about every day since he’d walked out of Dean’s office and had literally gotten away with murder.
“You know, Elliott,” Dean said one day over a hot dog, “This Abu character may not have to pay back the system, but he sure as hell has to pay me back for my aggravation, not to mention his unpaid bill with the Peterson family.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “But what can we do? It’s like he’s in this plastic bubble and we can’t get at him.”
“Well, Dean said, “How’d you like a case, Elliott?”
“What does it pay?” I said. “I can use the money.”
“Sorry,” Dean said. “There’s no money in the budget at the moment, but if this works out the way I hope it will, maybe we can both get some real sleep for a change.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Count me in, Dean,” I said. “What did you have in mind for this dirt bag?”
“How about if we take turns tailing him on our off hours?” Dean said, sitting up straight. “Just to let him know we’re watching him. You know, make his life as miserable as we can, within the law.”
“And if he slips up, then what?” I said. “He’ll just walk again and we’ll be twice as frustrated as we are now.”
“It’s gotta be worth a try,” Dean said. “How about if we just give it two weeks and if nothing happens maybe we’d better just forget it like the captain says.”
“Two weeks,” I said. “Who’s taking the first shift?”
“Make it easy on yourself,” Dean said. “Would you prefer days or nights?”
“Days,” I said. “Right now I don’t have any cases on my docket and it’ll give me something to do with my otherwise wasted time.”
Dean and I took our turns keeping an eye on our target. We let Ralah Abu see us everywhere he went. If he took a cab, one of us was right behind him. When he stopped for coffee at a sidewalk café, one of us was there. I stayed on
his heels even in the public restroom in the park. I stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, making a slicing motion across my throat with my index finger.
The first week seemed to have little or no effect on Abu. Then about eleven days into our tail job the pressure began to get to him. At first he didn’t try to lose either of us, but now he began making an effort to dodge both of us at every opportunity.
Monday night after my shift, I got a call from Dean. “I think our boy’s beginning to crack,” he said. “He tried to lose me on the train and then again on a bus headed for downtown.”
“It’s time to pour it on,” I said. “I’ll meet you at Highland and Santa Monica in half an hour. He always takes the bus from there at exactly five-thirty. If you lose him, I’ll pick the tail and that’ll give you time to join me later.”
“This guy knows he’s got immunity and knows we can’t touch him, Dean said. “Why would he try to lose us now? I don’t get it.”
“Wouldn’t you?” I said. “Tail a guy long enough and he’s bound to get spooked. Sooner or later something is going to happen and when it does, I want to be there.”
At five twenty-five Dean and I waited at the bus stop on Santa Monica. Dean sat on the bench with a paper held up over his face while I waited in the doorway of a nearby office building, keeping the bus stop in sight. Two minutes later Ralah Abu arrived at the bus stop. A minute after that the uptown bus rounded the corner and pulled to a stop in front of the bench. Dean laid his paper down on the bench and stepped up into the bus. Abu waited outside the bus and let the doors close without boarding. The bus pulled away and Abu stood there smiling and waving to Dean as the bus passed by him.
Abu turned and walked away. He spotted me in the doorway and froze. I took a few steps toward him and he slowly backed up, looking both ways for a quick exit.
Dean flashed his shield and had the bus driver stop half a block from where he had boarded. It took him a few seconds to join me again at the bus stop. Abu had turned away from me and was heading up the street when he spotted Dean coming toward him. We closed the gap between us and Abu panicked. He bolted and made a dash across the street in the middle of the block. He was still looking over his shoulder at us when he crossed.
The traffic light changed on the Highland Avenue side. An older sedan came around the corner from Santa Monica Boulevard at full speed from the opposite direction. As he ran, Abu looked back to see if either of us was following him. Dean and I stood where we were and watched as the speeding car bore down on Ralah Abu. Neither of us made a move or said a word. Abu and the sedan arrived at the same spot on the street at exactly the same time.
A woman screamed, tires squealed, and a loud, sickening crash sent Abu’s body flying into the air. It sailed several dozen yards before it landed with a sudden thud against a lamppost. In a moment, Abu was lying lifeless and twisted in the street with the lamp’s light casting an eerie glow onto his agonized face.
Dean and I hurried across the street to the sport where the car had come to a stop. The driver of the car emerged shaking and sobbing. Dean put his hand on the driver’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy,” Dean said. “I’m a police officer and we saw the whole thing. It wasn’t your fault. We saw that guy run across the street without looking where he was going.”
I backed Dean up. “Yeah, you’ll get full immunity, I’m sure.” Dean looked at the damage to the front of the man’s car. The car’s grille was caved in and took on the shape of the man it had hit. The identity of the car had been obscured. Dean turned to the man. “Looks like your car’s totaled,” he said. “What kind of car was it?”
The man stopped shaking long enough to point to a different nametag on the side of the car. “It’s a ‘79 Dodge Diplomat. Why?”
“No reason,” Dean said, turning to face me, a wide smile playing on his face.
“I guess he didn’t have immunity from this Diplomat,” I said. “Let’s call this in and after it’s wrapped up, we can get something to eat. I’m starved.”
“I’ll bet I nod off the minute my head hits the pillow tonight,” I said.
48 - Justice Delayed
It was one of the strangest Januarys on record for Hollywood. In my thirty-two years on this planet I’d never seen snow in Southern California. This was a first for me and even though I knew it wouldn’t stay on the ground for long, I decided to enjoy the phenomena while it lasted. I watched out my office window as the fluffy white flakes drifted down onto the streets, covering the cars and shop awnings on Hollywood Boulevard below.
I’d seen movies with children playing in the snow, making snowmen and sliding down hills on sleds. I envied some of those kids as I was growing up but realized, as I got older that the downside to all of this majestic white beauty included shivering, shoveling, blowing, plowing and automobile accidents. Suddenly I didn’t feel so nostalgic anymore.
I was watching two boys below my window. They were making snowballs and throwing them at each other when my phone rang. I tore myself away from my window and took a seat behind my desk.
“Cooper Investigations,” I said. “Elliott Cooper speaking.”
“Elliott,” the voice said. “Can you believe what’s happening outside?”
It was Lieutenant Dean Hollister from the twelfth precinct.
“Dean,” I said. “Hey, tell me, as an old guy you must have seen your share of snow. Ever seen it here in Southern California before?”
“Old guy?” Dean said. “I’m younger than your dad.”
“Not by much,” I said. “So, did you ever see snow like this before?”
“Where have you been?” Dean said. “Last February we got a pretty good covering in Burbank. I think it was the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh.”
“I heard about it when I got back from Key West,” I said. “Of course, by then it was all gone. I meant before that. Have you ever seen snowfall around here before?”
“Let me think,” Dean said. “Sure, it was back in ‘88 in the valley near Calabasas. I was out in it that day. But that was gone the next day, too. I’m damned glad it doesn’t snow around here on a regular basis. People from this part of the country have no idea how to drive when it rains, let alone snows. And before that we hadn’t had any snow around here since I was twelve. That would have been 1962, and that was just a trace that disappeared that same day. I guess the most snow we ever got was the year before I was born—1949. Dad told me that we got almost a third of an inch.”
“Thank you Al Roker for that insightful weather history lesson,” I said. “Gees, you’re like a typical woman.”
“A typical woman?” Dean said. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean this has happened to me many many times lately and I’m just starting to notice a pattern,” I said.
“A pattern to what?” Dean said.
“Try this yourself sometime,” I said. “Ask a man a simple question like what time is it. Men will generally tell you the time, end it there and move on. Women will give you three paragraphs about watch making and watchband styles before they ever get to the point. It never fails.”
Dean laughed. “Can’t wait to try that out later today,” he said.
“Well don’t do what I did,” I said. “I found out the hard way what not to say to these blabbermouth women.”
“Oh oh,” Dean said. “Come on, spill it. What’d you say?”
“Well,” I began, “I asked one woman on the street if she’d seen a guy I was tailing. After a minute and a half of sideline bullshit, I finally said, ‘so that would be a no’ and she lit into me like a crazy woman.”
“Learn your lesson?” Dean said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve learned not to ask women questions unless I have an extra hour to kill. So, why are you calling this beautiful morning, Mr. Hollister?”
“Well, Detective Edwards is on vacation,” Dean said. “And I’m a little short-handed. Would you be free for a while to sit in on a case with me? I could use some hel
p in the legwork department.”
“Sure,” I said, enthusiastically. “I can always use the work.”
“Hold on there, Chuckie,” Dean said. “I’m not asking to hire you to do anything. There’s no extra money in the budget. I just thought that if you weren’t busy and wanted something to do, well.”
I paused momentarily and then remembered how boring the last three days had been with no case and not much else to do. Gloria was out of town and the walls were beginning to close in on me. “Sure,” I said. “Give me fifteen minutes. Are you in your office?”
“Yes,” Dean said. “I’ll see you in a little while.” He hung up and turned his attentions back to the pile of papers on his desk.
I got to Dean’s office in twelve minutes. He was sitting behind his desk, shuffling through a stack of papers when I walked in.
“Thanks for coming in, Elliott,” Dean said. “By the way, how’s your dad doing these days?”
“He’s coming right along,” I said. “He’ll be back to work at the office next Monday and he’s not half as anxious as I am to see that day come. I could use a bit of a break.”
“What about Gloria?” Dean said. “Can’t she take up the slack at the office?”
“She could,” I said, “But she’s in Phoenix filing some papers on a recent case we had in Arizona. She’ll be back day after tomorrow. So, bring me up to speed. What are you working on?”
“I’ve been assigned to head the juvenile bureau,” Dean said. “If there’s one area of police work that can raise your frustration level, it’s this one. You have to handle juveniles with kid gloves and most of them know a slap on the wrist is all they’ll get for crimes that would send adults to prison.”
“You’re working with kids?” I said.
