by David Putnam
“No, Your Honor.”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Next case.”
I got up and hustled to the door.
Robby came down off the stand, and patted the DA on the shoulder as he passed on his way out. She stood. “Detective Wicks?”
I stopped at the door to observe.
Robby turned, went back, lowered his head. They both smiled as they spoke in low tones. Robby nodded, took hold of her shoulder, and gave it a squeeze.
Out in the hall, the elevator was too slow; Robby caught up to me.
Chapter Fourteen
“Hey,” Robby said, “I thought I was going to buy you some lunch.”
“Yeah, sure, that’d be great.”
“Whatta ya say, since we’re so close, for old times, we run up to Stops for a hot link?”
I didn’t have much choice. The entire purpose of the court appearance was to follow Dora Bascombe when she left the courthouse. Now she was nowhere to be seen. Robby had already cheesed that. I’d have to get the information I needed another way, which meant I had to tell Marie all about what I was doing. She wasn’t going to be happy.
We walked in silence out to his car, the same one he’d given me a ride in to Killer King the night the Violent Crime Team killed the kid out in front of Mr. Cho’s. We got in, he started up.
He put his arm over the seat to back out, his face close to mine, “What was it that you were going to talk to me about?”
I was tired and my mind felt full of sludge. “I need your help.” I never intended on telling him, but there was nothing else I could say that he would believe or at least not see right through.
“I’m here for you, man. You know that,” he said.
He steered the car over to Willowbrook Avenue and headed north in the late morning traffic.
“Well, you gonna tell me or sit there like a bump on a log?”
“Detective Mack paid me a visit.”
“Ah, shit. I thought I had that fixed. I’m sorry, man, really. You can bet your ass it won’t happen again. Not after I get through with that little son of a bitch.”
“I’ve been thinking about it. If he came at me after you talked to him, talking to him a second time is only going to make things worse. I’d appreciate it if you’d just lay off him. Maybe he’ll cool out all on his own.” I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but all I had to do was dodge Mack for another week, and then it just wouldn’t matter anymore.
Robby shook his head in disgust. “You know his kind. He’s not working the Violent Crimes Team because he shies away from trouble.”
“I know, but I think I can duck him long enough that he’ll forget about me.”
“It really pisses me off he went against my orders. I’ll go along with you, but only on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“If he catches up to you on some lonely dark street, you leave enough of him for us to identify.”
I smiled. Robby still had far too much confidence in me. I was nothing more than a broken-down, wrong-side-of-forty ex-con.
Before I could say anything in response, he said. “I need your help. I’m just going to lay it out. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours and I’m dead on my feet.”
“Help you how?”
“Like the old days. I need the best of the best to shut down this asshole who’s torching everyone, and you’re it. He hit again last night, fried another one. He’s doing it more frequently now.”
“How can I help? I’m on parole.”
“I can call in a favor, fix it with your PO. I’m calling in a lot of favors on this one. All I got.”
“I can’t help you, Lieutenant, it would only get us both in trouble and you know it.”
“Like I told you, I’m so tired I can’t see straight. I don’t have time to stroke your ego or pat you on the head. You owe me, and I’m calling in your marker. You know I never intended to do it, but this situation is getting real shitty. You can’t imagine the pressure they’re putting on me.”
I did owe him. Going back a long time. He was a patrol sergeant, and I was new to the streets pushing a radio car in South Central. It was something I didn’t want to ever think about, the images of that night. Just the thought of it—her name—I’d pushed her name out of my memory and wouldn’t let it back in.
Robby stopped at a red signal at Compton Avenue. “Say something, Bruno. You know that if you and I team up like the old days, we’d have this son of a bitch all grappled up inside a week. That’s all I want from you is one week. One week, pays you up in full.”
On second thought, I really didn’t owe him, not after he shot me, though independent of his argument, I did feel the tug of morality, to do what was right.
The signal turned green. We sat at the light. Cars behind us honked. He waited.
I looked at his haggard face, his bloodshot eyes. He looked a thousand years old. Maybe I did owe him for all the times he did what was right to shut down a violent offender in the ghetto. And beyond that, he had done what was right when he went alone in the back door of the house and saved the kid from Johnny Wayne Bascombe. I hadn’t known he’d been the one. Why wouldn’t it be him? He had always championed the underdog, walked the line, often venturing into the gray area of the law to throw assholes in jail. He’d taught me to do the same. For that and nothing else I knew I was going to help him. Before I could form the words, he said her name before I could stop him. “I’m calling in your marker, pal, for the little girl twenty years ago. You owe me for Jenny.”
Chapter Fifteen
That night, I had been assigned code-three to a traffic accident, car vs. pedestrian. I beat the paramedics and other patrol cars. Jenny was down in the street, knocked right out of the crosswalk, knocked right out of her shiny black patent leather shoes.
The night was hot. Groups of people clustered on the sidewalk, quiet, pointing, as if I wouldn’t see Jenny.
At first I thought Jenny was some little girl’s doll tossed haphazardly from a passing car.
No first aid or medical attention was going to help her.
Half her face was mashed, the other half was perfect, angelic in the scant aura of the streetlight.
There was very little blood.
Mercifully, she died on impact.
Her blue gingham dress masked the horror underneath.
Sweaty Marty said later he came up and spoke to me but I was “zoned out,” that “I had the blood spore with my nose to the ground.”
From the debris field, the bits of headlight glass and aluminum trim knocked off the car on impact, I knew the car was old and large. Then I noticed the asshole had hit poor Jenny hard enough that her little body ruptured the radiator. I started following the water trail in the street, a trail that would be gone in minutes, evaporated into the hot summer night. The swath started out large and wide and narrowed as the murderer picked up speed as the coward fled.
I ran.
The water narrowed further and then turned to sporadic blotches.
Then, to droplets.
At an intersection, I lost it entirely. He’d caught the green, only I didn’t know which way he went. I ran in a big arc, cars skidded to a stop to avoid the tall, black uniformed deputy who’d lost his head and ran in a circle in the middle of a busy intersection.
My flashlight dimmed as it started to fail.
I thought I picked up the trail headed north that meant a left turn. I got down on one knee and still wasn’t sure. I got down, in a prone position, and sniffed. I then got up and ran in a full sprint, fighting the heat that now helped the suspect to escape, drying up the evidence.
The foot race worked.
At the next intersection the murderer caught the red and left behind a puddle. He continued on through, went two blocks, and turned on Spring Street. He’d been close to home, a mile and half away when he ran Jenny down.
The water turned rusty and led up a concrete drive to a garage door closed and padlocked. I took a
minute to catch my breath and tried to shove back the lion that wanted to get even, to make things right.
In the academy they called it “your professional face.” No matter what happened, you had to put aside your personal feelings and be professional.
I went up to the door, sweat stinging my eyes, my uniform wet under the arms. I wiped my eyes clear on my short sleeve that left a sweat smudge.
I knocked.
The door opened immediately. The room on the inside was dark, the screen door between us. I couldn’t see him and didn’t know if this man, who without conscience, ran down a defenseless little girl in the crosswalk, had a weapon.
His rich and deep timbre voice said, “Can I help you, Officer?”
“Yes, I would like you to come out here and open your garage door.”
Silence for a long moment. “Heh, heh, I don’t think so, Officer. You don’t have a search warrant.”
I carefully, with as little movement as possible, reached up and tried the screen door.
Locked.
He started to close the inside door.
“Wait.”
“Yes, is there something else, Uncle Tom? Something you want to do for your whitie, the people you serve?” He didn’t try to mask the anger and hate in his tone. He was safe and he knew it, swaddled, nice and comfortable, in the shroud of the law.
The next second I sniffed it.
Alcohol.
A drunk driver.
The scent of metabolized alcohol set something off inside me, snapping the last straw. The professional face came off.
I roared.
With both hands I clawed through the screen, reached in and took hold of the enigma, a large, black man wearing a white Stetson hat. I pulled him through the screen door and out onto the ground.
“I caught that last signal,” Robby said. “You remember? By the time I turned on Spring and found the house you had that old man down in his front yard and was putting the boot to him.”
Robby had pulled me off. He had to slug me in the stomach to bring me out of the blind rage. That wasn’t how he’d saved my bacon, though. As a supervisor, he had witnessed a crime I’d perpetrated when I took the cowboy into custody with excessive force. Robby was obligated to stop me. Then turn me in for felony prosecution.
No, the way he’d really saved me came after he got everything calmed down with med aid responding for the suspect. He told me I’d done a hell of a job tracking the car, that he’d never seen anything like it, the tenacity, the perseverance. Then he helped with the story, the way it would be written, the way the courts would accept it, and at the same time save my career. Get at least some token of justice for Jenny. Six months later, Robby was transferred to run the newly formed Violent Crimes Task Force and specifically asked for me to be on his team. So started the genesis of the BMFs.
I owed him.
The name Jenny brought it all flooding back, the hot night, the sweat, the odors, the images of shiny patent leather and blue gingham.
“Yes, I’ll help you, but only for a week. One week.”
Chapter Sixteen
Robby smiled as he wheeled into Stops and parked among the derelict vehicles belonging to other customers. Stops had been at the corner of Wilmington and Imperial Highway forever. Right across the street was Nickerson Gardens, a city housing project that the city had finally fenced in with ten-foot-high wrought iron. Most places turned the curved pointed tops outward to keep the riffraff from entering. With the Nickerson, the wrought iron points were turned inward to keep the animals from escaping the zoo. Stops served hot link sausages on a bun smothered in barbeque sauce and chili fries so thick with grease they’d lie in your stomach for days. Cleevon Tuttle, a rotund black man in white apron with red barbeque sauce smeared in splotches all down the front, set a tray down on the counter with two hot links and chili fries. “Good to see ya, Bruno.”
Robby, his money clip out, peeled off some bills. Cleevon lost his smile, “Man, don’t you dare insult me.”
Robby put his money away and took up the tray.
Cleevon looked back at me. I’d had a great deal of respect for this man, that’s why I hadn’t come around. I broke eye contact and lowered my head.
“Don’t you be that way, Bruno. We was all pullin’ for ya. And if Johnny Cocoran hadn’t gone and died, you woulda got off just like O.J.” He leaned over the counter and took hold of my hand. “You stop that now. Listen to me, you been out a while, come around when you get hungry, anytime. It’s on me. You hear? You got nothin’ to be ashamed of. That sombitch had it comin’. He needed killin’. Everyone knows it.”
“Thanks, Cleevon.” All the help behind the counter stopped and watched. My new self-image, the crazy emotional old man thing, had me by the throat, sparking tears. “Doesn’t matter,” I said, “I still killed a man and I had to pay my dues.”
Robby saw my dilemma and nudged my shoulder. “Come on, let’s eat. Thanks, Cleevon.”
I followed Robby over to an outside table so we could keep an eye on his car and the thugs across the street on the other side of the wrought iron fence who milled about in gang attire, watching our every move. Robby took off his suit coat, which exposed his shoulder holster, let the thugs see it. He also didn’t want to get the messy chili on it.
The smell of the spicy food made my stomach growl. I’d been so busy, I couldn’t remember when I’d eaten last. Robby was always hungry and never put on an extra pound. He had that kind of metabolism. We ate in silence. He finished off his link and half the fries before he pushed them away and took up his Coke.
We’d missed the rush. Inside at the counter the line grew until it snaked out the door.
Without preamble, Robby started in. “The first victim was a good-for-nothing coke whore over off of Long Beach and Elizabeth Ave. The patrol deputy heard what he described as screeching. He turned the corner and saw Keeshawn Wilkins burning like a fresh-lit match, writhing in the street. When she saw the patrol car she yelled, “Help me.” That was it. She collapsed and burned out. I talked to the deputy personally. He admitted to me he was shook by it and all he saw was the burning woman. If there were wits in the area, he wasn’t aware, couldn’t remember. He said he never felt so helpless. I think it actually fucked him up in the head. He put in for a transfer to Malibu station.”
Barbeque hot link was a poor choice for lunch. But then anything would have been a bad choice. I pushed my half-eaten sandwich aside and washed it down with a lot of Coke.
“The next one, Devon Sherman, he was already a smoldering heap on the sidewalk when someone, an anonymous tip, called it in. That one was right out in front of the church over off Aranbe, you know the one. The press got a hold of it and tried to make it look like some kind of hate crime. We weathered it pretty well until the third one. Rasheen Patel, a motel owner over on Atlantic Avenue just north of Taco Quickie. He was robbed. And if you ask me, it looked like a copycat, which is going to make things more complicated when we do catch the guy.
“The fourth one, you’re really going to like this one. Late last night, not even in this area, up north of here, Central and Twentieth Street. Same MO, only this time it was the field representative for County Board of Supervisor Kendrick, name of McWhorter. You can imagine what a circus that turned this thing into.”
The tables around us started filling up, and Robby felt uncomfortable talking about the sensitive case. He looked around. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back in the car, he took out a pack of Dentyne from over the visor, unwrapped a piece, put it in his mouth, then offered me the pack. I waved him off.
He chewed and looked at me. “Well, what do you think?”
“When you first told me about this the other night, you said the guy used a coffee can to hold the gas, tossed the gas, held up a lighter, and demanded money.”
Robby smiled, reaching over to lightly punch my arm. “That’s why I need you on this. You don’t miss a thing. Rasheen Patel was braced by the suspect
out on the side of his motel when he was taking the trash out.”
“Which motel?”
“The Sands.”
“You have a witness from the second story who was looking out the window.”
This time it shocked him. “How did you know that?”
“How else would you have that kind of detail without a witness? The suspect wouldn’t do it with anyone standing close. And I know the Sands and where the dumpster is around back. Why do you think this one’s a copycat?”
“Because the first two had their money still in their pockets, burnt, but it was still there.”
“And the field rep for Kendrick?”
“His money was missing. Kendrick said McWhorter carried about a grand around all the time and liked to flash it. He was bold, into the power thing.”
“Where’s your witness?”
“We have her stashed. No one knows about her, especially the press. You can talk to her tonight. Right now, I need some sleep or I’m going to doze off standing up. You don’t look so hot yourself. I’d ask what you’ve been doing, but I know it’s something I don’t to want to know about. Am I right?”
I ignored the last part. “Can you drop me at my pad?”
“Sure.” He started up and turned north. He’d read my file and knew my residence of record. Had he not been so fatigued, he would’ve asked me where I was staying instead of tipping his hand.
He talked the entire way in order to stay awake, inane chatter about bygone days. For the most part, I tuned it out. I had more important things to think about. The foremost of which was whether or not someone saw me burying 75K behind the burnt-out apartment complex on Alabama and 117th. When you’re so tired the paranoia gets a good foothold, it plays havoc with your logic. My imagination had bulldozers knocking down the burnt-out apartments, churning up my hard-earned cash, the wind picking it up and blowing it down the boulevard.
