The Disposables

by David Putnam

  I said, “There are only two reasons for a copycat.”

  Mack nodded. Fong didn’t catch on, he asked, “What?”

  Mack said, “One is a psycho who liked the idea and wished he’d thought of it first.”

  “And the other?” Fong asked.

  I said, “The other is someone borrowing the MO to dispose of a problem.”

  “Okay, so we still got this puke for the others, right?” Fong asked, missing the full ramifications of the words.

  Mack said nothing and held my gaze. He put it together in his mind and didn’t like the end result.

  Fong leaned forward. “What? What are you guys thinking?”

  I said, “I really don’t like the way this is playing out.”

  Mack looked out the window into the dark night. “He’s an asshole and I wanted to rub his face in it, but not this. The team’s reputation’s on the line, the entire department.”

  “Who?”

  I turned in the seat to talk to Fong. “My car in the Taco Quickie parking lot.”

  Fong wasn’t chosen for the Violent Crimes Team out of ineptness. He cut me off. “What about your car? What are you trying to say? ” It came together for him, only he fought it more than we did. We knew the “who,” we just couldn’t rectify in our minds the why.

  “What did you recover out of my car?”

  Fong didn’t hesitate. “Dope and a gun. Rock coke, about three grams.”

  I didn’t smile. His reply confirmed it.

  Mack came out of his reverie, “What was in your car?”

  Mack made the leap. I now stood as a full partner to be trusted with covering his back and more, the reputation of the Violent Crimes Team. “I had forty-five thousand cash, taken from Q-Ball Bridges, and a Smith & Wesson model 645.”

  Mack hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

  No question. He believed me.

  Fong sat back. “Son of a bitch.”

  Ruben sputtered, “I didn’t do it. I’m innocent.”

  “Shut up.” Fong elbowed him in the chest.

  “What kind of gun did you find in my trunk?”

  Once I accepted the “who,” truly believed it, the beauty of the flawless, perfectly executed plan, awed me.

  Mack read my mind. “Something’s missing. He wouldn’t do it for forty-five K. No chance. If he went off the reservation, he’s smarter than that. He could take down a hundred times more.”

  As each move fell into place, more questions popped up. I had been made a patsy to the point of comedy. It was almost funny all the crap he’d laid at my door. “Tell me about the gun. Who is Kendrick?”

  Mack’s head whipped back. “The last guy torched.”

  I stayed ahead of Mack in my thinking, not by much though. “Who found the gun in the trunk of my car?”

  Fong cut in, “He did. Hey, should we be talking in front of this shitbag?” Referring to Ruben.

  Mack said, “The last guy torched is the key.”

  When he said it, I’d already gone by that part. I’d played back all of our conversations from the very beginning. “It’s not just forty-five K.”

  No one said anything.

  I said, “How much money did you guys get from my crash pad on 117th?”

  Fong said, “We haven’t found any money yet.”

  Mack said, “How much?”

  “Total? Close to two fifty.”

  Fong said, “Where the hell you get that kind of money?”

  I didn’t answer and went on. “The ballistics of the gun in my trunk matched the Bressler kill, didn’t it?”

  Mack nodded. “It all comes back to Ahern, doesn’t it?”

  “Who contacted Jumbo to set up the take-down at his house?”

  Mack said nothing.

  I looked at Fong. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, said, “What are we going to do?”

  “It’s a double-blind, me and Jumbo. We need to give Jumbo a visit.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “No chance.” Mack shook his head. “No way. What good will that do? He’s too smart. Jumbo’ll just lawyer up. And besides, who’s he going to be more afraid of? Us or him?”

  “I could talk to Jumbo. Guaranteed he won’t want to see me.”

  Fong smirked. “You’re on your way back to the can.”

  “Stop and think about what you just said.”

  “All right, I’ll say it again, you’re going back to the can. I’m not putting my ass on the line for you.”

  I didn’t look at Mack and take an unfair advantage. He owed me. I let it hang in the air. When Mack didn’t offer up, I spelled it out for Fong. “What did you book me on?”

  “Murder, multiple counts, ex-con with a gun, possession of cocaine.”

  “And you base all of this on what?”

  He didn’t answer. He knew.

  “I’ll tell you what you based it on,” I said. “Planted evidence in the trunk of my car. And to make matters worse, your whole team was on me during these purported murders, most of them anyway, following my every move. It would only take one instance where you had the eye on me the same time a murder went down. Just one. You’ll have detailed records of your surveillance. How are you going to explain that in court? I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t do it.”

  “You admitted you had forty-five thousand and a gun in the trunk of that car, and you’re on parole, that’s two to five on top of the parole violation.”

  “Sure, you’re right. Produce the gun and the money. What you got is pie in the sky.”

  “We booked you and took you out. We have to take you back in or it’s our asses. The court’ll let you out when the DA scraps the case.”

  “You can blue sheet me, an 849.b2.”

  Fong waited for Mack to ring in on the subject. When he didn’t, Fong shook his head. “No, Homicide’ll have our asses, making a unilateral decision like that. It’s their case now, not ours.”

  Correct, if you wanted to follow procedure. Didn’t matter if we could prove I hadn’t done it. Protocol dictated Homicide handles the disposition or gets their nose bent out of shape. I had interrogated too many suspects and interviewed too many victims. Fong held something back. I opened the door.

  Fong broke leather, pulled his gun. “Don’t.”

  I put my foot out on the curb.

  Fong pointed the large handgun at me.

  I looked at Mack and slid out. Mack put his hand on the gun, lowered it.

  Fong said nothing.

  I closed the door, got down on one knee, leaned in. “What do you have my girl for?”

  “Aiding and abetting a felon.” Mack said in a lowered voice.

  “If you no longer have the felon then how can she be abetting?” My heart started to soar upward into the cloudless night.

  “There’s—” Fong started to say.

  Mack held up his hand to quiet him. “There’s the other charge.”

  He yanked me back down to earth. I got up and walked around the front of the car, the headlights off. I wanted to see his eyes. He rolled down his window.

  I put my hands on the ledge and got a little closer. All this time no one had mentioned the kids. They sat like the elephant in the room.

  I said, “What other charge?” My throat went dry, my voice cracked.

  He waited a long interminable minute. “You know, Bruno.”

  “Say it.” I said, the bottom dropping out of my world. What did they have? Was it enough to hold her? Was it enough to hold me, and he was just going to let me walk because of what had happened between us? If so, I couldn’t let it go down that way. I would have to get back in the car, take the fall with her.

  “What it’s always been about.” His pale blue eyes, sad.

  “What? Say it. I want you to say it.”

  “The kids.”

  A large knot rose up in my chest. To deny it disrespected the man, someone I had grown to like. I tried to speak, my voice sandpaper at the back of my throat. “You guys don’t have a c
ase.”

  He didn’t move. My heart skipped. I watched his eyes.

  “No, we don’t have a case.”

  I stood and looked down the street as my eyes teared up, that old emotional man thing again. I said, “Then you’re going to release her?”

  “The FBI is coming down in the morning to put a hold on her. They’re adopting the case.”

  I rode that same roller coaster back down into the basement. “You could go in and blue sheet her tonight. You could do that.”

  “It’d be my job.”

  I wanted to tell him so much. Tell him about each child, the untenable environments, the sadistic physical abuse, and the system set up to protect them that put them right back into harm’s way. I couldn’t help it, I threw my trump card. I leaned back in, the tears heavy in my eyes, said, “You got a cigarette?”

  Mack never looked away, “Man, I’m soaked in gasoline and you wanna smoke?” He smiled. “I got to get these things off. You take care of yourself.” When he put it in drive, the red brake lights lit up the dark street. He didn’t move.

  He finally said, “You’re not going after Jumbo, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  He said, “I didn’t think so. Tell Wicks—tell him I’m the one that let the junkyard dog loose on his ass. You got about a two-hour lead, enough for me to do the paper on this case, then I’ll be right behind you.”

  He hit the gas. The back tires screeched.

  “What about my girl?”

  He didn’t stop or even slow down. The purple-black night slammed down. It took my breath away. I started running.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  In all the years on the street I learned one sure thing about the mind of a crook: how, when faced with adversity, a bold and brash act can pull your cookies out of the fire. I checked Wicks’s house in Rosemead, burned forty minutes of the two hours Mack doled out, and found it dark and cold. If time worked for me rather than against me, I would sit and wait. Instead, I chose bold and brash.

  One cold night in Compton, I stood in the parking lot of Rosco’s Market sipping coffee under the eave, in the lee of the wind, along with Mark Hocks, a rookie deputy in possession of a mere six months on the street. He’d called the meet, bought the coffee, and found it difficult to ask the question, the true excuse for the get-together. He wanted to know the secret to being a good street cop, how to make not just good arrests but great arrests. Honored, I didn’t know how to respond. I told him to always be suspicious and not look for the crime, don’t wait for the probable cause, watch the behavior. Behavior will give it away every time. Someone looks like a crook, go up and have a chat with him. I told Mark all of this while we watched the street, the cars going by in the icy rain. A white Honda Accord pulled in and got gas just as I was about to leave. The car—I thought it the same car anyway—white Hondas in Southern California were the same as snowflakes in Aspen—had gone by on the street and now it came back to gas up.

  I tossed the rest of the burnt coffee poured from the pot inside and, without telling Mark, walked over to talk to the driver. Both of our black-and-white cop cars sat in plain view to all. The driver of the white Honda got out, saw the uniform, and immediately looked around, a rabbit about to flee. I grabbed onto his open black leather jacket by the front and said, “Don’t. Don’t.” At the same time, I felt his waistband on the right side, found a .38. I pulled his gun, slammed him on the hood of the Honda, stuck his own gun in his ear, and told him not to breathe. Mark dropped his coffee, drew his gun, and ran over to help. The Honda was stolen. Jed Ashe also carried in his right shirt pocket a half ounce of rock cocaine. When asked by Mark what the hell he thought he was doing pulling into get gas with two cops standing in the parking lot, Jed said, “Didn’t think you’d tumble to me if I acted like nothin’ was wrong.”

  I chose bold and brash. It didn’t work for Jed, but I wasn’t Jed. I drove my boosted car into the parking lot of Montclair Police Station, forty miles east of Los Angeles, another forty minutes gone. It left only forty minutes to get the information I needed and get back to Los Angeles.

  The little burg of Montclair sat quiet in the dark night, light from the front window warm and inviting, as a soft invitation to Joe Citizen. I walked into the front lobby, a little bebop in my step that bespoke, “nothing wrong here.” I’m Joe Citizen making an inquiry. The lobby waiting area contained two gray Naugahyde couches, two glass cases with awards for the top cops, and pictures on the wall of the city council and mayor. On the other side of the counter, the blue-suited cop stood and came to the thick bulletproof Plexiglas. “Can I help you?” The sound came out metallic with some sort of audio boost.

  “Yes. I would like to speak with Barbara White.”

  Barbara kept her own last name, a professional consideration. Long ago at a barbecue, she confided she didn’t like the name Barbara Wicks not after being White all of her life.

  “What’s this in reference to?”

  “It’s a personal matter.”

  “What’s your name?”

  No way did I think the L.A. cops put out a BOLO for me, especially one that would reach this far out into the next county. Local maybe, not this far out. Still, I hesitated, “Can you just tell her Bruno is here to see her.”

  “Bruno who?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Have a seat.” He turned, picked up the phone, dialed a number, and he watched me as he spoke. The person on the other end said something, the cop turned to reply, as if I could read his lips. I fought the urge to bolt.

  He put the phone down and stared at me. My heart raced. He came over to the counter, slowly moved his hand to the edge out of view. Behind me, over at the front door a solenoid bolt shot home. He’d locked me in.

  The door that led to the back of the station opened. The woman in uniform did not smile. It took a long second to realize Barbara had aged a great deal since our last meeting. I tried to remember how long ago and knew not enough time had passed to warrant the quick degradation of youth. She’d lost weight. Where the curves on her hips used to beckon a man, they now showed too much bone, her uniform pants cinched up with a black basket weave belt. Gray sprouted in the part of her once lustrous brown hair.

  “What are you doing here, Bruno?”

  I looked at the desk officer, then back at her.

  “All right, come on back.” She held the door open. She wore a black automatic in a pancake holster on her side, her oval badge shiny and new. I followed her into her office. She walked behind her desk and turned, “You shouldn’t be here. You’re putting me in a bad position.”

  I sat down to stop the quaking knees. “Congratulations on your promotion. Lieutenant. That’s great.”

  She came around her desk and closed the watch commander’s door. “Let’s can the bullshit, huh? What do you want?”

  It hurt for her to talk to me this way. I didn’t know how much she knew, how much Robby told her about me, but we’d been good friends not all that long ago. I said nothing.

  She went back around and sat at her desk. The only sound in the room the radio. She monitored her shift beat units answering calls for service.

  I spoke first. “I thought we were friends.”

  “We were until you went over to the other team. What do you want, Bruno? You have thirty seconds.”

  “I’m looking for Robby.”

  “Funny, he’s looking for you.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  Her hard expression cracked, it softened. “We’re through. We split a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” They were the perfect couple. Although, I always thought she loved him more than he loved her. Now, standing on the outside looking in, seeing the past from a different perspective, I realized he may have been in love more with himself with nothing left over for her, at least not enough to hold the relationship together.

  Her eyes misted. She turned, slid open the window that accessed the
dispatch area, spoke to people I couldn’t see, “Tell Four Paul Three, not to take code seven until he handles that missing person and then tell Four Sam One I want him to call me ASAP.” She slid the window closed. The conscientious supervisor, she’d been monitoring the cop talk on the radio all the while conversing with me.

  I wanted to go around and hug her to help quell her emotional pain. “What happened?”

  “What always happens? He met someone else.” She looked away, her chin quivered. “It’s my fault.”

  “No it’s not, Barb.”

  She looked back her eyes aflame. “You don’t know shit. You have no idea how I respected you, the both of you. I envied you going to work with him everyday, all the overtime, seeing him more than I did. Then you went bad, you made him shoot you. It ruined him. That’s when it really started, three years ago.”

  Derek Sams ruined more lives than he would’ve ever known; my daughter, my grandson, my father, and now Wicks and his wife, Barbara. The insidious tentacles of narcotics burrow deep into the fabric of society.

  I wanted to lay it all at his door, but couldn’t. I had to own up to my own actions, my own choices.

  Shame rose up and heated my face. I wanted to tell her I didn’t ask Wicks to shoot. He didn’t have to. I was going to give up. He didn’t give me a chance. He never gave me the chance.

  She continued her rant. “You went bad, then he followed right along behind you.”

  I moved to the edge of my chair. “He went bad? What happened? What’re you talking about?”

  “The FBI popped him, civil-rights violation. A bad shoot by one of his men. They told him they were going to go back five years to investigate his team and their cases. Look into the culture, the tattoos, a real full-court press.”

  “He’s too good. They’d never make him on any of it.”

  “I told him that. He was okay for a while, until the pressure got to him. He said he was too old to start over. Even if he beat it, the department, the same people he made all those sensational cases for, demoted him to work in the jail, the watch commander at MCJ while they conducted an internal investigation. It killed him, Bruno. One week in that smelly hole and he was ready to sell out his mother.”