“Also, Mr. McCoy must not pay any attention to the news because he hadn’t heard of your friend being shot or of the restaurant shooting and all the kids had heard about it and it was on the TV. But I don’t think we were mentioned on the news; there’d be no reason for that, anyway. I heard them mention your name, Sergeant. They only said off-duty Sergeant Leslie killed a robber at Tom Ham’s.”
“He was nice to you?” her mother asked. “He didn’t say or do anything he shouldn’t have?”
“Oh no. He never has been anything but fatherly to me. That’s what he calls it. The bus came and he got on it and I walked on home. But it looked to me like he only went a few blocks. It looked like him getting off just a few blocks up the street. Maybe his cab was parked there. I didn’t see it but it’s odd he didn’t walk that little distance. And I don’t know why he’d take a bus instead of driving his cab as he did before.”
“Sweetie, you mean he’s met you before when you’re walking home from school?” the McCarty woman asked her daughter.
“Only once, a week or so ago but he had his cab, like, right there that time. He wouldn’t give me a ride home in his cab; he said because people might get the wrong idea about our relationship. But he’s called me before. But not for quite a long time. I think it’s been – oh, I don’t know, maybe a month since he’s called me. But I don’t phone him because he said not to. He said don’t call him except in an emergency. I don’t know why.”
Leslie sat there toying with his food and absorbing every word. Little Anne never seemed to be at a loss for words; they flowed out of her with the ease of a polished adult. Leslie thought she was the most loquacious child he’d ever seen. She was only twelve, he remembered, yet glib as any talkative adult he had known.
“Ah, you have your own phone then, Little Anne?” he asked her.
“Yes sir; it’s a cell, of course. All of us kids do these days. We talk to each other just all the time. Some of the kids even have Blackberry’s, like yours, and some of them text each other a lot. But to me, talking on a simple phone is all that’s necessary.”
“Jack,” Ronica put in, “it’s also a safety feature. With a cell phone on them, youngsters today can be more secure from harm by strangers, let’s say.
“But Anne, I want you to be much more cautious with Mr. McCoy. He’s not my friend anymore and he’s certainly never going to be your papa, no matter how he might wish it. If he calls you again – ever again, or if he stops you to speak to you as he did today, remember, I’d rather he didn’t. Okay?”
“But mother, he’s so terrific with mathematics!”
“Yes but I want you to be careful. I don’t say don’t answer your phone or don’t avoid him probably, if he stops to talk to you. But remember honey, I don’t approve of Donald McCoy at all. Alright dear?”
“Okay mom. You’ve certainly made that clear and I shall be much more wary of my former friend.”
Then the girl turned to the man in the middle of the island. “Sergeant Leslie, I know some kids figure they know things better than their parents but I trust my mother’s judgment even if I don’t necessarily comprehend the reasons every time.”
“Little Anne, I believe I comprehend the reasons your mother loves you so terrifically much,” Leslie said.
The girl glanced at him and then turned to her food. “Thank you sir. Thank you very much,” she said.
There was silence for a while as they ate. As Leslie polished off the food, he wondered how the girl could possibly know that her mother said she felt she knew him because his late wife talked of him all the time? She possibly had not been sleeping the whole time, from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. or she may have been listening in the living room, out of sight. Of course, her mother could have said that to her at another time. So what? Did it matter? Anyway, he thought he might tell them about his new gun.
“Seems our Police Chief Slumberjay doesn’t approve of such a big caliber gun as I’ve been carrying so she gave me to know today I’m to use only this one,” he said as he pulled out the 9mm Glock from under his arm. He noticed only the daughter reacted to it. Her eyes got quite large. Well why not; she was only twelve years old and would hardly be familiar with such weapons.
Ronica put in, “I’ve heard people say it’s ridiculous to have a woman as Police Chief, Jack. What’s she seem like to you officers?”
“I’ll tell you the truth; tiny as she is, she seems perfectly competent in the job. I believe most other officers feel the same. She was full of compliments to me this morning and I was surprised at that. I’ve been feeling badly because we have some very, very ugly cases that we are nowhere near to solving. She was nice enough not to criticize for that lack; at least, she hasn’t yet.”
“From what I understand about your business, you have a rough job much of the time,” Ronica said.
“You know, when I was a young boy in Milwaukee there was a gigantic old steam locomotive near where we lived. It was so magical to me. They were still using it occasionally for hauling freight trains. I’d stand there to watch it and it seemed almost all the time it would just sit there, kind of wheezing, groaning and puffing a little and not getting anything done but burning up coal. But then when the engineer pulled the throttle, all heck would break loose and that locomotive would explode into action and demonstrate its usefulness with all kinds of steam and smoke and toots and all that.
“The police detective business is a lot like that old steam engine. Most of the time we detectives seem perhaps to be a bunch of loafers, not getting anything done. But then, whammo! When things happen, well….things happen!”
She asked, “Jack, that’s quite an interesting way to put it. What would you like for dessert? We have both chocolate and vanilla ice cream and we have….”
“Ronica, please excuse me. I have an errand to do and I promise, I’ll be right back for dessert. You don’t mind too much, do you?”
“Of course not. We’ll both be right here.”
Leslie headed for the garage, jumped in his PT Cruiser and drove the few blocks to a flower shop on Fourth Avenue. Before going in, he scrolled his Blackberry to Lieutenant Pat Dean.
“Lieutenant!” Leslie said, “I’ve just heard that our person of interest in the .22 caliber killings was seen and talked to on First Avenue just about two hours ago. Yes, sir, it’s that McCoy fellow. He stopped to talk awhile with Miss McCarty’s daughter on the way home from school and he mysteriously rode away in a city bus.
“On the way here, I drove by First and Laurel where the daughter thought she saw him get off that same bus, only a few blocks after he got on. That’s all I know except the daughter said he looked really tired. If he’s our man, I shouldn’t wonder he’d be a mite tired.
“Oh yes, the daughter said he almost always carries a shoulder bag, like a lady’s purse, and he was when she saw him today. It would be good to know what he carries in that bag, sir.”
“Well damn, even if you’re not on the case you’re still on the goddamned case! Well, what’s happening with you right now?”
“I had to have an excuse to get out away from the McCarty’s to phone you so I’m picking up a couple dozen roses for them and I promised I’d be right back. As I told you sir, that woman is very, very special.”
“Thanks Jack. At least we know he’s in town if we didn’t before. You’d better get back there and enjoy yourself. You certainly deserve it. I’ll take it from here.”
When Leslie knocked on number 601 again, he came in with two separate dozens of roses in green glass vases, one for each of them.
“I couldn’t decide whether to get red ones or white ones so I compromised with pink ones for the two very nicest girls I’ve ever met in all my born days,” he told them.
“Aha! Thanks,” Ronica said. “So that was the sneaky little errand you had to do. They’re beautiful. You are also the sweetest, nicest man….” She stopped, blushing beautifully. He thought her sparkling brown eyes were so pretty.
“Sergeant
Leslie!” Little Anne exclaimed, her eyes large with disbelief. “I have never in my entire life been given pretty pink roses by anybody; not ever! Mother, if you don’t marry this man, by golly I will!”
“Very cute, sweetie,” Ronica smiled. “From what movie did you learn that line from? Jack you know she’s an actress already and she remembers her lines – and other people’s lines – rather well.”
“I’m glad you like the posies, little dear,” Leslie smiled at her, ignoring the very cute remark. “Why not do as you mother does and simply call me Jack?”
“Mother, may I?” she asked.
“Well, why not. He’s not a sergeant around us, I don’t think. Jack, this is so thoughtful of you. It’s been a very long time since….”
“Now then, where’s that ice cream you mentioned?”
The three were soon at the island, devouring their desserts. Ronica looked thoughtful.
“Jack, Donna told me the way you two met was you arrested her for driving drunk. And then you got her to go to Alcoholics Anonymous so she’d quit boozing. She said you wouldn’t marry her for years because you knew alcoholics often slip back to drinking.”
“Well, alcoholism is a terrible disease,” he said. “It’s just terribly costly to individuals and to all of society as well,” Leslie said. “Those with that sickness can’t simply have an occasional or a daily drink as most folks can. They have one sip and then they apparently cannot stop. It’s a terrible shame. Donna finally stopped kidding herself that an occasional sip was okay. She slipped many times before that. Yet, she was such an intelligent, loving lady.”
“Oh yes she was,” Ronica put in. “Everyone at her shop liked her very much. I saw that accident at 9th Avenue and C Street about an hour after it happened. Ironically, it was a drunk driver who killed himself, her and her baby and the U.S. Mail truck driver next to her car. Did you see the wreck?”
“No, I did not. I hardly wished to see such a sight. I was at the supposedly full Rosecrans Veterans Cemetery where they found an empty plot for my folks’ graves because of my dad’s Navy Cross and two Silver Stars. I had my phone shut off and I didn’t know of the accident until hours later.
“Dear God, I’ve seen so many grisly scenes in my time as a Police Officer. I’ll doubtless see many more over the years. It’s something one has to steel oneself for; that you are bound to see human beings and their bodies abused as they never should be. It’s amazing how cruel people can be to each other. You know, cops are just as human as anyone but you have to adjust your mind from being soft sometimes to being hard as iron. You just have to remind yourself now and then that Cops must not cry.”
“Jack, I must tell you the truth. I admire and respect you immensely for the services you so bravely perform for all of us people of San Diego.”
Leslie sat there a moment, taken aback somewhat by such a statement from her.
“Coming from you Ronica, that is the most precious commendation I’ve ever had. Thank you for that. Thank you very, very much. Even in front of your darling daughter, I could kiss you for that.”
“Well by golly, I wish you would!”
They instantly stood and embraced, kissing most passionately as though the child were nowhere around.
Little Anne abruptly stood up and loudly exclaimed, “Well mom, I guess that wasn’t such a waste after all, you buying today that huge truck load of Miller Lite beer.”
Ronica laughed, “I did not. It was on sale at the store today by the case so I had to buy a whole case of it. Jack, it’s only twenty four bottles – well shy, I’d say, of Little Anne’s imaginary truck load.”
Leslie had to smile at their humor. And that drove home for him that she really was becoming serious about him.
“I noticed in your refrigerator Jack, that you only had a few bottles left, so….”
“Ronica dear, you are the sweetest girl in the whole wide world.”
Leslie and Ronica caught their breaths and soon followed Little Anne into the living room. A small glass of red wine was laid out for the lady, a bottle of beer and glass for the man and a glass of chocolate milk for the girl; all on the coffee table.
The daughter ran into her bedroom and returned with a large photo album. Over the next hour or so they reviewed the photographic modeling career of the budding actress, beginning when she was all of five years old. They plugged in the videos of the three brief commercials she had made, advertising girl’s dresses for a chain of stores.
Then Little Anne excused herself as she went into the dining room and cracked open her computer to finish her homework.
They embraced and kissed rapturously again and at last “came up for air”.
She had tears in her eyes and she wiped at them with her dainty fingers. “You must know I’ve seen and talked with countless good-looking and successful men at my bar. Some of them, I’d say, would be quite good ‘catches’ but to me, my dear, you are the most manly of men and I admire and respect you with all my heart.”
After a while Leslie left after saying he’d call her on the morrow and his Chrysler PT’s tires, like his Ford’s, hardly touched the streets all the way home.
While driving, he recalled he had seen countless movies on television as distractions during the past two years and he could not recall one in which a girl actress came up with the line, Mother, if you don’t marry this man, by golly I will. Little Anne seemed extraordinarily good at acting whether the line originated with her or in a movie.
That night, for the first time, he slept where his father had slept. And he slept like a log. Forty one year old Jack Leslie was feeling as though life was very good again.
SEVEN
He had no sooner arrived in his office on Wednesday morning, September 10th, when an investigating officer in the District Attorney’s office called him and asked him to come right on over to their office to be interviewed.
“Where should I park my Ferrari when I get there?” Leslie asked the caller.
“Ferrari? You drive a goddamned Ferrari?”
“Well, not quite. It’s an old banged-up PT Cruiser, but that’s all us City detectives are allowed.”
“Oh; very funny Leslie. I’ll let them know in the parking lot behind the Hall of Justice to make way for your proud vehicle. See you soon.”
The Hall of Justice is between Union and State Streets on Broadway, directly west of the old County Court House and sixteen blocks down Broadway from Police Headquarters. Across the way was the Federal Court House and yet another, larger building for the Feds was to be built there. Business with the Mexican drug barons and “coyote” human traffickers was booming and more court space was needed to deal with those ugly crooks.
Leslie walked into the investigator’s ninth floor office and was led into a spartanly furnished room with three chairs facing a single chair across a table, interrogation style. He was introduced to the two men and the woman who would be asking the questions.
“This is to be a gentle inquisition like the long ago Spaniards used to have? I see no torture equipment, though,” Leslie said.
“Come on Sergeant Leslie, you know the DA wants us to determine if your shooting of that fellow in Tom Ham’s Restaurant Sunday evening was justified or not. You’ve been through it before. Plain and simple. Okay?”
“Okay. It’s just that I’m feeling very good for a change. Go right ahead with whatever questions you wish.”
“How’d you happen to be there at that particular time, Sergeant? Do you eat there a lot?”
“Not a lot. I just wanted to impress a young lady by taking her to that nautical atmosphere and for the occasion, I even wore a yachting outfit, cap and all. It was strictly a million-to-one coincidence that we came into the building as a robber was shouting obscenities to a clerk up on the main floor.”
“The lady you’re referring to, Sergeant – was it not the woman in whose apartment you were investigating a killing? A murder that happened that very day?”
“Yes, that happe
ned at about 2:35 that morning and yes ma-am, it was in that particular woman’s apartment. But that had absolutely nothing whatever to do with the shooting you’re investigating here.”
“Sir, I was only sort of wondering why, if you’d just met that woman that morning, you’re already taking her – and her daughter, wasn’t it? – why you’d be taking them out to dinner. Rather sudden, wouldn’t you say Sergeant?”
“Well, I suppose it might seem so. But this lady was a customer of my late wife in her beauty salon for some years and I’d heard of her and she’d heard plenty of talk about me, I’m told. So you see, we were more or less acquainted well before that particular day. But so what? Again, all that has no bearing whatever at what happened at Tom Ham’s rather classy restaurant. That’s where I’d called for a dinner reservation, no different than I had dozens of times over the years.”
“Okay Leslie, take it easy,” one of the men said. “We listened to Captain Noffsinger’s recording of what you had to say about the shooting right after it happened and we’ve read Lieutenant Borrelli’s report from witnesses right there at the scene. Did you know the man you shot there?”
“No; of course not.”
“But you knew he was black.”
“His forearms and hands were bare; that’s all I could tell of his ethnicity, although I fail to see how that could’ve mattered. He was committing a crime and as a Law Enforcement Officer, off duty or not, I was of course obligated to put a stop to that crime.
“Frankly, I must tell you, I was extremely surprised that he would attempt to shoot me. I had made a point to him that my pistol had a hair trigger and it was aimed right at him. I certainly believed he would put his gun down as I asked him repeatedly to do; and as calmly as I could possibly do. I felt at the time that he was a big bomb with a lit fuse. Unfortunately, sadly, it proved to be so.”
“But you know something of the man and his circumstances now?”
“Yes, but you all recognize I had no way in the world of knowing those circumstances then and you also understand of course, that it could not have made the slightest difference in the outcome. If I’d known every last detail of the man’s problems, it could not possibly have made any difference in what happened.”
The .22 Caliber Homicides: Book 1 of the San Diego Police Homicide Detail featuring Jack Leslie Page 10
