by Dianne Emley
Kevin said, “I went to look for aluminum cans. When I came back, I saw that clown. He was on the ground, dead. I went to the cigar store down the street and told them to call the police. That’s all I know. I don’t have anything else to say.” He hunched over as he spoke, as if to ward off a blow.
Clown? Vining thought that was a harsh way to refer to a murder victim.
Ruiz reached behind his back, beneath his jacket, and brought out his handcuffs. He stepped toward Kevin, who stumbled on a broken block of cement. “Are you coming with me voluntarily, or do I have to arrest you for trespassing?”
Vining knew that was another lie. The property owner would have to be there to press charges.
“Tony …” Kissick put out his hand.
“I called the police.” Kevin’s protests became frantic. “I did the right thing. Don’t arrest me.”
“Ruiz, come on.” Vining knew all the detectives were running on fumes after working day and night sorting out the gang-war carnage, but Ruiz’s behavior was unnecessarily callous. She’d watched longtime cops grow bitter. Ruiz had never been a ray of sunshine to begin with. He should retire before someone got hurt.
Ruiz nearly shouted at Vining. “Come on? He’s our witness. I want a good statement. I don’t want to be sitting in court with the defense attorney poking holes in it.”
“Did you see it happen, Kevin?” Kissick asked. “Did you see anyone?”
Kevin stared at the ground and rapidly shook his head.
“I have my own methods,” Ruiz said. “They’ve worked for me for many years.”
“So much for values-based policing,” Vining shot back. The PPD emphasized not just getting the job done, but how the job is done.
Ruiz pointed at Kevin. “Don’t move.” He looked at Kissick. “Can I have a word?”
Kissick followed Ruiz, who walked a few feet away.
Ruiz spoke in a stage whisper that Vining clearly heard. She turned to the homeless man. “Look, Kevin, if I take you to McDonald’s for some food, will you tell me what you saw, and let me tape record it?”
“You need to teach her not to second-guess a fellow detective in front of the public,” Ruiz said.
“Tony, all due respect, but you’re handling that kid all wrong. We need to earn his trust so we can find him if there’s a trial, not scare him to the point that he’ll flee the city and disappear.”
Ruiz drew his eyebrows together. He was nearly bald, which made his eyebrows seem even more bushy and unruly
“Tony look,” Kissick said. “Nan and I will take it from here. We’ve all been burning the candle at both ends. Go home and get some sleep.”
The pink tip of his tongue stuck out from the corner of his mouth as Ruiz gave Kissick a sarcastic look. “Poison Ivy’s got you under her spell.”
Poison Ivy was one of the two monikers Vining had been anointed with at the station. The other was Quick Draw, which she’d earned after she’d shot the rock star to death. She hated both nicknames and Ruiz knew it. She didn’t respond, but instead continued talking with Kevin. “Where do you usually hang out?”
Kissick moved close to Ruiz. He kept his voice low, but there was no mistaking the tone. “Tony, I’m in charge of this investigation. You’re either on this team and enthusiastic about being on this team, or I’ll ask Sergeant Early to reassign you.”
“No problem, Jim. I’ll talk to Sarge myself first thing tomorrow. I just might tell her that I don’t think it’s smart to have two detectives who are fucking each other working on the same investigation. I apologize for being so blunt, but I feel compelled to speak my mind.”
“Do whatever your conscience dictates, Tony,” Kissick replied. “For now, take Kevin to the command post and have him wait there. Tell the lieutenant I’ll be out in a minute. You can go home.”
“Fine by me.”
Kissick walked back. “Kevin, Detective Ruiz is going to take you outside. I’ll come get you in a minute and we’ll go get some food, okay? Or maybe you want to go to Union Station.” He spoke of the local homeless shelter.
When Ruiz left with Kevin, Vining pulled on her latex gloves. “What happened?”
“I’m telling Sarge I want him off this case. I can’t work with him.”
Vining nodded. “I never could work with him.” She added, “I heard what he said about talking to Sarge about us.”
He met her eyes. “Nan, Early has certainly heard the rumors. If she’s got a problem with it, she’ll bring it up. Would it make you sleep better at night if we go in and come clean with her?”
She thought about it. “Yes.” After a pause, “No … Well, maybe, but not right now.”
“Okay.”
They walked toward the wall that had been peeled away from the rest of the building. It had been bolstered by a wooden frame.
The wall looked majestic, standing like a giant tombstone, eerily shimmering beneath the spotlights. Drawing near, they saw the reason for the visual effect. The wall was covered with a vast mosaic composed of thousands of tiny squares of colored tile that had an iridescent glaze. The mosaic depicted the Colorado Street Bridge, a Pasadena icon and favorite subject of local artists. Instead of the typical 1920s romantic picture-postcard treatment, the style reflected the Space Age influence of the early 1960s. The bridge was rendered with sparse details and was surrounded with a border of boomerangs and atoms in a jarring contraposition. Blood splatter on the wall couldn’t have jibed with the artist’s vision.
“How about that?” Kissick said admiringly.
“Who knew that was in here all this time?” Vining said.
“Looks like they were making a path, hoping to get that mosaic out of here in one piece.”
The wall was partially shielded by plastic sheeting that appeared to have been carefully taped into place at one time. Part of it had been pulled off and lay crumpled on the ground. At the base, they could see the corpse’s tennis shoes and legs between the people gathered there. Maybe it was the effect of the artificial light, but Vining thought he looked as if he was wearing striped pajamas.
Vining spied some of the graffiti between two of the Pasadena Police’s own, Detective Alex Caspers and Corporal Cameron Lam, who appeared to be doing little besides watching a comely, young female coroner’s investigator crouched on the ground, working on the corpse.
Vining had worked with this coroner’s investigator before and knew her name was Bambi. Her parents had bestowed their sweet baby girl with a stripper’s name. It didn’t help matters when Bambi developed a stripper’s figure. No one could have predicted that Bambi would pursue a career that called her out in the middle of the night to creep beneath freeway underpasses and around mean streets, analyzing corpses.
Caspers and Lam gave Kissick and Vining a perfunctory greeting. They were absorbed in observing not the corpse but Bambi as she supported the victim’s head and probed the single gunshot wound in the back of his skull. Both men were in their twenties, handsome, cocky, and attractive to women. Caspers especially was preoccupied with sex— having it, pursuing it, or thinking about it his every waking hour, and probably while he slept, too. Vining guessed he wasn’t different from other guys his age, or even much older, but most were more restrained in vocalizing their obsession, at least during working hours. She’d tried to curb him while on the job. While she hadn’t completely housebroken him, at least she’d trained him to go on the newspaper.
When Kissick saw the corpse, he released a perverse laugh. “Guess the homeless guy, Kevin, was right. The deceased is a clown.”
Scrappy was wearing a clown costume. Voluminous, shiny fabric with orange, red, and purple stripes was gathered in ruffles at his wrists and ankles. Pompoms in primary colors were sewn down the front. Askew on his nose was a big, red plastic honker attached by an elastic band around his head. An oversize Afro wig, striped pink, green, and yellow, was on the ground nearby.
“A clown suit?” Vining looked at the others for an explanation.
&nbs
p; Caspers held up both hands in an elaborate shrug.
Vining looked at Lam as if he might have an answer. All he offered was “You got me.”
“Maybe he was dressed up for a kids’ party,” Kissick said.
“What kind of parent would hire him to entertain kids with those gang tats on his face,” Vining mused.
“The gangbangers’ Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” Kissick began taking photos of the victim and scene with his personal digital camera.
Vining added, “The kids bring their teddy bears dressed in gang colors.”
“Little do-rags on their heads,” Caspers joked.
The detectives laughed.
Absorbed with different concerns, Bambi pointed at the blood splatter. “He wasn’t facing the wall when he was shot. I think he was standing sideways. See this pattern here?”
Vining moved in for a closer look. Scrappy was on his back. His right hand still clutched a can of black spray paint that had stained his fingers. His eyes were wide open. He had a long, narrow mustache that was just a line of hair extending around both sides of his mouth to his chin. He had been a good-looking guy. The mustache accentuated well-shaped lips and a strong chin.
The bullet wound was easy to see through closely shorn hair that looked like velvet. His gang affiliation, NLK, was tattooed across the back of his scalp in ornate letters, three inches tall, inside a crown that signified “Latin Kings.” Three dots tattooed down his cheek meant Mi Vida Loca. Ironically, a clown face was tattooed on his neck. In street gang lingo, it meant “Smile Now, Cry Later.”
Vining knew they would find more tattoos across his abdomen, done in blue “prison ink” culled from Bic pens. The tattoos were a map of his life.
She turned her attention to the fresh graffiti marring the beautiful mosaic.
Kissick asked, “Nan, did you say that this guy used to be your informant?” When she didn’t acknowledge him, he called her again. “Nan …”
Vining was gawking at the graffiti. The bold, three-foot-tall black letters spelled:
Now everyone except Bambi was looking at her.
“Nan, what’s up?” Kissick asked.
The blood pulsed in her head while at the same time she felt she was being drained of blood. “He was here. He murdered Scrappy and he painted that tag.”
She looked at Kissick. “T B. Mann painted that tag.”
SEVEN
CASPERS SCRUNCHED “T. B. WHO?”
Vining stared off and briefly closed her eyes, not believing she’d uttered that name in front of everyone. “It’s what I call the man who attacked me.” She added defensively “I have to call him something.”
Bambi didn’t look up from her work, but straightened a little while leaning over the body, reacting to the moniker T. B. Mann as if someone had lobbed a pebble at her. Lam remained silent.
Kissick was direct. “Nan, what makes you think he was here?” She pointed her latex-clad hand at the graffiti. “Look at the C and the O. Those curlicues … They’re identical to the notes he wrote me.”
“He wrote you notes?” Caspers’s flippant facial expression alone bordered on insubordination.
Kissick silenced him with a raised hand. “You’re confident about that?”
“I’ll never get that handwriting out of my head.” She darted her index finger at the writing. “It’s all right there. The C and the O.”
Caspers was undeterred. “So Nan, you’re saying that the guy who stabbed you also shot this homeboy execution-style, then spray-painted this tag, then put the paint can in Scrappy’s hand, and then pressed Scrappy’s finger on the nozzle to make it look like he painted it.”
Vining conceded, “I know it sounds nutty.”
Lam asked, “Why China Dog? Why not ‘Vining one-eight-seven’?”
Caspers walked to the wall and pointed. “This thing. Is this what you call a curlicue?”
Bambi protested. “Watch where you’re putting your clodhoppers in my crime scene.”
Lam sagely rubbed his chin, but Vining could tell he thought she was cracked.
She threw up her hands. “It is nutty.” She thought it best to confirm what they were thinking and what she logically felt, even though the little hairs still standing up on the back of her neck told her otherwise. Battling intuition, she told herself that her obsession with T. B. Mann was like being in love— everything reminded her of him.
She offered a terse “Forget it. Just a crazy idea that flew into my head.”
Without further comment, she asked, “Bambi, may I have a look?” After getting the go-ahead, she walked to the corpse and leaned over to look into his dead eyes. “Old Scrappy. I was first on-scene after his girlfriend called nine-one-one when he’d beat the crap out of her. Broke her nose and nearly put her eye out when she was five months pregnant with his son. He was high on meth and didn’t like the way she was talking to one of his homeys.
“He went away for that, but not long enough. After he got out on parole, I caught him with a joint and I flipped him. He gave me a good tip about an old drive-by shooting murder up on El Sereno. Gave me decent information for a few years. For twenty bucks to buy drugs, he would have sold out his best friend. He was a player in NLK once, but his drug use got out of control and they sidelined him.”
She drew her gloved index finger across the three tattooed dots on his cheek. “They didn’t give him the moniker Scrappy for nothing. Can’t say I’m surprised to find him with a bullet in his head, but what was he doing here?”
“And why tag that wall?” Lam asked.
“That mosaic is probably valuable,” Kissick said. “Looks like they were getting ready to move it out of here.”
“Tara, how’s it goin’?” Vining called out to the supervisor of the PPD’s Forensic Services Unit, who was walking from the darkened, partially demolished offices, making her way with a high-powered flashlight.
Tara Khorsandi’s blue jumpsuit made her look even more petite. Walking over to the detectives, she was carrying a clipboard and was accompanied by a portly Latino, who was also in a jumpsuit and had a camera around his neck.
“No blood or weapons,” Tara said. “There are footprints everywhere from the workmen. This is going to be a bear to measure and sketch. There’s a bunch of offices still intact. We’ll have to go through everything again once it’s daylight.”
“Let’s do a videotape,” Kissick said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said.
“Anyone else camping here other than that one homeless guy?” Kissick asked.
Tara shrugged. “Don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell. There’s refuse in the offices. I’m going to talk to the lieutenant and see if we can’t get more floodlights in here. We’ll be back.” She and her companion left.
Bambi began unbuttoning Scrappy’s clown suit. Beneath it, he wore a white, sleeveless T-shirt and baggy jeans. A gold Saint Christopher’s medallion was on a chain around his neck. On his feet were expensive Air Jordans.
She went through his jeans pockets, handing Scrappy’s cell phone to Kissick. Vining looked over his shoulder as he scrolled through the recent calls and contacts list.
From a case on the ground, Bambi took out scissors and cut open the front of the T-shirt. Then she took out something that looked like a meat thermometer. Without hesitation, she stabbed it into Scrappy’s chest beneath his left pectoral, taking the temperature of his liver to determine the time of death.
Caspers involuntarily grunted and looked away.
Bambi gave him an impish grin. “Haven’t seen that before, Detective?”
Kissick patted Caspers on the shoulder as the younger detective shuffled a few feet away. “He’s never been first on-scene at a homicide before.”
“You ought to ride along with me one night.” Bambi smiled.
Caspers leaned against a bulldozer. “That would be great,” he muttered. His complexion suggested otherwise.
Bambi watched the thermometer. “I estimate he’s been
dead about two to four hours.”
Kissick looked at his watch. “That puts the TOD between eight and ten o’clock tonight. Plenty of people in Old Town then, but this area is off the main drag. People park on the streets here, though. Maybe someone walking to their car saw something.”
Lam helped Bambi roll the body over. She found a wallet in Scrappy’s rear jeans pocket and turned it over to Kissick.
He took Scrappy’s driver’s license from it and gave it to Caspers. “Alex, run that license number through DMV. Find out if any of the cars parked around here are registered to Scrappy.”
“Got it.” Caspers eagerly accepted the job and the change of scenery.
Vining looked at a photo that Kissick had taken from the wallet. It was of a young Latina and a small boy. “That’s Scrappy’s girlfriend. The one he beat up. The baby would be about five now.” She found a photo of Scrappy with a different woman, who was holding an infant.
“Word on the street was that Scrappy was trying to get out of the life since his last stint in prison for selling drugs. He’s got a new baby momma,” Lam said, using street jargon. “Trying to make the world a better place.”
Kissick examined a business card he’d found. “Aaron’s Aarrows. Human Directionals. Marvin Li, Owner. Address is on Las Tunas Boulevard in San Gabriel.”
Vining threw up her hand when the solution to the mystery hit her. “That explains the clown suit. Scrappy was one of those guys with the arrows. You know, the ones that stand on street corners with the big arrows that advertise new apartments or store openings.”
“That’s right,” Lam said. “They wear stupid hats and costumes and twirl the arrows around, distracting drivers. I saw a guy advertising Liberty Insurance dressed as the Statue of Liberty.”
“It seems like a complete waste,” Kissick said. “But every weekend, there’s an army of those guys all over the city. Someone must figure it’s worth it.”
Vining said, “The Scrappy I knew wouldn’t have been caught dead standing on a street corner in the hot sun, wearing a clown uniform, dancing with a plastic arrow.”
