by Alan Russell
I made my way over to Boyle Heights and parked on the street in a spot that allowed me to look into the lot that advertised Best $crap and Junkyard Dog Services. For almost an hour I studied what was going on inside of Tito’s businesses. The dogs were securely chained around the property. When the chains were pulled out to their maximum length, no more than eighteen inches separated one dog from another. Their proximity to each other seemed to stoke their animosity.
The recycling business was busy with a constant flow of customers. Most came into the lot by truck or car, but a few homeless people pushed in shopping carts mainly filled with crushed aluminum cans. Both Tito and his one-eyed assistant, Fausto, could be seen inside and outside of their trailer. A third employee, a middle-aged Hispanic man, stayed mostly in the back, working the heavy equipment. On those occasions that required his presence in the trailer, the man took care to travel along a specific path that kept him clear of all the chained dogs.
Finally, I decided I’d seen enough and drove into the recycling center and parked. Sirius’s window was open, and the other dogs must have caught his scent. They rose en masse and began barking. As much as they didn’t like each other, they became united in their animosity toward the newcomer.
Tito started in as soon as I stepped into the trailer. He pulled out a very thick billfold, plucked out a Hamilton, and extended it my way.
“I figured you’d reconsider about your dog,” he said, flashing me that fake smile of his.
“I thought we’d agreed on twenty,” I said. “Is bait and switch how you operate your business?”
“Got an A rating from the BBB,” Tito said, giving me another dose of his pearly whites.
“Best Crap got an A rating?” I said. “That surprises me. I would have guessed the BBB wouldn’t want anything to do with a business named Best Crap.”
“Best Scrap,” said Tito.
“My mistake,” I said. “I mean, the word best is easy enough to make out on your sign, but then you’ve got the dollar sign in front of crap. I guess lots of people have made that mistake before.”
“No one else has been that stupid,” said Tito. “Isn’t that right, Fausto?”
The small, quiet man with the eye patch nodded. One eye was enough to give me a look that could kill.
“So you don’t buy crap,” I said. “You buy scrap.”
“I am glad you finally understood that.”
“As it so happens,” I said, “I have some copper piping in my car. Do you buy copper?”
“Cash on the barrel,” said Tito.
“Let me get it, then.”
I went out to the car and came back with an armful of copper pipes, which I laid on the counter.
“Where did you get the copper?” Tito asked.
“From a plumbing project I did at my house,” I said.
“Lots of copper gets stolen from construction sites and remodels,” said Tito. “How do I know you didn’t steal this stuff?”
“I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
Tito looked at Fausto and nodded. The smaller man took my copper and weighed it.
“Would you like a receipt?” asked Tito.
“That would be nice,” I said.
He wrote out a receipt. “We pay a dollar sixty a pound for good copper. You don’t have quite three pounds’ worth, which comes to four dollars and twenty-three cents.”
I had paid about three times that at Home Depot. Like most of my investments, I bought high and sold low.
Tito went to the safe and opened it. There were plenty of greenbacks inside. He pulled out a few dollars and put the money on the counter.
“I’m glad I didn’t sell you my dog,” I said. “He’s going to be a star. These producers want him to do an animal cruelty commercial with Selena Gomez. The two of them are going to promote awareness for the LA Animal Cruelty Task Force. But I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s the second commercial. This week they’ll be shooting the first commercial. Crime Stoppers and ACTF will be teaming up to do a piece on those dogs that were dumped nearby. And you’ll be happy to hear a pet-food manufacturer has agreed to ante up a five-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever dumped those poor dogs. That kind of money ought to get lots of people calling in, don’t you think?”
Tito shrugged. “It’s been my experience that people don’t stick out their necks like chickens do when they are on the chopping block. What a strange behavior that is. It makes it so easy to chop off their heads. Then again, I have known one or two people who are like those chickens. It’s almost as if they ask to be hurt.”
He looked at me, made a slashing motion with his hand, and smiled.
His threat didn’t go unnoticed. “Whenever I hear some lowlife say, ‘They asked for it,’ you can be sure they didn’t.”
“Have you ever gone to a bullfight, Detective?”
“I have.”
“You surprise me.”
“I was with friends in Mexico,” I said. “The excursion had already been planned.”
“What did you think?”
“It wasn’t to my taste.”
“And yet Hemingway—a writer some say is the greatest of all time—loved going to bullfights. In the arena, he saw the artistry, and the skill, and the bravery. He immortalized the sport.”
“So Hemingway is right and I’m wrong?”
“My point is that some issues are not so black-and-white.”
“Hemingway shot himself in the head. Does that speak to his judgment?”
“Maybe it speaks to his cojones.”
“I try not to think with those.”
He smiled at me and said, “I heard a story about Hemingway, but I do not know whether it’s true or not. It’s said he went to a restaurant in Spain where he’d never dined before, and as he sat at his table he heard this—how do you say it?—this celebration going on. Hemingway watched as three waiters made their way to a nearby table, struggling with the weight of their tray. They lowered the tray to the table, and then the cover was taken off of the plate and a great bowl of soup was revealed. In the midst of this bowl were two huge balls. As the steam rose into the air, everyone in the restaurant cheered.
“Hemingway was puzzled. He called over one of the waiters and said, ‘What’s going on?’ And the waiter said, ‘Oh, Señor Hemingway, today there was a bullfight and we are serving up the balls of the bull who lost. It is a great delicacy that is called the Grand Victory.’
“After thinking about this, Hemingway said, ‘I would like to have a serving of the Grand Victory.’ And the waiter said, ‘Oh, I am sorry, Señor Hemingway, we only offer one serving of it a night. Because of that, the Grand Victory is booked far in advance.’ That news only encouraged Hemingway all the more, and he asked for the first date when he could partake of the Grand Victory.
“Three months later Hemingway returned to the restaurant, sat at his table, and waited with great expectation for his dinner to be served. Then the moment arrived, with all the waiters coming to his table. But when the cover was taken off the huge soup bowl, there was no cheering from the patrons in restaurant. Instead of two huge balls in the bowl, there were only what looked like two small eggs.
“Hemingway did not understand what was going on. He looked at his soup and asked, ‘What is this?’
“And the waiter shook his head sadly and said, ‘Alas, Señor Hemingway, it is not always the bull who loses.’”
Chapter Sixteen
The Evil That Lurks Within
I let the rooster do his crowing while I walked to the car. Cops are used to getting attitude, but it usually stops short of threats. Tito’s threats had been veiled, but I knew it wouldn’t do to underestimate him. He had been born poor and escaped poverty. I was a potential threat to the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed, and I imagined he would fiercely resist any possibility of returning to the poorhouse. I also had to be mindful of his character—anyone who could kill dogs wit
hout compunction was not likely to be much more charitable when it came to humans.
From inside his trailer, Tito was still waving goodbye to me, hoping he could provoke me into doing something. In my time in his trailer, I had identified two hidden cameras.
Mindful of those cameras, I stifled my impulse to give him a one-finger salute, and instead waved back. Then I said to Sirius, “Just remember, you can be a preening, strutting rooster one day and a feather duster the next.”
Sirius lent me one upraised ear, heard my rant out, and then dropped that ear and went back to sleep. I couldn’t really blame him. I started up the car and exited Best Scrap.
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” I said.
I thought of the dogs that Tito had dumped. Using Bluetooth, I said, “Call Bud Bennet.”
Bud picked up on the second ring and said, “I was just about to call you.”
“And what were you about to say?”
“That I need the name and number of that vet who treated the surviving pit bull A-SAP,” he said.
“The vet’s name is Kate Misko. She has her own practice, but I don’t remember its name. If you need her business number right away, you could call up Angie’s Rescues. She’s their on-call vet. Or I can text her number to you the next time I pull over.”
“That works for me, as long as you don’t forget, and as long as I get it within the hour.”
“No problem,” I said. “But what’s the urgency?”
“Crime Stoppers and ACTF want to start filming our commercial early next week and we need to find times that work for Dr. Misko.”
“I’m glad you’re doing that spot sooner rather than later,” I said. “I just left Tito Rivera’s business, and I happened to mention the Crime Stoppers commercial. That’s the one intangible he can’t control. Tomorrow I think I’ll return to Best Scrap and ask him if he wants to audition for the role of the animal-killing asshole.”
“Sounds like the two of you are getting real chummy.”
“Yeah, we’re close,” I said, “but I want to take it to that next level of closeness and slap some irons around his wrists. When I was at his junkyard, I couldn’t help but notice it was a cash business. Given the neighborhood, I’m certain Tito has a gun handy, even though he claimed to me that because of his record he doesn’t have one.”
“Capone went to the Big House for his unpaid taxes; maybe you’ll get the opportunity to nail Tito for his unlicensed gun.”
“By now he probably knows the dogs were cremated and that we don’t have anything to connect him with the shootings. Since that’s the case, he might have held on to the handgun he used.”
“Assuming there is a handgun.”
“There is,” I said, certain of it. “And I can’t imagine he hasn’t used that gun to put down other dogs in the past. I’m told Tito’s dog ring runs throughout Southern California. What if he shot dogs in a county other than Los Angeles? What if one of the nearby counties, like Riverside or San Diego or Imperial, collected ballistic evidence from the dead dogs? There’s a lot of remote desert area in those counties, places where dogfights and cockfights could be conducted without much chance of prying eyes. Tito might not have been as careful in those isolated locations.”
“I don’t remember hearing about any fighting dogs turning up with bullets in them in those other counties,” said Bud, “but it’s something I’ll look into.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” I said.
Just like I hoped I had gotten lucky with Ellis Haines in Las Vegas.
A funny thing happened on the drive home. I became so preoccupied thinking about my cases that I didn’t consider my route and essentially let autopilot take over. When I awoke from my fugue state about ten minutes later, I found myself driving toward Angie’s Rescues.
“Damn it,” I said.
I began recalibrating my route, but then I reconsidered. There had to be some reason my subconscious was directing me to Angie’s Rescues. For most of my life I haven’t listened to my subconscious, but I am no longer totally deaf to it. Maybe there was a reason my right foot had been commandeered. After my conversation with Bud Bennet, I remembered playing the longer version of the Temptations’ “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” and then followed up with the shorter version recorded by the Undisputed Truth. The instrumentals were exceptional on the original recording, but the words jumped out more on the song’s cover version. I kept thinking about Tito Rivera’s smile while the music played. The lyrics seemed made for him, and I had found myself singing along:
“‘Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies, and I got proof.’”
But I didn’t have proof, or at least not yet. Was the proof to be found at Angie’s Rescues? Or was I mistaking poor navigation for mystical guidance?
I pulled into the shelter’s parking lot. Before going inside, though, there were some promises to keep and calls to make. I tapped into a search engine and looked up the contact details for Dr. Kate Misko. After laboriously retyping the information, I texted everything to Bud Bennet.
Then I pulled out my notes and dialed the number that silent Jillian had given me. Dory Cunningham picked up on the third ring.
“Hi, Mrs. Cunningham,” I said, speaking in a higher-pitched voice than was usual. “This is Michael. I’m wondering if Jason is around.”
As I hoped, Dory didn’t ask, “Michael who?” She also didn’t ask me the purpose of my call.
“Hi, Michael,” she said. “I’m afraid Jason isn’t here.”
“Ummm,” I said, “I seem to have misplaced the number for his cell. Could you please give it to me?”
“Sure,” she said, and rattled off a number.
I repeated the digits to her, and Dory confirmed them back. “Thanks so much!” I said.
“No problem,” she said. “Bye-bye, Michael.”
It was possible Jason had a friend named Michael; it was also possible Mrs. Cunningham didn’t know the names of most of her adult son’s friends. Either way, I dialed the number. When Jason picked up he said, “Yes?” He sounded much more suspicious than his mother, but then again, he knew who his friends were, and their names.
“Jason,” I said, “this is Detective Michael Gideon of the Los Angeles Police Department. I was hoping you could answer a few of my questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Questions that have to do with Macho Libre.”
“I’m kind of busy now,” he said.
“This won’t take long,” I said.
“I really don’t have anything to say. That project has been shut down.”
“Why is that?”
“Among other things, it was a casualty of lack of funding.”
“Can you tell me about the shooting you did before shutting it down?”
“Like I said, it never really took off.”
“I know it lasted long enough for you to hire some day laborers as actors.”
“It was the least expensive way to get some extras.”
I decided to push harder for answers. “You supplied them with pot and booze,” I said, “and then you asked the workers to whale on each other.”
“None of that sounds familiar,” he said.
“Do you really think it would take me more than five minutes to track down where you rented your donkey and other livestock from? Your boxing ring was probably also rented. I sure hope you returned everything undamaged. You didn’t use permanent dye when you painted on those zebra stripes, did you?”
“Look, man,” Jason said. “The truth of the matter is that we didn’t have film permits. I thought we could get by without them, but then I learned that I could be subject to some hefty fines if anyone found out about our illegal shoot. That’s why we had to shut everything down. And that’s why I don’t want to talk about it.”
Everything he was saying sounded logical. But my rational mind wasn’t in charge at the moment. I was still navigating with my subconscious.
“I’d like to see the rough footage
of your film,” I said.
“It’s been destroyed.”
“I find that unlikely. I’ve been told filmmakers always keep the footage of whatever they’ve worked on.”
“Like I told you, we didn’t have permits, and I didn’t want to chance getting sued after the fact.”
“In that case, can you provide me with a working script?”
“What good would that do you?”
“I’m curious about what kind of film you were shooting,” I said, “and wondering if it could tie in with a woman’s fiancé who’s gone missing. This individual worked as a day laborer at the same parking lot where you picked up another day laborer, a fellow named Javier. If you don’t remember his name, you might recall you cast him in your production as the Frito Bandito.”
Static noise came over the phone. As it grew louder Jason said, “I think we’re breaking up.”
“How about you meet with me today?” I asked.
The static was louder now. “ . . . can’t . . . you.” Then our call was terminated.
I was suspicious at the convenient timing of the static and remembered a trick I’d been told about. If you wanted to get out of a conversation, you could create your own static and pretend the call was breaking up. All you needed to do was run your finger along the phone’s speaker.
When I hit redial I wasn’t surprised to hear a busy tone. Jason was likely calling his friends to make sure all their stories aligned.
Maybe my fingers could move faster than his. I used my phone to look up Jason Cunningham on various social media sites. In five minutes I had the names of his two friends: Brad Steinberg and Chase Durand. The former, I was pretty sure, was “Hitch,” and the latter was “Marty.” That meant Jason Cunningham was “Quentin.”
All three of the friends made references to the “short” they were filming. In various entries it was called a “farce,” a “spectacle,” and “action packed.” There were even shots of some of the costumes and some of the animals (chickens and the pig). I couldn’t find any references to the title Macho Libre, nor to the subject matter. Were they trying to keep their short under wraps, I wondered, or were they afraid there were those who might find the subject matter offensive? The closest thing I could find was a proposed production called WW. I found those initials in three posts, but no explanation of what they stood for. World War? Weight Watchers? I was pretty sure they didn’t stand for Wonder Woman.
