On the Grind (2009)

by Stephen - Scully 08 Cannell

  I passed a string of run-down strip malls and then saw the alabaster-white, wood-sided city hall building coming up on my right. It dominated most of a city block. It had a wooden cupola on each corner and a big weather vane on the roof making it look like a Mafia wedding cake. The city hall and the Haven Park PD shared opposite ends of the large structure.

  There was a small glass door right in the center that did not appear to be the main entrance for either the city hall or the police station. There was an open meter right in front, so I parked, got out, fed the slot a quarter, and walked down to the police station. Then I took a short detour around the Haven Park PD side of the building past the fenced and landscaped parking lot. I looked in at the police vehicles parked behind the chain link. It was better rolling stock than we had on the LAPD. There were two or three new Ford Crown Victoria squad ears that were not currently out on patrol. Two new SWAT vans, as well as some EMT trucks, black-and-white station wagons and surveillance vans were parked in random slots. A large black-and-white Vogue motor home that appeared to be a tricked-out mobile command center with two satellite dishes on the roof loomed above the rest. All of it looked less than a year old.

  I headed back to the police department's front door, which had HAVEN PARK P. D. stenciled in gold letters above the city seal. Under that it said RICHARD ROSS -- CHIEF OF POLICE.

  I knew all about Ricky Ross. In fact, I had a tortured history with him that went back ten years to my patrol days on the LAPD when I had partnered with Ross for six months while working in Van Nuys. I was the one who'd gotten him thrown off the LAPD. Back then I was just a few months sober, but Rick Ross was still the chief engineer on the Red-Nose Express. He liked to get liquored up, and on his way home in plainclothes would sometimes pull his sidearm and wave it at people who cut him off on the freeway. This practice earned him the nickname 'Treeway" Ricky Ross.

  One night, when I was catching a ride with him, I actually witnessed this behavior and, in an over-the-top moment, saw him accidentally discharge his weapon, barely missing a banker from West Covina. I'd immediately turned Ricky in to Internal Affairs and testified against him at his Board of Rights hearing. He'd claimed he was just removing his backup gun from his covert carry holster and it had accidentally discharged. He caught a huge break and went on suspension for six months, but that only made him worse.

  He was drunk all the time after that. His wife finally divorced him. He lost his house and a month later he'd lost his LAPD badge for good. Rick Ross blamed me for all of it. It would seem that this man could be a tough mountain for me to climb if I wanted a job in Haven Park. But I had a way around him.

  As I pushed open the door to the police headquarters, I ran smack into a big police sergeant in uniform, another cop that I'd known back on the job in L. A. He was a large, muscle-bound guy with a steroid abusers body named Alonzo Bell. Alonzo was half white, half some other, dark race that he would never exactly identify--Arab or Persian, maybe even Hispanic. Bell is an Anglo name, so he'd probably changed or shortened it, or the complexion came from his mother's side.

  Alonzo had been thrown off the LAPD years ago for losing it in an I-room and almost beating to death a gangbanger who'd shot and wounded his partner. The partner survived, but Alonzo s L. A. police career didn't. I remembered him as a giant attitude problem you didn't want to mess with.

  "Do I know you?" he asked, seeming to remember me, hard eyes giving me the once-over.

  "Shane Scully. How you been, Al?"

  "Shane fucking Scully," he said, a smile widening his flat brown features. "Whatta you doing here, dude?"

  "Looking for work."

  He grinned. "What happened to bring you this far down? You bang the captain's wife?"

  "Lost some evidence. Little misdemeanor. But I was running out of road in L. A. anyway. It was better if I just moved on."

  His dark features arranged into a frown and then he glanced at the name engraved in gold on the door. I guess he knew about my history with Ricky Ross. But then anyone who was on the LAPD when Ricky got the boot knew the story. After the IA hearing Ross went nuts, and confronted me in the Parker Center garage, where he threatened my life in front of about ten guys. What went on between us until he finally got fired had been pretty ugly.

  "You know Rick Ross is the acting chief down here," Alonzo warned.

  "Yeah, I heard. Its even on this door." I tapped the gold letters and grinned.

  "He's an asshole," Alonzo said matter-of-faetly. "The old chief, Charlie Le Grande, was okay. He just wanted to keep the shit on the sidewalk and off his shoes. But the feds busted him for having criminal ties to Eighteenth Street gang members. He's under indictment. Mayor Bratano appointed Ricky Ross to be our acting chief. Ross was on patrol two weeks ago, next thing you know he's chief. Nobody saw it coming. He's a hemorrhoid with ears."

  "Look, Alonzo, I'm kinda down to last chances, and I really want to stay in police work. I didn't know about Ross being acting chief, but this is kind of my last shot. I hear there's ways things can happen down here. Can you help me?"

  Alonzo surveyed me carefully for a long moment. "Yeah, maybe," he finally said.

  "How do I do it?"

  "Go ahead and fill out the paperwork. I'll help you get to the front of the line. C'mon." He walked back inside the building and I followed him.

  The interior of the department wasn't art deco. The funky architectural swirls stopped at the front door. Inside it was pure cop shop --pictures of the command structure, a bulletproof glass divider separating the public areas from the police cubicles in back. Alonzo buzzed us through using a plastic key card and we walked down a scuffed, painted hallway.

  "We've currently got forty-one active duty patrol cops on the job down here, plus command staff--a few captains and lieutenants," he told me as we walked. "But despite your history with Rick Ross, the timing's great because we're adding people right now, tryin'g to get our numbers up. Reason for the expansion is we just got the contract to police our neighbor city of Fleetwood."

  I'd read about the new Haven Park-Fleetwood contract in the Blue Line, the LAPD magazine.

  Both cities shared the same population base of illegal immigrants and were roughly the same one square mile in size. Although Fleetwood didn't adjoin Haven Park, it was just one city over, separated by the equally tiny township of Vista, which was policed by the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department. Fleetwood had also been using the county sheriffs as its police force, paying them under contract until about two months ago, when suddenly Enzo Diaz, Fleetwood's Hispanic mayor, asked Cecil Bratano, the Hispanic mayor of Haven Park, if Haven Park's police department would take over the policing duties in Fleetwood.

  For reasons of corruption and common profit, Cecil Bratano agreed. The county sheriff's contract was immediately canceled and Haven Park entered into a municipal alliance presided over by both mayors and policed by the Haven Park PD. Hence Haven Park PD's sudden need for more officers.

  Alonzo Bell stopped in front of a door marked PERSONNEL RESOURCES.

  "The girl in there is Mita Morales--Aztec blood, kinda fat. But she can screw you up and lose your file if she doesn't like you. She likes me, so I'll sprinkle some fuck dust on this deal, and she'll be your buddy."

  "Listen, Alonzo, I guess I should tell you I've got a pretty bad write-up on POLITE."

  "Don't worry about POLITE. If we dinged guys off this force because of that bullshit, there wouldn't be one cop riding in a Plain Jane down here, including our esteemed acting chief. Just fill out the forms and meet me at Club A Fuego at seven tonight.'

  "A Fuego?"

  "Yeah, it's a hangout. Big barn-sized bar full of off-duty cops, politicians, drug dealers --everybody goes there. It's where the real business in Haven Park and Fleetwood gets done. There're some people you need to meet. If we get them on your side, it won't matter what Freeway Ricky Ross says. You'll be set."

  "Just like that?"

  "It's very different down here. Welcome to Haven Pa
rk." Then he pushed open the door and introduced me to a stone-faced woman with Aztec features named Mita.

  Chapter 6

  Mita never smiled, never changed her expression as she asked questions about my background and typed the answers on a tattered, throwback IBM Selectric. She filled out the top of the first form, then rolled the paper down and typed some more information on the bottom of the sheet. She never turned on the computer that sat on her desk; never typed in the secret password for POLITE; never read about my career-ending felony case-tampering charge.

  "Fill the rest of that out and sign it," was all she said and scowled at me as if I were week-old bird plop cooking on the hood of her car. I went to the table across the room to do the work, but as I looked back, I caught her sneaking a peek at my ass. Gotcha, Mita.

  After filling out the report and smiling at Mita s Aztec stone-face, I left.

  Next, I drove around Haven Park looking for a suitable place to stay. I still needed employment before I could look for an apartment or motel room to lease in the area. Unfortunately, the hotels that I passed looked pretty Third World. I picked one called the Haven Park Inn, which was a cut above the rest. If things worked out down here, I'd give it a try.

  I continued to drive around the one-square-mile city. It was blocks and blocks of the same thing. Very little money had been wasted on landscaping. The business streets like Lincoln and Pacific were wall-to-wall one-story markets, stores or auto body shops, all pretty low-end. The residential neighborhoods were mostly bungalow-type houses with Spanish arches and barred windows, painted in traditional Mexican hues, bright, but also strangely depressing.

  I passed Club A Fuego. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning and there were very few cars in the parking lot. The nightclub was located on Willow Street and as Alonzo had told me, it was huge, a gymnasium-sized red barn. In Spanish a fuego means "on fire," but it can also mean "cool."

  The parking lot could easily hold two hundred cars. There was a porte cochere that shaded the entry. I saw a Haven Park police car parked under the overhang in the shade. A uniformed police officer was leaning against the front fender of his unit smoking a big black cigar. He didn't even look at me as I sharked through the parking lot and out the side entrance.

  I think in all the years I've been a cop I've never before seen an American police officer in uniform leaning against the fender of his patrol car smoking a big cigar. It was like a bad Mexican movie down here.

  I left A Fuego in my rearview mirror and headed through Vista. I passed the ritzy Bicycle Club Casino that sat on the lip of the freeway. A very impressive structure with a neon sign that advertised POKER & PAI GOW. Then I drove around Fleetwood.

  After about two hours, I had a pretty good idea of the layout of both towns. There was very little to distinguish them from one another. The Los Angeles River ran through the east end of Fleetwood and then through Haven Park. The river was a sludge-filled mess that afforded little esthetic relief from the relentless feel of poverty.

  Once, as I was passing back into Haven Park, I thought I caught sight of a tan Chevy four-door sedan tailing me. It looked like some kind of cop plain-wrap with blackwalls. I slowed clown, trying to see inside, but it immediately turned off.

  One other thing caught my eye as I cruised. The Hispanic gang that was operating clown here was a branch of the large and powerful 18th Street gang. The clique in Haven Park called itself the 18th Street Locos. They had spray-painted almost every available wall or overpass with 18-L. Agent Love had said that the 18th Street gang were the new gun and drug players in L. A., moving their product into our city from criminal warehouse towns they'd constructed south of the border. The flow of new Russian machine guns had been so relentless it had finally captured the interest of Homeland Security.

  The Locos were a powerful inner-city gang, so I wasn't surprised to see their graffiti. But there was some other tag art that did surprise me. Intermixed with all the I8-L'S were several freshly painted sscc graffiti tags. I knew that stood for the South Side Compton Crips. Compton was a few miles south. It struck me as strange and faintly ominous that black gangsters from Compton had started tagging walls in a predominantly Hispanic territory like Haven Park.

  What's going on with that? I wondered.

  Chapter 7

  Club A Fuego was already jumping when I arrived at a little past seven o'clock that evening. I pulled into its huge, half-full parking facility. Out of some sense of caution, I decided not to park in the underlit lot where my car might be tampered with and instead pulled out and parked under a streetlamp by the curb. Then I went inside.

  The interior of the club was a big open three-story space, one end of which was occupied by a large dance floor. The other side was the bar area, where most of the crowd had gathered. There was mariachi music blasting over the sound system. It was cranked up way too loud, emitting earsplitting Tijuana Brass. The music managed to cut through the din of the hundred or more people, mostly men, some who were shouting conversations at each other to be heard. A threadbare carpet that had withstood years of careless bar service gave the building a musty smell. Even with the hundred-plus people at the east end of the room, the place still looked almost empty. It was that big. Mexican waitresses in red vests circulated with trays. A few people had sought some privacy from the relentless music and were sitting at the tables around the basketball-court-sized dance floor, nursing drinks and conversing earnestly.

  I made my way to the far end and passed into the bar. I could smell fried Mexican food that was being served along with beer and mixed drinks. I found a place at the stick and ordered a Heineken, then looked around at the loud, milling crowd.

  A few guys I'd known on the LAPD were scattered around, most in plain clothes. Some were engaged in shouted conversation over the blaring music, others were playing pool on well-worn tables. Spanish was the primary language being spoken by the largely Hispanic patronage. Gangster types in street vines with gang tats talked with older-looking, slightly overdressed jefes in expensive silk suits and mixed with a smattering of off-duty cops in polo shirts and windbreakers. Strange crowd.

  I didn't see Alonzo Bell, so I took my beer and began a slow tour of the lounge. At one end of the bar a Mexican soccer match was playing on the digital flat-screen TV. Upholstered booths lined one entire side of the room. I felt a hand grab my arm.

  "There you are. I been looking for you, dude." I turned and looked into the big, flat, brown, frying-pan-shaped face of Alonzo Bell. He was in street clothes and his massive weight-lifter's arms bulged the sleeves of his short-sleeve shirt. "I got a table back here, follow me," he shouted into my ear.

  He moved us through the room, stopping a few times to introduce me to people I'd never seen before and probably wouldn't remember later. Some were Anglo, some Mexican.

  "Meet Shane Scully," he would say. "He's gonna try and catch a ride with us. Shane just came off the big blue zoo downtown."

  We finally made it to his table and he slid in. I took the seat opposite him.

  "My spot," he shouted. "Nobody takes it when I'm here."

  "Interesting place." I raised my voice over the din and motioned to the room. "How many of these guys are cops?"

  "The whole day watch and most of the swing shift will be here eventually," he called back. "This is where the real business gets done. That guy over there" --he pointed at a small Mexican man with sharp features --"he's the mayors assistant. Carlos Real. We call him Real Deal Real. Carlos will sell you anything from a gun permit to a stolen baby. He's always on the grind, that guy. We all are." On the grind was street slang for working your hustle.

  It went on like that, Alonzo pointing out cops, politicians and 18th Street Locos.

  "The Locos run everything down here," he told me. "The main veterano in the Haven Park clique is that guy over there. His name is Ovieto Ortiz."

  He pointed out a man in his late thirties who was just moving up to talk with the mayors assistant. Ovieto Ortiz was a wiry,
dangerous-looking man with a big black 18 tattooed on the side of his neck.

  "His street name is 007 'cause of his double-O initials and 'cause he's got a license to kill. Ovieto is a big piece of the way business gets done down here, so the cops tolerate him. You spell tolerate with a dollar sign in front of it."

  "I saw some South Side Crip graffiti here and in Fleetwood," I shouted across the table at him. "If Eighteenth Street Locos run this town, why are Crips tagging walls?"

  "The blacks used to run this place till all the illegal aliens moved in and pushed em out. Now they're trying to reclaim their old corners. It could get ugly. We have our orders straight from Mayor Bratano s office to shut these blacks down. We hook em and book 'em, the city court cooks 'em. The idea is to keep Haven Park and Fleetwood safe for Eighteenth Street business."

  "You kidding me? You're running this street gang's interference?"

  "We got our own culture down here. It's called cafeteria policing. Everything is laid out on a big buffet table, cops get to pass by and just fill their trays. You probably heard that the starting pay scale is low," he yelled, smiling as he said it.

  "Yeah. Fifty-five grand."

  "Don't let it bother you, dude," Alonzo said with a laugh. "If you're in the cafeteria line, you can make more money than a crooked banker. We got millions of scams. Last month, one of our damn patrol officers who was just a fucking two-striper, took home twenty-five hundred in kickbacks in two weeks. Get in the cafeteria line, brother. Fill your tray. You won't be sorry."

  "You're shitting me."

  "It's like Mexico. Haven Park's a Third World city with a whore's mentality. Everything that gets paid flows upstream. Everybody gets a taste as it goes by. Crooks kick up to cops, everybody kicks up to city hall and the mayor. Protection, bribery, tow tickets, the works. The two brothers who own A Fuego are Manny and Hector Avila. They also own Blue Light lowing, which has the exclusive tow truck contract for Haven Park and Fleetwood. That contract is worth a fortune."