After the service it seemed appropriate to have a wake or reception of some kind. Most of us, including my tail, traipsed across the street to a Baja-style fish taco stand for tacos and beer. We filled the patio seats and overflowed onto the sidewalk. The conversation was lively, an interesting collection of folks brought together by an unusual circumstance.
"Normal," the proprietor said when I apologized for the sudden morning rush when he was preparing for the lunch-hour crowd. He told me that he frequently fed large groups of people after funerals.
I walked up to my caretakers. "You getting enough to eat?" I asked.
"Yes, thank you." The officer was young, dark-haired and buff, as was his partner. Instructed to keep a low profile, they wore polos and khakis instead of starched shirts and neckties or midnight blue regulation garb, but the posture, stance, and side arms would tell any observer who they were.
"Is this your normal assignment, personal security?"
The two exchanged glances and in the interchange seemed to decide who would be the spokesman.
"No, ma'am. It's overtime," he said. "I work juveniles in the Valley, Ray here is community liaison. I don't know if what Ray does counts as 'normal' police work, but they let him wear a badge."
Ray guffawed. "Jack's a babysitter. He likes these OT jobs so he can play with grown-ups for a change."
They told me that besides working the occasional overtime assignment, they frequently did work for the film and television industries, location set security and crowd control, airport pick-ups and paparazzi evasion. Now and then they got into movies as extras, or got paid for giving technical advice. The money was good, the hours were flexible, and they saw how the other half lived. My guards told me that the agency that set up their moonlighting jobs would consider hiring just about any licensed and currently employed law enforcement officer.
I knew that many policemen had second jobs, frequently working in security. Mike had a string of moonlight jobs before he made detective-grade pay. Harry Young told me that four days a week, after his night watch shift, he put in four more hours watching over the Central Produce Market before he went home to bed.
We were still talking when a black-and-white police cruiser pulled up and parked in a red zone beside a fire hydrant. Sgt. Lewis Banks got out and swaggered over to the group. He greeted my watch cops with a handshake, and nodded acknowledgment to Julia and Mayra, who turned their heads away.
I didn't know why he was there or why I should be wary, but Early had reminded me on the ride to the studio that morning to listen to my instincts about people, and this man made me wary. His behavior at Mayra's house when Nelda was taken in bothered me. Given a chance, I would have asked Nelda why she reacted to him the way she did, some combination of rage and fear, I thought. But I didn't get the chance to ask her.
Banks seemed to know one of my guards, the one named Ray, so this unannounced visit, so far, had nothing to do with me. Maybe he was driving by and saw someone he knew. Still, I was glad there were so many people around.
I eavesdropped on their conversation.
"You still moonlighting with Magnum?" Banks asked his acquaintance. When he got affirmation, he said, "I work through them, too. Good enough pay, decent hours. You doing the seven-to-three shift?"
"No, mid-shift, nine to six," he was told. A little more conversation, and they shook hands. Banks made his way over to me.
"You're a hard person to catch up with," he said, one hand resting on the butt of his holstered weapon, a typical cop stance.
"What can I do for you?" I asked him.
"I was thinking more along the lines of what I can do for you. This is my beat, I know it better than just about anyone you can name."
"Thanks for the offer, Sergeant," I said. "I'll keep it in mind."
"I heard about Nelda Ruiz," he said and dropped his head for a moment. Sadness? Chagrin? "Hope you don't feel responsible. I mean, it was your call that got her taken in, but..."
"I'm certainly upset about what happened to Nelda," I said. "But I don't feel responsible. Nelda was taken in because she violated her parole. The enemies she made? That was her doing as well."
He nodded, agreeing. "As long as you aren't losing sleep over it."
"I sleep pretty well, thanks. And as I remember yesterday, if I hadn't made that call you would have taken in Nelda yourself."
"I sure as hell wouldn't have taken her to Metro." He sounded defensive.
"Because she would be safer among her old friends and neighbors in a local lock-up?"
"Hey." He held up his hands and backed up half a step. "I wasn't accusing you of something."
"And I'm not accusing you of something."
Rich Longshore strolled over as my watch cops set down their food and moved closer.
"Banks?" Ray said.
Rich moved in tight beside me. "Got a problem here?"
"Do you know each other?" I asked.
Rich studied Banks before he shook his head. He held out his hand, but it was not a friendly gesture. Rich had six inches of height on him. "Sergeant Richard Longshore, County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau."
"Banks. Lewis Banks. I work command at Central."
Rich looked around as if searching for a sign post. "Aren't we in Hollenbeck territory?"
"Yes," Banks said. "I was just driving by. Happened to see some people I know. Thought I'd check on Maggie here, make sure she's okay. She had a pretty rough day yesterday."
"You okay?" Rich asked me.
"I am," I answered.
"Well then," Rich said to me, pointedly with his back to Banks, "if you still want to talk to me and you're ready to go, you want to follow me over to my office? I don't know if you've ever been there, so I better give you some directions. Easy to get lost because we're situated right in the middle of the convergence of the Five and the Seven-ten freeways so the surface streets can get to be like a maze. Pretty confusing even if you think you know where you're going."
"Thanks," I said. "Let me say good-bye to some people, and I'll get Guido."
I said good-bye to Mayra, Julia, Phil, the crew, and even to Lewis Banks. Because I didn't want to lose them, I told my shadows where we were going, and they fell right in behind.
Rich was right, the streets around the freeway junctions were a tangle. I hoped Guido was paying attention to how we got in so he could get us back out again later.
"That cop, Sergeant Banks," Guido said, "why does he keep popping up?"
"I really should ask him that very question, but whenever he shows up I feel like I should run for cover, so, you know me, I dig in my heels and get confrontational."
"Maybe you were right and he just wants to be in the movies."
I laughed at that. "Yeah, maybe."
The Northridge earthquake of 1994 did so much damage to the sheriff's headquarters in the old Department of Justice building downtown that the building was condemned and the headquarters functions were scattered into available spaces all around the county. The Homicide Bureau moved into a vast warehouse-like structure in an industrial park in the City of Commerce. The detectives had found this space to be perfectly adaptable to their needs: good parking, working air-conditioning, movable partitions. After more than a dozen years in their temporary quarters they were still in place, and showed no restlessness about moving.
Rich gave us a quick tour of the detectives' bullpen, an immense open area filled with double ranks of desks, the long walls lined with filing cabinets, bulldog mascot paraphernalia everywhere. Rich, assigned to cold cases, worked in a back ell off the bullpen where cold case files were kept. On his desk he had a ceramic lamp in the shape of a bulldog under a silk shade and pictures of his grandchild in silver frames. Around his desk there were filing cabinets, file boxes, stacks of expandable files.
He pulled up chairs for us.
I said, "Would you mind if Guido videos this conversation?"
"Okay," he said. "But if we get into certain areas I might ask him to t
urn it off."
"Fair enough," Guido said.
I had to take a deep breath, compose myself, because my first question for Rich was a tough one. Stalling, I asked Guido if he was ready. He said he was, frowning, puzzled, because he had already told me he was ready. I sat up straighter, looked Rich in the eye.
"Mike chose a Monday to be his last day in this life," I said. "After Mike became ill, on Monday mornings you regularly came over to keep him company. Ever since that last Monday, I've wondered if there was something in particular he wanted to talk to you about."
"Hmmm." Rich furrowed his brow, studied his hands. "That morning, from the minute you brought Mike down for breakfast until I left him after lunch, he seemed unusually fine. Happy."
"That morning, he was," I said. "I think that he had made his ultimate decision and he felt as if a great burden had been lifted from him. From us. But did he have a last story to tell, a last message to impart?"
"He brought up Jesus right away," Rich said; I remembered that he had. They were talking about Jesus when I left for work. "We hadn't talked about the case for a long time. We went over the details again. He told me about that afternoon when he learned the mother was in a panic about not knowing where her kid was. Told me how he had proceeded."
"What did he do?" I prodded.
"When the call from Mrs. Ramon reached Mike, he was at Parker Center talking to Nelda Ruiz about the Rogelio Higgins shooting. Mike thought she knew something. He kept up his interrogation until Nelda's lawyer showed up, sometime midafternoon, talking deal, offering to swap Nelda's cooperation for a lesser charge. Mike called in someone from the D.A.'s office, and a proposal was offered."
Knowing that Boni had never snitched on Nelda, I asked, "Did they take a deal?"
"No. Over Mike's objections, the D.A. released Nelda into the lawyer's custody, so they could talk things over, with the promise that they would be back in the morning."
Rich sliced the air with a hand: "Never give a shyster time to sleep on something. Overnight he went over Nelda's assets, got her to sign her house over to him to pay his fees, and they decided to go to trial. Lawyer got the house, Nelda got twenty-to-life. And she never testified about Boni, said she had nothing to say."
"Why didn't Mike go right out looking for the kid when the call came from Julia?" I asked.
"Because he didn't think there was a problem," Rich said. "What did Julia give him to go on? She had a bad 'feeling.' A mother's bad feeling isn't enough. But to pacify her and to cover the department's ass, after Nelda and her lawyer left, Mike pulled up a recent mug shot of Jesus, made some copies, and went out to find the little creep. He showed the mug shot to some people, talked to Mayra at her taco cart. She said she hadn't seen Jesus, but later, after it was clear that Jesus really had gone missing, Mike thought she probably lied to him.
"When he got no hits from anyone who might have seen Jesus, Mike put out a missing juvenile bulletin with the kid's mug shot on it and Mike's contact information, and had copies delivered to the watch commanders at Central, Newton, Rampart, and Hollenbeck," he said. "And then he went home and had dinner with his son, Michael."
"Because he wasn't worried about Jesus," I said.
"That's right," he said. "Jesus did a lot of roaming. Mike believed all along that Jesus would show up. If the kid saw Mayra he probably had some money or drugs in his pockets to get into trouble with. When there wasn't any more, he'd go home."
"The something in his pocket was probably a lethal dose of heroin," I said. "The question is where he got it. And why."
"I suppose."
"Every time I ask someone about the day Jesus disappeared, the conversation begins with Rogelio Higgins," I said. "But every time I ask about Rogelio Higgins, people warn me off. There's a connection no one wants to talk about. What is it?"
Rich didn't say anything right away, looked from me to Guido, tapped his pen on his blotter. He looked down, he sniffed, he made eye contact again.
"You want to talk about Rogelio Higgins in some context with Mike Flint or with Jesus Ramon?" he asked.
"Both, either. I know there is a context."
He glanced sidelong at the camera and shook his head.
"Guido," I said. Guido turned off his camera and set it on the floor.
"Thanks," Rich said. "Can we talk off the record here? Friend to friend?"
"Yes."
"First," he said, "why don't you tell me what you think happened to Mr. Higgins."
"I think he was assassinated by someone, or several people, in law enforcement who didn't want his kind doing his thing in their neighborhood."
"His kind being a drug-dealing, gangbanger-enabling child-murdering s.o.b.?"
"Child-murdering?"
"What do you call it when a grown man sells hard drugs to a ten-year-old?"
"You illustrate my point, Sergeant Longshore. I think that when law enforcement couldn't stop Higgins legally, someone 'cleansed' him."
"Do you know who that Mr. Clean is?"
"I have my pet candidates, but I don't know to a dead-bang certainty."
"Candidates, plural?"
"Yes."
"Now I understand why you have a tail." He indicated my two shadows, who had found the break room and a couple of canned sodas and were now on the far side of the bullpen, comfortably seated, shooting the breeze with some sheriff's detectives.
"Off the record, friend to friend? Rich, I'm scared. Someone breaks into my house, tampers with my car. And then that happens to Nelda."
"What do you think the intruder wanted from your house?"
"Nothing big. Remember, he hiked in and out over a mountain crest," I said. "Both times, I think he was looking for something in Mike's investigation files, or maybe he just wanted to find out what Mike knew and to prevent anyone else from getting certain information."
"Both times?" Rich frowned. "You were broken into twice?"
"Yes, twice." I told Rich about the netsuke that had been removed from Mike's office after the first break-in, and mailed to me. I said, "The first time, I think I scared him off before he found what he wanted. The next day, I took Mike's files out of the house. Probably made the guy mad when he went looking for them again, and found them gone."
"Or it scared him."
"So he tried to scare me off, or warn me," I said, "by sending me something he took from my own house. You tell me the message I was supposed to get when my brakes were tampered with."
Rich frowned, thinking about something, watching me. "That thing you got in the mail, the netsuke you called it, was that the ugly little doodad Mike used to fool around with, used to rub it like a worry stone?"
"You've seen it?"
He nodded. "He liked to bring it out and tell this story about what it meant, malice pretending to be mercy or something."
"Right, malice in the guise of the goddess of mercy."
"Wolf in sheep's clothing."
"Murderer wearing midnight blue," I said.
Rich leaned back in his chair, gazed off into some far corner, working something through. When he brought his gaze back to me, he asked, "Where are Mike's files?"
"The originals are somewhere safe," I said. I shifted the topic. "What do these names mean to you?" I reeled off three names: Rod Pearson, Art Collings, Tom Medina.
"Holy cow, you have been digging, haven't you?" He pushed back from his desk and stood. "Wait here a sec."
When he was gone, Guido said, "I need the loo." He walked over to speak with the sheriffs engaged in shop talk with my shadows. One of the sheriffs walked Guido away. They were still gone when Rich came back with an aged and much-handled manila file folder. He sat down again, slipped reading glasses out of his pocket, opened the file, and began to read to me.
"Rod Pearson, accidental death, fall from ladder, December, 1998. Art Collings, accidental manslaughter, stray bullet to top of cranium, source unknown, New Year's morning, 1999. Jason Kelly, accidental death, severed spine, single-person collision
of personal watercraft with boulder, blood alcohol .12, at Pyramid Lake, August, 2000."
"Jason Kelly," I said. "Mike didn't have any clippings about Kelly."
"Kelly wasn't on the job anymore when the accident happened, so his accident wouldn't have attracted the sort of press that the death of a cop, on or off duty, draws. He'd left the LAPD the January before he died, stress related, his jacket says. He started selling insurance for his father-in-law in Calabasas. Coroner listed cause of death as single-person collision, possible suicide, because of the stress angle."
"Does Kelly belong with the others?" I asked.
Rich tossed the file aside. "Do any of them belong together? We looked at Kelly because he left the P.D. on the first anniversary of Jesus' disappearance."
"Tom Medina went down just six years ago, off duty, about the same time the grand jury subpoenas went out."
Rich frowned as if sorting out what he knew. "Except for the coincidence of approximate age and occupation, is there a link?"
"You tell me," I said.
"My dad was a career officer in the Air Force. Wisest man I ever knew," he said. "He used to tell recruits that horses, cars, and young men weren't reliable--actually he said they weren't worth a bucket of warm piss--until they had the stupid ridden out of them. Some of these young officers didn't live long enough to get the stupid ridden out of them. Medina was older than the statistical norm when he died. Maybe he was also dumber. He should have known better than to identify himself as a cop to a guy outside a 7-Eleven holding a gun."
"Maybe it takes some folks longer to get the stupid ridden out of them than others," I said. "And maybe Medina recognized the man with the gun and hesitated."
"You sound like Mike." He smiled. "I wouldn't have looked at these deaths together if Mike hadn't asked me to. He never said why he thought there might be a connection, but I did some checking. They weren't in the Academy together, they were never all assigned to the same division at any time, they didn't all work the same assignment, live in the same neighborhood."
"But they did know each other." I opened my bag and took out a big envelope that held the enlargements I had made of the three funeral photos, three dead cops, that I'd found in the clipping file Mike labeled OBITS AND PALLBEARERS. I found what I was looking for, a news service photograph from Rod Pearson's funeral, the first of the three to die, and handed it to Rich.
In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries) Page 24
