Jonas pressed hard on the small of his back, groaned, and said, "I wonder why God is letting me get knocked on my ass so much lately?"
Raleigh Dibble found Marty Brueger's missing dentures in the trash can by the toilet, but how they got there was anybody's guess. He figured it was the result of too much Irish whiskey. If the old man had any cash to speak of, that probably would've ended up shit-canned as well. But only Raleigh had access to the modest checking account at the local bank that Leona Brueger had left for groceries and other items in order to keep the house running smoothly while she was gone. She had opened the account with $4,000 and told him to phone her in Tuscany if any sort of emergency came up requiring more funds.
"Mr. Brueger," Raleigh said, "why don't you sit in your chair and watch Oprah or something? I'm going up to the house now to make you a nice snack. How about one of my special omelets?"
Marty Brueger nodded and said, "Got any more whiskey in the butler's pantry up there?"
"No, but I'll run out and get some later," Raleigh said.
"Why don't I go up there with you and look?" Marty Brueger said.
"No, Mr. Brueger!" Raleigh said. "Just rest. There might be another bottle. I'll be right back."
"I'll have all the rest I need pretty soon," the old man muttered.
Raleigh was a wreck by the time he got back to the house. But he was overjoyed to see that the floodlights had been turned off in the great room, and the tripod was lying on the floor. Nigel Wickland had finished.
Raleigh said to him, "Did you get it done the way you wanted ?"
"It's a wrap, as they say in Hollywood," Nigel Wickland said with a satisfied grin. "The next trip here will be far briefer. These are all conventional frames, even if the paintings are not of a common size. It'll be easy enough to make the poster board fit nicely. I think Sammy Brueger had them reframed with those ghastly ornate monstrosities in the past dozen years or so."
Raleigh was so relieved, he felt like sitting down. Now he had a headache, and he was a man who seldom got one. "When're you coming back?"
"It depends on how it goes at the lab," Nigel said. "I'll apply as much pressure as I can to my friend and I'll offer him a bonus of several hundred dollars if he can speed up the process. But it can't be done overnight, you know."
"Will you call me as soon as it's done?"
"Of course," Nigel said. "But be careful never to use your name if you ever ring my office again. And don't use my name when I ring you here. We must proceed precisely as planned."
We're going to come to a new understanding before we're through, Raleigh thought. But all he said was, "Yes, precisely."
Chapter Fourteen.
VIV DALEY AND Georgie Adams were "off the beach" and cleared for street duty while Force Investigation Division worked on building a twelve-inch-high stack of reports that would be presented to a Use-of-Force Board within nine months of the officer-involved shooting of Louis Dryden. Viv was not as jocular as she had been before that night, and nor was Georgie. Neither would ever speak of Cindy Kroll or her murdered baby again, at least not to each other.
They both had been ordered down to Chinatown, where Behavioral Science Services had their offices, and each one spoke with a BSS psychologist about the event in Little Armenia. Georgie had given brief answers to every question that the shrink asked regarding the taking of a human life. He said that he'd killed a few insurgents in Iraq and that this had felt no different to him afterward. He simply shook his head when he was asked if he had gone upstairs and seen the strangled baby. Both officers had the typical cop's distrust of shrinks from having seen and heard all that the profession had done with their "expert" opinions as witnesses for and against the prosecution in criminal cases.
Viv said that as far as she was concerned, they had killed a boogeyman and she felt not a shred of doubt or remorse about his death. She was less forthcoming when asked by her questioner to talk about what she'd seen in Cindy Kroll's apartment. The psychologist was a generation older than Viv and had gentle eyes and a motherly manner. At the very beginning of their session, she had come from behind her desk to sit next to Viv in one of the two client chairs. She asked Viv to call her Jane, but Viv never used the woman's given name at any time during that meeting.
When pressed repeatedly about her feelings concerning that horrific event, Viv reluctantly admitted to the psychologist that she'd grappled with impulses to contact the Department of Children and Family Services about the surviving child of Cindy Kroll. Viv said she'd thought about inquiring into the possibility of fostering the toddler, who she'd learned was named Carly, at least until a responsible relative could be found or until the child could be placed for adoption.
But Viv then added, "Of course, that was a silly thought. It made no sense at all. Here I am, a single woman with a job that requires me to work half the night, and then of course I have to sleep half the morning. Why would they ever give an infant to someone like me to foster?"
"I agree with you that they certainly would not," the psychologist said. "Still, you say you had impulses about being a foster parent, even if it was impossible given your lifestyle. Why was that, do you think?"
"I don't know," Viv said. "Pity, I guess. It was all so ... pitiful."
Viv refused to do more than shake her head when asked if she felt any residue of guilt or responsibility for what had happened to Cindy Kroll and her baby that night, and Viv bristled when the psychiatrist pressed her on it.
"Why should I?" she said.
"You shouldn't," the shrink replied. "But sometimes our unconscious mind doesn't understand words like should and shouldn't."
"Well, I don't," Viv said. "Just because I had a random thought about how that apartment could be attacked doesn't mean I had a premonition or something. I'm not a mentalist, you know."
"No," the psychologist said. "You're not. You were less cynical than the two detectives and your partner."
"What do you mean?" Viv asked suspiciously.
The psychologist said, "Police officers become prematurely cynical from seeing the worst of people and ordinary people at their worst. They don mental and emotional armor in self-defense. They tend to scoff at anything extraordinary. Your suggestion regarding the ladder and the roof was rebuffed as far-fetched, but it wasn't. You were not cynical. You were trying to be a good police officer by imagining a very unlikely scenario that ultimately came true."
Viv didn't say anything and the psychologist said, "Had you ever seen something very horrific before? Something involving helpless children?"
Viv hesitated and then said, "I remember one case when an Eighteenth Streeter who called himself the Tax Collector pistol-whipped a street vendor for not paying protection money. He decided he needed to teach all the vendors a lesson and he shot the man's baby right there in his stroller."
The psychologist shook her head slowly and said, "I can only imagine how you felt when you got there."
Viv said, "And there was the time we got a call that taught me why detectives who work child abuse are the only coppers who're never asked about their work by their civilian friends. The call came right after we cleared from roll call. This tot had been burned real bad in the bathtub and his mother said it was an accident. Except that his flesh was burned off from his elbows, straight down from that demarcation line. That meant that the child had been held by the wrists and put down into the scalding water. It turned out that the mother's boyfriend did it when he got frustrated during a potty training session. When the man was arrested, he said he didn't know the water was that hot. I was told later that they had to put the skin from dead people on the third-degree burns. It happened on the child's second birthday. His name was Stevie."
The psychologist said, "You know that you can come back and see me anytime, Vivien. You don't have to wait until you're ordered to come here."
Viv gave the shrink a lopsided smile and said, "Don't you know that cops consider it wussy to run down here and talk to you people?"
The psychologist smiled and said, "Oh, yes, how well I know. We have a lonely job around here because of the rampant machismo and super-self-reliance of your colleagues in blue. Believe me, I know all about that."
"Well, then, you get it," Viv said and fell silent.
The psychologist was quiet for a moment watching Viv gaze through the window as though she'd like to escape. Then she said, "Had you ever felt a strong impulse to foster a child before the incident in Little Armenia?"
"No, I hadn't," Viv said, and looked at the shrink again with a hint of defiance. And again she said, "Why should I?"
"You shouldn't," the psychiatrist said. "But this case was different, wasn't it? This had to do with Carly's mother and her baby brother, and feelings of great ... discomfort that you were experiencing because of what happened to them. Isn't that true?"
"Maybe," Viv conceded. "Are you trying to tell me that you think I do feel somehow responsible?"
"That man Louis Dryden was responsible," the psychologist said. "Cindy Kroll bore some responsibility also. She refused to go to a shelter where she and her children would've been safe until your detectives could have contacted Louis Dryden and warned him to stay away. You are obviously an extremely responsible person, Vivien, but none of this should become your burden. Given all that was known, the actions of you and your colleagues were reasonable and understandable. This event was an anomaly."
"Have we been talking about some sort of ... hidden guilt feelings here?" Viv asked. "Is that what we're talking about?"
"If we are, I hope we can dispel it," the shrink said. "The event itself was exceptionally horrific. You saw things that night that nobody should ever see."
"I suppose so," Viv said. Then she said, "That incident in Little Armenia ... it would rattle anybody, wouldn't it?"
"It certainly would," the shrink said.
"And on top of that ..."
The psychologist was quiet until she finally said, "And on top of that? What, Vivien?"
"Carly was so traumatized and confused that she kept ... she kept calling me ... Mommy."
Both women were silent and Viv was startled to taste tears in her mouth. And then she broke down and wept in her hands. The psychiatrist moved a box of tissues from her desktop closer to Viv Daley's chair and waited for her tears to stop.
At midwatch roll call that evening the word was passed from cop to cop that one of the Department's highest-ranking brass had been caught on a dark street in south L. A. with a hooker in his car. And she was not some special Beyonce look-alike but just a grungy old streetwalker who probably had every known STD and some new ones that weren't yet cataloged. When he badged the patrol unit that caught him, he offered the lame excuse that he was "interrogating" the hooker, who quickly got out of his car and continued on her way.
The two cops assured him that this contact would remain confidential, but by the end of watch they had each texted more than a dozen coppers, who each texted a dozen more, in a chain that didn't end until everybody in the LAPD and beyond knew about it. It was a perfect example of how well things remain confidential in police work, and why cops howl in laughter when cop-hating commentators on TV refer to "the blue wall of silence" or "closing ranks" in controversial cases involving allegations of excessive force. and other misconduct, usually involving ethnic minorities.
On that subject, Sergeant Murillo said at roll call, "I could offer to buy a brand-new car to any copper around here who could keep something on the down-low for even one day, and I'd never have to worry about ever touching my life savings. Which I think amounts to about four hundred dollars last time I checked."
After they cleared for calls that evening, Flotsam and Jetsam were not on the street five minutes before a late-model Mustang cruising slowly in the curb lane blew a stoplight on east Sunset Boulevard and caused several drivers to jump on their brakes and yell curses.
"You're up," Jetsam said and did a U-ee, pulling behind the Mustang with his lights flashing. He honked the horn to get the driver to notice.
The driver was so busy talking on his cell phone and driving so erratically that they thought he was DUI. When he finally saw them in his rearview mirror, he pulled to the curb. He was fumbling around so much that they thought he might be trying to hide some contraband or even a weapon, so both cops jumped out quickly and ran up to the Mustang, Flotsam on the driver's side with his hand on his Glock.
Jetsam approached on the passenger side, and since it was still light, they could both see well, and what they saw was a white-collar guy with his shirttail hanging out his fly.
Flotsam said, "License and registration, please."
The tall cop looked across the Mustang roof and grimaced at his partner. Since this was sometimes a whore track after dark, it figured that the motorist was looking to pick up a hooker on the way home from work. It was reasonable to assume that maybe he was doing some phone sex at the same time and it all got to be a libido overload.
Flotsam wrote the ticket on the hood of their shop, and Jetsam said, "Bro, whatever you do, don't shake hands with him."
Flotsam got back to the car and handed the man the citation book and his ballpoint pen. While the driver signed the ticket, Flotsam looked at the damp spot on the man's shirt where he'd wiped his fingers, and said, "You can keep the pen, sir. Compliments of the city of Los Angeles."
Hollywood Nate and Snuffy Salcedo got a message on their dashboard computer regarding "a female 5150 at Hollywood and Highland" on the Walk of Fame. Snuffy punched the en route button, and Nate glanced at the message and said, "A female mental case on the Walk of Fame. How remarkable. That description could apply to anybody on Hollywood Boulevard, since gender around here is always questionable anyway."
"I wonder which wack job it is," Snuffy said.
"Just pick anyone that's off the hook and making more noise than the others," Nate said.
When they got to the famous intersection and started cruising westbound very slowly, it didn't take long to spot her among the tourist throngs. She was a black woman about forty years of age who weighed upward of two hundred and fifty pounds. Her hair was dyed the color of a traffic cone, and her costume consisted of a man's olive-green battle jacket, World War II vintage, complete with combat ribbons. From her ample waist south, she wore Day-Glo pink tights and cowboy boots. She was banging two trash can lids together like cymbals and chanting gibberish. Of course, tourists and Street Characters scattered when she got near them, but there was one who did not move fast enough.
The cops saw her suddenly bang Wonder Woman on the head with a trash can lid, and that was enough for 6-X-66. She was an apparent danger to herself and others.
Hollywood Nate pulled to the curb and said, "This one will do, but she's probably not the looniest on the boulevard by any means."
"Loony but not lonely," Snuffy said. "There's always someone inside their heads to talk to."
The woman was cheerful and smiling when both cops approached her on foot, and Nate said, "Could I please see your cymbals?" She proudly handed him the trash can lids, saying, "Okey-dokey." "I'll bet you have lots of cymbals," Nate said. "How would you like to come with us and play for some nice folks?"
"Okey-dokey," she said.
"What's your name?" Snuffy asked.
She pondered until some cognition kicked in, and she said, "Pearl."
"I'm Snuffy and he's Nate."
"Whoopdedoo!" Pearl said, happy to meet new friends.
Pearl was so affable and even cute that Nate said, "I don't have the heart to hook her up, partner. Let's try her out in the backseat without the cuffs. If she kills you with a hidden hat pin, it's all my fault."
Nate opened the rear door and Pearl got in, fastening her seat belt without being told to do it.
"She's done this before," Nate said.
Snuffy looked at her through the cage and said, "You really shouldn't whack people on the bean, Pearl. It's very naughty." "Very naughty, very naughty!" Pearl agreed.
&nbs
p; Snuffy said quietly to Nate. "A good sign. Utter remorse."
As they drove east on Sunset Boulevard at twilight, they began to realize that Pearl had a peculiar tic where she not only repeated fragments of what she'd just heard but seemed to take particular delight in it if she was told to stop.
At one point Snuffy looked at a silver Porsche cruising past and said to Nate, "Don't you love that too-cool nine-eleven?"
Pearl said, "Too-cool!"
Nate turned to look at the Porsche and said, "Yeah, it's sweet." "It's sweet!" Pearl said.
Testing her, Snuffy said, "Don't say it's sweet, Pearl."
"It's sweet, it's sweet!" Pearl said with more enthusiasm.
They rode in silence for a while, heading for Parker Center, to the Mental Evaluation Unit for a commitment approval. After that, they would transport her the few miles to the USC Medical Center on the grounds of the old county hospital. These were the last weeks for the venerable LAPD main headquarters building before it would be abandoned and torn down to the ground. Everything was in the process of being moved to the new Police Administration Building, literally in the shadow of City Hall.
The new PAB was across the street from the Department of Water & Power, whose building the cops said looked like the Death Star in the Star Wars movies. There was extremely inadequate parking in the immediate area of the new PAB, and the Department of Transportation was only too eager to write tickets to any radio cars that they found temporarily parked in white and yellow zones. Of course, that produced noisy internecine bitterness.
Outside the new building were large, expensive, and controversial metal sculptures that were meant to give the impression of six bears and two monkeys. The cops figured that soon enough they'd be arresting sex offenders for humping them. The building was designed in such a way that the glass windows facing north caught the reflection of City Hall, which was directly across First Street. The coppers said that the dominant City Hall reflection seen from the new building was a chillingly sinister omen of what the future had in store for them.
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