The sun was cresting enough to paint the sky a sapphire blue while leaving the Los Angeles Basin in shadow. As a defense, Lucky grabbed for his Ray-Bans before hitting the Alameda on-ramp. Only his sunglasses weren’t in the center console where he normally left them. He patted his chest to see if he’d inadvertently hung them from his t-shirt collar, then the top of his buzzed scalp just in case he’d absently saddled them up high.
Dammit, Lucky.
He shook the image of Shia’s hurt face in exchange for the recollection of his sunglasses parked on the top shelf of his station house locker. For a split second, he wrestled between turning around and retrieving the sunglasses or braving the blistering sun for the twenty-minute drive home.
Lucky’s boot stomped on the brake pedal. The ’99 Ford’s wheels locked instantly and rubber bled against the asphalt.
His path was blocked by a tangle of recognizable mutts dragging a tipped-over shopping cart. All without the help of their beloved Mush Man.
“Shit,” said Lucky, assessing the picture with a reservoir of worry.
He jammed the ’99 into park and climbed out, scanning a quick three-sixty, half-expecting to see Mush Man careening around a corner, out of breath, uncontrollably cursing for his dog team to halt. Yet there was little sound but for the scraping of the crippled cart across the pavement along with some yowls from the tangled mutts.
“Where’s your boy?” asked Lucky, approaching the dog team. “Mushy take a tumble?”
The dogs perked up at Lucky’s smell and wagged their tails. He righted the cart and ushered the knotted mongrels over to the sidewalk where he crouched and gave each pup some scruffy attention. He took Oprah’s muzzle and looked into her eyes.
“C’mon, sweetheart,” he urged. “Where’s our Mush Man?”
21
The Hole. 6:04 A.M.
With so many embarrassing and frequent mainline blowouts plaguing the Department of Water and Power, quick response teams had been formed, serving both practical and public relations agendas. Seeking the opportunity for a bump in both salary and overtime pay was twenty-six-year-old waterworks mechanic Mike Keough from Hesperia, a high desert enclave more than eighty miles from Compton. Because he was the newest and youngest on the crew, Keough was bent on impressing his managers by being the first on every site and the last to leave. With that in mind, he had arrived at the Poinsettia Street repair dig at three minutes past six with a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts and a hundred-ounce Box O’ Joe. His thinking was, yeah, so what if I look like a red-faced ass kisser? I’m first here and ready to work.
And work he did.
With a glance, Keough could see the leaky clamps had left the hole nearly a quarter filled with muddy water. So he keyed the diesel generator, push-started it and, before the engine cylinders had found a rhythm, he switched on the drainage pump. The hoses bucked and filled. Keough quickly traced the line to make sure that no one had moved the relief spouts from the nearby storm drain during the night. For the briefest moment, he feared he would find the business end of the hose whipping around like a deranged snake, soaking somebody’s yard and house with mud-brown water. He was relieved to discover the four-inch collapsible discharge hose remained moored in the storm drain, precisely where he had left it ten hours earlier.
But the water wasn’t flowing evenly. It was chugging in fits and starts. Keough could hear the pump straining.
“Crap-salad,” he said aloud to nobody but himself. He turned toward the hole where he resigned himself to starting the day wet. He had to clear whatever had obstructed the strainer head.
As Keough’s view tilted into the hole, his eyes followed the hose line as it looped across a ledge dug out by a backhoe and followed the teeth marks into an opaque pool of browned fluid.
Easy enough, he thought, charting his route from a two o’clock position. He descended the ladder, foregoing the last two rungs and landing with knees bent in an athletic squish. He gripped the hose with both hands and gave it a tug, thinking a simple readjustment might free the filter’s face from the impediment. Instead of easing loose, the hose gagged and shook. The young mechanic gripped hard, set his feet, and threw his body weight back and away from the snag. For the briefest moment, he felt something give as suction resumed and the hose engorged itself. Then, snap! as if the filter head had re-engaged the obstruction with a shark’s bite. The pump wheezed and the hose whipped.
The water splashed. And for a brain-second, a startled Keough imagined he’d hooked some kind of huge, urban catfish.
“Eat me!” barked the waterworks mechanic. He let go of the hose and stumbled backwards, nearly tripping his backside into the goo.
There was no amphibious monster attached to the filter head. Or easily removed hunk of flotsam. It was a man. Small. Clothed. Not the least bit threatening. And very clearly dead.
22
Van Nuys. 6:31 A.M.
“So two nights in. How’s it feel?”
Steve Wimminger was seated in a corner booth at Nat’s Early Bite, a three-decades-old hole in the wall with a history of serving and employing recovering alcoholics and addicts. Across from him, picking at her plate of egg whites and limp asparagus sat Sheriff’s trainee, Shia Saint George.
“Okay,” she nodded in slow motion, as if trying to convince herself. “Never a dull moment.”
“No shit,” said Wimmer, leaning in, always leading with his hard-to-forget forehead. “That was you I read about in the Daily News? Took a swim on your first night out?”
“That would be me,” she semi-sing-songed.
“Coulda screwed our whole deal from the jump.”
“Nice to know you’re thinking about me instead of our thing.”
“C’mon,” he nudged her. “Don’t forget. I’ve been where you are.”
“A black female trainee?” she shot back.
“Fair enough,” admitted Wimmer. “But you know what I mean. I went through my five months in a black-and-white.”
“In Lennox,” she finished for him, having heard the story more than once. “With a Reaper.”
“So I never got swallowed by a DWP blowout,” he eased. “You’re lucky to be alive, you know.”
“He pulled me out.”
“Lucas Dey?” confirmed Wimmer.
“Lucky.”
“You’re lucky he pulled you out? Or Lucky pulled you out?” he joked. In return, he received little more than a cocked head and a narrowing of Shia’s eyebrows. “Okay. My bad. Just trying to keep it light.”
“What’s light about any of this shit?”
“It’s not shit,” he calmed her. “And I’ll stop with the wordplay.”
“Please do.”
“Eye on the prize. Always,” he reminded. “And I’m not the least bit distracted. You?”
Shia took a breath to regard the tenor of her next answer.
“No,” she said. “Just tired. I need to sleep.”
“So we’ll get down to it,” said Wimmer.
Nodding, Shia agreed without having to clarify what it was. She knew all too well the stakes that came with conspiring with the feds. In this case, that meant Deputy United States Attorney, Steve J. Wimminger whose target of investigation was Lucas Dey of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
“Anything to speak of yet?” asked Wimmer.
“Like has he suckered me into a perjury trap?”
“Exactly like that.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Coupla hours ago.”
“Wow. That didn’t take long.”
“Quick work if I wanna be in his ‘Circle of Trust,’” complained Shia.
“And you played it?”
“Didn’t really have to play it at all,” she said. “I sorta saw it coming.”
“Because I told you it was coming,” impressed Wimmer. “Unless he trusts you he won’t be keen on crossing any policy lines. At least while you’re riding with him.”
Wimmer was referring to the rules, regulations, and federal
statutes forbidding police officers from violating the civil rights of the citizens they were sworn to protect. Such violations were catnip for government prosecutors. Headline-grabbing. Career-enhancing.
“Still caught me by surprise,” she admitted.
“Didn’t expect it to happen the first week?”
“No. Not that,” she thought, reaching for her feelings. “I dunno. For a minute I forgot why I was there.”
“You’re there to take down a dirty cop.”
“Dirty?”
“Corrupt. Badge-heavy,” redefined Wimmer.
“Maybe.”
“He’s got the tattoo,” pressed Wimmer. “He’s a real deal Lennox Reaper.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she conceded. “Maybe I forgot because…”
“Because why?”
“Because he did something that felt pretty cool… Something he didn’t have to.”
“Yeah? Like how?”
The exhausted trainee gave Wimmer a condensed version of the previous night’s events involving their annoying ride-along, Atom Blum. Despite Wimmer’s expressing eyebrow-raised surprise at the mention of the director—admitting to be a fan of the boy wonder’s Roadkill and its subsequent blockbuster sequels—Shia kept her voice even as she described all the inappropriate come-ons, sexual passes, and flagrant, uncomfortable innuendos she’d been subjected to.
“Screen test?” chirped Wimmer, his voice carrying well beyond their booth. Nearby diners crooked their necks.
“Really?” griped Shia.
“Sorry,” said Wimmer, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. “Like anybody thinks a screen test is something other than a screen test, you know?”
“Still,” she reminded.
“I know, I know. Wow. He did that to Atom Blum? Friend to the Assistant Sheriff? Talk about some huevos grande.”
“He did that for me,” corrected Shia.
“Wanna flatter yourself or stay real?”
“I’m not being real?”
“How do you know he didn’t screen test the douchebag to amuse himself or give a middle finger to the Sheriff’s brass?” pushed Wimmer, already sounding somewhat embittered and admiring at once. “Balls on his balls. Jesus. Once a Reaper, always a Reaper. Take it from me.”
“Fine,” relented Shia, bending to her desire to sleep.
“Ink this to the inside of your eyelids,” impressed Wimmer. “LA Sheriffs is a career. But FBI is a launching pad to wherever someone smart, ambitious, and beautiful can imagine herself.”
Shia could have done without reference to her looks. Not that she was against men or women paying her unsolicited compliments. Wimmer, though, had yet to meet with her once without dropping some weak reference to her attractiveness. She wondered if the stick attached to the carrot he dangled came with hidden entanglements—such as an expectation of sexual congress once he’d fast-tracked her into a Justice Department career.
Quid pro quo.
Shia parted from the U.S. Attorney, leaving him at the cash register to pay the check. He would wisely hang back to eliminate the chance the pair would be seen leaving together. And thank God for her oversized Michael Kors sunglasses. The orbital lenses served a dual purpose: cutting the morning glare; and disguising her recognizable features. The last thing she needed was to bump into somebody she knew from either CSUN or the Academy who found her taste in breakfast companions suspicious.
A powerfully built gent in a cowboy-styled, snap-front shirt with sleeves rolled up to the top of his biceps held the door for her. His tattoo-covered leathery face below a close-cropped Mohawk made an immutable impression. At a glance, one might mistake him for a Maori tribesman from New Zealand, decorated from head to toe in ancestral ink. Only Shia distinguished a different genus of clan. MS-13—aka Mara Salvatrucha—the murderous transnational gang of drug traffickers known for tattooing their allegiance across their faces. She’d run into MS-13’s while working the county jail and knew to treat them with caution in extremis.
“Thank you,” said Shia, staring a split-moment longer in search of recognition. It was the easy smile on the man that struck her cold. So familiar. Had they met at the downtown dungeon?
“No problem,” beamed Mohawk, “and you have yourself a good morning.”
And that was that. Or so she thought.
An inner tumult bubbled as she piloted her Kia Optima on the short drive to her NoHo condo. She wondered if the taste in her mouth was regret. Or maybe betrayal. Her ambitious side was excited at the prospect of attending Quantico, carrying an FBI badge, and wearing suits tailored to fit both her striking form and a service pistol. She also questioned if it was another case of the grass being always greener. How many changes in a career trajectory could a twenty-five-year-old have already made? Or how many broken hearts and promises could she leave in her wake before her own fickle collateral caught up with her?
Shia’s next trick was surely to come at an inflated price. Lucky Dey. Wimmer’s grim Reaper. Betrayed by his trainee and tossed for God knows only how long into a Federal lock-up.
When Shia imagined Lucky in an orange prison jumpsuit she felt like choking on her own saliva. She next pictured that MS-13 member who had so politely held the door for her moments earlier. Her insides screamed that she’d crossed paths with the killer before. Most likely where there had been steel bars, electronic surveillance, and hundreds of thousands of poured concrete yards to keep men like him from mixing with the population at large. Yet there he’d been, a man who advertised his evil deeds through the tattoos on his face, behaving like any other gentlemen, a smile and a warm reply. Shia wondered what made her feel dirtier—passing within a hair’s breadth of an unshackled murderer or selling her soul to the U.S. Attorney in exchange for a career with the federales.
Get a grip, girl.
Before crossing her condominium’s threshold Shia would need to box her feelings to face her annoyingly sunny roommate—also known as Rufus Saint George, her permanently disabled father. The blind, former chemical engineer would be waiting for her in their cozy kitchenette, radio tuned to National Public Radio and already halfway through a pot of coffee. He’d expect a full debrief of her second night in a black-and-white. The best she could do was hope he’d be satisfied with half-truths, perhaps an anecdote, and her pleas for sleep.
23
Compton. 7:14 A.M.
Lil Rod woke to a buzzing in his head. It was like television static being broadcast between his ears and so disturbing that he couldn’t recollect where he was or how he had landed there. His only clear memory was that of hauling ass away from that big hole on Poinsettia.
“Yo, Lil Rod,” called a singsong voice. “I knows you ’round here.”
Young Raydon’s eyes fluttered open and began to swirl for a point of reference. He was horizontal and weirdly comfortable. In a bed? Surely not his own. With Julius Colón looking for him, he’d never have returned home. Then again, whatever zombie weed he’d smoked had proven so disorienting he could barely remember his given name.
“Know how I know young nigga’s here?” sang a rasping voice Lil Rod instinctively recognized as Wolfgang’s, a member of a Crips set called Original Swamps. The crew had connections to Julius.
Lil Rod pictured a quad-copter flyover of the neighborhood. Nearly everything and everyone in Compton had a Julius Colón connection—or so it seemed to the young gangster. One of J’s front businesses was the old Adams Funeral Home on East Palmer, famous for its drive-thru casket viewing. Lil Rod’s Uncle Antoine had worked there part-time. One afternoon, while giving his nephew a macabre tour, he’d shown off the decrepit storage shed leaning against the property’s back fence. Inside, amongst the piles of rusted junk lay a long-forgotten coffin—a sample casket left by a bankrupt manufacturer. Uncle A had confided that there had been times when he had tied on a serious drunk and that satin-lined burial box had proved a handy place to sleep without his wife or bosses ending up the wiser.
“You ’round here cuz
I found young nigga’s bike!” cackled Wolfgang.
Through the fuzz, Lil Rod could hear the familiar tick-tick of his bicycle’s gears. The sound revolved clockwise around the shed, leaving the impression that the Crip was walking alongside the bike.
“Lil Rod want his hot roddy ride back?” teased Wolfgang.
The casket was on the floor. Lil Rod found his knees and eased out of the box. The shed’s walls—redwood slats shrunk from years of an unforgiving direct sun—were striped in morning light. Dust and cobwebs hung. If Lil Rod still retained a childhood fear of spiders, it took a quick backseat to Wolfgang’s shadow crossing over him.
“Lilllllllllll’ Rodddddddddddd!!!” called the Crip.
Lil Rod hurled himself against the side of the shed. The vertical planks snapped like balsa wood. He found himself on his face in the back alleyway, but with his legs still churning in hopes of gaining traction. The moment the sixteen-year-old found his feet, instead of discovering Wolfgang quick-scaling the wall after him in full chase, he saw his hot rod neon yellow bicycle helicoptering over the shed and bouncing off the asphalt.
Twisting a one-eighty, Lil Rod hauled in the opposite direction, arms and legs pumping.
“LIL NIGGA!” yelled Wolfgang. “WHY YOU RUNNIN’?”
Lil Rod heard the thumps of scuffling sneakers behind him. One pair. Two pairs. Three. Wolfgang wasn’t alone.
Lil Rod was light and fast and nearly rested. So he pulled his elbows in, set his spine to the correct lean, and found the economy of speed and listened for the footsteps behind him to recede.
Willow Street crossed ahead. Houses to the north. Backyards. Fences to hop. Sixty seconds and Lil Rod was sure to lose anybody or anything biting his heels.
A white GMC Yukon screeched to a stop and blocked the alley. The doors burst open and out scrambled four more Crips hitting the ground and spacing themselves in a clothesline.
“Okay okay okay okay!” shouted Lil Rod, skidding to a stop, arms up in surrender.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 74
