Troy gave over the car and took the stub. While getting out he did a quick mental inventory and decided there was nothing a parking lot attendant would see. Diesel had a nine on a clip under the dash, but the guy wasn’t going to run his hand under there even if he did look in the glove compartment. Piz the Whiz had been working a parking lot in Vegas, and used the keys to open a trunk while the customer was gone. The trunk had three hundred and ten thousand in three cardboard boxes. Piz was going off duty in twenty minutes. He took the boxes with him when he went home—and never heard a word about it. He never asked, “What about the blue Cadillac? Did the guy just drive away?” Nobody ever complained, or asked a question, or acted as if it had happened. Somebody just swallowed the loss of three hundred grand without a sound of complaint. It was weird.
Troy remembered the story as he entered, where a maître d’ waited by a reservations stand. “Aris,” said Troy.
“Come this way.”
The maître d’ led him through several rooms to a rear room with two booths and two tables. Alex was in one booth that had been set up for two. When he saw Troy, he got up with a wide grin and the two men embraced. Their friendship went back two decades, and although there had been arguments, each knew the other was a friend to the core, something seldom experienced by men of the bourgeoisie. There were no façades between them, nor any need, for neither judged the other for anything; they were friends as only thieves can be.
“Hey, man, glad to see you, brother,” Alex said. “They sure didn’t coddle your ass, did they?”
“I’m not mad at ’em,” Troy said. “It wasn’t justice, but they knew what they were doin’, ’cause I’m gonna rip somebody off.”
“Siddown, man. Want a drink?”
Troy sat and looked around. The waiter was at hand instantly. “Gimme a coffee with some brandy,” Troy said. The waiter was gone.
They eyed each other. Troy now saw changes that had gone unnoticed when Greco visited him. The changes had taken place in the four years since the California Supreme Court had reversed his conviction. They had ruled unanimously that the police could not break down his door to arrest him simply because he was on parole and therefore without civil rights. They still had to knock and announce their purpose under Section 844 of the Penal Code. The warrantless search was manifestly a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The judge knew it, but he also knew that if he ruled that way, he would have to exclude from evidence the six kilos of cocaine they had seized. With the cocaine excluded, the State had no case. The judge ruled against Greco while knowing it was contrary to law, but it was right on target with public opinion. If he’d excluded the evidence and dismissed the charges, he might well be voted off the bench in the next election. The case had some notoriety. He would send Alexander Aris to prison where he deserved to be. If it was done unlawfully, let a higher court reverse the conviction and cut him loose.
Troy was in prison when Greco arrived, and he was still there four years later when California’s highest court said the search was illegal and remanded the case back to the trial court. Troy remembered what great shape the Greco had been in as he got on the L.A. County Sheriff’s bus to go back to court.
Greco had aged since then. Troy hadn’t seen him until the visit, but he had got word on the underworld grapevine that Greco was having a hard time getting over. He’d lost a sixty-kilo consignment when his runner got busted. A prison buddy had given up the stash to get out of jail on a drunk driving charge. It was just luck that Greco hadn’t been on hand when the raid came. Close calls and disappointments had turned his hair prematurely gray. He’d once been classically handsome; he still looked distinguished, but life’s hard miles were written in seams and creases on his tanned face.
Greco looked at Troy. “You’re lookin’ pretty good.”
“Prison preserves a sucker. No booze, no drugs.”
“Hey, this is me.”
“Well, yeah, a little homebrew. Once in a while some drugs. But you can’t maintain a habit in the penitentiary.”
“Except for Vito. Remember?”
“Sure I remember that crazy, green-eyed motherfucker.”
“He managed to get hooked in the joint. He had a run going before they locked him up.”
“Man, that’s a hard hustle if there ever was one.”
“What do you hear about that Pelican Bay?”
“It’s unbelievable. They inoculate ’em with hate. They’re makin’ monsters up there.”
“That’s what these fools want.”
“They think they can stop crime by getting tough.”
“I know. I can’t believe the way they’re building prisons. Then they fill ’em up with damn fools on nickel-and-dime drug cases. They make maniacs of ’em up there, and then turn ’em loose on the public. It’s like they were growin’ maniacs in hothouses.”
“In a way you can’t blame the squarejohns. They’re scared of crime.
“Hey, man, me too,” Alex said. “You know me, I don’t commit no crimes with guns. No robberies or—”
“It’s a bummer, too,” Troy inserted,” ’cause I’d sure rather have you with me than Mad Dog McCain.”
“You got that guy with you?”
Troy nodded. “Yeah.”
“Oh shit! Anyway, what I started to tell you. Much as I dislike guns, I pack a snub-nose thirty-eight sometimes when I’m gonna go into a bad area. I wouldn’t do it then if the motherfuckers would just take the money. Them young niggers nowadays, they shoot anyway. It gives ’em prestige if they waste somebody. It don’t matter who it is, even if it’s an old lady; they still get respect for it. But fuck all that, how do you feel, brother? You ready to make a move?”
“I’m fine,” Troy said. “I’ll feel real good when I have some money.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Take this.” From his inside breast pocket, Alex produced a narrow envelope swollen with $100 bills. “Five grand,” he said. “I’ll take it off the top when we cut up a score.”
“That’s a deal,” Troy said, folding the envelope and putting it in a hip pocket. “What about these hijacks? Do I meet the lawyer settin’ it up?”
“He don’t wanna meet nobody. You can understand that.”
“I’d do the same thing in his place. Run him down to me.”
“He’s the man in drug cases. They all get him. He knows more about search and seizure than anybody. He used to be a Deputy U.S. Attorney prosecutin’ drug cases—but he was getting chump change and the defense lawyers were gettin’ rich. He changed sides.
“He started making big money, so he bought a big house for his wife and kids. Then he got himself a hussy on the side, a little piece of young pastry he keeps in a condo in Century City. She’s got him pussy-whipped, and she likes expensive stuff. He needs money that his wife won’t know about … so he’s ready to set up some clients for ripoffs.”
“Do you think that’s covered in his canon of ethics?”
“What?” Then Greco saw it was humorous and chuckled. “I dunno. It doesn’t have to do with what he does in court.”
“That’s true.”
“What he’s got is all the shit he gets from the government on discovery motions … so he knows all that, plus he is in pretty tight, so some of ’em let things slip. There’s some nigger down in Compton they call Moon Man. They used to call him Balloon Head, but now he’s got too much dope, so they call him God. He’s proud of bein’ dumb. He tells the lawyer, “If you’re so smart and I’m so dumb, Mr. Peckerwood, how come I got twenty, thirty million and you work for me?”
“Here’s something else,” Alex said, reaching under himself for a file folder. It had a Xerox of the complete DEA file on Tyrone Williams. “My man got it on a discovery motion.”
Troy opened the folder. On the back of the cover was a mug photo of a round-faced young black man, head tilted, chin jutted out in angry challenge. He had bulbous eyes, a condition with a name that Troy knew but was unable to recall. It was also obvious wh
y he was nicknamed Moon Man.
Flipping through the file, Troy got an impression rather than a clear picture—and what the impression conveyed was precisely what Troy anticipated. Prisons overflowed with young black men who had the same history, ghetto-born of a teenage mother, raised in the projects on welfare and food stamps, total failure at school, first arrest at nine, and often thereafter. He’d gone to reform school for throwing lighter fluid on a dog and setting it afire, a piece of information that made Troy loathe him more than if it had been a human being. He’d been released at eighteen, and in the four years since then had been arrested twice for murder without being prosecuted, and had been charged with possession of drugs for the purpose of distribution. The search warrant was flawed, the evidence was suppressed under the exclusionary rules, and the case was consequently dismissed.
“You need this file back?” he asked.
“No … but you flush the fucker when you get done lookin’ it over. Here’s some addresses. He’s renovating an old mansion in the Lafayette Square area. You know where that’s at?”
“Hey, man, nobody in the world knows L.A. like I do.”
“He’s got four cars and he has some three-hundred-pound fool he uses as a driver and bodyguard. He likes to use a new Fleetwood Brougham, but not when he’s goin’ into the ghetto. He doesn’t keep anything at the Lafayette place. He probably keeps it at one of those other addresses. You’re gonna have to find out which one.”
Troy nodded. “Can you get us some police uniforms?”
“Yeah. I got a guy that works in a warehouse that rents costumes to the movies. I saw a whole rack of police uniforms.”
“I’m gonna need three.”
“Who else you got—besides that fuckin’ maniac? I don’t mind a guy bein’ a little weird. What the fuck, that’s why he’s a criminal, because he’s fucked up. But them paranoid dudes, they make me nervous. Keep him away from me.”
“I can handle Mad Dog. He loves me.”
“Yeah … well, didn’t somebody real smart say that each man kills the thing he loves?”
“Don’t worry … that guy’s not gonna kill me … or even dream of it. But he’d sure kill anybody I told him to.”
“I think he’s unpredictable, like nitroglycerine.”
“Big Diesel Carson from ’Frisco. You know him, don’t you?”
“Not personally. I saw him fight some nigger in the joint. It was funny.”
“I remember that … In the lower yard.”
“Yeah. He lost his cool and started swinging like a madman. He ran out of gas and the nigger stopped him. Everybody fell out laughing.”
“He don’t talk about that. The guy he fought was a sissy, too, loved to suck dick.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. They ribbed the shit out of Diesel over that.”
“He wanted to stab the guy afterward. But he’s got more sense now. He’s been out of the joint for about three years, got an old lady and a baby.”
“Man, that’s one guy I wouldn’t think would stay out three months. He never did before, did he?”
“No, he’s state-raised. He got lucky this time, got in the Teamsters, and Jimmy the Face looked after him. He even got off parole.”
“That’s great. He’s okay.” Then Alex changed the subject: “You need any artillery? I know a guy with some full automatic M16s.”
“Uh-uh. We’re armed to the teeth. I like pump shotguns better anyway. One thing I could use is handcuffs.”
“No problem. How many you want?”
“Half a dozen pair. I mean … if we’re gonna be arrestin’ drug dealers, we need handcuffs.”
“You got ’em. Hey, you wouldn’t want some credit cards, would you? Visa?”
“Uh-uh. I pass.”
“They’re good, man. No heat at all.”
“I know. But I got priors, and these fools made credit cards the same as murder if you got a record. I might as well rip and tear as use finesse.”
“You’re gonna hold court in the street, huh?”
“I might as well, right? It’s too late to quit, not unless I’m willing to be a cipher—and I can’t do that.”
“Look here,” Alex said, “when you go down into the ghetto, watch yourself.”
“I always watch myself.”
“It’s more dangerous than it used to be. Fuckin’ punk kids are carrying nine-millimeter pistols. A nine is all they want.”
“Where do they get the money? Good nines cost five, six hundred dollars. That’s a whole welfare check.”
Alex laughed. “Welfare! You sure are cold, bro’. They’re not all on welfare.”
“I know it. Still, where the fuck do kids get dough like that?”
“Crack and dust … angel dust. It’s what makes ’em crazy, too. They don’t have any sense of reality. Killin’ somebody is what gets them respect … so they think.”
Troy nodded acceptance of the warning. Alex Aris had walked the Big Yard at San Quentin. If he said the city’s streets were more dangerous than before, Troy had to respect the admonition.
Alex looked at his watch. “I gotta hit it. Long ride down to Laguna.”
Troy walked Greco to the parking lot. The attendant brought a new Jaguar convertible. Troy whistled. Alex winked. “The wages of sin,” he said as he got in.
8
After studying the folder’s contents and making some cryptic notes that nobody but himself would understand, Troy burned the folder, put the ashes in a shoebox, and dumped them on the Hollywood Freeway. A primary rule for successful criminality is to keep no records. Failure to follow that rule destroyed the Presidency of Richard M. Nixon. What the hell could he have been thinking when he recorded the conspiracy? Why didn’t he destroy the tapes when the shit hit the fan?
Troy began his investigation of Tyrone Williams, aka Moon Man, formerly Balloon Head. Troy’s scorn was partly envy. Moon Man Williams was twenty-two years old and had a gross income of an estimated one million dollars a month. Probably hyperbole, Troy decided; the police (and everyone else) inflated everything to either enrich themselves or add to their importance. Still, Moon Man had come up with $800,000 to successfully defend his last case. He’d delivered $500,000 cash in one day. It appeared that Moon Man was copping fifty kilos of cocaine at a time, and about forty of them were turned into rock. Apparently he had about twenty O.G.s and wannabes in his crew. Some sat on the dope, some made crack from coke, some made deals, and others delivered. It was hard to tell who was who from following. It was hard to loiter and watch in the ghetto. After dark, the only white faces belonged to the police.
Troy sat on various addresses at different times of day, trying to get a sense of what was happening. He also tailed Moon Man, falling in a block from his house and following him into the decaying ghetto of South Central L.A. On the third day, Moon Man was going south on Vermont and suddenly turned into an alley. Troy started to turn into the same alley, but at the last moment straightened the wheel and kept going. He looked down the alley as he went by. Sure enough, the alley was long and straight. The other car, an old Pontiac, was stopped halfway as Moon Man looked to see if anyone was following.
The next time Troy followed the old Pontiac and watched it turn into the alley, he punched the gas to the next corner and went around the block. Sure enough, Moon Man and his bodyguard came out a minute later. After that it was easy. Moon Man led him to a neighborhood not in the files. Off the Santa Monica Freeway at Crenshaw, down to Adams, east to Budlong, and south again. Mean streets where dogs and boys ran wild. Graffiti defaced every flat surface and windows wore bars as often as glass. Every block had a liquor store with a group standing around outside the door. Homeless men with supermarket carts were abundant.
Moon Man’s car turned into a driveway between a double row of court bungalows.
Troy drove past and looked in. Poverty. Poor black children running and yelling as they played kickball. At the rear was the Pontiac. The two men were getting out. Troy sensed that this
was a stash pad. He punched the gas and took the next corner with a squeal of tires. Maybe he could sneak around and see something.
Ahead was an empty parking space at the curb. He pulled in and looked around before getting out. The neighborhood was seedy, with vacant lots, a corrugated metal building, a decrepit apartment building. The only person he saw was an old man with a dog on a rope. He never even glanced at Troy. As he got out, Troy was reassured by the pistol in the clip holster inside his waistband under his jacket. He had the badge, too. Once upon a time the combination of badge and pistol would control any situation. Still potent, they were no longer an absolute talisman. Greco had told the truth when he said the streets of L.A. had changed. Americans likened their country to those of Europe, but portions of L.A. were more like a Rio slum than anything across the Atlantic.
Troy went around the corner to the street parallel to where Moon Man had turned in. He looked at the roofs to the right; he wanted to get behind the court bungalows. He passed in front of tiny homes that had sold for $2,500, no down payment, when they were built long ago when L.A. housing was among the cheapest in the country.
He came to an unpaved alley with ruts from truck wheels. It ran beside the corrugated metal building behind the bungalow court. He turned in. Half-pulverized glass crunched underfoot. The stench of human piss assailed him, so he breathed through his mouth. Night was coming on and it was dark in the alley. He tripped over something that moved.
“Hey, mu’fucker,” said a voice. “Watch where you be walkin’.”
“Sorry, man,” Troy said. He should have brought a flashlight. He was keyed up but calm. Afterward he reacted, but while things were in progress he was icy calm.
The alley turned and ran behind the corrugated building. A sagging board fence was on the other side. He could see the roofs of the court bungalows above it.
A dog barked, loud and angry, but it was a couple of yards away. Nobody would pay any attention unless it continued. How could he get through the fence? It looked as if it would crash if he tried to climb it.
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