The Heartless

by David Putnam

  I PARKED MY truck in the unsecured employee parking lot and ran for the side door of the Compton Courthouse. I pulled it open to the back stairs that led upward, then froze. Slowly, I turned around. My mind locking on to what I’d seen. In my haste, I’d subconsciously recognized some of the people rushing out the front door of the courthouse, heading to the jury-only parking area. They were from my courtroom. They were jurors for the trial of the murderer Louis Borkow.

  My first thought: the judge had been suspended pending judicial review. Suspended on allegations from yesterday’s little field trip to the rock house on Pearl. The place where he’d fired a shot through the roof. That meant my sergeant would be waiting on me for the same reason: suspension. With it I’d be restricted to my apartment during business hours while they investigated. If I wanted to go out, I’d have to call Internal Affairs Bureau—IAB—and ask permission. Damn. How would I be able to supervise Olivia?

  I ran up the stairs to the third floor, my breath coming hard when I got to the top. I really needed to start running on my next RDOs—regular days off. That was, if I still had a job.

  I hurried to my courtroom, stopped, and tried to catch my breath before entering. All the people in the halls waiting for their court cases stopped to look at me. I took in three long, slow breaths. I held the last one, and went through the double doors and on through the next set of double doors and into the courtroom.

  Esther, our court clerk, an older Hispanic woman with gray hair, looked up at me and didn’t smile.

  She always smiled.

  “What’s going on, Esther? Bad news?”

  She nodded. “You better take it up with the big boss.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  Now she smiled. “Now what in the world would you have to be worried about, Mr. Bruno Johnson?”

  I nodded toward the back chambers. “Unauthorized field trips, for one.”

  She laughed and pointed. “You better get back there. You don’t need to worry. He thinks you’re some kind of hero. He said he never had so much fun.”

  I followed orders and went through the door behind the judge’s podium to the hallway in back of the court used by inmates and jurors. I crossed the hall and knocked lightly on the door to the judge’s chambers, the same as I had done a thousand times in the last two years.

  The judge yelled a muffled, “Come.”

  I entered to find Borkow’s defense attorney, Gloria Bleeker, and Nicky Rivers, both standing, arms crossed, both mad as hell.

  I lifted my hands. “Okay, what’s going on?”

  Nicky walked by me with her back to everyone else. She mouthed the words, “Call me later.” She went out the door in a huff. I’d never seen her so angry. I hoped it wasn’t over our situation.

  Gloria Bleeker wore a tan and darker brown pattern skirt that matched her suit coat. She was thick-bodied with dark brown hair going gray. She’d been in the trenches a long time and it came out in her everyday cynical tone. She only stayed in the business because she liked the money.

  She wasn’t a bad person. I’d helped her out one night long ago, when I was a patrol deputy and pulled her over for drunk driving. I cut her a break and drove her home. Afterward, I asked her to take on a few cases pro bono, all of them kids who needed a break from a skewed justice system. We’d meet periodically for lunch, but we never discussed business.

  Gloria shrugged and headed out the same way Nicky had left. She’d cooled a little and didn’t seem as upset. “It’s a mistrial, buddy boy. Imagine that? Hooray for us, go team.”

  “A mistrial? Why? What happened?”

  Gloria didn’t stick around to explain and left it to Judge Connors to pass on the bad news. A mistrial was the best thing that could’ve happened to Borkow. Time was definitely not on his side when it came to the evidence and witness statements. In fact, he had nothing else to depend on except for the passage of time and the erosion of memories.

  With the mistrial, both sides would have to start all over picking a new jury, giving another opening argument, putting on the same witnesses—the whole shebang.

  When the door closed behind Gloria, I faced Judge Connors ready to be dressed down for my tardiness. He didn’t tolerate anyone being one minute late. I’d never given him reason to talk harshly until that moment. Maybe what Esther had said about yesterday would give me a little cover.

  He leaned back in his chair, one foot up on the desk, his black robe unbuttoned and hanging open. “I guess you haven’t turned on a radio or TV since last night, huh?”

  I shook my head. “No, sorry. I was a little busy.”

  He picked up the newspaper on his desk and tossed it closer. “Organized escape at your downtown jail. Guess who?”

  I reached for the paper. “You have got to be kidding me. Did they catch him yet?” The sheriff didn’t tolerate breaches in his security and took them as a personal affront to his integrity. In the past, when someone in his custody went “over the wall” or was accidentally released through a clerical error, he put everything on hold and threw every available resource at the problem until the violator was back in custody. Usually far worse for wear, booked in at the hospital ward, broken and bandaged. The violator had to be recaptured right away or there would be automatic lawsuits against the department for failure to protect in the crimes committed while the person was out on the lam.

  “Better read that,” Connors said. “Not one, but four got away. All of them in for murder. Can you believe it? Bad Day At Black Rock for the sheriff’s department. Just the one, though, ruined my damn trial. I can say it now. I was all ready to give that ol’ boy death row, for cutting that mother’s head off in front of that poor child. Giving him the needle would’ve done society a great service.”

  Connors tended to ramble on during moments or events over which he had little control.

  I looked up from the paper, a big ugly story, with the power drills and the semi-clad women fighting in the lobby as a distraction. They made the sheriff’s department look like a bunch of circus monkeys chasing around a greased football. There was going to be some real heat over this one. “This is really going to cause some problems.”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry for being late today, Your Honor.”

  “I guess it doesn’t really matter today, now does it? So you lucked out. Are you okay? You look ridden hard and put away wet. Girl problems, I’m guessing?”

  “Yes, but not the kind you’re referring to. I’m just a little tired.”

  “Olivia again?”

  I nodded and grew angry. Even though I called him my friend, I was uncomfortable with him knowing about my personal problems, my shortfalls when it came to fatherhood.

  Someone knocked on the chamber’s door. I headed toward it. “I guess I better get into my uniform.”

  “The trial’s trashed, so if you want to take a few days you can. We won’t go up on another one, not right away.”

  I put my hand on his door and half-turned. “Hey, that would be great. Thanks, Your Honor, I think I will.” With a couple of extra days off, I could keep a close eye on Olivia at a time when she needed me most.

  I opened the door. Lieutenant Robby Wicks from the violent crimes team stood there with a huge smile, one that didn’t bode well for me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  YEARS EARLIER, I’D been hand-picked by Lieutenant Robby Wicks for his newly formed violent crimes team. I didn’t have any detective experience and transferred right in from a patrol assignment at Lynwood Station in South Central Los Angeles. I took one of the four slots that the most experienced detectives from all over the county wanted and had lobbied for.

  I’d only met Robby once, when he had worked an overtime slot as a field sergeant at Lynwood Station. That particular hot summer night I tracked rusty water from a hit-and-run vehicle’s ruptured radiator. I did it running in the street following a leak as the water evaporated. The driver had hit and killed a young girl, a child in the crosswalk.
Hit her so hard the fabric of her dress imprinted in the chrome of the vehicle. When I finally caught up with the driver, I had to cross the line into the gray area of the law, and at the end of my boot I made the arrest. Robby was there to pull me off the suspect, who ended up hospitalized. Robby wrote what had happened to the suspect in his Use of Force report, “All the Injuries were sustained in the car accident.”

  Robby Wicks had seen something in my unwavering tenacity and call to violence that he liked. That episode had exposed something hidden in me that I did not like and that he had easily recognized.

  Together, for many years, we chased the most violent criminals Los Angeles County had to offer. It was as if Los Angeles was Robby Wicks’ own private game preserve. Working with Wicks called to mind the famous quote from Hemmingway that I’d seen posted over Blue’s desk in the narco office:

  There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never care for anything else thereafter.

  Wicks fell heavily into that category. What I feared most was that I did, too.

  When I made my decision to leave the team for a stable schedule in court services, Wicks did everything in his power to talk me out of it. In the end, we parted angry. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—understand my position—that my daughter had to come first. He could only see how I was messing with his uncompromised need to hunt. I had been his one and only hunting partner, someone he trusted implicitly to back his play no matter how far he ventured into the gray area of the law.

  Now he stood in front of me at Judge Connors’ chamber door, smiling like old times. He stuck his hand out. “Bruno, damn good to see you. You going to ask me in, or I gotta stand out here all day?” I hadn’t seen him in two years. He acted as if nothing had ever come between us. I took his hand and shook but didn’t return his smile. When the wolf knocks at your door, you don’t invite him in, you grab your gun. That wasn’t fair. I liked the man. I could even say, in a weird sort of way, loved him. I respected no man more, except my father, but for entirely different reasons.

  These weren’t my chambers to bar his entry. I didn’t have that authority. I stepped aside. He entered with a trailing whiff of cologne. He wore his usual brown polyester Western-cut suit. His expensive ostrich-skin cowboy boots had been replaced by highly polished black Wellingtons. He didn’t care that his Western garb was outdated. Over the years he’d developed a brand, the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he treated certain people, and stuck to it. He wanted everyone, the good guys and the bad guys, to instantly recognize him when he walked into a situation. He wore his hair short above his ears and long on top combed to the side like a kid in elementary school. He was anything but. He had intense brown eyes that bore into you even during the most innocuous conversations. Out of view and concealed in a hip holster, he carried a Colt .45 Combat Commander, a gun not approved by the department, a gun with the blood of many who’d gone up against him—gone up against us—the blood deeply engrained in the blue steel and stag grips.

  He moved right over to the desk, leaned in, and shook Judge Connors’ offered hand. “Good morning, Your Honor.” He sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk, something you didn’t do in Judge Connors’ chambers, not without being asked to first.

  Connors stared him down. “Cut the shit, Wicks. What do you want?” I marveled at the clash of two obstinate men who always had to have their way.

  I’d kept track of Wicks over the last two years with members from his team who came in to get search warrants or arrest warrants signed by the sympathetic Judge Connors. I was envious of their job, of their continued friendship with my old friend, envious of a job I wished like hell I had never left. They had intimated at first, and eventually came right out and said it, that Robby Wicks would do anything to get me back on the team. He had even asked them to test the water when they saw me, to see if I’d take an offer to return.

  Robby never came with them. He wouldn’t lower himself to that level of scut work or to swallow his pride and ask me to come back. In my mind, real or imagined, he wanted to avoid any kind of contact with me as it further impugned his reputation. No one left his team the way I did. You promoted out or you just didn’t leave. That’s the way he looked at it. Leaving to go to court services gave him a black eye, and he didn’t like it. Now he sat in my judge’s chambers, smug and arrogant as hell.

  I went over and stood at the side of the desk.

  Judge Connors said, “Bruno, weren’t you going to take some days off?”

  The question shook me out of my stunned reverie and cleared the way for logical thinking. I knew why Wicks had come. A blind man could’ve seen it. I didn’t take my eyes off Wicks. “I think my old supervisor has a favor to ask you, Your Honor. And before he does, I’d like to ask that you not grant that favor.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WICKS CHUCKLED AND raised his hands. “Bruno, Bruno, I have the milk of human kindness running through my veins. Why do you treat me like this?”

  “Go on, ask that favor you got in your pocket. Bring it out and take it for a walk. The answer is no. It’ll always be no and there’s nothing you can say that will change my mind. You’re wasting your time here, Lieutenant.” He still didn’t get it. Olivia needed me more now than ever.

  At the same time, I did want to go with him. I wanted back into the hunt that I craved every second of every day. I stood there torn, but resolved.

  “You got it all wrong, my fine Negro friend. The favor I have is something I’m doing for you.” He pointed at me.

  He didn’t mean anything by calling me a Negro. It was his way of trying to weasel back in with me. In the past, while men hunting the worst of the worst, we were equals. He’d call me names without vehemence or malice. It was more out of camaraderie that, as odd as it sounded, brought us closer together. I did the same. My usual for him was WT, White Trash.

  I looked at Connors. “Your Honor, tell him no and tell him to get the hell out of your chambers.”

  Wicks’ mouth dropped open, still smiling. I had to return the smile. I said, “No, this is not going to happen. Forget it.”

  Connors said, “I’m not the fool you two apparently think I am. Lieutenant Wicks here wants you back TDY, temporary duty, to chase these four violent shitasses who escaped from the jail. Am I right, Lieutenant?” Connors tapped the newspaper on his desk. “I’ll grant that request on one condition.”

  Wicks and I both quit staring at each other and looked at him. I said, “What?” I couldn’t believe he’d throw me under the bus that quick when he knew my situation at home. “No,” I said. “Not under any conditions.” I looked back at Wicks. “Get out.”

  Wicks didn’t lose his smile and patted his coat pocket. “You still haven’t asked what kind of favor I’m going to do for you. The favor I got right here in my pocket.”

  I didn’t like his smile; it scared the hell out of me.

  Wicks looked at the judge. “What condition?”

  “That the sheriff’s department reinstate my reserve status and allow me to join Bruno in this exciting endeavor.”

  Wicks again chuckled, his eyes going back to mine. “I think we can work that out. Get your gear, Bruno, we’re rollin’ out hot just like the good ol’ days.”

  “No, it’s not going to happen. I’m gonna take a few days off, family leave. The judge already approved it.”

  Wicks stuck his hand in his pocket. He and I had only been talking metaphorically about him having a favor hidden away. I held my breath. He was too smug, too confident. Somehow, he knew he had me over a barrel. He wouldn’t be there otherwise. I couldn’t figure out what he could possibly have that he was so sure would change my mind.

  His hand came out of his pocket.

  A cassette tape. An ordinary, innocuous cassette tape.

  My mind spun a thousand miles a minute. What could he have on the tape that would be a game changer? In the past he’d been known to do black-bag wir
etaps. Wiretaps without the sanction of the law. What had I been into that he could use to blackmail me? Ah shit, he knew about Nicky Rivers, our little thing. He knew who her husband was, the lieutenant at SEB. He had somehow obtained a tape of our clandestine tryst. The tryst that was, as of yet, an unconsummated affair.

  Connors leaned over, his hand extended. “What do you have there, Wicks? Give it to me. I have a recorder right here.”

  Wicks handed it to the judge.

  I tried to grab the cassette. “No.”

  The judge pulled it back quick. He chuckled. “Take it easy, Bruno, my man. We’re all friends here. It won’t hurt to take a listen. Shall we?”

  “Don’t do it, Your Honor. Please don’t.” Sweat broke out on my forehead not only for my situation but for the embarrassment of Nicky as well.

  He didn’t hesitate and stuck the cassette in the recorder on his desk, the one he used to dictate reports and memos for his secretary. Connors said, “Wicks wouldn’t dare bring something to me that would disparage your character. He knows how I feel about you. What he has here has to be something else entirely different, and I want to hear it.” He poised his finger over the button. “Wicks, you want to say something to set up what we are about to hear?”

  Wicks turned deadly serious. “My team was called in to assist on this escape. Everyone in the department has been put on notice that these mutts will be found and found quickly. We started looking into it late last night. This is a recording from Louis Borkow on a jail phone talking with a co-conspirator out on the street who we have yet to identify.”

  All phone calls in the jail are recorded as a matter of routine.

  Judge Connors pushed the play button.

  I immediately recognized Borkow’s voice. “I want you to do what we talked about.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do I need to spell it out for you?”

  “Naw, I think I got it. You want me to get Olivia Johnson over ta this house on Pearl.”

  My heart jumped up into my throat. A cold trickle of fear crawled up my back. Then it quickly shifted to anger. My back went stiff. I clenched my fists. I wanted to crush the life out of Borkow and would pay anything for that opportunity.