The Heartless

by David Putnam

  “What about ten grand? What if I can put ten grand in your hand, today?”

  Her face lit up. “Ten thousand for Little Genie, not Louis?”

  “Bruno?”

  “That’s right.”

  She licked her dry lips, her eyes alive with excitement. I had her on the hook. If I could prove we’d keep her safe while taking down Genie, at the same time holding that ten grand in her hand, she might go for Borkow for another ten.

  “Bruno,” Nicky said, “where the hell are you going to get ten thousand dollars? Our Victim’s Advocacy Department has more money than the sheriff’s department and no way would we cut loose with that kind of money.”

  I reached out and offered Twyla my hand. “You know me—my word is my bond. I’m offering you ten thousand dollars. Is it a deal?”

  “Show me the money, and we’ve got a deal.” She shook my hand.

  I said, “I just need to make a quick phone call.”

  Nicky muttered, “Sweet Jesus, Bruno, you’re going to take us all down.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  I HURRIED FROM the phone booth back to the truck parked on Wilmington Avenue, watching the traffic speed by, people in a hurry, everyone with somewhere to go. I got in the driver’s side and closed the door. Twyla had to scoot over closer to Nicky. The Ford Ranger didn’t leave a lot of room in between.

  “Well?” Nicky asked.

  “I made the call.”

  “You’re still not going to tell me who you called?”

  “No.”

  Twyla said, “I’m sensing something between you two. I did right from the gate. You have, like, history together, don’t you? I mean, like—” she held her arms out as if hugging an invisible lover, closed her eyes, and puckered her lips.

  Nicky and I both said, “No.”

  “Well, maybe you should.”

  I looked past Twyla. Nicky looked furious.

  “Let’s step out of the truck and discuss this,” I said.

  Nicky didn’t move. Her jaw muscles knitted as she stared out the windshield. I took the keys from the ignition, got out, and came around and opened her door. She still didn’t move.

  I put my hand on her arm. “Please?” I gently tugged on her arm and half-pulled her out of the truck, closed the door, and led her around to the back. I let the tailgate down and we sat.

  I said, “You and I both know this … this thing you’re angry about isn’t over what’s going on with the reward that I just drummed up.”

  “Oh, is that right? Now you’re a couples counselor?”

  “Are we a couple?”

  “Well, one of us thought we were headed in that direction. But I guess I was wrong.”

  I got up, stood in front of her, and took both of her hands in mine. I simply looked into her eyes.

  After a moment, she spoke, her voice husky. “Okay. Okay. I might have stretched the truth a little about … but I did it for the right reasons.”

  I said nothing.

  “You need to get over yourself, Mr. Bruno Johnson. I just said it’s not what you think at all.”

  I nodded.

  “Look, John knows it’s over. He’s known it’s been over for five or six months now, just like I told you. Just because I hadn’t moved out when I said I did, it doesn’t mean I lied to you.”

  I simply nodded.

  “I didn’t want to move out … because … because, well, I guess it came down to me being stubborn. I wanted him to move out and he wouldn’t—it sounds so damn juvenile.”

  I said, “You put me in a jam.”

  “You told Wicks that we’d been separated for six months. That’s what happened, wasn’t it? And he told you only a couple of days, right? That’s what happened back at my apartment. That’s why—”

  I put one finger on her lips.

  She nodded and pulled back a little. “I figured as much. Do you want me to tell you what happened? You want me to tell you all of it?”

  “Not my business.”

  “I want it to be your business. Will you hear me out, please? Just hear me out. I think you owe me that much.”

  “This isn’t the time or the place, especially with the deal we have going down.”

  “This will only take a second, and it’s important.”

  “All right. But we have a witness in the truck.” I pointed to Twyla who seemed to be paying us no attention.

  Nicky put her case together in her head just like a good prosecutor would, and she was one of the best. “Okay. Six months ago, before that, John and I grew apart. No one’s fault. Our careers left little time for the two of us. I’d been trying heavy-duty murder cases for five years that took every minute of my day and most of my nights. He got promoted and transferred to SEB. That took more of his time.

  “We talked it through one night. We both loved and cared for each other and didn’t want to give up. Everything seemed good for a while. I thought the train was back on the tracks just in time.”

  She paused. “It was an accident that I caught onto him. I’d picked up a case downtown at the Criminal Courts Building and ran into an old friend. We had lunch. She knew me by Rivers, didn’t know I’d married John Lau. We ran into three of her friends, younger, at lunch. One let it slip she was sleeping with a guy in the sheriff’s department named Lau. What were the odds? Lau isn’t a very common name, Bruno.”

  She looked at me for a reaction. I gave her nothing.

  “I excused myself, left the restaurant, and took a few days to think about it. I decided I wouldn’t give him the chance to deny it, because he would. So I did something I’m not proud of. I followed him in a rental car.”

  She nodded to herself as if giving approval. I reached over to put an arm around her. “It’s okay.”

  She shook her head and pulled back. “No, you have to hear this. I followed him to The North Woods Inn restaurant. I waited out in the parking lot. Finally, he came out holding her hand. The bastard never held my hand.”

  She shifted her voice to less personal. “They walked across the street to the hotel. The next day I told him to get the hell out. He didn’t even ask why. He just told me to kiss his ass, and that I had to leave. It was his house. That was six months ago.

  “We’ve slept in separate rooms since. So, you see, I didn’t really lie to you, I just didn’t tell you the whole truth. Can you forgive me that small transgression?”

  Twyla still sat in the cab of the truck watching us. Only a couple of minutes had passed.

  People in cars zipped by on Wilmington, their faces turned to see a black man standing in front of a nicely dressed white woman.

  It didn’t matter. I kissed her. Kissed her like I did in the bougainvillea bush. For one wonderful moment the kiss made all the silly mess about unwritten rules melt away and turn meaningless.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  JUDGE CONNORS DROVE up behind the Ford Ranger and tapped his horn interrupting our kiss. I pulled Nicky into one last hug and whispered, “Ah, shit.”

  She peeked over my shoulder. She stiffened. He expression turned proffesional. Back to the problem at hand. “The judge? Really, Bruno, you called the judge and didn’t warn me?”

  “It’s not illegal, is it?”

  “Don’t try and dodge the issue. And no, it’s not illegal, but it’s not exactly protocol either having a judge see the informant. That’s not the problem here. He saw us.”

  “If I could’ve pulled this off any other way, I would have. The judge insisted that he be present so who am I to say different? Conners isn’t like other judges.”

  “He won’t be able to preside over the case; he’ll have to conflict out.”

  “I don’t think he cares. I think he’s just bored with his job and wants a little excitement. He’s doing a good thing, helping to take a murderer off the street. And maybe even two.”

  Nicky put on a fake smile and waved to the judge as he got out of his Mercedes. “You okay, big guy?” she said out of the corner of her smile. />
  “Fine. I just wish you’d have told me that story back at your apartment when you were still naked.”

  “Not my fault. That’s a male thing. You guys always jump to the wrong conclusions when it comes to women. If you could just slow down long enough to ask, to talk about your skewed emotions, we could avoid messes like this. In fact, we’d probably have world peace.”

  Talking about emotions was the third rail of relationships and was to be avoided at all costs. I knew that much at least. “You think we could continue this later on?”

  “Damn straight we will.”

  I waved. “Hi, Your Honor.”

  Connors walked up smiling, wearing tweed pants, a long-sleeve shirt, and loafers. He looked like a lost literature professor from the sixties who had stopped for directions to Haight and Ashbury. He had a nervous tic and continually smoothed down his mustache with two fingers.

  He ducked a little and pointed toward the truck cab. “Is that the woman to whom I owe the money?” He patted the bulge of his shirt pocket where the top quarter of some U.S. currency peeked out.

  “Yes,” I said, glad that he chose to ignore what he’d seen when he pulled up.

  “Then I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Your Honor, that’s not a good idea. I appreciate you coming out and the money; it’s really going to help, but—”

  “My money, my game. And if you’re worried about it, don’t. I’ll indemnify the both of you from any future policy violations. This is all on me.” He looked around for a place. “Why don’t we step back to my car where there’s more room?”

  I looked at Nicky. She shrugged.

  I waved to Twyla. She got out and followed us to the Mercedes. We got in and closed the doors that vacuum-pressed our ears and muffled the outside sounds down to almost nothing. I sat in the back seat with Twyla. Nicky was in the front with Connors.

  “How’s this going to work, Bruno?” the judge asked.

  “Show her the money, so she knows we have it and that we’re not playing any games. Then—”

  “Hold on,” Twyla said. “I’m callin’ bullshit here.” She slapped her own hand. “I don’t just get to see it; I get the money now or I’m not talkin’, pure and simple.”

  The judge stared her down with his gray eyes. “Young lady, like he said, this is not a game. This is serious business.”

  “Don’t I know it. But I’m the one who has to look out for number one.” She hooked her thumb back toward herself. “No one else is going to do it.”

  “How is your daughter doing?” the judge asked. “Her name’s Chloe, right?”

  Judge Connors, before he moved up to trying homicides, worked in Family Court, the drudgery of all the courts, a place where nobody won, everyone lost. He also had a memory unsurpassed by anyone I’d ever met, except maybe my father. The freaky kind of memory.

  Confidence bled out of Twyla’s expression. She nodded and was at a loss for words.

  I said, “Give her the money. She’s staying with us until this thing is done. Right, Twyla?”

  She was staring at the judge. “You’re the one who took Chloe from me?”

  He nodded. “That’s right, but I also gave you visitations and promised to revisit your custody as soon as you got your life straightened out.”

  Twyla looked down at her hands and picked at her fingernails, already bitten down to the quick. “Chloe’s with some very nice foster parents now. She’s better off.” She looked up, angry. “If we’re going to do this, let’s get it done. I got places to go, people to see.”

  The judge pulled the sheaf of hundred-dollar bills from his shirt pocket. The paper bank wrapper read $10,000. He handed it to her.

  She started to thumb through the bills, her lips silently moving as she counted.

  The judge said, “Well, for crying out loud, what, you don’t trust us?”

  “It’s my life we’re talking here. I don’t trust anyone when it comes down to me.”

  We waited until she finished. She rolled the bills up and stuffed them into her front shorts pocket. The wad wouldn’t fit all the way and some peeked out.

  “Okay,” I said. “Where to?”

  “Little Genie, he isn’t far from his hood. He’s hidin’ up in the Jungle.”

  “The Jungle?” the judge asked.

  I said, “Crenshaw and what?”

  “Slauson, just off 10th.”

  The judge turned back around in the seat, started the Mercedes, put it in gear, and took off into the traffic on Wilmington. “Just tell me where to go. I’m not familiar with that area of Los Angeles.”

  Twyla muttered, “Most crackers aren’t.”

  I’d leave my truck and come back for it later.

  Nicky said, “What are we doing here, Bruno? You are going to call in for backup, right? You can’t take this guy down by yourself. In fact, I think for someone like this, protocol dictates that you call and put the SWAT team on standby.”

  Of course, she was right, but the SWAT team didn’t seem like the right fit at that moment. Not with their current commander. “We’re just going to peep it, get a feel for the location, and then I’ll call in the violent crimes team. That’s what they do. That’s what they’re good at. We’ll let Wicks handle it.”

  “Peep it, that’s all, Bruno. I’m serious. Then you’re going to call it in.”

  “That’s what I said. Take it easy. I can’t call in the violent crimes team until I have something to give them, an address, or at the very least a description of the place.”

  The judge looked at me in the rearview. For the first time in the two years I worked with him, I couldn’t read what he was thinking.

  There was no scenario in the world where I would get involved in a violent confrontation taking down an escaped fugitive wanted for murder. Not while driving around in a Mercedes with a judge, a deputy DA, and a sketchy informant. Even to me, it sounded like the start of an absurd joke.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER, the judge turned onto Slauson as the time approached nine in the morning. Go-to-work traffic still clogged the streets with people everywhere, in the convenience stores, the gas stations and coffee shops. All of them blacks, going about their daily routine unaware that there was a murderer of Genie’s caliber moving amongst them, on the loose, volatile, and absolutely deadly.

  I said to Twyla, “Okay, here we are. We’re coming up on 10th. What are we talking about here? Tell us where this place is. Point it out.”

  She leaned up, trying to see better, her chin a little higher in the air. She pointed. “Make a right. Right here. Yeah, yeah, down this street a little farther down.”

  “Where, Twyla? Describe it. We’re just going to drive by so you can point it out. Give me some notice. I don’t want to—”

  She slumped down in the seat. “Oh, dear Lord.” She put her hand over her face and tried to make herself small.

  The judge caught on and slowed to a crawl, then stopped completely.

  “Bruno?” Nicky said.

  All of those actions happened on the edge of my awareness. I had automatically slipped into hunter mode, my attention focused down range at some furtive movement that caught my eye.

  A male black adult, wearing an expensive black leather bomber jacket with the Raiders logo on the back, bebopped out of a wrought-iron gate headed for a Lexus parked on the street. He didn’t look like a murderer, or even a gangster hood. He looked like a regular guy going out to his car on his way to work at a small corporate office, the kind of place that stocks a full lunchroom, with bagels and poppy seed muffins and four kinds of coffee.

  Nicky followed my line of sight and turned in her seat. She saw the guy in the Raiders jacket. “Bruno, don’t you do it. You call it in, you hear me?”

  The judge said, “She’s right, kid, you need to call this in.”

  I said to Twyla, “Is that him?”

  She slid from the seat down to the floorboard at our feet, curling up into a tight li
ttle ball. “Twyla! Is that him?”

  She squeaked. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Just keep driving. Keep going. You can’t let him see me. He’ll kill us all. I’m tellin’ you right now, he’ll kill us all.”

  “He’s not going to see you, just stay down.” My hand automatically went to the door handle. I couldn’t let him go mobile; we’d have to find him all over again. I opened the door and popped out. As I did, I said, “Go to a phone and call 911.”

  The judge said, “Bruno, get back in this car, now.”

  I eased the door closed until it clicked. I reached under my truck driver shirt and pulled one of the .357s from my waistband. I held it down by my leg and walked casually along the street side of the cars parked on the curb, my focus on Genie.

  Working the violent crimes team for all those years, chasing murderous men who had no compunction whatsoever about killing another human, I couldn’t help but develop an unwanted taste for death, a big unhealthy dose of it. I hadn’t had that taste for more than two years. It returned now like an old friend, hot and metallic, fueling adrenaline that made my pulse pound in the back of my eyes.

  With each passing second, I moved closer to my target. Forty feet to go. Almost there. Thirty.

  He made it to the Lexus, key in hand, ready to open the driver’s door.

  In the movies or TV crime shows, the good guy always yells, “Stop, police,” or, “Freeze.” That stupid move always sparks a foot chase. High drama, for no valid purpose other than drama. That doesn’t happen in real life. In this part of the game you always try to get right up on the suspect before he realizes your intent. The goal is to get close enough to chunk him in the head with a blackjack, or as a last resort, club him with your gun.

  Genie was smiling, enjoying the day, when his instinct kicked in. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d caught my movement heading right toward him. He lost his smile when his head whipped around to look at me. The shift in expression changed his entire look. Now he projected the face of a cold-blooded murderer that matched what I had expected to come upon. His eyes dropped down to my hand with the gun held by my leg.