Bad Intent

by Wendy Hornsby

  For Alyson and Christopher Hornsby, fellow oarsmen on the long voyage.

  THANKS

  I am indebted to so many people. To begin with:

  Terry Baker, who offers succor and shares room service.

  Beth Caswell, the Frick to my Frack time and again on the rubber chicken circuit.

  Jan Burke, for whom there will always be a duck on my bike and Myers at my house (Sedona Sedona).

  And my editor, Jennifer Enderlin, who is both patient and wise.

  I can't forget Officer Doug Senecal, Metro Division, LAPD, who lent his handsome mug and impressive pecs to the Cause, as well as the ever-ready Dragnet.

  Thank you.

  A truth that's told with intent

  Beats all the lies you can invent.

  — WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

  “Auguries of Innocence”

  BAD INTENT

  Wendy Hornsby

  Chapter 1

  It ain’t none of my grandbaby’s fault. He’s a good, Jesus-lovin’ boy. Like I say, it ain’t his fault Kenny Jackson got hisself killed. You ax me, I say it’s the lying police should hang they heads for takin’ away the baby daddy, puttin’ him in that jail for his child’s whole damn life. What’s he suppose’ to do? Fourteen years my grandbaby daddy been in that jail, fourteen years for something he ain’t even done. You lock up an innocent man that way, who’s gonna see to it his boy come up right? He ain’t got no mother. He ain’t got no one but me. I tell you this, for damn sure I ain’t got no help from the lying mothuhfuckin’ poh-lice.

  Etta Harkness looked directly into the lens of my video camera, but she was playing to the crowd we drew, changing her answer to my question to please them, to feed their anger; the signs they carried said things like “No More Police Brutality” and “Justice for the Brother.”

  LAPD had the intersection beyond the courthouse cordoned off so that a few busloads of protestors couldn’t get to the demonstration that was massing in front of Parker Center, the city’s police administration building. Because of my camera, we drew the frustrated overflow unable to get past the corner. I didn’t know what the issue was, but the mood was easy to read and, I confess, had me worried about getting away intact. The weather didn’t help—it was over a hundred degrees and not yet noon.

  What Etta was saying was of no use to me, or to my documentary project: the question had been about how her grandson Tyrone, age fifteen, had managed to get himself charged with murder. But I let her run on, kept recording as she slipped into heavily accented ghetto-speak for the crowd, didn’t comment when she changed the story, transferred blame from her own broad shoulders to the police, because I wasn’t sure what the mob would do if I put my camera down.

  Just about the time the light flashed on, warning me my battery charge was low, the police let six or eight news vans through their barricade. The vans parked at the curb in front of the courthouse and began disgorging jeans-clad video crews and fully made-up on-camera talent. Our spectators were drawn away, magnetized by prime-time news possibilities.

  When they were gone, I turned off my camera and faced Etta without the lens as intermediary. “What was all that about?” I asked. “What happened to ‘the boy’s dad was a con and his mother was a junkie’?”

  “They was.” Etta had the grace to blush, a deep rose that glowed under her mocha-colored makeup. “But the police never helped me none.”

  “What about Officer Flint? You told me Officer Flint bailed out little Tyrone all the time.”

  “I didn’t mean him.” She touched a tissue to her sweaty upper lip. “It was them others.”

  “Right,” I said. If truth is beauty, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then I guess that, by extension, truth must also be a matter of personal preference. At any rate, a variable. “You want to go somewhere cool and have a soda before I walk you to the bus stop?”

  Etta dabbed at her temples. “I thought I might go on by the police station and see what’s happening. I don’t get downtown much.”

  “Suit yourself.” I handed her all the change I had in my pocket, for the bus. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Before she walked away toward the line of police in riot gear, she said, “Say hey to Officer Flint for me.”

  “Sure,” I said, but I thought it was about time for me to do more than say hey to the man.

  I had turned my life, and my fourteen-year-old daughter Casey’s life, upside down to be with Mike Flint. We had agreed, we would spend two and a half years together in L.A. while Mike finished his twenty-five years on the LAPD and pensioned out. I could do that time standing on my head, as long as it meant breakfast every morning with Mike. But Casey and I had been in town for almost a week, and the one person in this city of three million I had not seen much of was Mike Flint.

  I walked into the courthouse, stopped at the first pay phone, and dialed Mike’s office.

  “Homicide Specials.” A familiar voice. “Detective Merritt. Can I help you?”

  “Depends,” I said. “Can you sing all three verses of ‘You Are My Sunshine’?”

  Merritt laughed. “Hi, Maggie. Let me get Mike.”

  A pause, then, “Flint here.”

  “MacGowen here,” I said. “What did you do this time?”

  “Give me some choices.”

  “Look out your window. There are a few hundred demonstrators on your lawn. I thought you might be in trouble again.”

  “No more than usual. Do you have any clothes on?”

  “None.”

  “Damn, I wish I could walk out of this place right now.”

  “That’s why I called. I’m still downtown. Meet me for lunch.”

  “Sorry.” Mike’s baritone was deep, cranky. “I’m waiting for a warrant to come down.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Could get ugly. The witness I’ve been looking for? Neighbors saw her at her mother’s house this morning. The old lady won’t talk to me, but if she doesn’t decide to get helpful real soon, I’m gonna take my tire iron, rip the bars off her front door, and ramshack de’ place. As soon as I get the warrant.”

  “Give me an address, I’ll bring my cameras.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “You okay, big guy?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m just real tired of the way this goes down. No one wants to talk to me. The daughter saw a murder, for chrissake. All I want to do is bring her in, get her statement before the killer gets to her. I explained this to her mother, but do you think she’ll help me even if it means saving her own daughter? No way.”

  “Perspiration is coursing down between my pert breasts,” I said. “Forget the old lady.”

  Finally, he laughed. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “I will if I want to. Come out for an hour. The old lady will wait.”

  “Sorry, baby,” he said. “Listen, I located the people you need to talk to for your film. LaShonda DeBevis works for the L.A. County Library, the Lennox Branch. The last known address for Hanna Rhodes is her grandmother’s.” He gave me a number on Grape Street in Watts.

  “Forget Hanna,” I said. “I don’t have time to track her down.”

  “Trust me, she’s worth the effort,” he said. When Mike is sure about something, he can be very pushy about it. “If you want to talk to people who grew up in the projects, you can’t do better than LaShonda and Hanna. Just don’t tell anyone where you got the information. I can draw a two-day suspension for unauthorized use of the DMV files.”

  “Good. Take the two days and we’ll go lie on the beach.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “I tried,” I said, feeling let down. It was no big deal, I told myself. I really didn’t have an hour to spare, either. “Don’t hurt the old lady when you boot he
r door.”

  “Not if she gets out of the way.”

  I smiled at the image. “You sure talk tough for a guy with dimples.”

  “I don’t have dimples.”

  “Take a look in a rearview mirror.”

  He laughed. “I love you,” he said.

  “Sure,” I groused. “Sure.”

  “Maggie…” His voice trailed off, followed by a short thinking silence. “Screw it. Give me ten minutes. I’ll meet you by the coffee place down in the civic center mall.”

  The camera I held was heavy. Ten minutes didn’t give me time to put it away in my car. But I said, “I’ll be there waiting.”

  “Hold on. Merritt wants to talk to you.”

  Merritt came back on the line. “Maggie?”

  “What’s the word?”

  “I think I’ve got it.” He began to sing, “You are my sunshine…”

  Chapter 2

  Mike ran in an easy but determined lope. Past the line of speakers on the Parker Center lawn—“It’s time, Los Angeles, to demand justice, to demand accountability from those who abuse it”—down a gauntlet of picket signs and then through the cordon of riot-ready police, his marathoner legs pumping, silk tie flapping against his shoulder. People in his path, even the visibly angry ones, made way for him, stepped aside when they saw the big detective shield on his belt, the holstered automatic he held flat to his side. He wasn’t even breathing hard, but I was fairly gasping just watching him.

  I cannot explain the effect Mike Flint has on me, I only know its power. Way back when my parents still thought they should try to influence my choice of men, they would have warned me off Mike. I wouldn’t have listened to them any more than I listen to my friends who warn I should be more cautious.

  Mike was certainly nice to watch when he was in motion, a visual I wanted to keep. From my perch above the mall, next to the city’s official monstrosity, the Triforium, I taped his progress through the demonstrators.

  Mike has a long, slender, runner’s body, a craggy Bogart face, and prematurely snow-white hair. I would describe his looks as striking rather than gorgeous, unless we’re talking about Mike naked, in which case the latter definitely applies. Among all the detectives working homicide with the Los Angeles Police Department, Mike has the highest rate of spontaneous criminal confessions. I think the reason the bad guys spill it is because Mike can look and talk like everyone’s favorite Uncle Ned. When he wants to.

  Mike crossed First Street against the light and headed into the teeming human mass pouring into the underground mall, looking among them for me. I blew a modest ballpark earsplitter to get his attention, kept the camera on him until he came close enough to reach up and cover the lens with his hand.

  “You’re late,” I said as he aimed a damp kiss at my face. “I’d just about given up on you.”

  “Something came up. Let’s get out of this crowd.” He took my heavy camera under one arm and me under the other and, still in a hurry, impelled me upstairs against the downstream of foot traffic; the usual early lunch hour crush was made heavier by demonstrators seeking relief from the relentless, pounding heat.

  Without breaking stride, we went straight into the relative quiet of the Children’s Museum, through the gift shop and into a side exhibit area, stopped finally in front of a tall tinted window that overlooked the street and Parker Center below. Next to us there was a six-foot robot made entirely of plastic Lego blocks. Its recorded voice repeated at twenty-second intervals, “I contain eighty thousand Legos. You can build me at home.”

  I took Mike’s arm and watched him watch the demonstration. I recognized some of the speakers, the incumbent district attorney candidate and a ghetto preacher with political ambitions of his own among assorted movers and shakers.

  “What’s it all about?” I asked.

  “Bullshit variation on the usual. D.A.‘s pulled up an old case, wants to ride it into the hearts and minds of the voters. Let’s just hope he doesn’t start another riot.”

  Two grubby-faced tots stepped on my toes so they could get up close to Mike.

  “Is that a real gun, mister?” piped a little towhead about five years old with a big-eyed stare. “Are you going to rob us?”

  “No.” Mike drew back in mock offense. “I’m a cop.”

  “No you’re not, big fibber. Real cops wear a cop suit.”

  “This is my cop suit. See the badge?”

  I had to turn my head to cover my laughter. I didn’t want to embarrass the kid. His friend did the honors for me. He punched the towhead and whispered loud enough for the entire room to hear, “He’s a grandpa cop. That’s a grandpa cop suit. Ask him if he hits people.”

  “Only when I have to,” Mike said, laughing.

  An adult, properly chagrined, came and fetched her charges. “Sorry,” she said to Mike, and scooped the boys away, scolding them about speaking to strangers.

  I leaned against Mike’s hard shoulder. “Grandpa cop suit? I need to buy you a new tie, cupcake.”

  “Don’t bother. I have all the ties I need to get me through the next two years and five months.”

  Outside, a line of black and white cars with lights flashing drove up onto the Parker Center lawn and scattered the crowd that surged toward the building’s glass entrance. People ran like ants under a garden hose. I could see they were yelling and screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything except the happy little voices inside the museum. I was glad we were in out of the noise this time, away from the forward, panic-driven rush.

  “Tell me about this old case,” I said. “Seems to have struck a chord. You boys get caught beating someone again?”

  “Not even close.” Mike gave me his narrow, tough-guy gaze. “Just doing our job, putting a bad guy in jail. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what we did or didn’t do. The people want bread and circuses, and the D.A. is delivering. It’s as simple as that.”

  I said, “Uh huh.”

  I must have sounded more skeptical than supportive, because Mike sighed from some deep and angry place. He turned away from me to check the growing fracas outside. Mike, always so assertive, so know-it-all, seemed uncharacteristically burdened.

  “Tell me the truth,” I said. “It’s not simple this time, is it?”

  “No.” He tried to smile, but couldn’t make it stick. “Boss came to talk to me—that’s why I was so late getting out of the office. Looks like it might be my turn to take a shot.”

  “What did you do?” The words came out okay, though my chest felt too tight to breathe. Mike had told me enough war stories about the good old days on the force that I had some idea what the range of possibilities for getting in trouble was, and knowing that didn’t make me feel any better. I gripped his hand, felt him grip back. “Mike?”

  “I told you,” he said. “We were just doing our job: a clean collar, a good conviction. One more con off the street.”

  “There’s more to it than that or the D.A. wouldn’t be making an issue of it. Tell me about the case.”

  “I don’t remember all the details—first murder I worked when I made detective. Off-duty cop got shot during a routine robbery. We made a clean collar, got a good conviction. The D.A. can say anything he wants to about it, but he can’t change the facts.”

  “When was this?”

  “Michael was still in preschool.” He frowned while he calculated. “Fourteen, fifteen years ago.”

  “Police usually turn it on to find a cop killer,” I said. “So, what happened? You go overboard?”

  “It was nothing like that. Wyatt Johnson wasn’t killed because he was a cop. He was killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That makes a difference?”

  “Big difference. It was a routine street crime, and that’s how we handled it.”

  The question I didn’t ask was how they handled routine street crime fifteen years ago. I had heard plenty of stories about brawls and wild chases and had seen the old scars on Mike’s body. I knew f
ists and flashlight blows came under standard operating procedure in the days before the rhetoric of kinder and gentler was enforced. I could see Mike was worried. The big question I asked was, “What can happen to you?”

  “Nothing. The statute’s run out on anything actionable. All they can do is give some grief to everyone who worked the case. Won’t hurt anyone, but who needs it?” He looked down at me. “They can’t take my pension. Anything else? Who gives a fuck?”

  “Indeed,” I said.

  “Indeed,” he mocked. His pager beeped. “I have to get back. See you at home around five.”

  “You’ll be home?” I asked. “Should we be baking a cake with a file in it?”

  He backed up. “No. Jesus. I told you twice—it’s a piece-of-shit case. By tomorrow it will be a nonissue again.” Between waves of kids, we were alone for a moment, me, Mike, and the Lego robot. I took advantage of the pause in chaos to put my arms around Mike. I said, “I’m worried.”

  “Trust me, baby.” He kissed the back of my neck. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “I trust you, Mike. About as far as I can throw you.”

  Chapter 3

  It ain’t none of my grandbaby’s fault. He’s a good, Jesus-lovin’ boy. Like I say, it ain’t his fault Kenny Jackson got hisself killed.

  “Meet Miz Etta Harkness,” I said. “Age forty-five, grandmother of one, great-grandmother of two.”

  “She gives good sound bite, Maggie.” Ralph Faust, from the Los Angeles bureau of Satellite Network News, reached over and shut off my video player. We were in my newly rented office, the remains of lunch bagged and stashed under an end table. “Pathos, bathos, and a bleeped obscenity to hook the viewers as we segue into a commercial. I’ll give you a thousand for that half-minute of videotape.”

  I thought about the offer, low-ball, but within the standard range. Money wasn’t the issue here. As an independent filmmaker, I share film goodies all the time, now and then for no payment other than lunch or a favor I might want to redeem later. I hesitated because Ralph Faust was a shark and I had to think about the possibilities.