The Trials of Nikki Hill

by Christopher Darden; Dick Lochte

  Goodman wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t so sure about any of Morales’s fall-back plan.

  The original plan hadn’t been that great either, but at least they could have hung around the apartment until Rupert beeped his little brother. Sitting slumped in the canvas chair wasn’t doing his back much good, and the intense heat was baking him. In fact, he’d stopped sweating, which he thought was a symptom of dehydration. The gangstas in the house on the corner, the one belonging to Rupert and Fupdup’s auntie, weren’t showing any signs of leaving.

  If only Fupdup hadn’t unscrewed the bedpost and tried to brain Morales with it, forcing Morales to bang into the wall and smash the kid’s beeper, they could be relaxing with air-conditioning and a Corona.

  “I’m thirsty,” he complained.

  “There’s a mom-and-pop a couple blocks south got all the Cokes and beer you need. Big old honky like you never be noticed in the hood.”

  “There really a mom-and-pop around here?”

  “Sure. Over on Denker.”

  “How do you know this neighborhood so well?”

  Morales was using another of Leander’s peepholes. “My sister Pilar lived a couple blocks away,” he said.

  Goodman was surprised. “A Chicana lived in this neighborhood by herself?”

  “Not by herself. Pilar was a teacher, got assigned a school up on Western Avenue. She met this other teacher, black guy named Luther Bing. A little wimpy, but okay. Moved in with him.”

  “They don’t live here anymore?” Goodman asked.

  “They don’t live anywhere anymore,” Morales said, drawing back from his spy hole. “See, the Crazy Eights— not Rupert and his asshole buddies; this was some years ago—they didn’t exactly approve of mixed couples on their turf. So they tole Luther, he wants to eat tamales, he should go live in East L.A. Luther picked a real bad time to brave it out. He said they couldn’t chase him away. So they gutted him right on his front porch and went inside the house and raped and killed my sister.”

  Goodman stared at his partner.

  “There were eight of ’em,” Morales said. “Proud of what they did. Went around bragging about cleanin’ up the neighborhood. My brother officers did what they was supposed to and pulled ’em in. That fucker Thomas J. Gleason was head deputy D.A. then. He said there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction. There was never enough evidence, as far as Big Tom was concerned.

  “My ole man, he wouldn’t accept that. He kept pushing for somebody to do something. He found one piece of evidence, a neckerchief they traced to this prick who was called Lee-O. The old man was the kind of guy who never let up. Finally the cops went after Lee-O. He died before they could nail him.”

  “Died how?” Goodman asked.

  “Burned to death. Seven of ’em are dead. None by my hand, amigo. A couple OD’d, or maybe it was the Colombians sending a message to the Crazies that they were unhappy with their drug arrangement. One guy drowned. Another got shot in that big bank robbery in San Diego about six years ago. I don’t know ’bout the other, ’cept he not around anymore. Maybe dead. Maybe moved away.”

  He resumed his position at the peephole.

  Goodman was reeling: what must it have been like for his partner, being a cop and having to stand by while the punks who raped and—

  “They’re movin’,” Morales said, doing a fast duckwalk to the rear door.

  By the time he and Goodman had hopped into the cab of the truck, the black Chevy was nearly two blocks away. Morales stepped on the gas, smiling merrily. “We’re on ’em like white on rice.”

  The Chevy was tearing down Exposition Boulevard, heading east to the Harbor Freeway.

  Morales closed the gap a little. “Chevy look familiar, amigo?” he asked.

  There was something about it, Goodman thought.

  Morales brought it into focus for him. “On the day Arthur Lydon lost his guts to the pigeons, we went up to Maddie Gray’s house to see if he was there.”

  “Right,” Goodman said.

  “That Chevy,” Morales said as he moved the truck through the gathering traffic, “was coming down the hill from the Gray house when we were going up.”

  They entered the freeway and rolled north. The sun had set on the weekend, and several lanes of other motorists headed in the same direction, most of them thinking about dinner. Goodman was thinking about his partner, realizing how stupid it was to ever take anybody at face value.

  “They might be headin’ to your place,” Morales reported just before their truck dipped down the exit leading to the Hollywood Freeway.

  Headlights were blinking on as the Chevy barreled along. Goodman tried the radio. Cool jazz filled his head, each note as clear and precise as if the combo were in the truck with them. “Super-stereo,” Morales noted. “Say what you want about Leander, amigo, the man knows what he likes.”

  “Too bad he didn’t install a water fountain,” Goodman said.

  The Chevy left the freeway at Cahuenga and went south along that boulevard until Sunset, when it turned right. Dusk was rapidly segueing into night.

  “Heading to Willins’s office?” Goodman wondered.

  The Chevy made a right before that, at Sunset Plaza Drive.

  Goodman’s heart was racing. He began his calming exercises. It would take more than steady breathing to still his excitement.

  The Chevy was headed up the hill toward Jimmy Doyle’s villa.

  Morales downshifted and moved up the steep drive, catching the Chevy in his headlights as it kissed the curb and stopped. Passing by the black car, Goodman pushed his peripheral vision to the max, but still couldn’t make out its shadowy passengers. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why’d they park so far below Doyle’s place?”

  “Either he tole ’em he doan want a gangmobile parked in front of his house, or they payin’ a surprise visit.”

  He eased the truck to a stop above the villa and the two detectives got out. They walked down the twisting drive until they found a section of the road that allowed them full view of the house Doyle was renting. Goodman’s eyes were drawn to the sight of the Hollywood flats far below to their left, miles and miles of lights shimmering like zircons in the clear night.

  He shifted his focus to the villa, then past it, squinting down the drive. “You see the Chevy?” he asked.

  “Naw. Just one big shadow down there. You’d think these homeowners would spring for some streetlights.”

  They moved down until they were less than twenty yards from the villa. They could hear someone singing a cappella. Doyle. Wailing an Irish ditty about a politician named Dough-erty who won an election by a very large majority.

  Down the hill, car doors slammed.

  The detectives retreated from the villa into the shadows.

  Goodman saw the young men sauntering up the hill. Four of them were typical gangstas, but the one in front was a real style setter. No baggy pants for him. He wore his colors in the form of a bright orange jacket and pleated black trousers. He carried a long, flat leather case.

  When the group reached the villa, they spread out. Two explored the outer edges of the building, crawling over the waist-high wall and continuing toward the rear, where the structure cantilevered over the hill. While they skulked silently across the patio tiles, orange jacket and a sidekick strolled to the front door. The remaining gangsta took up a lookout position near the curb in front.

  The doorbell chimed. Doyle’s singing stopped briefly, then began again.

  Goodman shifted his position and was able to get an angle on the front door when it opened. The big vice cop, Lattimer, stood in the doorway. “Yeah?” he inquired of the two boys, his deep voice floating on the night.

  “You Mr. Doyle?” orange jacket asked politely.

  Lattimer stepped back out of Goodman’s line of sight. The detective could hear him shout, “You expecting anybody, Jimmy?”

  Orange jacket and his pal entered the villa. The pal closed the door.

  “If she’s a he
artless lady with raspberry-colored hair, send her up,” the detectives heard Doyle call out. He began to sing again. “Two by two, they marched into the dining hall. Young men and old men and girls who weren’t men at—”

  The singing ended abruptly with a sound resembling a cough and a gurgle.

  “Shit,” Goodman hissed and started forward.

  Morales moved more quickly and more gracefully.

  By the time the lookout heard the soft scrape of rubber sole to his right, the butt of Morales’s pistol was on its way to that sweet spot above his ear.

  Morales dragged the unconscious boy behind the waist-high wall while Goodman, his own gun drawn, circled the property to the left.

  The main patio at the rear of the villa was in darkness, but faint light spilled out of open doors over the pale pink flagstones. Just beyond the doors was a dining room. The light came from a stairwell against the far wall.

  Goodman, seeing no gangstas, slipped inside the villa, moving cautiously over the thick carpet toward the stairs. Conversation drifted down the stairwell. “. . . could cut your friend’s ear off,” a male voice was saying. “Better yet, I’m sorta fascinated by the idea of scalping someone. We could do that, to show you we mean business.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Doyle said, sounding surprisingly calm.

  Goodman felt something jab into his back. “Drop it, mother-fucker,” someone hissed.

  The detective didn’t hesitate. His gun hit the carpet without a sound.

  “Wassup down there?” the voice shouted from above.

  From behind Goodman, the gunman replied, “ ’S’okay, Rupert. We jus’ messin’ aroun’.”

  “Then stop it!”

  Goodman turned. The boy was at least a foot shorter than he, dressed in baggy black and orange, baseball cap backward on his head. He had a Colt .45 in his small hand, pointed at Goodman’s gut. Behind him, Morales’s gun was pressed against the top of his baseball cap, persuading the boy to lie to Rupert. Goodman took the Colt from the little gangsta’s fingers and picked up his own weapon from the carpet.

  “So we’re clear on the plan?” Rupert asked somebody upstairs.

  “By tomorrow evening, I’ll be long gone,” Doyle replied, sounding like he meant it. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me who sent you here. As a professional courtesy?”

  Morales grabbed his gangsta and shoved him up the stairwell past Goodman.

  They heard Rupert chuckle. “You’ve got brass, fatso.”

  “I’d just hate to think you and I might be working for the same folks and they picked this unfriendly way to cancel my contract.”

  “Guess that’s a mystery you’ll never solve.”

  Morales pushed the gangsta to the top of the stairs, using him as a shield. “Hey, everybody chill, huh?” Morales yelled.

  Goodman entered the scene with caution. One of the punks was sitting on a couch next to Lattimer, flash frozen with his pistol casually prodding the cop’s side. Lattimer had an unhealthy-looking lump on his chin and a lightning bolt of blood extending down from the left corner of his mouth.

  Doyle was standing at the foot of his bed, wearing only boxer shorts, black socks, and black wing tip shoes. His body was pale and puffy. A livid red welt extended from the bottom right of his jaw to his temple. He regarded Morales without expression.

  Next to him was the obvious leader of the gang, brandishing an outsize knife with a long blade that was sleek and smooth and gently curved. It must have been resting inside the leather case Goodman had seen the boy carrying, which now lay open on the bed. The boy suddenly pressed the blade to Doyle’s throat and said, “Another step, I’ll slice him clean.”

  “Rupert, you make my mouth water,” Morales told him.

  The boy with the knife looked confused. “You know me?”

  “I know shit when I see it.”

  “One’s missing,” Goodman said, walking past Morales, a gun in each hand. His weapon was pointed at Rupert, the banger’s Colt aimed in the general vicinity of the boy with Lattimer.

  “No,” Morales said. “I popped that one on the way in.”

  Goodman edged toward the boy on the couch, giving Rupert a wide berth.

  The boy watched him coming. He didn’t know what the hell to do. He looked to Rupert for some clue, but Rupert was having his own moment of indecision. Lattimer broke the ice by grabbing the boy’s gun and smacking the kid in the face with it. Blood gushed from the gangsta’s broken nose.

  As the vice cop drew back for another slam, Goodman said, “That’s enough,” pointing his guns at Lattimer now.

  The vice cop looked at him, amazed. “What?”

  “Hand over the weapon,” Goodman ordered.

  Lattimer snorted, hesitated, then presented the pistol to Goodman, grip first. “You gonna hear more about this,” he said.

  “Yeah, right,” Goodman said. “Like you’re gonna hear about swapping department secrets with the Irish tenor over there.”

  “I think we’re leaving now,” Rupert said, dragging Doyle a few feet toward the stairs. His blade nicked the short man’s throat and a line of red formed immediately.

  Without warning, Morales shoved his gangsta shield toward Rupert. His weapon now covered both of them.

  “You’re the one they call Crazy Cop,” Rupert said. Morales grinned. “I hope you’re not so crazy you force me to kill this guy.”

  “Do it,” Morales said. “I’m tired of waitin’.”

  At that moment Rupert realized it was no bluff. As far as Morales was concerned, his hostage was worthless. “Shit,” he said, and withdrew the blade from Doyle’s neck.

  “Drop the pigsticker, Rupert,” Morales commanded.

  Rupert raised the blade to his lips, kissed it, then turned and placed it in its case.

  Doyle drove his fist into the boy’s kidney. Rupert yelped and fell against the bed. Doyle straddled him, pounded his neck, and rode him to the carpet. He grabbed Rupert’s ear in his fist and twisted it. The boy howled. “Who sent you here, you little prick?”

  “Fuck you,” Rupert replied between screams.

  Doyle released his hold and stepped away. “Lovely city you guys got here,” he said to Goodman. He grabbed a Kleenex from the box at his bedside and began dabbing at the cut on his neck.

  Who do you think sent ’em?” Goodman asked.

  Doyle shrugged. “Could be anybody. There’s no loyalty anymore. Know who your only friends are, detective? The people you got the goods on. They respect you. Since they’ve got the goods on you, the feeling is mutual.”

  He moved to his dresser and started to reach into an open drawer.

  “Hold it,” Goodman ordered.

  Doyle held it. He shook his head. “Just gettin’ a shirt.”

  Goodman looked inside the drawer. He nodded and Doyle removed a starched white dress shirt. “It’s the New Wild West,” the Irishman said. “Everybody’s carrying. I don’t have a gun; I must be from out of town.”

  Morales ordered the three gangstas to eat the rug. When they were stretched out on the carpet, he patted them down, one by one, removing gravity knives, a palm-size Intratec 9 mm, pagers, thick rolls of cash, vials of cocaine.

  Lattimer, who’d been watching Morales with bored indifference, seemed surprised when Goodman said to him, “Now you.”

  “What?”

  “On the floor,” Goodman said, pointing his gun at the vice cop.

  Lattimer lowered himself in stages, cursing Goodman the whole time. The detective found no other weapon, but he did discover a computer disk in the vice cop’s jacket pocket. “What’s this?” Goodman asked.

  “Work.”

  “Good,” the detective said, slipping the disk into his pocket. “I’d like to see the kind of work you do.”

  Doyle had put on his pants. He pulled a suitcase from his closet and placed it on the bed. “The LAPD,” he said, shaking his head. “You think you got it all under control.”

  Goodman looked around th
e room. “Something we missed?”

  “Do the math, bucko,” Doyle said, pulling out handfuls of underwear and socks from the dresser. “Punks like these outnumber you two to one. They’re all armed with superknives or Uzis.” He dumped the clothing into the suitcase. “It takes eight or nine of you to subdue just one stoned asshole like Rodney King. And he didn’t even have a weapon. So do the fucking math.”

  He shoved more clothes into the suitcase.

  “You going somewhere?” Goodman asked.

  “Count on it. This town’s not for Jimmy Doyle.”

  “What’s the deal, Jimmy?” Goodman asked. “Who’d you piss off, besides me?”

  “Fuck if I know, Goodman. As you heard, young blood over there wasn’t in a name-dropping mood.”

  “You do anything to annoy your client?”

  “Dyana? She and I are solid.”

  “I meant her husband.”

  Doyle paused and gave it some thought. Then he shrugged and went back to his packing. “Who knows?” he said.

  “Him,” Goodman said, pointing to Rupert.

  “Yeah, well...”

  “Let’s load up and vamoose, huh?” Morales said.

  Goodman nodded. He spotted an empty cleaner’s shirt box on the floor and began dumping the weapons, beepers, money, and drugs into it.

  “Nice little haul, boys,” Doyle said with a smirk. “Drugs, cash. A useful little throw-down. Cop’s delight.”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Lattimer,” Goodman said.

  Morales grabbed the back of Rupert’s orange jacket and jerked him upright. The boy looked wobbly. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he said.

  “Like you got a choice,” Morales said, cackling. He pushed him toward the stairs.

  “You guys can’t just leave,” Doyle said. “There are bodies all over this place.”

  “Let your cop take care of it,” Goodman said. He took one of Doyle’s neatly folded handkerchiefs and used it to pick up the case containing Rupert’s long knife.