by Robert Crais
Pike said, "Cops."
The uniforms brought us through a heavy metal door and into a long sterile hall that held all the charm of a urinal in a men's room. There were little rooms on either side of the hall, and they put Pike into the first room and me into the second. The rooms sported the latest in interrogation-room technology with pus-yellow walls and water-stained acoustical ceilings and heavy-duty soundproofing so passing liberals couldn't hear the rubber hoses being worked. There was a small hardwood table in the center of the floor with a single straight-backed metal chair on either side of it. Someone had used a broken pencil to cut a message into the wall. In interrogation, no one can hear you scream. Cop, probably. Detainees weren't allowed pencils.
They kept me waiting for maybe an hour, then Micelli and a cop in a gray suit came in. The new cop was in his late forties and looked to be a detective lieutenant, probably working out of homicide. Micelli took the chair across the table from me and the guy in the suit leaned against the wall. Micelli said, "This conversation is being recorded. My name is Detective Micelli, and this is Lieutenant Stilwell." You see? "I'm going to ask you questions, and your answers will be used in court. You don't have to answer these questions, and if you want a lawyer, but can't afford one, we can arrange for a public defender. You want someone?"
"No."
Micelli nodded. "Okay."
"Did you call Poitras?"
Micelli leaned forward. "No one's calling anyone until we get through this."
Stilwell said, "How do you know Lou Poitras?"
Micelli waved his hand. "That doesn't mean shit. What's it matter?"
"I want to know."
I told him about me and Poitras.
"When I finish it," Stilwell said, "Okay, but what were you doing down here?"
"I got a tip that a REACT cop named Eric Dees is involved with a gangbanger named Akeem D'Muere and I'm trying to find out how."
Micelli grinned. Stilwell said, "You got proof?"
"A guy named Cool T gave me the tip. He was a friend of James Edward Washington. Washington is one of the dead guys."
Micelli said, "That's fuckin' convenient."
"Not for Washington."
Micelli said, "Yeah, well, we got a little tip, too. We got tipped that an asshole fitting your description and driving your car was down here trying to move a little Mexican brown to the natives. We got told that the deal was going down in an abandoned building off the tracks, and we went over there, and guess what?"
"Who gave you the tip, Micelli? Dees? One of the REACT guys?"
Micelli licked the corner of his mouth and didn't say anything.
I said, "Check it out. Twenty minutes ago I saw Akeem D'Muere put a gun to James Edward Washington's head and pull the trigger. I'm working for a woman named Jennifer Sheridan. Akeem D'Muere has a mad on for her, and he said that she's next."
Stilwell crossed his arms. "Two of the dead men found in the garage were named Wilson Lee Hayes and Derek La Verne Dupree. Both of these guys had a history of trafficking in narcotics. Maybe you were down here to meet them and the deal went bad. Maybe you and your buddy Pike tried to rip those guys off."
I spread my hands.
Micelli said, "You own a 1966 Corvette?" He gave me the license number.
"Yeah."
"How come there was a half kilo of crack in the trunk?"
"Akeem D'Muere's people put it there."
"They dumped eight thousand dollars' worth of dope, just to set you up?"
"I guess it was important to them."
"Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys buy and sell dope, they don't give it away. No profit in it."
"Maybe it wasn't theirs. Maybe Dees gave it to them. Maybe it came from the LAPD evidence room."
Micelli leaned forward across the table and gave me hard. "You're holding out for nothing. Your buddy's already come clean."
"Pike?"
Micelli nodded. "Yeah. He gave it to us. He said you guys found a connection for the dope. He said you thought you could turn the trick with the Eight-Deuce for a little extra cash. He said that after you set the deal you got the idea that you could just rip these guys off, then you'd have the cash and the dope. Maybe sell it three or four times. Really screw the niggers."
I gave them the laugh. "You guys are something, Micelli."
Stilwell said, "If you don't like our take on it, how about yours?"
I gave it to them. I told them about Mark Thurman and Eric Dees and Charles Lewis Washington. I described how I had been followed, and how Pike and I had boxed Riggens and Pinkworth at the Farmer's Market. I told them about Dees warning me off. I told them about the meeting with Cool T, and Cool T putting us onto the park, and the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys lying in wait for us. Micelli squirmed around while I said it, like maybe he was bored with the nonsense, but Stilwell listened without moving. When I ran out of gas, Stilwell fingered his tie and said, "So you're saying that Dees set you up to get you out of the way."
"Yeah."
"Why doesn't he just bump you?"
"Maybe he knows that if I get bumped, guys like Joe Pike and Lou Poitras will stay with it, and he doesn't want that. He wants to buy time so he can regain control of things."
"But if he gets you jugged, he's got to know you're going to talk. He's got to know we're going to call him in and ask him about it."
I said, "He knows I'm going to be sitting here with a guy like Micelli. He knows I can't prove anything and all it looks like is that I'm trying to dodge the charge. If I'm alive, he's still got control. If I'm dead, guys like Pike and Poitras are a couple of loose cannons."
Micelli made a big deal out of throwing up his hands. "He's wasting our time with this crap. I got tickets to the Dodgers tonight. I want to get there before the stretch."
I said, "Listen to me, Stilwell. D'Muere said he's going for the girl. Even if you guys don't buy my end of it, send a car around to her apartment. What's that cost you?"
Stilwell stared at me another couple of seconds. Then he pushed away from the wall. "Finish up, Paul." Then he left.
Micelli and I stayed in the interrogation room for another hour. I would go through my story and then Micelli would ask me who was my connection and how much was I going to get for the dope, as if I had said one story but he had heard another. Then he would have me go through my story again. The room was bugged and there were probably a couple of guys listening in. They would be taking notes and a tape recorder would be recording everything I said. They'd be looking for discrepancies and Micelli would be waiting for my body language to change. He'd keep trying out scenarios until I seemed comfortable with one, even if it was one I denied. Then he'd know he struck pay dirt. Of course, since I was telling the truth, he wasn't going to get the body language when and where he wanted it. He probably wasn't too concerned about that, though. Time was on his side. Maybe I shouldn't have passed on the lawyer.
After about the sixth time through, the door opened and Stilwell came back, only this time Eric Dees was with him. Micelli said, "You been listening to this stuff?"
Dees grinned. "Yeah. He's pretty good at this."
Stilwell said, "You arrest the guy in the park?"
Dees nodded. "Sure. He's down in cell four."
"Cole said you ripped off his dope."
Dees smiled wider. "Gathered it for evidence, duly logged and checked in."
I said, "Come off it, Stilwell. He knew I was going to be in here. He knew I was going to be talking."
Stilwell stayed with Dees. "You got anything going with these gangbangers?"
Dees spread his hands. "Trying to bust' m. Cole's been nosing around and I tried to warn him off and maybe that's when he got the idea for the dope deal. I don't know. I don't want to talk about an ongoing investigation in front of a suspected felon."
Stilwell said, "Sure."
Dees said, "I've got to go wrap it up with my guys. You need anything else?"
"That's it, Eric. Thanks."
Dees left w
ithout looking at me.
I said, "Jesus Christ, Stilwell, what do you expect him to say?"
"Just about what he said."
"Then what are you going to do about it?"
Stilwell grabbed my upper arm and lifted. "Book you on three murder counts and a dope. I think you're guilty as sin."
CHAPTER 20
They took me out into the detectives' squad room and began the booking process. Dees wasn't around, and after Micelli spoke to a couple of uniforms, he and Stilwell left.
The processing cops had already begun with Pike and, as I watched, they used paraffin on his hands and took his picture and fingerprinted him and asked him questions so that they could fill out their forms. He nodded once and I nodded back. It was strange to see him without the glasses. He seemed more vulnerable without them. Less inviolate. Maybe that's why he wears them.
They led Pike away through a hall toward the jail and then they started with me. A uniform cop named Mertz led me from station to station, first using the paraffin, then getting my prints, and then taking my picture. I crossed my eyes when they took the picture and the cop who worked the camera said, "No good, Mertz. He crossed his goddamned eyes."
Mertz picked up a baton and tapped it against his thigh. "Okay, smart ass. Cross'm again and I'll smack you so hard they'll stay crossed."
They took the picture again but this time I didn't cross them.
When Mertz was filling out my personal history form, I said, "When do I get a bail hearing?"
"Arraignment's tomorrow. One of the detectives ran over to the court to get a bail deviation so we could bind you over."
"Jesus Christ. Why?"
"You see the crowding down there? You're lucky they'll arraign you by next Monday."
When the processing was finished, Mertz turned me over to an older uniform with a head like a coyote squash and told him to take me to felony. The older uniform led me back along a hall to a row of four-by-eight-foot cages. Each cage had a seatless toilet and a sink and a couple of narrow bunks, and it smelled of disinfectant and urine and sweat, sort of like a poorly kept public men's room. "No place like home."
The older uniform nodded. Maybe to him it was home.
There were two black guys in the first cage, both of them sitting in the shadows of the lower bunk. They had been talking softly when we approached, but they stopped when we passed and watched us with yellow eyes. Once you were in the cells, there was no way to see who was in the next cell, and no way to reach through the bars and twist your arm around to touch someone in the next cell, even if someone in the next cell was reaching out to touch you. I said, "Which one's mine?"
The uniform stopped at the second cell, opened the gate, and took off my handcuffs. 'The presidential suite, of course."
I stepped in. A Hispanic guy in his early thirties was lying on the lower bunk with his face to the wall. He rolled over and squinted at me, and then he rolled back. The uniform closed the gate and locked it and said, "You wanna make a call?"
"Yeah."
He walked back down the hall and out the heavy door and was gone. One of the black guys in the cell next to me said something and the other laughed. Someone in one of the cells on the other side of me coughed. I could hear voices, but they sounded muted and far away. I said, "Joe."
Pike's voice came back. "Fourth cell."
Someone yelled, "I'm trying to sleep, goddamn it. Shut the fuck up." It was a big voice, loud and deep, and sounded as if it had come from a big man. It also sounded about as far away as Joe Pike.
I said, "D'Muere said he's going for Jennifer Sheridan."
Joe said, "Dees wouldn't go for that."
"Dees may not know. D'Muere wasn't talking like a guy who was worried about what Eric Dees thought."
The big voice yelled, "Goddamn it, I said shut up. I don't want to hear about your goddamn–" There was a sharp meat-on-meat sound and the voice stopped. Joe continued, "Maybe he isn't. Maybe things aren't the way we were told."
"You mean, maybe they aren't partners."
Pike said, "Maybe Dees is an employee. Maybe D'Muere is the power, and Eric Dees is just trying to control him. Maybe putting us in here is part of that."
"Only maybe while we're in, Jennifer Sheridan gets offed."
Pike said nothing.
The heavy door opened and the cop with a squash for a head came back pushing a phone that was bolted to a kind of a tripod thing on heavy rollers. The cop pushed it down to my cell and parked it close enough for me to reach the buttons. "You can make as many calls as you want, but it won't take long distance, okay?"
"Sure."
He went out and left the door ajar because of the phone cable.
I called Marty Beale's direct line and a male voice answered. It wasn't Marty, and it wasn't Jennifer Sheridan. "Watkins, Okum, & Beale. Mr. Beale's office."
"Jennifer Sheridan, please."
"She didn't come in today. May I take a message?"
"I'm a friend, and it's important that I speak with her. Do you know where I can reach her?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm an office temp, and I didn't get here until this afternoon."
"Do you know why she didn't come in?"
"I'm sorry, sir."
I hung up and called Jennifer Sheridan's apartment. On the third ring, the phone machine answered. After it beeped, I said, "It's Elvis. If you're there, pick up."
No one picked up.
I called Lou Poitras. A woman's voice answered, "Detectives."
"Lou Poitras, please."
"He's out. You want to leave a message?"
"How about Charlie Griggs?"
"Hold on." I heard her ask somebody in the background about Griggs. She came back on the line. "He's with Poitras. You want to leave a message or not?"
I hung up and leaned against the bars. "She didn't go to work and she's not at home."
Pike said, "Could mean anything."
"Sure." Mr. Optimism.
"We could help her."
"In here?"
Pike said, "No. Not in here."
"Joe." I knew what he was saying.
"Wait."
The cop with the squash head came back for the phone, and forty minutes after that the heavy door opened again and in came the squash with a Hispanic cop sporting a flattop crew cut. The squash said, "You guys are going to be bused over to County. On your feet."
You could hear the men in the cells coming off their bunks.
The squash went down the row, unlocking the doors and telling the prisoners to step out into the hall. When the squash got down to Pike's cell, he said, "What in hell happened to you?"
The big voice said, "Fell."
Pike was three people behind me.
They lined us up and led us down another corridor past the booking area. The young Hispanic cop brought up the rear.
We went down another short hall and then out into a kind of outdoor alcove. Two uniformed cops were walking into the maintenance building to our right and a third uniformed cop was coming in from the parking lot to our left. A large blue bus that said SHERIFF on the side was parked maybe sixty feet away. The deputy sheriff who drove the thing was talking to a guy in the maintenance building. The cop coming in from the parking lot walked past us and went inside through the same door that we had just come out of. The deputy sheriff yelled, "Hey, Volpe," and went into the maintenance building. Pike said, "Now," then stepped out of the line and launched a roundhouse kick into the side of the Hispanic cop's head. The Hispanic cop went down. The squash heard it and turned and I hit him two fast straight rights low on the jaw, and he went down, too. The Hispanic guy who had shared my cell said, "The fuck you guys doing?" He looked surprised.
The black guys with the yellow eyes held on to each other and smiled. The big guy who'd been with Pike said, "Fuckin' A," and ran to the right past the maintenance building and toward the front gate. Two other guys ran after him. Pike and I went to the left through the parking lot, keeping low and moving toward
the street. We made the fence just as men began shouting. The fence ran back along the side of the building past a trash dumpster and maybe half a dozen fifty-five-gallon oil drums and a motorcycle that looked like somebody's personal property. We followed the fence back toward the oil drums, and pretty soon we were on the side of the building. The shouts got louder and there were the sounds of men running, but all of the noise seemed behind us.
We went up onto an oil drum, chinned ourselves to the roof, then jumped back across the concertina wire to the street. A couple of kids on mountain bikes watched us with big eyes.
We walked toward the houses just as an alarm buzzer went off at the police station. An older man rocking on a porch stood and looked at us. "What's going on?"
I told him they were running tests.
We stayed on the street until he couldn't see us, and then we cut between two houses and started to run.
Somewhere behind us, there came the sound of sirens.
CHAPTER 21
We went over fences and through vegetable gardens and between houses. We checked each street for police, then crossed steadily and with purpose as if two white guys on foot were an everyday thing in South Central Los Angeles. Twice we had to pull back between houses for passing patrol units, and once we surprised an elderly woman coming out of her home with a basket of wet laundry. I gave her my best Dan Aykroyd. "Gas company. We've had reports of a leak." The Aykroyd works every time.
We moved from her yard to the next, and worked our way north.
More black-and-whites roared past, and sirens that started far away drew close. The cops knew that anybody who made it through the gates would be on foot, so they'd concentrate their people within a close radius. More and more cops would flood into the surrounding streets, and pretty soon there would be helicopters. Pike said, "We need wheels."
"They impounded my car. You think they got the Jeep?"
"I was on the next street over. They didn't know about it."
