by Miles Corwin
“Two guys just tried to kill me.”
She slumped onto the sofa, looking stunned.
“Well I’m one for two. One down. One to go.”
“What happened?”
Ignoring her question, I fell onto the sofa, kissing her, working my way down her neck to the base of her throat.
She looked up at me, eyes half closed. “I can see I’m not going to have to whup you upside the head tonight.”
“Somebody,” I said, “already did that for you.”
A gust of wind rustling the oleander woke me. I reached for the Beretta. Gripping the gun, I realized where I was. Nicole was asleep, her hair splayed on the pillow as if she was floating underwater. I checked the digital clock on the end table: 7:05.
I dressed quietly and left without waking her.
When I entered the squad room, a half dozen detectives immediately surrounded me and volunteered to search for Li’l Eight. They may not have liked me, but if someone tries to kill a cop, everyone closes ranks.
“I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but the Seventy-seventh is all over it. They’re hunting this guy down. But I’ll let you know if I need you.”
When I returned with a cup of coffee, Ortiz strolled over. “You need some backup, homes. Let me ride with you. At least until my partner gets back from vacation.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I need you.”
Ortiz stood up and straightened his pants. “Let me pass along some advice my grandfather used to give me. It’s an old Mexican saying: All your friends are false; all your enemies are real.”
I fingered Ortiz’s frayed, antiquated corduroy sports coat and said, “Let me pass along some advice my grandfather used to give me: Dress British, think Yiddish.”
When Ortiz walked off, chuckling, I called Captain Sippleman. “Any luck in tracking down Li’l Eight?”
“Jesus, Ash, it’s been less than twenty-four hours. Give us a chance.”
“When you get him into custody, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know as soon as possible.”
“Will do. And don’t worry. We’ll get him. I sent out a state-wide BOLO. And every watch commander on every shift in every division in the city knows we’re looking for this clown. As you know, a lot of these gangsters are too stupid to leave the ’hood. So I also gave an extra heads up to all our South Central patrol captains and Sheriff’s department stations on the southside. They know this guy’s a number one priority target.”
I wanted to track down Li’l Eight myself, stick the barrel of my gun in his face, and pull the fucking trigger. But after my last attempt at going solo and almost getting killed, I decided that the 77th had a better chance of finding him and taking him into custody, than I did. They had the patrol officers scouring South Central, the gang officers with snitches, the vice cops making arrests and picking up scuttlebutt on the street.
Duffy wandered by and sat on the edge of my desk. “Have you seen the paper this morning?”
I shook my head.
“The Times has got a big spread on the Wegland dirty cop story. TV and radio is chasing. I’ve been sending calls all morning to Press Relations.”
“They get any of it right?”
“About half right. Not much more you can do. Let Captain Sippleman do his thing. Fortunately, you’re back on call tonight, so the problem of you fucking around with the Patton case has been solved.”
“How about a few more days? There’re some things I need to do on Relovich because—”
“I already told you this is nonnegotiable,” Duffy said, walking off.
I closed my eyes and slumped at my desk, unable to concentrate, unable to keep my thoughts from drifting back to yesterday, when I was taped up, helpless, frightened. I blinked hard a few times. My head began to pound. I shook out three Tylenol and swallowed them with the dregs of my coffee.
A secretary from the captain’s office called out across the room, “Ash, a cop from Metro is on the line. I’m transferring him to you.”
I could feel my pulse quicken. Metro is the department’s elite patrol unit. Maybe one of the Metro guys scooped up Li’l Eight. I grabbed the phone.
“Detective Levine, this is Dan Freed from the Times. I’m doing a follow-up on the Relovich murder. I’m trying to get some background on Wegland and Patowski and put together—”
“What kind of shit are you trying to pull? You identified yourself as a Metro cop.”
“I never said I was a cop. I just said I was from Metro. I’m on the L.A. Times Metro staff.”
“Don’t play dumb. That’s a bullshit con job and you know it. Call Press Relations,” I said, slamming down the phone.
When I returned to my loft that evening, I was in a nasty mood. I popped open a beer and collapsed on the overstuffed chair by the window. The sun was red and low on the horizon, seeping through the venetian blinds and casting stripes on the polished concrete floor. I drank another beer, stared into space, and angrily thought about how Rip and Li’l Eight had humiliated me.
I fell asleep in the chair, and when I awoke, I checked my digital alarm clock: 6:10. Sitting up, I grabbed my remote control, flipped on ESPN, and distractedly watched a darts tournament, feeling dazed and half-asleep. After staring at the screen for about fifteen minutes, I spotted on top of the television the DVD of the Bae Soo Sung robbery-murder that Tommy Pardo had given me. I had seen it before, but the last time was almost a year ago, so I decided to watch it again.
I slipped the disk into the DVD player and studied the soundless black-and-white security video of a stocky guy in a baggy T-shirt wearing a Shrek mask and black gloves who burst through the front door waving a pistol. Sung raised his hands above his head and stepped away from the counter. Shrek yelled something to Sung. Sung nodded and waved his palms, as if to placate Shrek. He stuffed the bills from the register into a paper bag. Shrek grabbed the bag and headed for the door. But instead of walking out, he spun around, extended the barrel toward Sung. That terrified expression in Sung’s eyes had haunted me since I had first seen it: in an instant he knew he had only a few seconds left to live; he knew he’d never see his wife and children again. Shrek pulled the trigger. A dark rosette burst from Sung’s chest, and he fell to the ground.
For the next twenty minutes, I rewound and played the tape several times, but I didn’t see anything that I hadn’t spotted before. I padded off to the kitchen, made myself a cup of coffee, and brought it back to my bed. Sipping the coffee, sitting on the edge of the bed, I played the tape again. When Shrek grabbed the bag of cash with his left hand, I dropped my cup, spilling the coffee on my bed.
Staring at the screen, I was unable to move. I could hear a loud rushing noise, like the roar of the surf. I felt disoriented, like I was underwater, unsure of where the surface was, not knowing whether to swim up or down.
I jumped to my feet and shouted, “Damn! That’s it!”
Quickly rewinding the tape, I froze the image of Shrek grabbing the bag. I crouched a few inches from the television and studied the screen.
When Shrek had entered the store, his left hand was in his pocket. He only removed it to grab the cash bag. In that split second when he pulled his hand out of the pocket and gripped the cash bag I saw something that stunned me.
Two fingers of the left glove flapped a bit, as if there was nothing inside.
The shooter was missing two fingers—his ring finger and the pinkie.
I knew someone missing two fingers. He’d planned to rape me and kill me.
Lil’ Eight.
CHAPTER 38
I waited until eight and called Captain Daryl Sippleman, who was coordinating the search for Li’l Eight. I didn’t want to tip him off about my discovery; I just wanted to know if he was close to arresting Li’l Eight.
“Sorry, Ash, no luck yet,” he said. “But I did bust that woman who set you up.”
“Where they holding her?”
“She’s at the jail over at Sev
enty-seventh. And don’t worry about Li’l Eight. It’s supposed to heat up over the next few days. The natives will be restless, and they’ll all be out on the streets. We’ll get him.”
“I don’t like the idea of this guy still roaming around.”
“Neither do I,” Sippleman said. “We’ll scoop up his ass. Don’t worry.”
But I was worried. And I wasn’t going to wait around to see when—or if—Sippleman would finally find Li’l Eight. Sippleman had his chance. Now I was going to track him down using my own methods.
I showered, dressed, and headed down to the 77th Division. After parking in back, I hustled over to where they kept the female prisoners. I told the jailer to bring out the woman who’d set me up.
A few minutes later, she shuffled into the interview room, wearing a frayed yellow housedress. When she saw me she shouted, “All because of you that I’m here.”
“No. It’s all because of you. Remember when you told me where I could find Rip? Well, when I got there he tried to kill me. And he was almost able to do it because he knew I was coming. And he knew I was coming because you warned him. That’s why you were arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. That’s why you won’t see the sun shine for the next twenty years.”
She buried her face in her palms. After I let her cry for a few minutes, I said, “There might be a way for me to help you.”
She lifted her head and looked up at me, eyes red and tear-stained. “How?”
“I’ve got to find Li’l Eight. You let me know where I can find him, and I’ll talk to the DA for you. He might cut your sentence.”
“How can I find him from the jailhouse?”
“Follow me.”
I led her down a narrow hallway that smelled of disinfectant to the small windowless sergeant’s office, which was empty. “Sit,” I ordered, pointing to the chair behind the desk.
I handed her a pen and pad, pointed to the phone, and said, “Get me an address.”
During the next fifteen minutes she made a series of calls, the phone jammed between her ear and the crook of her neck, her voice muffled. After slamming the receiver down on the hook, she glared at me and jabbed her finger on a number she’d scrawled on the paper.
“There’s the address right there. You put it out that I tell you where he stayin’, I dead. You understand?”
I grabbed the piece of paper and said, “If he knows I’m coming, you’ll never get out of here. You’ll never see your kids again. You understand?”
After leading her back to the interview room, I left for a moment to tell the jailer not to let the woman make any phone calls for the next twenty-four hours. When I returned, I said, “I want to ask you something else before I leave. You know Li’l Eight?”
“I seen him around a few time.”
“You know anything about a market shooting he was involved in?”
“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“You ever hear of a woman named Latisha Patton?”
She crossed her legs. “I heard of her.”
“What did you hear?”
“I heard she a snitch.”
My mouth went dry. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“It was out on the street.”
“How’d it get out on the street?”
She jiggled a foot and said, “Will it help my case if I tell you?”
I slammed my fist on the metal table. “Where’d that information come from?” I shouted.
She glanced at me with distaste, pursing her lips as if she had just sucked a lemon. “A girl from ’round here, named Rhonda Davis, her sister work at your po-lice headquarters downtown. She a secretary. She work with all the kiddie cops.”
“Juvenile?”
“Yeah. That’s it. Well, she gettin’ down with one of your big shot cops there. A guy she call the Big Leprechaun. Rhonda’s sister hear it from him.”
As I walked back to my car, I was so stunned I had trouble walking. I tried to sort out what I had just heard, but I still couldn’t believe it. I took a few deep breaths, slowly exhaling.
I called Ortiz at the station. I tried to speak, but my mouth was too dry. Finally, I managed to croak, “Meet me on Second Street behind PAB.”
I pulled up at the curb and motioned for Ortiz to get in the car. I filled him in on what the woman told me.
“You sure she was talking about Duffy?” Ortiz said.
“I’m sure. That’s what the gangsters used to call him when he worked South Bureau Homicide.”
“What the fuck was he thinking?” Ortiz said.
“I heard Duffy was banging some twenty-two-year-old black secretary who works in juvenile, but I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to actually talk to her about a case. He must have been on one of his fucking benders.”
“When he’s on one of those, he gets all drunked up and runs his mouth. What a stupid motherfucker. This is your case, Ash. It’s your call. What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to drive out to this address,” I said, waving the piece of paper the woman gave me. “I’m going to bust Li’l Eight. Then I’m going to front Duffy.”
I shook out three Tylenol, swallowed them with a swig of warm water from a bottle in the backseat, and stared through the windshield, my head swirling with thoughts of Latisha, how I had convinced her to talk to me; how I had tried to protect her; how we’d awake in the morning, her head on my chest, our legs entwined; how I had found her sprawled out on a street corner, half her head blown off. I thought about the hellish past year. I had been so consumed with anguish, so tormented; I had blamed myself for her death and I had suffered grievously. Every single day. And then this. The anger would come later, I knew. Now, I was in a daze.
“You want me to drive?” Ortiz asked.
I slipped the key into the ignition and started the car.
“You okay?”
I gripped the wheel tightly, drove off, and didn’t answer.
“For what it’s worth, that bitch in juvenile got canned a few months ago. She got caught snooping into some department databases.”
Pulling off Crenshaw, I headed up to The Jungle, a run-down South L.A. neighborhood crammed with seedy two-unit apartment buildings. Residents originally gave the neighborhood its nickname because of the lush tropical landscaping—fan palms, banana plants, begonias, enormous birds of paradise—that surrounded the buildings. But soon the name took on a more menacing meaning when the neighborhood began to deteriorate. Rival gangs shot it out on the streets, dealers peddled crack in the alleys, and the shoddily built apartments fell into disrepair.
I pulled up in front of the apartment where Li’l Eight was staying, we climbed the steps to the second floor, and rang the bell. When no one answered, Ortiz and I peered into a few side windows and determined nobody was home.
I returned to my car, and parked down the street, far enough away so Li’l Eight couldn’t spot us, but close enough so I could keep an eye on the front door. After two hours of silence, Ortiz said, “You’re great fucking company.”
“Sorry. This Duffy thing’s got me turned around.”
“Why don’t we call in this address to SIS and let them sit on the apartment. They can bring Li’l Eight in for us.”
“I don’t want to interview Li’l Eight at the station. I want to talk to him right here. I’ve got a creative interviewing approach in mind for him.”
“Just don’t be so creative that they fire your ass.”
I turned toward Ortiz. “This was never just a homicide investigation. The stakes were always high for me. Now they’re higher. I’ve got to take care of it in my own way.”
Ortiz nodded. “I understand.”
After two more hours of waiting, I said, “Let’s meet downtown tomorrow morning at five and then hit him up. We should catch him in bed then.”
“You got it.”
I drove back to PAB, and we headed up to the squad room
. Now was the time to confront Duffy.
CHAPTER 39
Duffy was in his office, hunched over a computer, typing furiously. I entered without knocking and sat down.
He pushed away from his desk, twirled his chair toward me and, with a theatrical motion, checked his watch. “It’s almost two. Where the hell you been?”
“I just figured out something.”
“What’s that.”
“That you suspended me last year because you were trying to get me to quit.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. You didn’t contact me this past year because you didn’t want me to come back.”
“Ash,” he said, his voice softening, “when you were just a kid on patrol, I pulled you off the street and brought you into homicide as a trainee. I shepherded you through and made sure you made detective. I was there when you got your shield. I brought you to Felony Special. We go too far back for you to come up with some crazy-ass conspiracy theory about me.”
Thinking back to all those years with Duffy, how I had trusted him, looked up to him, worked so hard for him to curry his approval, I felt betrayed and began to choke up. I couldn’t get any words out, so I just swallowed hard and shook my head.
“You’re paranoid,” he said.
I leaned forward and studied his face. “I know you were banging that secretary in juvenile. I know you told her that Latisha Patton was cooperating with me. I know she put the word out on the street that Latisha was a snitch. And I know, now, that’s why Latisha was shot.”
Duffy gripped his desk, kneading the edges. “That cunt’s a liar.”
“I didn’t hear it from her. I did my own investigation.”
Duffy’s hands fell limply to his sides.
“After I was suspended last year, you didn’t want me to come back because you were afraid I might stumble onto the truth. You figured you were home free when I quit. Then you heard that I started nosing around the case, that Latisha’s daughter complained, that the I.A. lieutenant warned me off. You thought I’d keep picking at the case. So you decided the best way to derail me was to hire me back on the job, where you could keep an eye on me and load me up with cases so I’d be too busy to chase the Patton case. You were trying to figure out how to get me back when the Relovich homicide landed on your desk. You used the case to manipulate Grazzo into asking for me, making him think it was his idea.”
