Kind of Blue

by Miles Corwin

  He stared straight ahead, frozen, not even blinking

  “Don’t bother trying to weasel out of all this. I know it’s true. You know it’s true.”

  He leaned over and closed the blinds in his office. Raising both palms he said, “This is the God’s honest—” He stopped in mid-sentence and abruptly dropped his palms to his lap.

  “Let’s stop shoveling the shit,” I said.

  His face was contorted, as if he was struggling with an emotion that was somewhere between anger and anguish.

  “God, I’m a stupid motherfucker. Worst mistake of my life. Damn, Ash. You know how often I wished I’d never got involved with that whore? Every fucking day for the past year.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve gone through,” I said softly.

  Duffy bowed his head. “That’s what’s made it so hard,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “You can fuck anyone you want. But why did you have to tell her about Latisha? I just don’t understand that.”

  He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and emitted a phlegmy cough. “We were out drinking one night. Christ, I’d downed so many I can’t even remember where we were or when. I don’t even remember talking to her about the case. It was a total fucking blackout.”

  “You’re pathetic.”

  “That’s not an excuse, I know. But that’s the truth. The next morning she brought up Patton’s name. I realized then that I’d totally fucking blown it. I tried to piss backward. But it was too late.”

  “But why?”

  He shook his head, frowning. “I guess I was telling her about some of the cases we were working, trying to impress her, an old man with a hard on for a young babe. She hung on my every word, and I kept gabbing.” He slammed a palm on the blotter, the tears spraying the edges of the desk. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

  Watching Duffy sputter out an explanation, I felt an intense hatred for him. I wanted to grab him by the throat and smash that self-pitying look off his face. “What a prick you are. You just let me take the fucking fall. You took the easy way out. And, to be perfectly safe, you sent the case back down to South Bureau. You figured those guys are so overwhelmed, so overworked, they’d never have time to get to the truth. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with me or the case. You were just praying I’d never put it all together.”

  Duffy unclipped his badge from his belt and dropped it on his desk. “You want my badge, Ash, you can have it. I mean it. You can tell Grazzo right now about all this. I won’t dispute it. I got twenty-three years in. I don’t deserve a twenty-fourth.”

  Reaching over, I picked up the badge and walked to the door. I knew Duffy. He always liked to make the grand gesture. At the time he made a dramatic pronouncement, he usually believed it. Later, however, he invariably recanted.

  I tossed the badge on the floor and walked out of the squad room.

  CHAPTER 40

  As I walked through the dim parking lot, I could feel my anger settling and mutating into a profound sadness. I didn’t have the luxury to wallow in how Duffy fucked me over, however, because I had to focus on Li’l Eight. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning to sit on his apartment. And I decided that I wasn’t going to call Ortiz. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do when I confronted Li’l Eight, but I knew I wasn’t going to adhere to LAPD interrogation regulations. This case was personal for me, but it wasn’t personal for Ortiz. I was willing to get fired over how I sweated Li’l Eight; I wasn’t willing to risk Ortiz’s job.

  I drove out to The Jungle, parked down the street, and opened my trunk. From a metal toolbox, I removed a small silencer that I had confiscated from a Belizian cocaine dealer and slipped it into my coat pocket. Light-stepping it to the building, I climbed up the stairs to Li’l Eight’s apartment on the second floor, looked in the windows, and determined no one was home. So I returned to my car, kept my eye on the front door, and waited.

  I was jittery, nervously tapping my fingernails on the dash, but the longer I waited, the more I thought about Li’l Eight, the angrier I became. When I had first joined the LAPD, there seemed to be a code that criminals followed. If you held up a market and the clerk gave you the cash—you didn’t shoot him simply as an afterthought. If you knew a witness was going to cooperate with detectives, you threatened him first and persuaded him not to cooperate—you didn’t just blast him. If a detective came to arrest you, you’d probably run and maybe even shoot it out—you’d never tie him up and debase and assassinate him. I may not have liked some of the old-time crooks I had arrested as a young patrolman, but I realized now that many of them at least pulled their heists with a degree of professionalism, getting in and out of jobs quickly, with no violence. Li’l Eight symbolized to me the new breed of criminal. Since he’d decided to violate the code of street poker, I decided I wouldn’t simply call him. I would raise the stakes.

  At dusk, I drove off to a gas station to take a piss. When I returned, the fog had rolled in, so there wasn’t much of a sunset, just a gradual darkening as light seeped from the veil of gray on the western horizon. At eight, I thought I saw someone enter the apartment. I climbed out of my car, but slowly crawled back in when I realized it was the apartment next door. A half hour later, I almost dozed off, so I opened all the windows and took a few deep breaths. The fog had misted up my windshield, limiting my visibility, so I kept my windshield wipers running.

  Shortly after nine, I spotted a stocky black kid with a goatee, who was wearing a baggy, white T-shirt, approach the apartment. Jumping out of the car, I hustled down the sidewalk for a better look. It was Li’l Eight. As he began to climb the steps, clutching a key ring in his right hand, I slipped up behind him, stuck the Beretta in his back and said, “Put the key in the lock nice and easy.”

  When he reached into his coat pocket, I jammed the gun in his back and said, “Hands out where I can see them.”

  He opened the front door and I followed him inside.

  “Surprised to see me?”

  He gave me a contemptuous look.

  “Sit down.”

  He held his wrists out toward me. “You might as well cuff me right now and take me downtown. ‘Cause I ain’t sayin’ shit till I see my lawyer.”

  I took a step forward and lifted up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. And there it was on his upper arm: The big CK tattoo with the C crossed out.

  I was so enraged, Li’l Eight faded into an amorphous blur. I wanted to jam the Beretta into his mouth and blow the back of his head off.

  He stood up, looked at me with a half smile, and muttered so softly I could barely hear, “Shoulda finished you off when I had the chance, punk-ass bitch.”

  I slammed him on the side of his head with the barrel of my gun. He fell to his knees, wiped the blood off, and looked up at me with a smirk of superiority. “No beat down gonna make me change my mind. Nothin’ you can do to make me talk.”

  I gripped my gun tightly and said, “You’re going to tell me all about how you killed that Korean liquor store owner and you’re going to tell me all about Latisha Patton.”

  I thought of my old guru, Bud Carducci, and how he used to persuade recalcitrant suspects to talk. He’d figure out what they were most afraid of, then exploit that fear.

  “Start talking—Li’l Seven.”

  He shook his head. “That ain’t my name.”

  “I screwed the silencer onto the Beretta’s barrel, reached over and grabbed Li’l Eight’s right wrist. I jammed the muzzle on the tip of his pinkie fingernail and pulled the trigger, spraying tissue and nail fragments over the front of his shirt.

  He let out a strangled scream and flopped on the carpet like a landed fish, jerking his hand spasmodically.

  “It will be if I have to pull the trigger again.”

  “Mother fucker!” he howled.

  I grabbed a towel from the kitchen and tossed it to him.

  He wrapped his finger and fell onto the chair, writhing and yelping.

  “You going to tell me?�
�� I asked.

  He looked up at me—blinking hard, lips quivering—and said, “Don’t know about no Korean and no lady named Tisha.”

  “I just took the tip off. But next time, I’ll blow the whole pinkie off. Then I’m going for the ring finger and the index finger and the thumb. So you either tell me what I want to know, or I’ll keep blasting.”

  He shook his head.

  I wrestled his right hand out of the towel, stuck the muzzle just below his pinkie, and said, “You want to be known as Li’l Seven?”

  “No!” he screamed. Reaching for the towel, he wrapped his right hand. “You crazy!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “So you better start talking.”

  “Just keep that piece away from my hand,” he shouted.

  I pointed to the chair. “Get off the floor and sit down.”

  He crawled to his feet and teetered onto the chair, his chest heaving with staccato coughs.

  “You robbed that Korean market on south Figueroa, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yeah, I robbed it.”

  “Why’d you shoot the Korean guy behind the counter?”

  He looked down at the towel, now soaked in blood, and shook his head.

  I jabbed my gun toward the towel.

  “I don’t like slopes.”

  “That’s it? That’s why you shot him?”

  “Didn’t want to leave no wits.”

  “But you were wearing a mask. He couldn’t identify you.”

  He mumbled a reply, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  “What was that?” I shouted.

  “I’d been in there before, buying shit and casing the place,” he said through gritted teeth. “Maybe he could’ve recognized my voice or IDed me later on. I didn’t want to take no chance.”

  “Why’d you pick that place? It’s a ways from your ‘hood.”

  “When I was in the joint, met a homeboy from that ‘hood. Said the slope kept a lot of cash in his register. I remembered that. When I got out, I went after it.”

  “You killed Latisha Patton, didn’t you?”

  He gripped the towel and shook his head.

  I reached over, yanked off the bloody towel, tossed it on the floor, and stuck the barrel in the middle of his palm. “Tell me the fucking truth, or I’ll blow the whole hand off.”

  He stared at the bloody towel, turned his head, and spit on the floor. “I had to cap that bitch. She talkin’ to the police. What I suppose to do?”

  “Tell me where you found her?”

  “I found out where she lived.”

  “How?”

  “Through the ghetto grapevine. She tole some friend in the ‘hood, who tole someone, who tole someone. So I go out to her place in the Valley.”

  “You shoot her there?”

  “Lemme think.” Crouching slightly, he balled up the towel and threw it at my face. He ran into the kitchen.

  I chased after him, and cracked him on the head with the Beretta. He dropped to the floor, twitching and rubbing the back of his head.

  “I’m sick of fucking around with you.” I tapped the barrel of the gun on the knuckles of his right hand. “Did you shoot her there?”

  “Tied her up there,” he whispered. “Shot her at Fifty-fourth and Fig, cut her loose, and dumped her.”

  CHAPTER 41

  The doctor at the Twin Towers jail downtown was able to quickly patch up Li’l Eight’s pinkie, and I was able to book him there. I was relieved that I didn’t have to check him into the jail ward on the thirteenth floor of County General Hospital and contend with the questions and the paperwork associated with an injured suspect in my custody.

  I didn’t think the methods I had used for extracting the confession would hold up in court, so I busted him for attempted murder of a police officer. Since this was his third strike, he’d get twenty-five to life—and would probably never get out. Still, I planned to pass on Li’l Eight’s confession to Pardo over at South Bureau. Maybe we could work the case together when things calmed down, nail Li’l Eight for the double murder, and send him to death row.

  At dawn, two tired and bored detectives from the Force Investigation Division interviewed me briefly. I told them that Li’l Eight had tried to grab my gun and I fired, which zipped off the top of his pinky. I wasn’t sure they believed me, but they didn’t seem too interested in trying to disprove my story.

  Shuffling through the squad room, I poured a cup of coffee, returned to my desk, and fell into my chair. I closed my eyes, but jerked them open when I heard Duffy sit on the edge of my desk. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were so bloodshot I could only see a few streaks of white in a sea of red. I smelled alcohol and Tic Tacs on his breath. His tie was askew and his hair was uncombed.

  “I’d like to have a minute with you,” he said.

  I followed him into his office.

  “I’m grateful to you—more than you can ever know—for getting some justice for Latisha Patton,” he said softly, staring down at his desk. “That case was so damn important—for the department, for this unit, and for me, especially because of the way I … how I … how because of me everything turned to shit,” he sputtered, still looking away from me.

  I remained silent.

  “I don’t know how many people know of my culpability,” he said, licking his lips.

  Duffy was fishing. He wanted to know if I was going to file a complaint or inform the brass about his role in the Patton debacle.

  “I’m not going to take you down.”

  “Ash, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate—”

  “Save it.”

  “So where do you want to go from here,” Duffy said. “You just cleared two big cases. You’re in a position to call your own shots.”

  I still wanted to track down Wegland’s partner. I just didn’t want to discuss my plans with Duffy. The power equation with him had shifted, and I knew I could use it to my advantage. That was one reason I didn’t rat him out. If the chief brought in a new lieutenant, I might not be able to finish off the investigation the way I wanted. But as long as Duffy remained in charge, I had all the leverage and I could do whatever I wanted.

  “I need some time to finish things off.”

  “No problem. I’ll keep you clear of new cases for as long as I can. I owe you big-time and I can promise you that—”

  I stood up, walked across the office, and slammed the door while Duffy was in mid-sentence.

  By the time I finally returned to my loft, I’d been up almost thirty hours straight. I crawled into bed and slept deeply. It had been a long time since I had slept without waking up in a cold sweat, without a nightmare, without tossing and turning, without having to pop three Tylenol in the morning for a stress headache.

  The next morning, lying in bed, I decided to work from home. Normally, Duffy would squawk about me being away from the squad room. But there wasn’t much he could say now. And I just couldn’t deal with him today. If Duffy would’ve simply leveled with me last year, owned up to what he’d done, instead of letting me take the fall, everything I had gone through the past year would have been—

  “Damn,” I shouted, jumping out of bed. If I continue to go down that road, I’ll be too pissed off to get any work done today. And I might be too pissed off to return to Felony Special and work for Duffy. I didn’t want to leave the unit. This was the best job in the department. If I wanted to stay at Felony Special, I had better learn to let it go; I had better learn to live with it and tolerate Duffy. Could I? If I continued to use my leverage against him to get what I wanted, maybe I could.

  I showered, dressed, ate a bowl of cereal, and made a cup of coffee. Sipping my coffee, I read my synopses from the interviews with Theresa Martinez and the San Pedro crackhead. Since they were my only eye wits of Wegland’s ghost partner, I decided to interview them again.

  I walked to PAB, picked up my car from the lot, drove up Interstate 5
and arrived at the Pitchess Detention Center in the early afternoon. After dropping my Beretta in the metal locker, I waited in the interview room for a few minutes. When the deputies brought the junkie out, he wearily walked across the room, hunched over, hands slightly in front of him, like he was an old man pushing a walker.

  He plopped down on a chair with a grunt. “I’m tired, youngblood. Too tired to do long time.”

  “Then you better give up the pipe.”

  “Soon as I get out, I gonna clean up my own self.”

  “Look, I appreciate you talking to me, helping me out with this case.”

  “Ain’t no thang.”

  “I just have a few more questions.”

  He nodded.

  “When I talked to you in the Harbor Division jail, right after you got popped, you told me you spotted two guys at the bottom of the hill, walking toward their car, looking around.”

  “Aiight. I remember that.”

  “Can you describe the guy who got into the passenger side?”

  “Looked kinda Mez-can. Skinny and taller than the other dude. I tol’ you that already.”

  “I know that. Anything else you remember?”

  “I just seen that Mez-can for a second before I was on my way.”

  “I’m trying to get a little better description.”

  “Gonna be tough. That junk ride I was on that night done wrecked my memory. And both fools wearing those lids that sailors wear. Made it hard to see their faces.”

  “Watch caps?”

  “Thas right.”

  “Anything else you remember about this Mexican guy? Think about it. Take your time.”

  He rubbed his palms together. A few seconds later he said, “Dang. Just can’t think of nothin’ else. Wish I could help you. And help myself. I’m sorry ‘bout that.”