Deadly Lullaby

by Robert McClure

  He lifts his gaze to me, then quickly looks away, body language you’d normally associate with guilt, and places his hands on the table. Compared to the rest of him, his huge hands are as sterile as a surgeon’s. After evidence techs scraped away the caked dirt and grime, dug out every particle crusted underneath his fingernails, and bagged it all as evidence, they made him scrub. Now he meets my eyes again before he places one paw over the other, covering multiple fresh lacerations on the back of his right hand, and stares at them like he’d saw both clean off if he could.

  Another indication of guilt.

  Earlier, he claimed he got some of the scratches when he dove into some bushes to hide, got the rest when he fought with the blue boys who finally ran him down. My obvious take on it is that they’re defensive wounds Sonita inflicted during her death struggle. There’s no need to argue with him about which version is true. It’ll take a few weeks, but the DNA lab will resolve it for us. The techs found flesh under Sonita’s fingernails.

  Still staring down at his hands, he says, “Man, you just want me to come out and say I did it, that I kilt that girl.”

  No, my strategy from the start has been to get him to admit to small facts one by one, until he admits to so many the truth will emerge of its own accord. “Taquan,” I say, “all I want is the truth from you. You can start by telling me whether your prints are gonna be found on the girl’s personal items—her purse, her wallet…We’re gonna know one way or another when the lab results come out, so you might as well tell me now.”

  He glances at the wall to his right, as if he’ll never see the city beyond it again. “Yeah, they’ll prob’ly be on the purse—wallet, too.”

  “And the cash in your wallet”—a glance at the report before me—“the, what, three hundred and sixty-two bucks? Think the girl’s prints will be on those bills?”

  He nods slowly and sags in his chair, defeated. “The dead girl, yeah, I took the bills from her wallet….That’s what you want to hear, right?”

  “Only if it’s the truth.”

  “It’s true.”

  I nod. “Did you take her cellphone?”

  He shakes his head. “No, didn’t see no cell, and that’s the truth, too.”

  “I believe you,” I say, not knowing or caring at this point whether I mean it or not. “All right, you ready to tell me what happened?”

  “You won’t believe me. Don’t matter what I say.”

  “Only if you bullshit me, Taquan. If you tell me the truth…” I shrug, allowing him to finish my sentence in his head however it suits him.

  Taquan has a faraway look in his eyes. “I’d just scored with this PR I told you about, the one I buy from? Then I got smoked up next to the bushes over on Park View, near Seventh.”

  “What did you smoke?”

  “Crack. Some weed, too, earlier, but that ain’t no thing.”

  “How high were you?”

  “Too fucked up, man.” Taquan shakes his head in self-disgust and looks away. “Fuckin’ fried…Been smokin’ every chance I get for almost a month, ever since I lost my job at Sanitation.”

  “You high now?”

  “What? Hell no, man, wish I was. I’m crashin’ hard.”

  Out goes my best sympathetic smile to him. “All right, you got high in the bushes on Park View near Seventh. Then what did you do?”

  “Just took off walkin’, you know, feelin’ good. A little crazy but…good.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  He shrugs. “Not real sure. Hung out around the lake awhile until some Asian junkies started fuckin’ with me, askin’ if I got change to give ’em and shit, and I split and just cruised. Must’ve crossed Wilshire somewhere ’cause I remember some dudes playin’ soccer, you know, in the field over there?”

  “Sure.”

  His voice changes, tenses. “And next thing you know is I’m walkin’ on that path over there close to Park View, near Sixth this time.”

  He lowers his eyes to stare at the table, just stares and stares.

  “Which paved path were you walking on? There’s one that runs right next to the sidewalk on Park View, the one that’s visible from the street, and there’s another one that runs more or less parallel to that one that’s farther inside the park.”

  He’s been nodding since I was halfway through my question, a good sign. “It was the one inside the park, the one you can’t see from the street ’cause of the bushes there.”

  “Ah, okay, so the Pavilion was to your right?”

  “Yeah,” he says after pondering it some. “I guess it was, yeah.”

  I nod. “So you were walking toward Sixth, then.”

  “Right, close to where that path joins up with that other one there, just up ahead a ways.”

  All right, he’s almost on top of the murder scene at that point, on the curved path with the bushes to his left. “Go on, man.”

  Onward he goes: “Then I heard something in the bushes close by, like…like…I dunno.” He runs his hand down his face, takes a deep breath. “Like a squirrel dyin’, I guess, or a more like a cat, maybe. You ever heard a squirrel or cat die?”

  “Can’t say that I have, no.”

  He scrunches his eyes together, holds them together that way and looks at the tabletop a beat, then looks at me. “Me neither. But that’s what it sounded like. Maybe that’s a dumb thing to say, but that’s what it sounded like. Like a little squeal or something like that, and a huffin’ sound, like…at the end.”

  “So do you hear anything after that?”

  It was as if I’d said nothing. “Then you know what I heard?”

  “What?”

  “A man.”

  “Did he say something?”

  A nod. “Somethin’ I couldn’t understand, crazy shit, real mean, and that’s what made me walk in there, through the bushes, ’cause it didn’t sound good, you know? It sounded like somethin’ wrong, bad wrong, and I walked in there and saw this man standin’ there in the dark. He saw me and I froze up, you know, scared, and he just took off runnin’ toward Park View, fast as hell, and I looked ’round and saw that girl there and was thinkin’, ‘Ah, man, the motherfucker kilt her, kilt her,’ and then I saw her purse next to her feet, and I got real scared, you know, knowin’ y’all’d think I did it and all, that I kilt her, but I didn’t kill her, I didn’t…but I grabbed her purse, though, I sure did, which I know’s wrong but I did it anyway ’cause I need money, man, no job an’ all an’ smokin’ that junk an’ all, an’ so I took off runnin’ in the opposite direction of the man.” He turned away from the space he’d been staring into over my shoulder and looks into my eyes. “Then y’all caught me.”

  His shoulders slump, his breathing shallows. He thinks he’s shot his wad, but he hasn’t. There’s more there, more inside his head he doesn’t know he has or that he’s intentionally withholding. I have to extract that information before some crack or meth residue seeps into his brain and dissolves it from his short-term memory bank—or, assuming he’s been pumping me full of lies, before he thinks of more lies.

  I allow him a few sips from the can of Coke I got him earlier and go back at him.

  “What did the man look like, Taquan?”

  He looks up, shrugs. “Short but not skinny, pumped, you know, with muscles, but pretty short.”

  “You remember more than that about him.”

  “It was dark an’ I was fucked up, you know? Scared. And, man, he bolted when he saw me, just fuckin’ hauled ass outta there.”

  “What about his face?”

  A shrug. “Too dark to see.”

  “Age?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Long hair, short hair?”

  “Short and slicked back, kind’a like yours. Shiny, too, like he had the same stuff in his hair you got in yours. Gel or somethin’, you know?”

  “What color?”

  “I’d say dark color, but it was dark outside, so…”

  “How about his clothes?”

>   He shakes his head, huffing air like he’s close to exhaustion. “Seems like I might’a saw his bare arms, but it was too dark outside to tell anything else, and I was—”

  “Stoned, right, you’ve mentioned that, but you can’t say what kind of shirt or pants the guy was wearing?”

  “Shit, man, I don’t know.” He plops his elbow on the table and rests his head in the crook of his arm. His voice is muffled. “You wearin’ me the fuck out, man.”

  Think I’m wearing you out now, my friend, just wait.

  “Just a few more questions, Taquan”—a pause—“then you can go back to your cell.”

  He bolts upright like a jack-in-the-box, blinking himself alert. “Nah, I’m good, I’m good. Ask anythin’ you want, man, no prob.”

  “If you insist,” I say, smiling to myself. “Okay, you see this short, stout guy standin’ there when you walk through the bushes, and one of the first things you thought when you saw the girl was that the man had killed her, right?”

  He nods. “Oh yeah, yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “What did you see that made you think that?”

  He sits back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap, thinking harder than he’s thought since we met. “He was there, man.”

  “Taquan, you don’t want to pin it on the guy just because he was there, do you?” I lower my voice. “I mean, you were there, too.”

  This stuns him, probably scares him more than he lets on or even realizes at this moment, but it gets him to thinking. He finally says, “I guess he could’a walked up on her and found her just before I did. Maybe heard the noises I did and just got there when I did, you know, and got scared of me the way I got scared of him and run.” He shakes his head as if to rid himself of that thought. “But I don’t think so. It was his voice, like the way he said whatever it was he said. It was so mean, you know? And the way he stood there lookin’ at her, it was like, ‘Fuck you, bitch!’ ”

  “Do you remember any word he spoke at all?”

  He shakes his head. “No, just heard the voice, wasn’t listenin’ for words. It just wasn’t nothin’ I made out…”

  Down goes his head into the crook of his arm again.

  I’ve tenderized him as much as possible.

  Time for the whiplash: “Taquan, look at me.”

  He struggles to raise his head, like there’s a sack of cement resting stacked on top of it.

  “You’re full of shit.”

  Confusion, hurt. “What?”

  “You expect me to believe the bullshit you just laid on me?”

  “I told you I was stoned and it was—”

  “How’d you lure her into the bushes? Offer her cash you didn’t have in exchange for a little pussy?”

  “Naw, that didn’t—”

  “Rock, then, you offered her rock.”

  He shakes his head so hard the force could dislodge his brain stem.

  “There were half a dozen condoms in her purse, Taquan, and a blade and a pipe, so we figure her for a hooker. You knew she was a hooker, didn’t you? You’d seen her around before last night, hadn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Yeah? You’d seen her before and you didn’t mention it until now?”

  “You didn’t ask me, man, what’re you tryin’ to—”

  “You’d fucked her before, too, hadn’t you? Knew she carried cash.”

  “I can’t afford to buy pussy, shit. I can’t afford food.” He sits back, crosses his arms.

  He’s retreating, closing up. Not a good sign.

  Take the foot off the pedal.

  “Sorry, Taquan.”

  He swivels his head to me. Those eyes: Distrustful. Hateful.

  “Tell me,” I say, “where had you seen her around before last night—in the park?”

  Still sulking, he nods his head, talks to the tabletop. “Yeah, and downtown, too, ’round the mall, hangin’ with some black chick.”

  “Yeah? What did the black chick look like?”

  A little shrug, eyes still staring down the tabletop. He shifts in his seat, twists his neck. Bad signs.

  “When’s the last time you saw them?”

  A shrug again.

  Fuck, losing him. Time to attack. I stand, lean over the table into him. “She pulled the blade on you in the bushes, didn’t she?”

  “No.”

  “You offered her rock for pussy, or offered her cash you don’t have, and then you go in the bushes to do the deal. You know her, you know she’s got cash and rock in her purse, so you start to rob her. She pulls her blade, and you go into a crack rage and choke her out.”

  He shakes his head, tears well up in his eyes. Tears, good. Tears are good.

  “I know you didn’t mean to, Taquan. You just lost control. Admit it and you’ll dodge murder one. The prosecutor’ll pop you for nothing more than murder two, tops, maybe even reckless homicide. Admit it and the state won’t pump your ass full of Jesus juice in the death house at San fucking Quentin!”

  Taquan’s ready to talk, to confess. Tears spring from his eyes now, fucking streams of them. He backhands snot from his nose, turns to me, speaks. “Now you’re doin’ what you said you wasn’t gonna do. Try to get me to admit to somethin’ I didn’t do. I don’t want to talk to you no more. I want one a those lawyers you told me about.”

  Shit.

  Babe

  The Venetian Social Club always served as the primary gathering place for the Balboa and Sacci organizations, and for years I came here almost every day. The place appears deserted, and there are no human sounds to conceal the loud creaks my footfalls make on the old vinyl flooring in the foyer. When I veer right toward the bar area, a deluge of memories flood my thoughts, the voices and images of long-departed friends and enemies sweeping all immediate business concerns from my mind. My reverie is interrupted when Sam the bartender emerges from the kitchen behind the bar.

  “Babe!” he says. “Thought I heard somebody come in.”

  Sam gives me a sincere welcome back, shaking my hand across the bar top and gripping my shoulder much more affectionately than I would have preferred. He pours me my usual vodka rocks and plops in a squeeze of lime as if I last bellied up to the bar yesterday. He seems gratified when I acknowledge his thoughtful gesture with a warm nod, a smile, and a “You are the best, Sam, the very best.”

  “Babe, I gotta say, eight years in the can has left you no worse for the wear. You don’t look any older than the first time you walked in here. You were what then, sixteen?”

  “Jesus, Sam,” I say, “does Nico have you slinging drinks for nothing but tips now?”

  “I ain’t hustling you for a tip,” he says. “Just noting a fact: You still look like you.”

  Looking around me, I say, “I guess this joint and everyone in it is frozen in time.” The Venetian, in fact, still resembles a well-worn VFW or Foreign Legion post, with its old wood paneling and mismatched dining room furniture haphazardly arranged in front of the beat-up bar. To my delight, the framed poster of J. Edgar Hoover still hangs on the wall to my left, one that has him aiming a tommy gun at the room. At the bottom of the poster are written the words “Freeze you dirty rat!,” which Anthony “Tony Rocks” Stone (may he rest in peace) wrote there years ago during a swacked-out party that followed Mr. Balboa’s first acquittal on federal racketeering charges.

  Sam claims to vividly remember the first day I ever came here, though I tell him he cannot remember it as vividly as me. I tell him the date was September 30, 1979, the first date I always note when tracing the genealogy of my so-called Life of Organized Crime. This date stands out not only because it was my sixteenth birthday, but also because it was exactly six months to the day after I had joined my third set of foster parents in eight months. Turned out they were the last set of foster parents I ever had: Frank “The Beast” East and his wife Connie, a childless couple in their thirties. Frank comes up in our conversation almost right away, Sam commenting that “The Beast” was a per
fect nickname for him, a tall and muscled, red-headed SoCal native who anybody would agree was an alpha male’s alpha male. A Vietnam vet who wrenched Hueys in the war and became a car mechanic when he mustered out, the Department of Children and Family Services concluded Frank was the perfect person to set me upon the straight and narrow path that the so-called criminal abuse of my father had caused me to stray from. The department’s background check did not uncover Frank and Connie’s connection to LA boss Dominic Balboa through then-underboss Joe Sacci: Frank operated a chop shop out of his commercial garage and Connie manufactured the highest quality LSD in Cali at the time in her basement lab. I learned of the Easts’ so-called criminal association about a week into our relationship, the very day I was arrested for joyriding in a stolen ’69 Firebird.

  Frank slapped me around after retrieving me from juvie detention, then sat me down the way a real father should and taught me how to steal a car without getting caught. (Frank’s Ten Commandments of Car Theft, verbatim: I Always keep your hair short and well-groomed. II Always wear a conservative shirt and sports jacket, the latter of which you use to conceal your slim jim and flat-head screwdriver. III Walk at a normal gait, deliberate but never rushed. IV Smile. V Avoid targets in residential neighborhoods and parking garages; vast, unattended parking lots with several exits present the least risk. VI Be sober. VII Know the makes and models of the cars you are after and become intimately familiar with their locking and ignition systems. VIII Practice, practice, practice. IX Do not joyride, dumbass. X Do not steal hubcaps, because when you steal hubcaps you are putting a wetback or a spade out of work.) I obeyed Frank’s instructions to the letter and turned over twenty cars to him that summer. Frank then brought me to the Venetian for the first time to introduce me around and show me off. Dominic Balboa—the son of John Benedict, the so-called founder of the enterprise—was the head of the family then, a big man, tall and broad of stature, with a head full of wavy salt-and-pepper hair and a life of hard-earned wisdom that backlit his eyes. There were six or so wiseguys standing around me and Frank at the bar, busting my balls the way hard men do with a kid, and they grew hushed and parted like the Red fucking Sea when Mr. Balboa walked up to me. He neither needed nor would have tolerated an introduction, just got in my face and said, “Hey, kid, I’ve heard about you. Word is you’re a car thief. Is what I hear right? Are you a car thief?”