Deadly Lullaby

by Robert McClure

  The address Compton High has for Monique Lefler is on South Frailey in Compton, about half a block south of the intersection at Compton Avenue. I decide to cruise by there first, even though Eleanor told me expulsion papers mailed there were returned, and I’m not the least surprised to find the clapboard house deserted, the front yard overgrown with ankle-high weeds. While only one block away, the Leflers’ new abode on South Lime is a significant step up from their old one. It’s just across the street from East Rancho Dominquez Park, a municipal park famous for the tennis courts where Serena and Venus Williams learned to play. The house is a peach stucco bungalow that’s entirely surrounded by a matching stucco fence, its windows and doors protected by decorative wrought iron and their frames trimmed in bright white paint. The grass has been recently mowed, the low hedges around the house trimmed and weeded. The property is deeded in the name of TLL, Inc., and I learned of the place only because Lefler’s wife provided the address to prison authorities upon intake; score another one for COPLINK.

  The waist-high gate is locked, so I hop it. I have to depress the door buzzer twice before Terry Lee Lefler answers the door, wearing nothing but black silk pajama bottoms. His complexion is medium to light brown, and his slim frame is muscular, his abs and biceps defined. No visible body art. His head is cleanly shaved and his goatee tightly trimmed and flecked gray, his right ear adorned with a thick gold hoop earring lined with about a carat of diamonds. He has a strong cleft chin and an unlined face, wide and well-defined lips that have a movie-star quality to them. My thought upon laying eyes on Terry Lee Lefler is he makes it through life on his looks and a personality he perceives as charming.

  I badge him, introduce myself in the usual way, and ask if I can step inside to talk.

  His big brown eyes narrow. “Unh-unh, no way,” he says, “not without a warrant,” shaking his head and stepping outside on the porch, pulling the door shut behind him. “I don’t have anything to hide, understand, it’s just a rule I live by.” He’s about an inch taller than me, and puts his hands on his hips and looks down directly into my eyes, glowering. “You better tell me why you’re here before I call in a complaint about you trespassing on my property. I keep that front gate locked for a reason.”

  This in-your-face rooster shit gets tiresome, but it’s not as bad as it could be, considering I’m confronting a pimp in Compton. “Do you know a young Cambodian girl named Sonita Khemra?”

  His eyes become concerned, and he cocks his head and says, “Yeah, why?”

  “We found her dead in MacArthur Park last night, strangled.”

  He slumps sideways against the screen door, his head bowed and his eyes clamped shut, massaging his temples and saying, “Oh, no, man, oh, no…” He continues this lament for a few seconds before he snaps up his head, his eyes as wild and scared as an animal fleeing a forest fire. “Is my daughter okay?”

  “I have no information that indicates she’s not.”

  He blows a big sigh of relief, nodding. “Thank God,” he says, and hauls himself off the door and straightens his posture, taking a deep breath. He concentrates on my eyes for a while before looking me up and down, sizing me up from the inside out. He finally says, “I need to sit down and have a drink to let this shit sink in. Let’s say, just between me and you, that I have a bong on my coffee table with a bag of weed—hypothetically, understand. Would you be willing to overlook that so we can get out of the heat and talk this over in comfort?”

  To ask me that question Lefler has to be either a good judge of men or have more balls than brain matter; my preliminary vote gets cast on the former. “I’ll do you one or two better, Lefler. I’m not here to bust you for drug possession or for promoting prostitution or for any similar petty shit. I’m here to find out what I can to solve Sonita Khemra’s murder.”

  He studies me a beat, gauging my sincerity, turns and swings open the screen door, then shoulders open the main one, saying, “That’s good enough for me. C’mon in. My lawyer would shit a brick, but I’m gonna help you all I can.”

  Lefler snatches the bong and baggie from the coffee table and hustles down the hallway to the rear of the house. I hear the scritch of a lighter and gurgling sounds before I hear a door open and shut, and my hope is the weed loosens his tongue when he returns instead of making him paranoid and withdrawn. Waiting, I stand in the middle of the living room, noting that it’s tidy and well-furnished, tasteful but not luxurious—polished wooden floors, a brown-and-burnt-orange three-piece leather sofa set, a midsize flat-screen, and decent stereo gear. The living room is separated from the kitchen to my left by an L-shaped breakfast bar that has four place settings neatly arranged on its top. What I can see of the kitchen is spotless. The only scents I detect in the room are a whiff of incense and a crisp, evergreen air freshener.

  Having pulled on a nylon black tee, Lefler returns to the living room leading a Caucasian woman by her elbow. She’s a pretty brunette with short, ruffled hair, thirtyish and fresh-faced, clutching a short, red robe to her midsection, smiling shyly while rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Detective Crucci, this is Marla. She’s the only person in this house besides me and you. If you want to confirm that by lookin’ around, do it now before she goes back to sleep.”

  Lefler’s intuition impresses me again; the first question out of my mouth was going to be whether anyone else was here. “Thanks for the offer, but I believe you.”

  Lefler whispers a word or two in Marla’s ear and kisses her cheek; she flashes me a shy farewell smile and pads back to the bedroom.

  “I’m having a glass of red wine,” he says, turning toward the kitchen. “I have soft drinks and iced tea, but if you want to have a wine or a beer with me, I won’t tell on you.”

  “A beer sounds good, whatever kind you have,” I say. Regulations be damned. I almost always accept the offer of alcoholic drinks from people I interview when they’re drinking, too, especially in their home; acceptance of their hospitality warms them to me and puts us on common ground.

  He returns with a goblet of wine and a bottle of Heineken, hands the beer to me and gestures for me to sit in the leather easy chair at the head of the sofa. He falls into the sofa to my left with a phoosh, takes a drink of wine, and looks dead at me, his jaw set and his eyes showing not a hint of effect from the weed. “How’d you connect me to Sonita?”

  “I won’t reveal my sources, but it’s no secret she and your daughter Monique were friends. Before we talk any further, though, let’s be absolutely certain we’re talking about the same girl.” I withdraw Sonita’s school picture from my breast pocket and reach across the space between us to display it to him.

  A flash of hope instantly disappears from his eyes as he gives me a grim nod. “That’s her. What the fuck happened?”

  I summarize her discovery in the park.

  He says, “You have any idea who did it?”

  “We have a suspect in custody,” I say, “a guy named Taquan Oliver.” I tell him the circumstantial evidence against Oliver is strong but I’m not totally convinced he’s guilty. He says he’s never heard of Oliver and doesn’t recognize him from the picture stored on my iPhone. “Oliver told me this morning that he saw a man standing over Sonita in the bushes just after she died. He described him as short and muscular with short, slicked-back hair. Any idea who this man might be?”

  “No.”

  “All right,” I say. “Tell me how you know Sonita.”

  He leans back, holding the goblet of wine between his legs with both hands. “Sonita and Monique have been friends for about a year. She’s done overnights here, has sat right where I’m sittin’ and has had meals with us.” He shakes his head and sighs. “Her being dead, man, is unreal.”

  “What kind of girl was she?”

  “Funny, perky…Everybody says it about dead kids, I guess, but she was what you’d call full of life, really. She had a nice sense of humor, and wasn’t scared of anything. She wasn’t mean, you know, but she was tough, a street kid an
d proud of it. She really liked hangin’ out here, liked the attention I gave her and the food I cooked her.” He shakes his head again, chuckles, his voice growing thinner and thinner. “Crucci, that little thing could eat, man, like a pregnant wolf.” His voice is close to breaking, and he wipes his eyes, sniffs and looks away.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  This gives him pause, makes him shift in his seat. “A couple weeks, maybe a little longer.” He thinks a bit before wiping his eyes again and leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Don’t peg me as a bad father, all right? I haven’t seen my daughter in two weeks, either. Monique split not long after Marla moved in.” He shrugs. “They don’t get along. Marla tried like hell, but Monique won’t meet her even partway. You probably know her mother, my wife Chau, is in prison, right?” While I nod he says, “Monique got pissed I’m running with a woman other than her mother.” Another shrug. “Chau knows what I’m doing, shit, and doesn’t care. If there’s a woman on earth who sympathizes with a man’s needs, it’s Chau….Anyway, I’m still in contact with Monique by cell—almost entirely texts—and she says she’s doing fine, has plenty to eat and has shelter, but I’m not sure where she’s staying.”

  “I need to talk to her. Text her and have her call me. Tell her it’s urgent.”

  He agrees, but his expression is one of pure skepticism. “I’ll text her, but good luck on a response. Monique’s not one to obey a direct order, especially one from me.”

  “All right, give me her cellphone number and I’ll let you know where she is, if and when I track her down.”

  “You going to ping her number through cell towers?” he says, grabs his cell from the coffee table, opens it, finds Monique’s number on his contacts list and shows it to me.

  It’s not the same number Eleanor gave me earlier. “Yes,” I say, feeling like I finally accomplished something as I tap the number into my phone. “If her phone account is in your name, with your approval we can get it done in under an hour.”

  He shakes his head, and sets to composing a text message, I assume to Monique. “No, when she left she got an account of her own. I can’t even tell you which company it’s through.”

  “We’ll need a subpoena, then, and I should be able to get one to the service companies in town by the end of the day. Response time varies by company, but they usually email the documents back to us within twelve hours. Then we’ll have to see which towers she’s hitting the most, and after that it all becomes educated-guess work. I’ll talk to you when we get the data to see if the general locations of the towers she’s pinged are near any of her usual haunts. Do you have a recent cell number for Sonita?”

  He shakes his head. “Hers was disconnected last time I called it. That was about the same time Monique left.”

  Damn. “Could I have a picture of Monique?”

  He nods. “I’ll send you one from my phone. What’s your number?”

  I tell him my number and he works his thumbs on the screen, as if familiar with the procedure for sending a JPEG through his cell. He glances at his cell screen before replacing it on the table and leaning back, thinking some more. “You know, I have a pretty good idea where Monique might be spending some time.”

  When he says nothing further, I say, “You want to tell me where?”

  “Over at Sonita’s uncle’s house in Brentwood, some cat named Khang.” He says Khang’s name the way he’d say “no-good motherfucker.”

  I don’t say anything, just look at him with my pen poised over my notepad as if the fact of Khang’s existence is news to me.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of Khang, Sonita’s uncle?”

  “Maybe what I’ve heard is wrong. I need to hear what you know.”

  He narrows his eyes and works his jaw. “Sonita moved in with the man some time back, and she and Monique started spending some time over there. They don’t like him that much, but he’s rich and has a nice house they can disappear in.” He starts to say something else but thinks better of it, turning his head away and gulping wine to wash the words down.

  “What else do you know about Khang?”

  He becomes sullen, drumming the fingers of his free hand against his thigh. “Excuse me,” he says, “I have to hit the head,” and jumps up and walks down the hall.

  I let him go without trying to stop him.

  When the coast is clear I snatch his cell from the coffee table and depress the screen-activation button; the screen is locked and PIN protected.

  Shit.

  My phone vibrates, indicating I just received a text message. I look down to see the message is from Terry Lee, and I open the three pictures of Monique he attached—two head shots, one full-length. To say the girl’s pretty would be to insult her; even the words “fucking gorgeous” understate it. Wide and defined movie-star lips like her father’s, high cheekbones, and eyes that are a genetic mixture of both parents. Her African features blend beautifully with her Asian ones, making her what’s known in some circles as a “Blasian,” her skin the color of a mocha shake and smooth and clear. Her makeup is well done, except maybe her eye shadow’s so heavy it detracts from the Asiatic tinge to her eyes. Long, straight, shiny black hair that’s streaked gold like Sonita’s. Her figure is long and lithe and would be at home on any fashion runway in LA.

  Before long, the muffled gurgling sounds of a flushed toilet emanate from the rear of the house. Lefler returns, grabs a beer from the fridge and a bottle of wine from the counter, and walks back to the sofa. His face is stoic and his strides are purposeful, as if his break from me filled him with new resolve.

  When he sits I place my empty bottle on the coffee table, take the fresh one from his extended hand and say, “You were talking about Khang.”

  He nods. “I only met him once, when he stopped by to pick Sonita up. What I know about him I got third- or maybe even fourth-hand, but word is he’s a drug dealer—a distributor of serious fuckin’ weight—and maybe a pimp, though I can’t find out the extent of that. If all this shit’s true, he’s real quiet about it. My wife’s Vietnamese and knows some Cambodians, and got me in with some of that crowd. Most said Khang was connected, you know, ganged up. Some of them just stared at me when I mentioned his name, like they were terrified of the man.” He takes a drink of wine. “Sonita told me he owns an import business, and I checked it out. It’s a big place, man, over on Sixth and Alameda.”

  “Have you talked to him since Monique left?”

  “I have, and he denies knowing where she and Sonita are. I don’t believe him.”

  “If I had to take a wild guess,” I say, “it would be that you’re afraid Khang’s involved your daughter in prostitution.”

  His eyes harden as if he’s taken my statement as an accusation, but they soften just as quickly as he resigns himself to the facts. “That’s just one worry I got about that motherfucker. There’s a lot of Asians that play by a different set of rules than we do, man, it’s their culture. I know because I married one.” He pauses. “I guess you know my wife’s in prison for shooting up a guy, right?” I nod and he continues, shaking his head. “Chau’s crazy, but she got it from her mother, who was running a house in Bangkok when we met. I was in the navy then, on liberty in Pattaya Bay, and Chau said she hated what her mother did, you know, luring young girls into prostitution—some of them little girls, man, like twelve and thirteen. I brought Chau to the States to take her away from all that, and she was straight until we ran into money trouble a few years back. She started running her own little stable and showed me the ropes, and I used my technological know-how to expand it to what it is now. If it wasn’t for me, Chau would’ve had sixteen-year-olds working for us, maybe younger, but I wouldn’t stand for it.” He pauses to sift through what he’ll tell me next, says, “I’m not going to talk to you about my business in any more detail than this: I don’t force women to work for me, and I pay ’em top dollar—I mean top dollar—and treat every one like a princess. I even ha
ve a bonus schedule and health insurance available if they want it, and provide doctors to help keep them STD-free. And I verify that everybody’s twenty-one years old or older, no exceptions.”

  I nod as if congratulating him for his nobility. “Do you have any evidence that Khang’s lured Monique and Sonita into prostitution?”

  “No, he’d be dead if I did, or I’d be dead from trying to kill him.” He bites his thumbnail, then yanks it from his mouth as if irritated that he’s relapsed into the habit. “Honestly, I’m more afraid that Monique’s started up her own little thing and recruited Sonita to work with her. Monique’s headstrong and as wild as her mother, and has the same attitude about her body. And she’s independent-minded. Hell, she’s already been busted once for solicitation.”

  “I know,” I say, “I saw her record,” which reflected that she tried to hustle an undercover guy in a hotel bar, the Sidebar at the Beverly Wilshire. Monique admitted to the undercover guy that she hit the bar after servicing a customer upstairs in his room.

  Lefler takes a deep breath to compose himself, looking away for a spell before looking back at me. “Now, I’m not positive she’s in the business. I googled her cell number and she isn’t using her phone on any escort internet sites, and you have to advertise on the net these days unless you walk the streets.” He shakes his head. “And Monique would never walk the streets—never.”

  “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t using another phone for business.”

  “Right, which is exactly what she’d do to hide from me; she knows I’d find her if she posted her number somewhere on the net. Could be, too, that she’s hooked up with an internet escort service that passes the customers on to her after snaring them. But I seriously doubt she’d work for anyone. Like I said, she’s an independent girl.”