A sip of tequila, followed by a hit of beer.
Put aside, for the moment, the degree of alertness of any witness who might be in the vicinity of the bank at La Brea and Beverly. Put aside the degree to which any alert witness in the vicinity is willing to report the crime in progress. Put aside the possibility that uniformed patrol officers or roaming detectives might happen upon the scene and observe something suspicious. All these variables, and others, constitute what is technically known in law enforcement circles as “Dumb Fuckin’ Luck.”
Dumb Fuckin’ Luck is inherently incalculable and, therefore, unquantifiable.
A sip of tequila, a hit of beer.
The most important factor that has little to do with Dumb Fuckin’ Luck, though equally unquantifiable, is the degree of skill and experience of the criminal(s) involved in the commission of the crime in progress; obviously, the more skilled and experienced the criminal, the more likely he or she is to get away from the scene of the crime undetected.
Jack Barzi—aka Chief—is a criminal I know little about.
The old thug, I know: the skill-and-experience factor is one that cuts distinctly in his favor. He’s been in tight jams before and walked scot-free from all but two. Bottom line is the sonofabitch knows how to take care of himself.
Then why do I feel guilty for not helping him?
A sip of tequila, followed by a gulp of beer.
There I was in my cruiser, investigating the murder of a young woman, a young woman whose mother found solace in my vow to bring her daughter’s killer to justice. Then this frantic SOS call comes in from my sociopathic father, pleading with me to divert from the aforementioned mission of justice to go on a mission for him, a mission of distinct injustice.
Who the hell could switch gears that fast? It’d be like throwing a speeding Formula One race car in reverse.
A sip of tequila, a hit of beer.
Why the hell should I help him anyway? He left me to be raised by a wolf when I was a kid. Hell, worse than a wolf; mama wolves, at least, nurture their pups.
But what if he gets busted at the bank?
Or worse, shit—what if he gets whacked?
Damn it, why do I feel so—
“All units, all units, repeat, all units, shots fired at the Keystone Community Bank at La Brea and Beverly, probable 211. Code 3.”
It’s happening.
There’s this primordial eruption inside me, a DNA-fueled surge of adrenaline, compelling me to bolt to the bank to rescue my father….There’s nothing you can do, damn it….Not now, not now…
—
Sirens…a river of turbulent radio chatter between mobile units and their supervisors at Wilshire Division HQ…chatter between choppers and their ground controllers…tequila…SWAT chatter…EMS vehicles called…tequila…then, finally, a broadcast from the first uniform at the scene to his watch commander:
“7 Adam 14 to 7-10. I’m 10-97. Over.”
“Roger the 10-97, 14. What’s the situation? Over.”
“Ahh, a 211 that went down maybe, oh, ten minutes ago? The wit who called in the shots was in the HoneyBaked Ham at the other corner of the strip mall, ran outside and said he saw nobody flee the bank. So, uh, no known suspects—no live ones, anyway. I’m inside the bank now and we got definite 10-54s here. Some have’ta be perps, considering the weapons within their…”
…and I hear little else after the 10-54 designations—dead bodies.
Leo
There’s no answer when I call the old thug.
Stupidly worried about cops at the scene smelling booze on my breath, I stuff one handful of mints in my mouth and another handful in my coat pocket before leaving the Karma. Driving east on Beverly in a daze, there’s a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that’s multiples worse than the one I get at funeral-home visitations of colleagues killed in the line of duty. I’ve imagined this occasion many times before, mostly when I was a teenager—the occasion I’m called upon to identify the old thug’s body. The beginning of the daydream (sometimes a sleeping dream) is always more or less the same: a coroner’s assistant in a morgue, or a cop at a crime scene yanks the white sheet away from the old man’s face. Standard stuff. Then the fun begins: his throat’s slashed ear to ear; or he’s taken a large-caliber round to the head, sometimes two or even three rounds (a revenge murder where often his dick and balls have been crudely hacked off and stuffed in his mouth); or his corpse has been recovered from a body of water, or a shallow grave, and the decomposed flesh and wiggly parasites feasting on his face make him completely unrecognizable to anyone but me.
Considering the circumstances, the reality today, if it occurs, will resemble the large-caliber-round-to-the-head version.
The parking lot that fronts the little strip mall is jammed with black-and-whites, unmarked cruisers, and EMS vans. The entrance to the mall on Beverly is blocked by a patrol car parked behind yellow crime-scene tape. My cheeks bulging with the remainder of the mints I squirreled away in my pocket, chewing, gulping, I have to park my cruiser on the sidewalk next to the lot entrance on Beverly in front of HoneyBaked Ham on the corner.
Out of the cruiser, pulling the chain from my badge wallet and looping the lanyard around my neck, I weave around the spectators on the walk, ignoring them instead of peppering them with questions the way I usually do. The uniform guarding the lot entrance eyes the badge dangling at my chest, waves me through, holding up the tape for me to duck under. Dazed, as if wading through the plasma of a dreamscape, I walk across the lot toward the bank’s front entrance at the other end of the mall, uniformed EMS and police personnel moving about me in slow motion. Feeling the stares, hearing voices, I have to shade my eyes from the patrol-sled strobes before they trigger a photosensitive epileptic seizure.
I come to a dead halt when, there, at the bank door, standing alone, are two plainclothesmen, both black guys. I breathe deep, swallowing the mints, and continue on.
I introduce myself and in return get a shrug from one, a blink from the other, noncommittal gestures you’d not interpret as hospitable. Neither offers to shake my hand.
Without further prompting I say, “I was down the street having lunch at the Karma Bar and heard the all-units call. I’m a relatively new detective, so I thought I’d stop by and see what I could learn.”
This seems to soften up one of them. The one who remains unimpressed is the guy leaning against the doorjamb, the one with “Detective II Leroy Paterson” on the identification hanging from his lanyard. A dark-chocolate African, boot-camp brawny, Paterson has a drill-sergeant crew cut, complete with whitewalls. He wears a gray three-piece suit and navy-blue shirt with an identically colored tie. His arms crossed, he’s tonguing a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, trying hard to look bored.
Paterson says, “Well, I dunno…” turning his head to his partner, whose badge identifies him as Detective III William D. Marten. Marten is a latte-skinned African with a short and tight ’fro and a thin, weepy mustache. A tall, skinny man, my thought upon looking at him is he’s all legs and lungs, which explains why his blue suit doesn’t fit him quite right. Marten, who from the get-go seemed more open to my presence, says, “I don’t see a problem with that.” He shakes my hand and says, “Call me Doc.”
“Thanks. Everyone calls me Crooch.”
Paterson maintains his bored persona. He glances at my feet, removes the toothpick from his mouth and jabs it at me to emphasize his words. “You want to learn something about crime-scene analysis, Crucci,” he says, “fine, we’ll give you the tour. But you gotta wear shoe covers.”
“Rule one,” Doc says, nodding, serious, “is ‘Preserve the integrity of the scene.’ ”
“What’s, uh, going on here?” I say, peeking over and around Paterson’s shoulder through the bank door. A pair of splayed legs are visible on the floor in the distance, ass up—jeans, black ankle boots. No sport coat I can see, which is encouraging, since my father almost always wears one. I haven’t paid
attention to the type of shoes he wore either time I saw him. He wore jeans both times.
“Freaky is what it is,” Doc says.
“Yeah,” Paterson says. “Freaky.”
“Freaky,” I say, my mouth still dry even after a couple of swallows. I clear my throat. “Why do you say that?”
Exasperated, Paterson shakes his head. “You deaf? You get shoe covers and we’ll let the crime scene tell you why.”
For effect, knowing there’s nothing there, I reach into my back pocket, say, “I forgot ’em in the cruiser.”
“Damn, son,” Paterson says, clicking his tongue, “looks like you’ll have to trot your ass back there and—”
“Why do you act like such a prick at times?” Doc says to him, putting his left hand on my shoulder and reaching into his back pocket with the right one. “Crooch here is takin’ free time to answer the all-units call, least you can do is treat him like a brother.”
“Aw, Doc, I was just givin’ the boy some—”
“I know what you’re doing,” Doc says to him, then to me says, “Here,” handing over a pair of polypropylene surgical shoe covers, “slip these on and follow me.” He reaches in the breast pocket of his coat and comes out with surgical gloves. “Put these on, too.” Doc walks in the door, turns to his left to say to Paterson, “Stay here and watch the door, be useful.”
Paterson shakes his head. “That’s cold, man.”
My thoughts twirl as we step inside. After a few strides we stop at the corpse sprawled face down on the back edge of the lobby’s tile floor, the one whose legs I spotted from outside. A cautious sense of relief flows through me at the sight of it. The corpse is clothed in jeans and a jean jacket, and there’s a ragged, gaping hole in the back of its head, an exit wound accented with bits of skull and brains; the hair’s straight and long in back, a mullet, nothing at all like the old man’s thick, wavy, ’80s-Travolta blow-back. Upon closer inspection of the man’s features, he’s obviously Hispanic, with bushy eyebrows and a big mustache. A .38 revolver is on the floor close to his outstretched hand.
“Now,” Doc says, “one thing about this bank robbery that sets it apart is the recording system to the surveillance cameras was turned off. Last thing recorded was yesterday, so the bank employee responsible for the system either forgot to turn it on or was in on the robbery, an insider.” He shrugs. “My hunch is the employee just forgot, which I’ll explain in a minute. Either way we have no surveillance tape. All we have at the moment is one eyewitness who was watching from inside HoneyBaked Ham down the row here, the manager. He says he saw a male matching this description”—pointing at the corpse—“and one other Hispanic male meet and talk in the parking lot. He saw this one come up and knock on the front door, even though there was a Closed sign on it. He didn’t pay any attention to what the suspects did afterward, and didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary ’til he heard shots.” He inclines his head toward the floor. “So our preliminary theory is this one knocked, figured nobody was home, and called a locksmith coconspirator to break in the back—which obviously cuts against having an insider.” He shrugs again, says, “One thing that looks pretty certain is that the shooter that popped him is right there,” pointing to the body at the head of the short hallway that leads to the back door.
More relief hits me after a few steps to the body. It’s face up, blank eyes to the ceiling, a nonfatal wound on his right cheek, dead from a frontal head shot from a small caliber round—a .25 or .22 smack between the eyes. A short and slight Latino male with a mustache, jet black, curly hair, definitely dyed, wearing a maroon polo shirt, khaki slacks, and topsiders.
Definitely not my father.
“That’s the bank’s owner,” Doc says. “His name’s Errol Ovando, according to the HoneyBaked Ham wit. He must’ve confronted the first in the lobby here, shot him with that .45 there”—he points to the chrome Colt .45 1911 still in Ovando’s right hand—“then heard the others in the back hall.” Doc puts his hands on his hips and stares at Ovando’s body, shaking his head. “And this is the unusual part: It’s kind’a crazy, but the only scenario that makes sense here is that after Ovando took out the first guy in the lobby, he walked to the head of the hallway here”—plants his feet, forms his thumb and forefinger into an imaginary pistol and aims down the hall—“and pow, popped the locksmith first, then exchanged simultaneous headshots, pow pow, both fatal, with the other male coming out of the vault.” He motions with his head to the back door. “C’mon, you’ll see what I mean.”
We step over the bank owner’s corpse—my mind flashing back to the old man’s claim that he was a money launderer, a skimmer—walk down the hall a few steps, stop.
The locksmith’s body is easy to recognize from his work uniform. He’s slumped against the wall by the door, a blossom of blood spread across the middle of his white work shirt; I instantly eliminate the possibility that this corpse is my father’s.
The fourth one is facedown in the hallway, a tall and muscular body like my father’s, same approximate height. The torso is outside the vault, the lower half inside it, dressed similarly to the old man in jeans and blue blazer, a large exit wound in the back of his head; that part of the black hair that’s not matted with blood and brain matter is styled similarly to the old man’s. A briefcase is tipped over next to his left hand, open at the top, leaking packets of money on the floor. A small-caliber pistol rests by the corpse’s right hand, a pistol fitted with a suppressor, the pistol used to off Ovando.
Doc is saying, “This guy’s in the vault, loading up with cash, right? Hears the shots and…”
…the rushing sound in my ears drowns out Doc’s voice as I bend over to check out the corpse’s face…
My God, the relief that floods through my system is overwhelming.
The foxy old thug made it out alive.
Doc’s words return to me as I stand, weak-kneed and breathing deep, having to lean against the wall to keep from collapsing…
“Damn,” Doc says, grabbing my biceps to steady me. “You all right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, smiling on the inside but rubbing my temple and grimacing for Doc’s benefit. “I’m fine. I, uh, had a lot to drink last night. I’m hungover.”
He views me with suspicion. “Man, how many 10-54s you worked before?”
Unable to keep from smiling on the outside now, I cuff sweat from my forehead, sniffle, and take a deep breath. “Quite a few. But never one quite like this.”
Babe and Leo
“Well, my son, so good of you to fucking call.”
“Good of you to finally fucking answer. You had me worried.”
“No shit? Everything considered, I thought your previous calls were misdials.”
“Enough of that. How are you?”
“Not a scratch, no thanks to you.”
“What about Barzi?”
“Hey, Chief, my son wants to know how you are.”
“Tell him I’m good enough to bend over and let him kiss my hairy ass.”
“Tell him I owe him one, all right? I mean it. Tell him.”
“He says he owes you one, Chief.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
“Look, old man, if it’s any solace, I don’t feel very good about myself right now.”
“What, you regret not dropping by and slapping your cuffs on us before we could get away? Or maybe you just wanted to put a bullet in my head and rid yourself of your shame once and for all.”
“That’s hurtful.”
“And the shit you said to me today was what?”
“See my side of this for a minute, just one fucking minute. You caught me off guard and I shot my mouth off. If I could take back my words, I would. If I could change my decision to refuse you help, I would. But consider the possibility I might have made your situation worse. At the time I figured you could take care of yourself. Turns out I was right, right?”
“At considerable cost in blood and treasure, yes, you were right.”
“Old man, it’s worse than unfair to hold that against me. If you had made the decision to stay home today, there would’ve been no blood.”
“…”
“Old man?”
“I am here, saying Hail Marys and Our Fathers in penance for the twisted criminal mind God gave me.”
“That’s it, blame someone who doesn’t exist. At least you’re not insulting anyone.”
“If you called to make me feel like a creep, you failed. Now, if you have nothing else to—”
“I called to tell you I’m sorry.”
“Well, you already did that in your own way, so guess I will be—”
“Hey, don’t hang up. You canceled lunch today and gave me a rain check for drinks this evening. I’m cashing it in.”
“…”
“Old man?”
“I am busy tonight.”
Babe
My nerves are no longer sparking like the frayed ends of downed power lines, so my sole concern at this moment is that the AC is on the blink again and the living room is now a sauna. Fresh out of the shower, wearing nothing but old running shorts and a tank top, from flat on my back on the couch I inspect the cracked plaster on the wall, the blistered paint on the ceiling, and the picture-window frame’s rotted corners. It contrasts nicely with my new stereo rack and plasma flat-screen, the freshly potted plants and flowers, and framed prints. After nine years confined to forty-eight square feet of steel and concrete I shared with another inmate, this place seemed like a palace when I got out. Now its luster has worn off.
Maggie appears above me holding another vodka rocks, offering it downward. Her mouth moves but the ringing in my ears drowns out most of the words.
“What did you say?” I say, squinting.
Wearing short-short cutoff jeans and one of my ragged wifebeater tees, she kneels on the floor by my head, speaks at eye level as if offering me her lips to read. “I said we’re almost out of vodka.”
“We have other stuff, right? Bourbon and rum, gin, tequila…”
Deadly Lullaby Page 28
