Shaker

by Scott Frank

  “No. But it was one of the Wilshire lines. And it was a Saturday.”

  They both stood.

  “How do I contact you?”

  “You can leave a message for me at the Good Shepherd Shelter, it’s on Beaumont.”

  “I know it.”

  “But most of the time I just sleep down at the rail yards, near Union Station.”

  “That’s not safe.”

  “It’s better than some places.”

  She stood there another moment, then nodded and walked back up the corridor.

  Kelly watched her, knowing this whole thing was a loser. If Ruth Ann Carver really saw her kid, the best thing in the world for her, for both of them, would be for it to just fade away. The lady was right, she was born that day into another person with another life. And her son, too. If it even was her son.

  A loser to be sure. Kelly wanted nothing to do with it.

  She was turning for the stairs when she saw Randall nudge past Ruth Ann Carver and frantically wave at Kelly.

  “You gotta go, like right the fuck now.”

  “Go where?”

  “Shooting on Dehougne. Two down.”

  “I’m not supposed to leave the building.”

  “Everybody’s still at Cahuenga. The sergeant over there said you gotta go help secure the new scene until they get there.”

  Kelly couldn’t move. The last place she wanted to be was outside. Even at this hour. And the very last place she wanted to be was at a crime scene.

  She hoped to Christ that, at least, given the late hour, there wouldn’t be a crowd.

  Kelly knew it was bad the moment she turned onto Dehougne and saw the chaos half a block away. She pulled in behind a red and white ambulance and sat there a moment, watching a rookie uniform whose name she thought was Oscar something—Quincy maybe—as he tried to move a crowd of two dozen neighborhood people back across the street, away from the alley. She didn’t see any detectives. Nobody here yet. Just her.

  Kelly grabbed the clipboard off the seat and got out of the car. She walked up to the uniform, the nametag said QUINTANA, and asked him what was going on.

  He nodded to the alley where Kelly now saw a man without a shirt leaning against the wall a few feet away from where two paramedics worked on another man, this one flat on his back.

  “We roll up, two guys are down, we see the rent-a-cop over there, he’s all hyped up, going on about how he broke up some gang shooting, but we don’t see anybody around but him.”

  Kelly looked into the alley and saw Quintana’s partner listening to a slight but animated guy in a security guard uniform. Right above their heads, two stories up, was a dark window.

  Dark, but Kelly could see a face up there.

  The face looked at her, then moved away. She turned, glanced at the growing crowd across the street, then spoke into her rover and requested more bodies. There was a lot of shit on the ground, she knew the night guys would want all of it.

  She felt strange walking the scene without Rudy, but they were short. The only way they would ever let Kelly show her face in public.

  She pointed to the window and said, “Go upstairs to the apartment, the one overlooks the alley, see if anybody up there saw anything.”

  “What about all these people?”

  “Go,” she said. “Right now.”

  Quintana nodded, moved off around the building.

  As Kelly walked further into the alley, she realized that the shirtless man was dead. A good portion of his head had been blown off, most of it baked onto the stucco wall he was now leaning against. A small black hole leaked blood a few inches below his left eye. He was barefoot and Kelly automatically glanced around to see if his shoes were lying about somewhere, but knew that she wouldn’t find them.

  She turned her attention to the man on the ground, watching as the paramedics cut away his bloody shirt and trousers, and saw at least two gunshot wounds.

  But when the man looked up at her, met Kelly’s gaze, he seemed utterly at peace. He seemed to be in no pain at all. He watched Kelly with calm eyes as she came over and crouched down beside him.

  “Who shot you?”

  The man just looked at her a moment, then closed his eyes.

  Kelly watched as one of the paramedics inserted an IV into the man’s arm and asked, “He tell you his name?”

  The paramedic shook his head. “Guy hasn’t made a sound since we got here.” He patted the man on the cheek and the man’s eyes came open again.

  “Try and stay awake, okay, buddy?”

  The guy looked once more at Kelly. She said, “What’s your name?”

  He didn’t answer. He looked to be near forty with sandy brown hair and pale blue eyes. Maybe it was the way he was looking at her, or the small features and smooth skin, whatever it was, Kelly felt like she was looking at a child. More than that, she felt something she hadn’t felt at a crime scene in a long time: she felt sorry for him.

  “Sir, can you tell me your name?”

  The man opened his mouth, but made no sound.

  The paramedic said, “We gotta load him.”

  Kelly said, “Someone needs to go with you.” She then squeezed the man’s hand and stood back as they lifted him onto a gurney.

  She walked, taking care not to step on any of the dozen or so shell casings that littered the ground, to where Quintana’s partner, a black cop with a shaved head and huge forearms, was listening to the security guard.

  She said, “Officer,” and Quintana’s partner turned and looked at her. His nametag said FRY. Kelly nodded to the paramedics who were loading the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “I need you to ride with the guy, get a Dying Declaration.”

  Fry considered her a moment, gave her a look like he was in a bar, just saw her walk in, wasn’t sure yet how he felt about her. Kelly had been getting a lot of these looks from the black officers lately.

  “There a problem, Officer Fry?”

  “No, ma’am.” Fry nodded to the guard. “This is Mr. Dooley,” he said. “He’s the one called it in.”

  Kelly said, “Thanks,” then extended her hand to the security guard, Kelly putting him somewhere in his early forties.

  “I’m Sergeant Maguire.”

  The guard shook her hand and said in a breathy rush, “Man, it was hairy.”

  She watched as the guard walked about in place, still all amped up on adrenaline. “They just started shooting,” he said. “Like that. No hesitation, no thinking about it. We all just started shooting. I must’ve emptied my whole fucking clip.”

  Kelly said, “I’m going to need your gun.”

  He stopped moving and turned to her.

  “And your holster.”

  “What for?”

  “Techs need it. Find out who shot who.”

  “I can tell you that.”

  “I understand, but I’m still going to need you to surrender your weapon, please.”

  He looked at her, not so hyper now, and took off his holster and handed it to her. “It’s a Glock,” he said, “case you’re wondering.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Same as you, I bet.”

  She took the holster, looked to where a long-haired detective she knew worked auto had just now arrived, was crouching down marking shell casings. Rick something. Or was it Ron?

  Jesus, no wonder they all hated her.

  “Hey.” She took a chance: “Rick.”

  The auto guy looked her way, took out a cigarette, and looked off at the dead man, now covered with a blanket, and said, “He looks familiar to me. Anybody ID him yet?”

  “I just got here.”

  Dooley said, “He looked familiar to me, too.”

  Rick looked at him. Then at Kelly.

  “This is Mr. Dooley,” she said. “He’s one of the shooters.”

  Rick eyeballed the guard and said, “Looks like there was a lot of shooting.”

  “It was pretty hairy.”

  Kelly held up the holster and
said to Rick, “I was wondering, could you take this for me, put it in your trunk? I don’t think I’ll be here long.”

  Rick looked back at Kelly a moment before he took the holster and said, “Sure,” but Kelly could see he wanted to say something else.

  “Yeah?” Ready for whatever shit was coming.

  Rick looked down at the gun in the holster, then at Kelly, and said, “Listen, just so you know, there’s a lot of us think what you did was justified.”

  “Justified?”

  “We just want you to know that we’re, you know, cool with what you did. That’s all.”

  Kelly asked, “Who’s we?”

  “You know.”

  She watched as Rick from auto then turned and walked off with the holster. She remembered Dooley and saw that the guard was still standing there.

  She said, “How ’bout you tell me what happened?”

  He started moving again, shook his head and whistled. “Man,” he said. “It was pretty fucking—”

  “Outside of how hairy it was.” She glanced up at the dark window above the security guard’s head. “Start with what exactly your gig is.”

  “I work for Valley West Security. Senior patrol officer. I’ve got six buildings over on Hart, all of them damaged in the quake.”

  Kelly nodded. At least a dozen apartment buildings in the area had been condemned after the quake and now the owners were paying guys like Dooley to keep out the transients, drug dealers, and prostitutes while the owners either waited for or squandered their FEMA checks on other projects.

  Kelly said, “What were you doing over here, you got buildings over on Hart?”

  “I heard a gunshot.”

  “What time?”

  The guard said, “About nine.”

  “You heard it from over on Hart?”

  “It was quiet,” he said. “I was just sitting in my cruiser, eating dinner when I hear the shot. So I start driving.”

  “You didn’t call the police?”

  “I wanted to check it out before I bothered you guys.”

  “So you drove from Hart over to here, passed by the alley…”

  “I see these kids with guns out. I can’t see what they’re doing, so I shine my spot into the alley.”

  “You hear a gunshot,” Kelly said. “Then you see kids with guns, and you still don’t call us?”

  “They were about to kill that guy.” He nodded in the direction of the ambulance where Officer Fry was now climbing into the back with the wounded man. “They had him dead to rights and I could see the other guy was already down.”

  “So you hit them with your Q beam, then what?”

  “They started shooting at me. Blew out my windshield and my rear window. It’s raining glass, so I open the door, get into a crouch and return fire.” He stopped moving long enough to add, “I don’t think the little fuckers expected me to return fire.”

  “How many little fuckers were there?”

  “There were four of them,” he said. “All blacks.” Then he added just in case she didn’t get the hint, “No doubt bangers from some set around here.”

  “How many of them had guns?”

  The guard said, “Two of them had firearms. One of them had a little machine gun of some kind. I know because it jammed and they took off running after the other two.”

  “What direction was that?”

  He pointed down the alley. “That way.”

  The guard looked at the dead man. “I thought he looked familiar, too.”

  “Sergeant.” It was Quintana. He jogged over to Kelly, pointed to the window and said, “Nobody was home, but I left a card.”

  Kelly looked up at the window. “Somebody’s up there,” she said. “I saw him.”

  “Well, nobody answered the door.”

  She looked across the street. Kelly wondered if the face she saw upstairs might be somewhere in the crowd of fifty people that now stood in front of the duplex. Three more patrol units had arrived and she could see the yellow tape stretched across the mouth of the alley.

  Kelly said to Quintana, “Officer, would you take Mr. Dooley to the car, see if you can’t get some description of the suspects beyond they’re black and in gangs.”

  Kelly smiled at the security guard, put her hands behind her back, and started to walk the alley. She noted a half dozen more shell casings, at least two different calibers, as well as a brown grocery bag and a folded piece of paper. The paper looked newer than anything else around it, so she crouched down, unfolded it. It was a torn-off piece of a map. A name and address were written in what looked like a child’s handwriting: Martin Shine. 1322 Laurel Canyon. #12.

  “I’ve seen this guy before.” She turned and saw Rudy Bell, a tall, rail-thin black detective and, up until six months ago, her partner, now holding the blanket back from the dead man’s face. Across the street, Kelly saw three more homicides getting out of their cars, jogging her way.

  Rudy said, “Sorry I’m late. We had another thing.”

  “I heard.”

  “He looks familiar, doesn’t he?”

  “Not really. But Rick what’s-his-face in auto said the same thing.”

  Rudy Bell looked at her and smiled. “What’s the matter, sunshine? You just wake up?”

  “It’s been a long night and I’d like to get the fuck out of here now that the men are here.”

  “Who’s more of a man than you are?”

  “According to my rep, I’m not anything anymore.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “Seriously, Rudy. You guys need me?”

  “No. Get out of here.”

  Rudy watched her pull off her gloves and said, “You’re letting yourself go.”

  “I never had ahold of myself to begin with.” She nodded to his suit and said, “What is that, Armani?”

  He tugged at a lapel and said, “Hugo. You like it?”

  “You always look good, fatso,” Kelly said.

  Rudy looked at her, started to say something when out in the street someone screamed. A high, shrill wail that split the crowd in two. Kelly saw a woman push through the center to where the uniform stood by the tape. Kelly couldn’t hear all that she was saying, but caught one word: husband.

  Kelly called to the cop standing near the yellow tape, “Keep her over there.”

  The woman, wrapped in a pale blue bathrobe, tried to push past the cop and yelled, “Frank!”

  Kelly and Rudy walked forward, Rudy saying, “Ma’am, we can’t let you back there.”

  “What’s happened to my husband?”

  Rudy looked at Kelly.

  “My neighbor called, said he was lying in an alley. He was out doing his exercise, didn’t come home. I was about to call the police when—My God, is that him?” She was staring at the body by the wall.

  Kelly knew this woman from somewhere, but wasn’t sure where. She asked, “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  From somewhere behind her, Kelly could hear Rick, the auto guy’s, voice, “Wait a minute, I know who this guy is…”

  “I’m Theresa Peres.”

  Rudy said, “Your husband is Frank Peres?”

  She looked up at him. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Kelly looked at Rudy, who turned and muttered, “Oh, Christ.”

  Behind her, Rick was saying, “He’s that guy, that city councilman running for mayor.” Kelly turned around and Rick smiled at her. “I knew I recognized him.”

  Kelly looked at the woman, at Theresa Peres, who was trying to shove her way past Rudy, but was being held back by Rudy and another cop. Kelly turned and watched a news crew now headed this way. The reporter was fumbling with her earpiece when she looked up and saw Kelly.

  “Sergeant Maguire?”

  Kelly turned and started to walk away from the crime scene. Then she started to run. She got in her car and watched as two other patrolmen now helped restrain Mrs. Peres. She watched as Rudy Bell stepped away from the hysterical woman and tucked in his shirt, ducking
his chin to see if the grieving woman had left a mark on the linen, and then looked off to where Kelly now sat.

  Kelly started the car, made a U-turn, and drove off without looking back.

  Science put Roy Cooper’s gun under his pillow and lay there in bed listening to the sounds just out the window on Agnes Street, picturing the neighborhood in his head. It was something he did every night to chill, help him fall asleep.

  He could see the houses, all of them built in the early fifties and painted white, green, or blue; all of them the same design—one story, a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom. Maybe a third of the houses had lawns. A few had rosebushes or crape myrtle trees out front. All of the backyards were cement.

  Tonight, Science, whose real name was Noel Bennett, was having trouble calming down. The only sounds he could hear outside his window were the hum of the electrical wires that ran between the houses, and his older brother, Cole, standing out on the lawn talking to a friend in low tones.

  The quiet felt good after the hour that Science and Truck had spent hiding in the weeds near the DWP right-of-way, a ten-mile-long corridor bordered by dirt berms and cement-block walls that ran along the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. The walls were supposed to keep people away from the overhead electrical towers that ran up the center, but Science and Truck made it in one jump to the top, their adrenaline carrying them up and over.

  At one point, a five-o whirly flew over and they leaned their backs against the dirt, certain the spotlight would catch them and they’d have to run for it, but the white beam moved on to nearby Hart Street and then swept over Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

  Science was cold and had pulled on the hoodie he took from the jogger. It was huge on him, two sizes too big. He looked down at himself, then turned to see Truck watching him with one eye.

  That’s when they started laughing. A full hour of it. They couldn’t stop. They would try to get up and walk, maybe get a few steps, when they would look at each other and then fall down in hysterics.

  Mothafucka shoulda kept on runnin’.

  True that.

  He ain’t gonna run nowhere no more.

  No doubt.

  Science was relieved that Truck didn’t bring up the slap. Glad to be just laughing. But he understood that, at some point, he would have to do something about it. He would have to rectify. And soon.