Vertical Coffin s-4

by Stephen J. Cannell

  Darren Zook came back to the table. His face was tight, his black skin stretched white around his jaw. "Those fucking guys are in there," he whispered, pointing to the pool hall.

  "What guys?" Christine asked, but everybody else at the table knew. SRT had come here, just like us, because it was the closest bar to Forest Lawn.

  Darren turned and started towards the poolroom. I scrambled out of the booth, grabbed his arm, and spun him around.

  "Whatta you doing?" I said.

  "I got some things to say to those assholes," he snarled.

  "No you don't. Sit down."

  "Hey, fuck you. Who are you anyway? You came on one ride with us. You're blue, we're tan. You're not even in our tribe."

  He yanked his arm away from me and started into the pool hall. I looked over at the booth. Four sheriff's deputies all sitting there trying to decide if they wanted to stop it or join it.

  "This is no good," I said softly. Then I turned and followed Darren into the poolroom.

  There were two SRT commandos shooting a rack on the far side of the room. The other four members were in a booth drinking. Brady Cagel must not like hanging with his troops, because he wasn't around. I looked over and saw Darren Zook by the cue rack, carefully selecting a weapon. He was making a big deal out of running his hand over the stick, checking it for cracks. Then he pulled it down and headed toward the six SRT agents. I cut between pool tables and intercepted him.

  "Darren, you're drunk. This ain't it," I said, holding one hand against his chest. Now the SRT agents looked up and saw us for the first time.

  "Hey Billy," Gordon Grundy, a big, square-headed federal SWAT commando said, "Yer fucking moolie's back." All the feds looked up at us. The vibe was so nasty that the four civilians playing pool at the next table laid their cues down on the green felt and just walked out of the bar. On the way they passed the four sheriffs from our table, who now stood in the threshold: Brill, the Nightingale brothers, even Christine Bell.

  "Here come the rent-a-cops," a stocky, Hispanic fireplug fed in a black suit said. I thought his name was Ignacio Rosano. He stood, and as he did, three other feds rose with him. Now everybody was on their feet.

  "Let's cool down," I said. "We don't need this, guys."

  "Get the fuck outta here, Scully," Zook said. Then, without warning, he pushed me hard to the right and swung the pool cue. It hit Rosano on the shoulder and bounced up hard, into his throat, landing with a loud THWACK.

  The dance was on.

  Bar fights, like bad parties, are no fun and hard to remember afterwards.

  I paired up with Billy Greenridge. He was a SWAT-trained commando about my same height, and had good moves. I tried my Brazilian jujitsu, but he was fast and I couldn't take him to the ground. We traded right hands. I caught the first few body shots on my elbows, then one slipped through and cracked a rib. This is not the way police officers are trained to behave, I whined to myself as I covered up. Then I saw his square jaw loom into view-a clean shot. I swung hard, but he spun and I missed, catching his shoulder and throwing myself badly off balance in the process. Out of the corner of my eye I saw people wheeling and trading punches. Darren and one of the SRT guys were doing some kind of Quo Vadis thing with pool cues. Christine Bell seemed hard pressed to find an opponent. The feds kept ignoring her, turning away and going for one of the guys, until she stepped up and kicked Grundy between the legs and brought him down like a bag of sand.

  The worst part of this fight was that it was so stupid. Our side was also going to be shamefully easy to identify afterwards, all in our nice police dress uniforms, complete with name plates.

  Two of the feds were now lying on the floor. As I turned to find a new opponent, I caught it from behind with a pool cue. The next thing I knew, I was on my hands and knees under the table trying to remember what continent I was on. That's when one of the feds put me out of my misery. I caught a shiny, black brogan with the right side of my head. I was done. Down for the count. Gone. Oh well.

  Chapter 8

  BUSTED AGAIN

  What the hell happened to you?" Alexa asked. It was eight fifteen the next morning. As soon as I stepped out of the shower I put on a baseball cap to cover the six emergency-room stitches in the back of my head. But I guess the shower had opened the edge of the cut, and blood was running down the back of my neck.

  "Take off that silly hat," she ordered.

  "Oh, I don't think…"

  She reached out and snatched the hat off. Then we did a little circle dance where she kept trying to get around behind me. "Shane, have you been fighting?" Sounding now like the horse-faced nun in those old Mickey Rooney movies.

  Busted again.

  Chooch had just hobbled out the door with Delfina, both of them on the way to school. He dropped her at Venice High each morning, then drove out to Harvard-Westlake in the Valley. We were alone, so I couldn't even use the kids for cover. I brought us both mugs of coffee and handed one to Alexa. She sat at the kitchen table and looked unhappy. I knew she couldn't stick around long, because she had a nine o'clock meeting with Tony Filosiani. They were reviewing some detective crime scene tactics in Vernon, where the department had a big public relations problem pending on a bad arrest.

  "Who hit you?" she demanded again.

  "What makes you think I got hit? This was a… I fell off a whatever-a thing." Great, Shane. "I was leaning back and tipped over in a chair, hit my head." Better.

  "I can spot blunt force trauma. Don't forget who you're dealing with," she said.

  She was right. It's pretty hard to BS a trained street detective. When it came to skirting the edges of the truth, this was not your normal marriage.

  So I told her about the fight that took place the night before at the Pew and Cue. When I finished she was very quiet.

  "Well, say something," I said. I hated it when she went quiet. That was always the worst.

  "What do you want me to say, Shane? We've got major problems going down between sheriffs and SRT. Lawsuits are bound to get filed, so how do you help? You and a bunch of sheriffs go out after Emo's funeral, get plastered, then get into a fight with SRT. Let's see… What should I say? How about this: Was it fun?"

  "Would it help if I told you I tried hard to break it up before it got started?"

  "That might help."

  "I tried really, really, really hard to break it up before it got started."

  "Y'know, Shane, I love you, but you still have a lotta spots left that need smoothing off."

  "And you're slowly sanding them. I want you to know I'm extremely grateful."

  "Did the LAPD roll on it? Is this disaster gonna show up on a department green sheet downtown?"

  "One of our black-and-whites was called, but Darren talked 'em out of doing anything."

  "Darren. Not you."

  "I was… in the toilet throwing up."

  "Shit." Now she looked worried. "You got knocked out?"

  "I don't think I was puking because of a concussion. I think it was bad chicken wings. I feel really good this morning. Tip-top. The E. R. docs didn't even want to hold me."

  "Because you didn't tell them you were throwing up."

  "A lot of it is kinda vague. I've got blank spots."

  "Really." She leaned back, tipping in her chair, still watching me.

  "Be careful," I said. "I wouldn't want you to go over and hit your head, like I did."

  "Shut up, Shane."

  But I'd turned the corner, I could already hear a smile in her voice.

  "It was just bad luck. We didn't know they'd be in there."

  She heaved a sigh. "Look at me. Right in the eye." She leaned forward and started checking my pupils. "You're okay, I guess."

  She got up. I stood with her, but got a little dizzy when I did. To be honest, I might have picked up a mild concussion, but the less said here, the better.

  She kissed me without passion; still angry, but she was late. "Be home for dinner?" she asked.

  "I thin
k so. I'm trying to wrap up the Paula Beck thing today. Once the D. A. files and Zack comes back from Miami, we can move on to something else. I'll be on the fourth floor. Lunch?"

  "I don't break bread with lawless brawlers," she said.

  "I was not brawling. I barely hit anybody."

  "Noon at the Peking Duck," she snapped.

  We left in separate cars. I drove my Acura, following her new blue Lexus until she sped up around the 10 Freeway and lost me in the heavy traffic.

  I spent most of the morning on the fourth floor at Parker Center wrapping up the Beck investigation. I didn't think I had come up with enough on Paula for the D. A. to file the double-H. Even though the case was tragic, it really was just involuntary manslaughter. The D. A. could try and run his bluff, but if her public defender wasn't a complete moron he'd know it was a stretch. I finished the investigation report and handed it in to Cal, who glanced it over, then smiled at me.

  "What happened at the Pew and Cue?" he said, his black, shiny, chrome-dome glinting purple in the overhead fluorescents.

  "I wasn't there," I said.

  "It's all over the department. Somebody said you got knocked cold." I kept my six-stitch lace-up turned from his view.

  "Me?" I said. "Wasn't there. Bum rumor."

  I had lunch with Alexa and we didn't say much. She picked at an avocado plate, which I could have told her was a bad menu choice at the Peking Duck. Stick to the Oriental dishes in that joint, the egg rolls and dim sum.

  The rest of the day went slowly. I searched through our files on predicate felons, looking for a new target Zack and I could work when he got back. By six I was getting ready to pack it in, when my phone rang. It was Sergeant Ellen Campbell, who works as Alexa's administrative assistant.

  "The skipper wants to see you," she said brightly. The skipper was Alexa.

  "On my way."

  I closed up my desk, logged off my computer, and rode the elevator up two flights to the sixth floor. I figured Alexa was going to suggest we make up over dinner. There was a Greek restaurant called Acropolis, in the Valley, she'd been wanting to try.

  I walked down the thick, sea-foam green carpet that covered the corridors of the command floor, entered Alexa's outer office, and found Ellen, a perennially happy, freckled blonde sitting behind her desk. Most lieutenants aren't staff rank officers and don't have private secretaries, but Alexa was an acting division commander, and head of Detective Services Group. She reported directly to the Office of Operations, which was right below the Chief, so she was way up on the department flowchart.

  DSG supervised all the detective bureaus, from Forgery and Missing Persons, to Special Crimes and Robbery-Homicide. Normally the head of DSG would be a captain or a commander, but Alexa had taken over the XO position a year ago as a lieutenant. She was made acting head by Chief Tony Filosiani after her boss, Captain Mark Shephard, had been shot and killed. Chief Filosiani liked her and was willing to leave her as acting head until she made captain, which, the way she was going, would probably be in another year.

  Ellen was facing her computer as I crossed the office. "Storms blowing. Wear your raincoat," she said without looking up.

  Alexa's digs were small. One window, no view. She had portable bookshelves on every wall. Tony Filosiani was a law enforcement junkie and read everything from student doctoral theses on criminology to medical volumes on forensic science. Alexa had picked up the trait. She had books and manuals piled everywhere. It was the new department. The rubber hose was in the Hall of Fame. Now we forced confessions with drops of DNA, luminous light, and blood-spatter evidence.

  "Shane, sit down," my wife said, looking harried. She glanced at her watch and I instantly knew we weren't going to dinner.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  "Big problems. ATF Internal Affairs just sent us over a copy of their findings on the Hidden Ranch shoot-out. They found SRT innocent of any wrongdoing."

  "What'd you expect?"

  "Sheriff Messenger's in with Tony right now. He's pissed. The mayor is coming over with Enrique Salazar from the Board of Supervisors. The area SAC from ATF is on his way, too."

  "Look, Alexa, it's…"

  "No. Stop talking for a minute and listen. We're going into a meeting on this in seconds. The ATF finding claims that they told the sheriff's warrant control office about the automatic weapons in Smiley's garage. Of course, the WCO denies it, and of course, there's no paperwork substantiating what ATF says."

  "Of course."

  "But Brady Cagel says they never write any paper on stuff like that when they give over a bust to another agency, and the fact is, he's right."

  "But what does this have to do with us? It's a sheriff's department-ATF spat."

  Her intercom buzzed. She picked up the phone, listened, then said, "Right. Thanks, Ellen." She hung up and said, "Come on. Mayor MacKenzie's here. We're on."

  "Alexa, whatta ya mean we're on?"

  "We've been ordered by the mayor to reinvestigate it." And she was out of the office and down the hall.

  I hurried to catch up, finally grabbing her arm before she got to Chief Filosiani's huge double doors. "You're giving this to me?" Duh… Finally getting it.

  "Look, Shane, I need you. This is the ultimate red-ball. Either way this goes, nobody is going to come out a winner. The best we can hope for is some kind of mitigating circumstance. But we probably won't get that lucky. The mayor doesn't want ATF to reinvestigate. He's not happy with their current finding and doesn't trust their objectivity. He also can't trust the sheriff to be unbiased. He knows there's going to be multiple lawsuits on the shoot-out from the neighbors and from Emo's family, so he came to us. We're your classic uninvolved third party."

  "Why me?"

  "Three reasons. One: you're a great cop and you're fair…"

  "Stop it. You'll make me vomit."

  "Two: you're the only L. A. cop that Sheriff Messenger will accept. He liked the way you handled the Viking case."

  "What's the third?"

  "You're the only person in this building I can trust not to leak. We're gonna do this together."

  The door to the chief's office opened and Tony was standing there. His round Santa Claus face was red, but his cheeks were not ho-ho merry. He motioned us into the outer office.

  The chief's waiting room was fronted by a secretarial area. Bea, his battle-ax with a heart of gold, was sitting behind a large desk, a murder-one scowl already on her hawkish face. She nodded at Alexa and me as the chief led us into his office. You had to be very observant to spot the twinkle in her eye.

  Mayor Richard MacKenzie, known around town as Mayor Mac, was standing by the window. He was a tall, skinny, hollow-chested man with riveting blue eyes and a ridiculous blond comb-over. His double-breasted suits all fit like hand-me-downs. Also in the office, looking like he wanted to throw an ashtray, was Bill Messenger. Half Armenian, half Egyptian, he was a second-generation deputy who had been elected county sheriff two years ago.

  Across the room, wearing charcoal stripes and a purple tie, looking exactly like what he was, a slightly overweight politician working on a sound bite, stood Enrique Salazar.

  Tony closed the door behind us. "Shane, you know Mayor MacKenzie and Sheriff Messenger," he said.

  "Yes," I said, shaking hands.

  "And Supervisor Salazar."

  Enrique didn't cross the room. He waved a ring-laden hand at me instead.

  The office was strangely underfurnished. Chief Filosiani was a no-nonsense commander, known by his troops as the Day-Glo Dago because of his New York Italian demeanor and his penchant for flashy pinky rings. He had stripped out the expensive antiques and artwork that was the legacy of his predecessor, Burl Brewer, then sold them at auction and used the money to buy new Ultima Tac vests for his SWAT teams. He had installed utilitarian metal office furniture in the room, but there was damn little of it.

  "Have you filled Shane in?" Tony was saying.

  "A little," Alexa said. "I've explained th
e-" She stopped when Bea opened the door and admitted a sandy-haired, brown-eyed, compact man in a tan suit who looked like a carefully tailored gymnast. Behind him was the ATF ASAC, Brady Cagel.

  Tony shook hands with the first man, then introduced him to the room. "Garrett Metcalf is the new SAC area commander. He and Mr. Cagel are here to make sure we don't blackjack ATF. Supervisor Salazar is looking after the county's interests."

  "We're already late for a briefing at Justice," Metcalf said. "We can't stay but a minute. What's so important here, you had to demand an emergency meeting?"

  Mayor Mac turned away from the window. "We have the IAD shooting review you faxed over," he said. "You guys should scare up a literary agent and start publishing fiction."

  "Whatta you want, Mr. Mayor? You want me to lie?" Cagel snapped back. "Want me to fire shots at my own people when they didn't do anything?"

  "They sent one of my deputies up to Hidden Ranch without all the pertinent details," Messenger said.

  "I'm not going to argue this with you, Bill," Metcalf responded. "Our ASAC told your warrant control office there was a possibility of automatic weapons up there. Your guys didn't act on it or include it in the warrant. What am I supposed to do?"

  "You're just whitewashing," Messenger said. He looked like he was on the verge of throwing one of his well-known Egyptian conniptions.

  Garrett Metcalf said, "Your warrant guys dropped the ball. We're not gonna pay the freight."

  "I'm asking LAPD to reinvestigate," the mayor said. "Detective Scully is a neutral party. I've asked him to rehang the investigation."

  "He can investigate all he wants," Metcalf said. "It won't matter. It's closed. This is it as far as ATF and Justice are concerned. Not to get pissy, but a municipal investigation just isn't gonna cut it. This is a federal finding from Justice. It's over."

  "Municipal crimes are tried in municipal courts," Salazar said, speaking for the first time. "The federal government can't change that." His words flew across the room like chips of ice.