Yesterday's Echo

by Matt Coyle

  “The overkill is a CYA move by La Jolla PD.” She pulled me away from her car into the alley that split the motel units. “There’s a push by the La Jolla town council to disband the police force and contract with San Diego County Sheriff’s department to handle law enforcement. Del Mar does it and saves a bundle in tax dollars. The council is looking for any excuse to take their agenda to the voters. If this turns into a homicide, it will be all over the news and the whole department’s existence is going to be on the line. They’ll do whatever it takes to close the case.”

  Heather and I exchanged business cards and then hugs and said our goodbyes. I went back to the front desk and found out that Melody had checked out earlier that morning.

  • • •

  The sun had started to burn through the haze when I made the climb up to my car. Strict parking enforcement pushed us day workers up the hill from Restaurant Row into residential neighborhoods to park our cars. The homes along the way were mostly small and at least fifty years old. Some had sprouted new additions or second stories. None had views of the ocean, and all were worth more than I’d make in twenty-five years. I was from this town, but not of it. And yet, this is where I’d returned for a second chance at life. If Turk sold Muldoon’s, I didn’t know where I’d go for a last chance.

  Feet shuffling on the sidewalk behind me pulled me out of my head. My car was twenty feet away. Too late. A fist smashed into my right kidney before I could turn around. Pain shot through my back. A python, or maybe an arm, squeezed around my neck. I grabbed at it with my hands and felt taut flesh. A lot of it. I pulled at the arm and fought for air and saw Gen Y tough guy smiling in front of me. Then I heard the big one in my ear.

  “Muldoon’s not around to help you this time, Cahill.”

  They must have staked out my car after Turk kicked them out of the restaurant.

  I tightened my stomach, but didn’t get my hands down in time to block the kid’s punch. It went through clenched muscle and into my solar plexus, and all the air left my body. I tried to bring oxygen back into my lungs, but another punch landed on my right rib cage. Pain exploded up my side. The only thing that kept me from hitting the ground was the arm clamped around my neck. But it sealed off the chance any air would return to my body. I gasped. My face flashed hot and tight. I pulled at the arm, and it eased its pressure. Not from my effort, but because the man-mountain wanted an answer.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  It was probably time to tell him the truth. Maybe that would be worth a couple of gulps of air. I mulled this for a millisecond when I saw the front door of a house across the street open a crack, and a withered woman’s face popped out.

  “What girl?” My voice rode out on a gasp.

  “Motherfucker!” Spittle flew out of the Gen Y kid’s mouth and hit my chin.

  He drew back his right hand, but his punch never landed. I kicked him in the crotch like I was punting a football. It would have been a fifty yarder. He yelped and fell to the ground in slow motion, curling into a fetal position.

  The boss tightened his grip on my throat. I stomped my right heel down on his instep but only made him squeeze harder. I tugged at his arm. It was like trying to pull a branch off an oak tree. My face burned, and my head pounded. Then he relaxed his choke hold and moved his arm two inches down. My mouth opened wide and vacuumed in as much air as it could, then I heard a shout from across the street.

  “The police are on their way!” The voice was a high-pitched whine. It was the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard.

  The huge arm now clamped both sides of my neck. A police choke hold, back when they were still allowed. I could breathe, but felt dizzy. I grabbed his arm with all I had left but couldn’t budge the tightening vise. My legs wobbled and everything turned red.

  Then I heard it again.

  “I called the police! They’re coming!”

  “Talk to the cops and you’re dead.” The Brooklyn-accented voice hissed in my ear.

  Then he let go of my neck.

  My knees hit the sidewalk first, and then my hands and face. I heard the neutered one struggle up off the ground, then running footsteps, car doors slamming, and finally a vehicle peeling out and zooming away. I didn’t see any of it because my eyes were closed. When I opened them I saw the sidewalk, up close.

  “Are you all right?” It was the voice from heaven again.

  I rolled over on my back and groaned. My whole body felt like an open wound. After someone had rubbed salt in it and squeezed on some lemon juice for flavor.

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “The police should be here any minute!”

  I rolled back over onto all fours and stood up in stages. My car sat twenty feet away. The police would have to question my savior across the street alone. Brooklyn’s threat hung in my ears under the pounding in my head.

  When I finally made it to my car, the seat belt felt like an iron maiden when I cinched it around my torso.

  I got home safely, locked the front door behind me, then glaciered through the kitchen to the back door and let Midnight in. He bounded in and jumped up to greet me before I could stop him. I stepped aside and tried to avoid his clawed embrace. My right foot caught the leg of the kitchen table and my back hit the ground at the same time Midnight’s front paws landed on my rib cage. Pain shot through my front and my back and met in my middle. Laughter came instead of tears.

  Midnight raked his tongue along my asphalt-scraped cheek.

  Love hurts.

  Muldoon’s

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Three hours later, after ice on my kidney and ribs and Motrin down my throat, my house phone rang. I struggled off the couch and answered it, hoping it was Melody.

  “Rick, it’s Dan Coyote.”

  Not even close.

  Dan was a detective for the La Jolla Police Department. He was the only cop I knew who liked me, and that was probably because he didn’t know me very well. We’d met playing golf at Torrey Pines a couple years ago. We hit it off and now hit the links together every month or so. He’d joined the LJPD from the Phoenix PD when La Jolla was short on manpower. It was a few years after I’d returned from Santa Barbara. If he knew or cared about my past, he never mentioned it.

  “Hi, Dan. If you have a tee time, I’ll probably be out of action for a couple days.” I didn’t think I could put a tee in the ground, much less make a golf swing.

  “Actually, I’m calling about an incident that occurred today that may involve you.” His voice was more detective than golf buddy.

  The ancient Good Samaritan who saved my life must have given the police my license plate number. I didn’t know whether the goon’s threat had been idle or serious and I didn’t want to find out. Beyond that, I’d had enough police involvement for a lifetime.

  “If you’re talking about a couple of guys roughing me up, it’s not a big deal. I’m fine. I don’t want to press charges.”

  “I’d still appreciate it if you’d come down to the station and tell me about it.” His voice, now full detective, brought back bad memories from Santa Barbara.

  “I have to be at work soon. It’s really not worth your time.”

  There was a pause and then a deep exhale. “Look, Rick, the woman who filed the report is the owner of The La Jolla Lantern. She’s making this a big deal. I’d really appreciate it if you’d come down.”

  The Lantern was the tiny local paper. Apparently its bite was bigger than its circulation. I didn’t want the one cop I had as a friend to join my long list of enemies in blue.

  The La Jolla Police Station was on Wall Street, just a few blocks from Muldoon’s. The cops called it the “Brick House” because it was constructed of white brick. It had been a library in its early days before the police took it over. I guess the “Library” wasn’t as intimidating as the “Brick House.”

  I hadn’t been there since my dad got kicked off the force twenty-five years ago.

  The two-story station house had polished
wood floors and exposed wood-beam ceilings. I could see how it would have made a charming library, but my body tensed and my breaths quickened when I walked through the front door. It was a police station. A place where I used to belong, but never would again. A place where you were forced to face the truth, even when you lied.

  The desk sergeant, a blue sack of wrinkles with a gruff tone, phoned upstairs to Detective Coyote in Robbery/Homicide. This was La Jolla. They might as well have called it Robbery/Died of Natural Causes. The town averaged maybe a murder a year. Still, the murders were usually high profile and became grist for books and TV crime shows. Jilted ex-wife murders her rich husband and his new trophy wife, white-bread wannabe gangbangers beat to death a surfer buddy, rich kid murders his whole family. The murders probably got big publicity because of their rarity and locale.

  Just like Santa Barbara.

  Dan came downstairs to usher me up to the second floor and Robbery/Homicide. His greeting was professional and lacked the warmth of a first-tee handshake. He had less hair and more stomach than when we’d first met, but still had an athlete’s grace. His Native American ancestry showed in prominent cheekbones and dark hair. Tan slacks, a brown blazer, and a conservative tie made up his uniform. There were no jeans and T-shirt detectives on the La Jolla police force. Those were for TV cops and Levi’s commercials.

  Robbery/Homicide was housed in a square room that stank of day-old coffee. There were four low cut gray cubicles in the middle of the room adorned with computers and family photos. A large window faced the street and let in palm tree-filtered sunlight. An American flag hung on the wall opposite the window next to a map of La Jolla with red-and-black pushpins stuck in it.

  In the far-left corner of the room there was a large glass-enclosed office with “Police Chief Raymond Parks” stenciled on the front panel. I guess in a small PD like this, the chief had to slum it with the gold shields. Open blinds cut shadows across Parks’s face as he sat at his desk in his dress blues. He turned up dark eyes and gave me a flat-faced stare for an uncomfortable three count. My reputation preceded me. I wanted to get the hell out of there and back onto the streets where the tough guys didn’t have badges.

  The only other person in the room was the detective I’d seen talking to Heather Ortiz at the Shell Beach Motel earlier in the day. A nameplate on the outside of his cube opposite Dan’s read “Detective Moretti.” Hair slicked back hard, olive skin deeply tanned like a guy who spent his days at the beach or his nights under a sun lamp. He was hunched over a trash can clipping his fingernails. I guess the DB turned out to be an overdose. One less murder to solve for the busy boys at Robbery/Homicide.

  Dan pulled a chair from the empty cube next to his and offered it to me. My ribs and kidneys hurt as I lowered myself down into the chair. He opened with some preliminaries, name and address to get everything on the record if needed. Then he asked me to describe my day leading up to and through the assault.

  I gave him the rough and tumble at Muldoon’s and then the ambush. The rest was between Melody and me. Nothing about taking her home last night, nothing about looking for her at the motel. I didn’t even give him her name or what she looked like. Until I knew different, Melody didn’t want the cops involved and I certainly didn’t want to be involved with the cops.

  “And you don’t know the woman that these men were looking for?” He looked at me like “no” would be the wrong answer. I gave him a version of it, anyway.

  “Like I said, they were looking for a woman they claimed had dinner in Muldoon’s last night. I don’t necessarily see or remember every guest who comes into the restaurant.”

  I’d probably never see Melody again. If I did, I didn’t want it to be because I’d betrayed her trust.

  Dan stood up and looked down at me like I’d betrayed his. Sometimes in life you have to make hard choices.

  “All right, Rick,” Dan said.

  He walked over to a file cabinet against the wall and grabbed two large three-ring binders, then came back and dropped them on the desk. They made a loud “clunk” that brought Moretti’s head over the cubicle wall. He gave me cop eyes and then disappeared below the partition.

  “Look through those mug books and let us know if you find the men who assaulted you.” He gave me the same look Moretti had. “I’m going to go grab our sketch artist in case the suspects aren’t in the books.”

  I flipped through the mugs and didn’t see anyone I recognized. I sat quietly and waited for Dan’s return. The quiet didn’t last long.

  “Those two hard boys seemed pretty certain you knew the woman they were after. Why do you think that is, Cahill?” Detective Moretti’s coal eyes bore into me over the top of the cubicle.

  He must have been listening while he worked on his manicure.

  “I don’t know.” I held his glare. “Maybe they didn’t like getting kicked out of the restaurant and decided to take it out on me.”

  “Just an innocent victim.” He hit each syllable hard like the drop of a guillotine blade. “Is that it, Cahill?”

  I’d never met this guy before and wished I hadn’t then. His contempt for me was boldly up front, even for a cop. I hadn’t faced such hatred since my last encounter with Colleen’s father.

  “I didn’t even want to press charges.” My voice had some hiss to it. “I came down here as a favor to Dan, so—”

  “You’re a real sport, Cahill.” He smacked gum, loud and hard with an open mouth. “Doing the police a favor by reporting a crime that you seemed content to cover up. You could have saved us all a lot of time and trouble if you would have waited around for the uniforms. That’s what people with nothing to hide do.”

  “Yeah, I can see you’re very busy. Not even enough time for a decent manicure.”

  Moretti sprang up from his chair to his full height, which would have been right at the police department minimum, if they still had one. He walked over and let his short-man frame tower over me as I stayed seated. I glanced at the chief’s office behind Moretti to the left. Parks’s eyes were on me and not his belligerent detective.

  “How the hell were you ever a cop, Cahill?”

  Finally, a good question. I hadn’t planned on being one. I was going to be a football coach. Start in high school and then move my way up the ladder. My father had been a cop for LJPD. At least until he “retired” early without a pension. There’d been an investigation, but no charges filed. I remembered playing kickball in grade school the first time I heard the word “bagman.” Neither the kid who’d repeated his father’s words nor I knew what it meant. Until later.

  My dad died when I was a sophomore in college. The man I’d loved as a child, feared as a kid, and hated as a teenager. His ex-partner was the only cop who attended the memorial service. That was the day I decided to become a police officer. I never let myself believe that I was doing it to erase the tarnish my father had brought to the family name. It was only after I’d turned tarnish to rot that I realized what I’d been trying to do.

  I didn’t think Moretti was interested in the details, so I kept my history to myself.

  “You had to go all the way to Santa Barbara to find a place where no one could smell the stink of your old man on you.” He smacked his gum louder. “But you fouled the world and that poor girl with your own stink. Didn’t you?”

  If he didn’t have a badge and it had been five years ago in a bar, I would have stopped his mouth with my fist. That may have been what he was hoping I’d do now. Give him a reason to put me in a cage where I belonged. Where my family blood had fated me. I tamped down the anger and shoved it into a compartment in a dark hole in my mind.

  “You practicing interrogation methods for when you catch the guys who jumped me?” I smiled up at him like a good citizen. “After you’ve buffed your nails, of course.”

  He raised his foot up and rested it on the arm of Dan’s chair and leaned in on me. Up close, I could see the tip of a jagged cleft lip scar under his black mustache. I caught a whiff
of his cologne. It was subtle, like ox musk mixed with gasoline.

  “Something’s not right about your little story, Cahill.” He smiled but drilled small, mean eyes into me. “Just like the story you told Santa Barbara PD a few years back. The rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the rotten tree.”

  I stood up. Moretti dropped his foot back to the ground and straightened up. It didn’t matter how straight he made his spine, he’d never catch up to me. This time I crowded him and looked down at his forehead. “Tell Dan I’m sorry I couldn’t wait around for the sketch artist.” I crouched down a few inches so we were eye to eye. “Okay, Detective?”

  Moretti grabbed me by my shirt and sent his cologne in first before his face. “Sit down!”

  He tried to push me down into the chair, but I stayed upright. My ribs and kidneys screamed pain, but I swallowed it. I caught the chief’s office out of the corner of my eye. Parks still had his eyes only on me.

  “Sylvia’s ready to sketch for Mr. Cahill.” Dan’s voice broke the tension, but I kept my eyes on Moretti.

  “Cahill and I were just discussing his father.” Moretti relaxed his shoulders and looked over at Dan. “Bags Cahill left quite a reputation behind. Just like his son, Rick, here.” He turned back to me. “I told your friend Dan all about your, ah, interesting past this afternoon.”

  He gave me a snake grin, patted me on the shoulder, and then left the room.

  I turned and saw in Dan’s eyes that I’d need a new golf partner. Now every cop I knew was on the other side of the thin blue line.

  I sat down and worked with the sketch artist. Not because it was the right thing to do. I’d already done enough wrong to negate the right. I did it to show Moretti and the rest of them that, although I was my father’s son, they’d never know me. They could label me a bent cop, a guy who got away with murder, but they’d never know who I really was.

  No one ever would.

  Dan had left me alone with the sketch artist. After about a half hour she had two good renderings of my attackers. I didn’t think anyone wanted to pat me on the back or shake my hand about being a good citizen, so I thanked the artist and got up to leave.