by Baxter Clare
They paused to order from Nancy and as she walked away, Gail said amiably, "She's cute."
"And available."
"Is she an ex?"
Frank smiled, "Nope. You won't find many of those in my closet."
"Pun intended?" Gail asked.
Frank smiled, mentally hurrying Nancy along with the drinks. She was beat and knew the scotch would give her a temporary lift.
"Did you have a quiet weekend?"
"Not really. Worked most of it."
"Don't tell me you're a workaholic," Gail cringed.
"It's possible," Frank admitted. "First step to recovery's acknowledging it, though, right?"
"Did you get called in?"
"Nope. Worked mostly on Placa's case. We found our primary suspect Saturday night and worked him in the box for twenty-four hours —"
"—God, no wonder you're tired."
Frank shook her head at the table, "Nook and Bobby did the hard part. But none of what we have is adding up, which makes me think I'm going to land back at Go with no money. There are things about this case that I can't square."
"Like what?"
"Like my best suspects have valid alibis. Like why is Placa's mother so antsy every time I bring up drugs? I know they know something, but they're not talking. And the graffiti around the 'hood — it's as good as a daily newspaper. Bobby and I checked it out today. There are a couple memorials up for Placa, her brother did a really beautiful one. He's got his sister's talent with a can. Anyway, the memorials show a lot of respect, but the curious thing is that none of them are striking out a rival gang — and that's standard procedure on a memorial. The curious thing is, we're seeing strikes with LAPD struck out. Two of them are fresh ones we're pretty sure her brother did, and they both say 187 LAPD."
Frank explained that tacking the California penal code for murder onto a rival's name was a common death threat.
"So the brother's mad at the police?"
"Yeah. Like we're responsible somehow for his sister's death."
"Maybe he's just mad that you're not doing anything about it."
Frank smiled at Gail's innocence. She wasn't sure how the woman could be Chief Coroner of one of the world's most brutal cities and still be so naive.
"What?" Gail asked in response to Frank's amusement.
"Nothing. I don't think that's it," she said sitting back, so Nancy could set her drink down. "Bangers don't look to the law to solve their problems. The law is their problem. They'll take care of any justice or punishments in their own way."
"Street rules."
"Exactly."
"Which gives me job security."
"Both of us."
Stirring her drink with a fingertip, Gail said idly, "Maybe it's a cop."
"Maybe what's a cop?"
"The missing link. The person, persons, you're looking for."
Frank frowned, "Why would it be a cop?"
"Well, all that 187 LAPD graffiti, and the older man — what was his name?"
"Barracas?"
"Yeah, he was LAPD, right? Narco?"
"Retired."
"Still it's kind of interesting he was taken out too. And this courier business the boys supposedly ran sounds kind of flimsy. It's a perfect front for running drugs."
"Great," Frank nodded. "Now you're into LAPD bashing like the rest of the world."
"I'm not bashing anybody. It's just an idea."
"Hm. Better stick to your day job, doc."
"Whatever. You don't have to get so defensive."
"I'm not defensive," Frank clarified into her drink, "it's just hard enough to put up with the thrashing the department gets from the outside, then when my own colleagues start it gets a little tiresome."
"I'm not bashing your beloved institution," Gail argued, "but you have to admit the LAPD's hardly a bastion of ethics or morality."
"Granted, but by the same token most of its cops aren't out committing multiple homicides."
"Of course not," Gail agreed. "But you're a huge department. Rogue individuals turn up. It doesn't mean the whole institution's suspect. I'm not casting aspersions upon you personally."
"Better not be," Frank warned, as another waitress brought their dinner.
"Or?" Gail asked archly.
"Or else I won't stick around for dessert."
Stabbing at her salad Gail moped, "And now I've probably gone and pissed you off so much you won't answer my question."
"What question's that?"
"L.A. Your name. What's it stand for?"
Swallowing a huge bite of club sandwich, Frank answered, "Law And. My mother forgot the O."
"Come on. Tell me."
"Departmental secret. If I told you I'd have to kill you."
"It's something really sappy, isn't it? Like Lilith Ann or something absolutely not in character with a tough cop image. Am I right?"
"Yep. That's it," Frank agreed too easily.
"Can I call you Lily?"
"Call me whatever you like."
"Come on, tell me," Gail pleaded.
"Can't. Classified material."
Nancy came over to check on them and Frank circled a finger over the table. "Another round?"
Gail shook her head, narrowing her pretty green eyes at Frank.
"Don't think you can ply me with liquor, copper. I've got a memory like an elephant. And friends in high places."
Popping a French fry into her mouth, Frank grinned, "Good luck. It's legally L.A. Changed it years ago."
"You brat," Gail complained, and Frank was having such a good time sparring with the doc that she actually laughed.
Chapter Twenty
"Think about something, Bobby."
He and Frank were en route to the Compton PD to pick up a suspect.
"We're dealing with a family with a long history of banging. I mean, hardcore, hope-to-die OGs. It's a family tradition. These people don't scare lightly, but they're scared about something around Placa's murder. You can tell. They know something and they're afraid. They're not moving on this. If it was some vato who capped Placa, Gloria or Tonio'd be on him like stink on shit. But nothing's happened. Let's consider it's got nothing to do with a banger. Nor any sort of kickdown. Why would that scare them? That's their element. I think they're dealing with something out of their control here, something they can't or won't fight. What could that be to a bunch of OGs?"
Frank studied a clutch of women laughing outside a whipped hair salon. Bobby was quiet a long time and Frank let him drive slowly down Florence. Near a Tarn's, she said, "Pull over. Want some coffee?"
"No," he said, absorbed in his quandary, engine idling. When Frank got back into the Mercury with a large cup, Bobby proudly announced, "The Erne."
The Mexican Mafia, with their long arms in the heroin trade. Frank had talked to Narco and they'd substantiated Ruiz' purported ties to the Erne, but the problem was linking Ruiz to the Estrellas. Short of Placa's involvement in her fight for his territory, there was no other link. And Ruiz' corner franchise just wasn't big enough to involve offing whole families. Much as she didn't want to, Frank was letting go of Ruiz' involvement in any of the homicides. He was a street banger, plain and simple, not an organized hit man.
What had surprised Frank was the paucity of information that Worthington, the Narco lieutenant, had provided. It was common knowledge that you could always buy smack from an Estrella, every beat cop knew that, yet Frank couldn't remember a recent drug charge on any of them. Frank had thought that odd but Worthington had written it off as not having the resources to worry about small timers who sold within the hood. While she'd been chewing on that, the dinner conversation she'd had with Gail kept whispering in her head.
She was willing to admit that the LAPD probably had more than their fair share of bad cops. That was obvious enough. And it was possible that one of them was shaking down the Estrellas. She'd reluctantly entertained the possibility, and the more she examined it, the more plausible it seemed. She still didn't
like that a cop might be involved, but the more she played with the idea, the more sense it made.
"Good guess, but no. Think about the tags," she prodded. "Who's Tonio been Xing out?"
Bobby still hadn't driven out of Tarn's little lot.
"We sitting here all day?"
He shoved the car into drive, hunching over the wheel. Finally he turned to his boss.
"You can't mean a cop?"
"Why not?"
"No way. No sir," he insisted adamantly.
"Just calm down for a minute. Don't get squeamish on me. Tell me how long that family's been dealing."
Bobby heaved one of his gargantuan shoulders, "Forever. So?"
"So when was the last time any one of them got busted?"
"It's been a long time," he admitted. "So you're talking about a shakedown."
"It's possible. It fits. Like Claudia claiming you brought donuts. It wasn't you or Nook. But Alicia said some cop brought donuts. Why? Who? Why would she say that? Why all the LAPD strikes all of a sudden? I mean there's always been some, but why this sudden proliferation at Tonio's hand? And it would absolutely explain why they're not talking, not retaliating, why they're afraid."
"I don't like it," Bobby maintained.
"I'm not asking you to like it; I'm asking you to consider it. Shit, I don't like it either, but this isn't lifting a bottle of Scotch or a leather jacket. It's not even lifting eight pounds of coke from a locker, man, it's murder. Wholesale murder."
"Maybe," Bobby corrected, as Frank always did when her men mistook supposition for fact.
"Maybe," she agreed. "That's all I'm saying. It's a possibility. And we shouldn't look the other way because we don't like what we see."
"Isn't that being kind of hypocritical?"
"What do you mean?" Frank asked carefully.
"We looked the other way on Willie Larkin."
Frank took in an iron works shop and the metal recycling center next door. They passed a body shop, then a sunroof and alarm store before she answered, "That was different and you know it."
A small-time hustler, Larkin'd been working the block since he could walk. His felony charges used more ink than the editorial section of the Sunday Times and at nineteen he'd already danced on two murder raps. One was an old bag lady, Crazy Sadie. She only weighed 90 pounds with all her clothes on, but Larkin had strangled her because she wouldn't give up her Walkman. The second charge he'd waltzed on was the shooting of Travis Jones. Larkin and his homes were hanging out at JayZ's poolhall while eight year-old Travis pedaled slowly down the street. One of the homes bet Larkin couldn't shoot the bike out from under him and Larkin bet a bottle of Olde English that he could. He took aim with his .44 and the boy went down, shot through his femoral artery. Larkin looked around for high-fives while the kid bled to death in the street. The homes who'd bet the 40-ouncer reneged and Larkin beat the shit out of him.
Eighteen months later the owner of JayZ's called in a 240, assault in progress. Sergeant Eric Venedez was first on the scene. By the time he got there Larkin and his wrestling companion had put away their knives, but both were still in flight after pounding 40s all day, and thought Venedez looked like some fun standing there all alone.
Witnesses claimed Venedez approached the men first. Venedez said they came to him. After a short, confusing scuffle, the outcome was a DOG, Larkin's foe turned ally "dead on ground". Witnesses said Venedez shot without provocation. Venedez said Larkins's buddy pulled a gun. No one in the bar had seen him with a gun, only a knife, but backup units and Nine-three detectives found a stainless steel .38 next to him. Everyone in Figueroa knew Venedez carried a stainless steel .38 drop gun and even the boots knew why. Venedez' frequent and vociferous rationale was, "I'm not about to let twelve people who aren't even smart enough to get out of jury duty second-guess what I should or shouldn't do out there. My ass is on the line, not theirs."
Venedez carried his luck with him that day, but Larkin left his at home with his brains. When he was patted down for his ride to the station, they found a 9mm on him, a 9mm he should have ditched the minute he saw Venedez pull his. Yet there it was, Venedez' defense riding in Larkin's waistband. Not one cop, Frank included, asked Venedez where his backup piece was. After inconclusive ballistics tests and autopsy findings came in, and not withstanding that no one in the bar had seen the dead man with a .38, Larkin went to the bing for a mandatory twenty-five.
In Larkin's case, the law was absent while justice stepped forward. Larkin killed in cold-blood; Venedez had killed in self-defense. Larkin belonged in jail; Venedez didn't. The logic was simple and Frank had succumbed to it, but not happily. Despite it's frequent and egregious errors, Frank believed in the system as a whole. Because homicide was the ultimate offense, she wasn't against bending the rules now and then to close a case. But no matter how justified Larkin's setup was, it dismayed her that she could so easily leap to the other side of the law.
"Looks like a double-standard to me," Bobby argued softly.
"Then you're looking at it wrong. Venedez is one of the best uniforms we have. He does good work out there. What happened that day was an accident, but he'd have been left twisting in the wind for it. Whoever's bumping off the Estrellas isn't doing it by accident. This is cold, it's calculated, and it's deliberate. And where's it going to stop?"
"I still think you're barking up the wrong tree," Bobby muttered.
Sipping around his braking and accelerating, Frank countered, "Maybe, Picasso. But in case you haven't noticed, we're running out of trees to bark at."
They were working south on Hoover, toward Compton.
They were obviously in Blood territory, because the project wall on Frank's right dripped, "Bompton Krip Killas" in bright red paint. Frank considered the rash of anti-LAPD graffiti in Tonio's hood.
"Just play with it for a sec. Assume for the sake of argument that we're looking for a cop. Where do we start?"
"Damn," Bobby swore his strongest oath.
"Where do you start?" Frank repeated patiently.
"I don't know. Surveillance?" her detective said reluctantly.
Frank hoisted an eyebrow.
"On your spare time, Nook's, or mine?"
"All right. We bug the house. Put in a camera."
"Possible, but improbable. Unless we did it illegally."
Bobby took a sideways glance at his lieutenant.
"It wouldn't be admissible anyway, so who'd know if we did it off the record."
"Off the record," Frank smirked. "You're starting to sound like a reporter. If you were shaking them down would you be going to their house all the time?"
"Risky," he conceded, his teeth sinking into the query. Frank knew once he bit down on it Bobby wouldn't let go until he'd thrashed out every possible answer. He was like a pit bull.
"Get Narco in on it," he suggested.
"What if it is Narco? We don't know that. We still haven't looked too closely at Barracas. I gotta get his file. Maybe he's got some sticky fingers here. And that courier service. What the hell kind of front is that? Did you subpoena his IRS records yet?"
Bobby shook his head.
"We don't get Narco on this. Too risky. Next plan?"
Bobby negotiated a maze of blocks that had once been a proud neighborhood. Now the houses were crumbling and disintegrating. Trash spilled from them, blowing from yard to yard. Cracked, uprooted sidewalks glinted with broken glass.
A weedy lot with burned furniture and bullet-pocked appliances had become the local dump.
"How about we bust a move on Claudia and her kids? Hit them with what you know. Or what you think you know."
"Now you sound like a cop," Frank praised. "But let's not do anything yet. In fact don't even mention it to Nook. Just think about it. Kick it around some while I run with it a little, okay?"
"You're the boss."
It was after three by the time they returned to the station. Bobby processed their suspect while Frank went upstairs to generate the avalanche
of reports and forms on him. This wasn't her job as a Lieutenant, but they were so short-handed that she pitched in whenever she could. Besides, what would take her a couple hours would take the finical Detective Taylor a couple of days. Ike and Noah were still there, typing and talking on the phone. Noah grinned and flapped a big hand at her. Ike just glanced at her. She hung her linen jacket behind the door, glad there were no more meetings today.
The phone rang and she picked it up. It was Fubar whining about her write-up for the monthly newsletter. Assuring him it would be on his desk tomorrow morning, she absently poked through one of Placa's cartons. Nook had sent the clothing off to the lab. There was white powder in most of her pockets and they wanted an analysis, even though it was probably just antacid residue. Placa had stubs of Turns rolls everywhere — her pockets, drawers, backpack. That was a lot of bellyaches and Frank had been meaning to ask Claudia if Placa had an ulcer.
Foubarelle ranted about sundry things, and Frank answered in monosyllables as she went through the backpack. Two notebooks, school papers, a math and history text. A Dallas Cowboys cap. She fished out Tampax, half a pack of generic cigarettes, crumpled napkins and match books, a handful of bus schedules and tokens, six open Turns rolls.
Frank had to offer the captain more assurances before he'd let her go, then she pawed through the litter in the bottom of the pack. Discarded wrappers, crumbled tablets and loose tobacco concealed an assortment of hollow-point bullets and an envelope of razor blades. A zippered flap held an ugly switchblade.
Frank shook the pack onto a section of newspaper without finding anything else. She wet her finger and tasted the powdery residue coating everything. Sweet. Turns. Flipping through one of Placa's notebooks, she placed a call.
"Hey sport. You get the stuff I sent you about Custard Pie?"
"Yeah, thanks."
They chatted for a minute, Frank fending off the anticipatory jabs, like Kennedy accusing Frank of calling because she missed her.
"Horribly," Frank answered, "but as long as I'm here, I was wondering if you could do me a favor."
Kennedy said something obscene and as steeled as she was, Frank was glad Kennedy wasn't there to see her face flush. Sex with Kennedy had been exhilarating and Frank wished for a moment she could accept the young woman's indecent proposal.
