Street Rules

by Baxter Clare

  “So what were you lookin’ for?”

  “I don’t know. Anything.”

  Frank hadn’t expected to find a smoking gun, but she’d needed to see for herself where Luis Estrella had been. She’d half walked, half slid down the angled hillside, and from the surprisingly accurate LASD notes, found the exact location of the body. Searching for the anomaly in the scenery, she’d spent a couple hours crawling through prickly-leaved shrubs and poison oak.

  But for a small assortment of the usual litter, it was a surprisingly clean canyon. Frank had cleared some duff to bare soil and nestled herself against a large boulder. She’d let the mild sun play over her face. Closing her eyes against it, she’d shut out the scenery and gradually deafened herself to the birdsong and bustle in the underbrush.

  She’d concentrated on Luis Estrella’s face, the proud picture of his tats. She imagined him in his room, at the kitchen table with his family, driving in his beat-up car. Working hard at becoming him, she’d absorbed everything she knew about him — his heroin habit, his limp, his ill health, his easy-go-lucky clownishness. She put herself in his tennis shoes and sweatshirt, on the dirty bed in the garage, scratching himself, picking at his sores.

  Frank didn’t have to shoot up to know the effects of horse. She’d grown up around the drug and been surrounded by it throughout her career. When a junkie was happy, he shot up. When he was sad, he shot up. When he was breathing, he shot up. A gutter-hype like Luis lived for only one thing, and that was to dip steel. The only thing that mattered to him was scoring and using. A junkie on the nod couldn’t be provoked into the rage necessary to waste an entire family. A crashing junkie could be angered, but his rage would be focused on finding his next hit. Nothing else mattered to him. The horse obviated any other needs; food, sex, shelter — it all paled compared to the craving for that next hit.

  Sitting in her patch of sunshine, Frank had tried to feel how a hope-to-die junkie could muster the wherewithal to efficiently and cold-bloodedly kill six people. And his dog. The dog that slept in the garage with him, on his own bed. Johnnie was right. It didn’t make sense.

  She repeated that to Noah, who just shook his head. She couldn’t blame him. With a case load like theirs, a detective had to take the most obvious leads and run with them. In a few days, sometimes a few hours, another call would come in and his already heavy load would have to be shifted to accommodate the new burden. The ninety-third didn’t have the luxury of chasing wild hairs and shaky leads. If the evidence pointed north, a detective went north, even if his gut screamed south. The detective could only indulge his gravitational pull if and when the opposite course had been proved a misdirection.

  Rather than arguing when they both had more pressing demands, Frank conceded, “We’ll see what the lab comes up with.”

  Long after Noah had typed up his 60-day report and gone home, Frank could almost see the top of her desk again. She was satisfied with the progress she’d made on the reams of budget projections and overtime justifications, payroll forms and vacation requests, multi-jurisdictional faxes and memos, 60Ds and preliminary reports, plus dozens of warrants, weapons registrations, rap sheets, DMV printouts … and still there was a pile. Determined to return to an empty desktop Monday morning, Frank crammed the remaining papers and photos into her briefcase. She palmed the light switch, leaving the squad room dark behind her.

  On her way out she asked Officer Heisdaeck about his upcoming back surgery and swapped quips with a B&E artist in the holding tank. He’d been on the streets since Frank had been a boot. A few weeks back his 13 month-old grandson had been grazed by a .22 meant for the boy’s Crip father and she asked how he was doing.

  “He be awright. Ain’t nuttin’ but a scratch. Got his first taste a Blood, dat’s wha’ da was. He gone be a big time slob killuh.”

  The man in the holding cell was Frank’s peer, but bad food, worse liquor, and a lifetime of combining drugs made him look twenty years older. No doubt he’d been brought in on a D ‘n D but he was subdued now, remorseful.

  “Yeah, he’ll be alright,” Frank agreed. “Got his Gramp-C reppin’ him.”

  ” ‘Da’s right. Somebody gots to hep the lil’ ones comin’ up.”

  “Don’t reckon there’s anyone knows as much about these streets as you do.”

  She slapped his cell bars and he clucked, ” ‘At ain’t no lie, Franco. ‘At ain’t no lie.”

  Slipping out the back, she was on the Harbor Freeway in two minutes, headed north to Pasadena. The drive usually only took fifteen, twenty minutes but the crush of Saturday evening traffic slowed her down.

  Squeaky brakes and idling engines competed with talk radio shows and the powerful boom-boom-boom of car stereos. Frank sat with her arm out the window, aware of each sound, but knowing they didn’t demand her attention. The same went for the pastel dusk folding softly around the downtown skyline. Seventeen years with one of the largest police forces in the world had exquisitely honed Frank’s senses. She hadn’t been in uniform for over a decade but she still needed to hear the heartbeat of the streets. That was why she listened to the hip-hop stations and could recite N.W.A. and Da Brat lyrics.

  Frank had spent her entire career in the corner of the western world infamous for the Watts riots, and then thirty years later, the Rodney King riots. She’d missed Watts, but the second series of riots had been a succession of nights straight out of Dante. Frank had been “riot-baptised” with bricks and bottles, bullets and fire.

  Clay had asked during one of her earlier sessions what it was like to work in such hostile environs, especially as a female, and a white one at that. Frank hadn’t thought much of it. Born and raised in New York City’s lower east side, there was nothing she hadn’t seen by the time she entered the LAPD Academy; landing at the Figueroa Station had merely rounded out her education. The hard streets afforded Frank an excellent outlet for her natural wariness and aggression and as a younger cop she’d looked forward to the physical confrontations of the job. The demands of her rough exterior world commanded Frank’s constant attention, offering diversion from her own complicated interior. Like the kids growing up in Compton and Inglewood, Frank had survived by refusing to show fear or pain. Softness was equated with weakness, and weakness meant death. She’d lived by that street credo for forty years. Ironically, it had almost killed her.

  Frank absently tracked a jet gleaming silver in the dying sun. Despite the terror of suicides and homicides witnessed, of bullets and knives passing through her flesh and that of loved ones, none of it had scared Frank more than one desolate night with Kennedy, the night she was sure her brain had cracked and that whatever she touched was dripping in blood; her blood, Kennedy’s blood, her father’s blood, Maggie’s blood, all the blood she’d seen puddled and sprayed on sidewalks and cars, walls and carpets, cribs and school chairs. Everywhere she looked, blood.

  Exiting slowly onto Colorado Boulevard, Frank was guardedly optimistic that she could handle the memory of that night so easily. She figured the Wednesday afternoons with Clay must be paying off. Turning down her street, she noted the dusky gloom of the big oaks over the road, the neighbors windows glowing yellow. Frank realized that she was finally enjoying coming home again. Just as she pulled into her driveway, her pager thrummed against her hip. She left the car running on the vague superstition that if she stopped it, she’d have to start it again. She called the front desk on her cell phone.

  Sergeant Romanowski ceremoniously informed her, “Lieutenant, your presence is requested by Detectives Nukisona and Taylor at the corner of Hyde Park and South Wilton.”

  Frank backed out swearing. So much for superstition.

  Chapter Seven

  Back in the warren of traffic on the One-Ten, Frank shook her head at Nook and Bobby’s run of bad luck. Not only did they get the Estrella homicides, but they’d caught two mysteries in the last two weeks — each case a bad boy shot with no witnesses, no motives, and no suspects. She considered how the two didn’t
make an ideal homicide team. They were both more tenacious than aggressive and tended to plod through cases, bogging down in detail. Especially Bobby. Though they both earned high marks for sheer determination, she wished there was more fire in their partnership. As it was, she’d have to settle for stubbornness and resolve. Because of their tendency to err on the side of caution, Frank figured they were calling her out on a grounder.

  She poked the radio’s preset button to KLOS, hoping electric guitars and pounding backbeats could pump her up for what was looking like another long night. Creeping off at the Downtown exit, she worked her way south using a maze of side roads. The cool spring evening belied the deadly summer heat just around the corner.

  Bummer of a nice night to die, she thought, arriving at her destination. A Sheriffs unit and two LAPD radio cars worked their lights where the road made a dogleg. The coroner’s van split the night with glaring halogens. Handley was stepping into a pair of coveralls so Frank figured the investigator had only beaten her here by minutes.

  “What have you got?” Frank asked Bobby. He twitched his head at a body on the sidewalk. Its legs were off the curb, hidden by a line of parked cars.

  “It’s Placa, Frank. She took a couple rounds.”

  Frank swallowed hard, holding Bobby’s gaze a beat, before lowering it to his tie. She took in the LAPD tie clip and starched creases in his shirt. She appreciated the time he took to get dressed for a call-out. In the matter of seconds it took for Frank to formulate those thoughts, she had morphed into stone and ice. Now she swung her head toward the body which was suddenly not just a body. The ice in Frank’s veins warned her that this was personal. It also warned her to be especially objective. She walked over to Placa, squatting on her heels in front of the dead girl.

  Give it up, she silently willed. Show me how it went down.

  Placa’s left cheek was pressed against the broken concrete. From the shattered look of it she’d been dead or disabled as she went down and hadn’t been able to break her fall. Her braid went through the back of a Dodger’s cap, tilted almost off her head. Frank could make out a tiny blue tattoo just under the eye socket and the “52K” jarringly tattooed under her bangs. A sexy female devil with flowing hair and pointed tail peeked from under Placa’s right sleeve. Her left hand was arched awkwardly in a blood puddle. The name “ITSY’ stood out in blue on the webbing of her thumb and forefinger.

  Frank unconsciously held her own ring finger, stroking it lightly as she studied the dead girl in front of her.

  Handley knelt too, but Frank said, “Hold up.”

  “I don’t have all night,” he pointed out. The look Frank cut him was enough to send the tech a respectful distance away.

  “Anybody see anything?”

  “Not yet,” Bobby answered quietly.

  Frank looked around. Nook was talking to two of the uniforms. The Sheriff’s deputy was making conversation with Handley. Waddell was working paper in a radio car and Hunt was in his usual position against the bumper of another. Frank gave Handley the nod and walked over to Waddell. Twitching her head toward Hunt, she asked, “You short tonight?”

  “Yeah. Couple guys called in sick. Guess its just coincidence that it’s Saturday night, huh?”

  “Who’s got the log?”

  “Hunt.”

  “Who was Responding Officer?”

  “They were,” he said at the cops Nook was talking to. Frank moved toward Hunt, telling him she wanted the scene log. He sneered and moved slowly off the bumper, retrieving the list from inside the unit. Frank scanned it and as she did, she murmured, “Are you 10-7?”

  “No, ma’am,” he drawled, his answer sounding lazy and snide.

  “Then I suggest you get your ass off this car and find some witnesses.”

  Hunt grunted, “There ain’t a fuckin’ monkey in this jungle that’s seen shit.”

  “You’re probably right,” she answered, “but you better start knockin’ to prove it.”

  Swearing under his breath, Hunt hitched up his heavy belt and sauntered off. Frank assessed the area. The east side of South Wilton was residential. It was a nice neighborhood lined with old, graceful palms. Each small, neatly kept bungalow had a trim patch of lawn sloping gently to the street. It was a solid working-class street where pride was still evident. Despite the hype, much of the south-central neighborhoods were like this one, quiet and modest, occupied by decent people trying to earn a decent living. Then there were the kids like Placa, who lived hard and died fast.

  The rule of the streets, Frank thought, resuming her sweep of the area. The west side of Wilton was industrial, with privacy and security fencing running the length of the sidewalk. Where Frank stood, Wilton took a deep curve to become Hyde Park. Tall fences continued along the north sidewalk, but a building supply company took up the entire south corner.

  Most of the adults on Wilton had gone back inside, bored with yet another gang-related shooting, but the kids still hung around, gawking. A radio played on a porch. A couple of young girls sang and mock danced with each other. Frank recognized the tune, the one all the pop and hip-hop stations played every twenty minutes. The irony that the band was Destiny’s Child didn’t escape her.

  Frank caught the heavy odor of frying food in the air as she watched Hunt and Nook knocking on doors. Few of the houses had air conditioning. They would have easily trapped the heat of the day. Little kids would have begged to play outside before they had to go to bed. Grandmothers or grandfathers would have watched them, collecting the evening breeze on stoops and porches. Aunts or uncles might have joined them, sharing 40’s or iced teas. Siblings would have been kicking by someone’s car, bumpin’ and swapping tales.

  Still Hunt was probably right; nobody would have seen anything.

  Frank returned to Bobby, who was searching the wallet Handley gave him.

  “She strapped?”

  “Nope, nothing.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  Bobby nodded, “Kind of weird for that G to be running around without a gat. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “Yeah. Especially Placa. She favored those little deuce-fives. I could wallpaper my bathroom with her concealeds alone. Find out what time this was called in, and when the first unit showed up.”

  Nook sauntered up, and asked, “Why’s the LAPD better than the AMA?”

  Both Frank and Bobby stared at him, and he grinned, “We still make house calls.”

  Neither of his colleagues responded, and he said, “What?”

  “Do a weapons sweep. Look for a .25.”

  Bobby asked, “You want to knock with us on this one?”

  Frank nodded, watching Handley shove Placa’s shirt up. She knelt next to him, noting the entry wounds.

  “How many you see?”

  “Well… looks like five. So far,” he said, pointing. Placa had taken a round dead center in her back and another through her left shoulder blade. A third grazed the left side of her neck, and Handley exposed another a few inches above her beltline. The fifth made a tiny hole at the base of her head. Whoever smoked her had made sure she wouldn’t get up again.

  “Trajectory?”

  Handley gingerly examined the most lethal wounds. He boasted, “Hard to say for sure until we get her on the table, but entry appears to relatively level, maybe angling slightly left.”

  Nook had recovered a fresh case from a .25, roughly 150 feet south of the body. It had been on the road and was flattened.

  “Show me where the jacket was,” she said to Bobby.

  He walked Frank in front of a battered pick-up parked at the crook of the curve. Frank stepped on the spot. Raising her arm, she sighted along the sidewalk at Placa’s height. The trajectory of Placa’s wounds would have been consistent with a shooter in a tall vehicle or standing where Frank was. She wondered if it was coincidence that she’d been shot with a .25. Maybe it was her gun. She tried to imagine Placa fleeing, Placa who’d rather suffer a beating death than run. Placa
with her outrageous and dangerous pride.

  Was she outnumbered and outgunned on foreign turf? Frank thought this was Rollin’ 60’s turf. Frank didn’t think the Kings had a quarrel with them. Maybe she’d rounded a corner and a rival happened to be coming around the other way. But she was running north. So the danger would have to have been from the south. From where the casing was, the shooter had been just at the bend, not enough time for a shooter to accidentally round the corner, recognize her, and open fire. Unless they knew she was there, as if they’d been following or chasing her.

  Frank was doing her best to be objective, but events were becoming too coincidental; within one week Julio Estrella’s family was massacred. A few days later his brother winds up OD’d in the bottom of a canyon. After that, Placa mysteriously calls to tell Frank to meet with her, then ends up fatal. Another convenient drive-by statistic.

  Frank needed a good witness. There had to be one. It was pretty hard to ignore a girl running down the street and shots being fired; even as jaded as south-central residents were, they would have instinctively glanced up to see which way the bullets were coming from. Was there shouting, screaming, anybody claiming? When the first shots sounded, they’d have all ducked for cover. Before that though, someone must have seen or heard something. But this was south-central; ratting in the ‘hood was often deadly and rarely done.

  Adjusting the bite of the harness under her left arm, Frank drew a long breath and joined her men in their search for a witness.

  Chapter Eight

  A couple hours later, the best the detectives had were two people who thought maybe the car that had driven up on Placa was some sort of sedan. They couldn’t even give them a color or guess at a make. Too dark. No street lights. The usual frustrating responses. But the first witness was pretty sure she’d seen a sedan pulling away from the curb around the pickup, as if the sedan were leaving a parking space. When they asked the second witness where the car was in relation to the street, he’d said, come to think of it, the car looked to be parked.