by H Hiller
It looked as though a party from the night before was just beginning to wind down in the lounge. The women were dressed in their best club dresses, highest heels, and longest nails, but their hair was a mess. The men were mostly wearing dress shirts with loosened ties or sweaty over-sized T-shirts, and glassy looks that came with spending the entire night imbibing and indulging. The table tops overlooking the stage were still cluttered with imported beer and champagne bottles. Boxes of partially eaten take-out food from just about every late night eatery in the neighborhood had been dropped wherever people had taken their last bite.
Members of various bands Biggie, and now Bumper, represented were milling about in search of lost hats, shoes, and a wallet. I wasn't counting on the wallet ever being seen again. I picked up an iPhone left under a to-go box and waved it around, but nobody seemed to be missing one, so I just held onto it for the moment.
“Can we talk privately?” I asked Bumper. I remained standing and this cued him to disengage from the blonde. He led me up a flight of wide metal stairs to a second VIP area. This one was almost as trashed, but we were finally alone. We took up positions against the metal railing and surveyed the wide open space of the nightclub. I set the cell phone on the bar table beside Bumper before a body-builder sized guy from the studio’s security detail arrived to use a metal detector and his bare hands to pat me down.
“This is a first,” I commented when he left my handgun in its holster but patted at me until satisfied that I wasn’t wearing a wire or a concealed video camera. He offered my own phone to Bumper, who ordered him to place it in the beer fridge. The heavy metal icebox would cancel any signal.
“I’d say our relationship has changed since your last visit. I get the definite feeling you’d like to hang something on me.”
“Well thank you for that. I thought you had convinced yourself you’re Teflon coated.”
“I told you the last time you were her not to come back unless you thought you could arrest me for something.”
I was concerned about his demeanor. My plan was to eventually march him out of here in handcuffs with enough evidence to make him roll over on his FBI Agent handler. He was acting like he knew more about what I came here to do than he should have. I assumed he knew Cisco had been rounded up at the dog fight, but this would mean nothing to him if Georgia's story about keeping him uninformed about Bumper’s change of plans was right. I trusted that Conroy would not have tipped off his own Agent if he felt he might have to choose between a public relations disaster and getting on my dangerously bad side.
“I actually did come to arrest you.” I took a moment to read him his Miranda rights as well, which he took as a joke or a bluff on my part. I made no move to handcuff him or detain him in any other way. “You obviously know you aren't going to keep everything secret, or to get away with the crap you and Gabb have been pulling.”
“It’s too early to laugh this hard. What's the charge?” Bumper mockingly held his hands out for the cuffs. “Do you really think you've got a case I can’t beat?”
“You're not going to hide behind that whatever-I-did-was-to-maintain-my-cover crap are you?” Bumper’s smug smile twitched just a bit. “You just don't get it. That you’re working with Gabb it is what makes me go after you all the harder. I know your real name is Eric and I also know the details about your departure from the state police in Oklahoma and the NOPD, you naughty boy. I see you’re even still wearing Rolex watches.”
“Tell me what you've got that I don’t know,” Bumper said and subconsciously placed a hand over his watch. He wasn’t smirking as much now that I had his full attention. My knowing about Agent Gabb and access to his personnel files were genuine surprises. I wondered if Gabb had even mentioned having dinner with Avery to Bumper. It occurred to me that the pair were not very good about comparing notes.
“I had a little chat with a woman named Georgia the other night. She tells a pretty convincing story about you blackmailing Amanda Rhodes.” He lost his grin entirely and his jaw tightened just a bit. “Blackmail is ugly enough, but what chance do you think a twice fired cop turned informant and a crooked FBI agent have at trial in this town?”
“You’ll still have to prove it.”
“You did that when you signed the confession in my sister’s office.”
“What confession was that?”
“You don’t remember meeting Amanda’s attorney? You signed a document admitting you have been receiving ten thousand dollar payments in order to remain silent about Amanda’s adoption of Parker. Well, not in those exact words but in ones that her court testimony will make clear were for that purpose. She also has an audio recording of your entire conversation she will turn over as evidence. I’ll also bet that I can tell you the serial number on the hundred dollar bills in your wallet.”
“You’re full of crap. That conversation is covered by attorney/client privilege.”
“That only applies to her clients, and you aren’t one. Amanda is her client and she was just protecting Amanda’s interests. Then there are the photographs I have of you and Gabb taking the money she gave you to a safety deposit box on Carondolet. The FBI is probably already there with their search warrant this morning. The Special Agent in Charge seems very keen on wrapping this up on a slow news day.”
“You’ll still have to prove it in court.”
“Actually, I think you might plead to blackmail rather than being the guy who decided to use a dog to kill Biggie. A lot of people keep telling me how hard you pressed Biggie to get a dog, and then the dog killed him. That is some coincidence. What were you thinking?”
“I had nothing to do with that dog killing Biggie. Nothing! Just ask the trainer.”
“I did. You certainly had him scared enough to give up Georgia as the one to go after. She doesn’t know you got to him and has been trying to protect him. I guess love will make you do some silly things. I think his story will change once you are sitting beside him in jail. I am pretty sure I can prove you killed Biggie, but I just cannot figure out why. My guess is that you decided to kill him to take over the studio, blackmail and all.”
“I took the payments, sure, but then I passed 'em on to the fat man because that was my job. What you don't know is that I'm the one that gave Biggie’s lawyer a will I made up with Biggie's name on it so that actress could maybe get some of her money back. The amount of stuff you don't know is bigger than the little bit you think you have on me.”
He certainly had me there.
“You do realize forgery is a crime, right?”
“Surely you aren’t suggesting I took the money. Feel free to search me. That’s why I jumped at the chance to actually get paid legally for what Biggie had been doing illegally.
“Well your contract reads like a confession.” This seemed to jolt him a bit. “Maybe there are other skeletons to find as well.”
“Great choice of words but knock yourself out looking for them.”
“I’d say that Biggie’s skeleton will be enough. I’ve got pictures of you holding something shiny in your hand. I can prove a shiny dog whistle set the dog off.”
“It’s quite a leap from shiny thing to dog whistle.”
“I broke down the video from the parking lot. You two didn’t argue like you told me. You blew that whistle and the dog was on him before you even got behind the Land Rover.”
“That’s your version. I’m sure I can get a hundred different versions of what’s on that one camera’s footage.”
“Yeah, funny you mention that as well. It turns out that where you parked happened to be the only spot in that parking lot covered by just one camera. That must have taken some scouting to figure out.”
I was not real sure how his argument of committing criminal acts to maintain a cover would play with Katie’s grand jury or the courts. He was, at best or worst either one, guilty of taking payments from a fool and killing a man everyone wanted dead. I was running out of things to throw at him. I wasn’t going to tell h
im everything I knew, but the damning accusations and evidence I had already rubbed in his face had not rattled his cage enough to elicit even a denial. He also had not blamed Georgia for blowing the whistle. He might well have been saving that as a bargaining chip down the line, along with any number of other things. His ability to stone-wall me was about to start giving him the upper hand if he continued to refuse to be bluffed into divulging anything else. I kept poking at him because I knew he had a lot of things to tell me about Gabb if I could just get him to flip on his partner.
“Let’s just sit here and wait for that FBI team you keep talking about.” Bumper’s tone was guarded, but he had lost most of his belligerence and hostility.
“Fine. We can talk about other things in the meantime. Maybe we could start with why you would do so many bad things using your brother’s name. Is there some sort of family issue driving you? Did your big brother not love you enough?”
I just thought I should see how much more I could push the informant’s buttons before I gave the signal for the arrest team to take him away. I had already delivered the news that his money was gone, his boss was under investigation by his own department, that he had been tricked into signing a confession to a crime he had believed he could explain away as being part of his cover, and that his perfect murder plan had a few flies in its ointment. All to no effect. It was time to start getting personal.
“You don’t know a thing about me and my brother.”
“All I know is your name is Eric and you’re about to go away for a long time for things you did under your brother’s name. That’s going to come up at the family reunion, don’t you think? I’m just disappointed that you seem okay that the statement Agent Gabb gave this morning will likely be the official record of what happened here.”
The reaction he couldn’t keep from making seemed to be more about Gabb having made a statement than about my knowing his handler’s name. I tried to bait him a bit more.
“It’s probably going to show how little imagination you two put into hiding your lies. How many other people knew what you and your handler have really been up to? Can you trust Gabb to give the same story when you’re both questioned?” Maybe there was something to be gained from convincing him that Gabb was less his partner than a co-conspirator who had decided to take a deal and dump everything on Bumper.
I had gone from detective to bullfight picador, pricking at this bull of a man until I could get him to charge. “Close your eyes for a second. Now imagine you are a fly on the wall at your boss’ interrogation. Is he throwing you under the bus or is he taking full responsibility for what you two did? I would bet his statement is way different than yours.”
This was literally true. To the best of my knowledge Gabb had so far not even been questioned. Conroy had told me over breakfast that he wasn’t going to touch Gabb until I had Bumper in handcuffs. He had sent him on an errand to Baton Rouge to separate the pair this morning.
The bodyguard was quiet for a long moment, his jaws visibly flexing and beads of sweat formed on his face as he began wondering what might have been said in the fictional interview. It was a game of Liar’s Poker, but I was winning as he convinced himself that Gabb would position him as the fall guy in whatever their scheme was before and after Biggie died. Bumper eventually turned towards me and pounded his hands on the metal rail beside him so hard I thought it might bend. He stormed back to the sofa and sat down.
“Look,” Bumper said and gave me what was probably his scariest look. “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I’m telling you all of this only so you’ll know who you’re dealing with.”
“And who is that, an overly ambitious FBI Agent who tried to frame Biggie? Your whole operation is probably headed for the toilet as it is. The smartest thing you can do now is to offer to testify against the guy who has been doing worse things than you.”
“Why the hell are you so interested in what Gabb anyway? What did he say when you talked to him this morning?”
“Never mind that. What I want to hear is your version,” I bluffed again.
I casually picked up the stray cell phone from the table tossed it on the coffee table as I took a seat on the table to be close to Bumper. I also began paying a lot more attention to where he moved his hands. I assumed he still carried the knife he used to stab Biggie in his pocket. I had made my earlier statements about the dog whistle to put that theory on the record for anyone else who would be listening in the parking lot.
“I graduated from the police academy about six months before Hurricane Katrina. I was stationed in Algiers when the storm came and I didn’t find out my house had been washed away for another week. I started doing rescues and then crowd control like everybody else around me.” Bumper started to develop the blank stare of a man allowing himself to revisit memories he has spent a long time suppressing. I have a mental walk-in closet all my own. “I met Agent Gabb, Jim, when he was working for a private security company hired to supplement NOPD. We teamed up with some of the SWAT guys from NOPD to start doing house to house searches out in the East. Every cop in town had a list of low-lifes we hoped had evacuated. We rounded up a lot of guys with criminal records and got them out of the city before they could make any trouble.”
“Gabb wasn’t an FBI agent?”
“Nah. He used the contacts he made here during Katrina to get into the FBI Academy after everything blew over.” I noted to myself that Conroy had skipped over that nugget.
“So how did you get from there to here?”
“I got caught with some Rolex watches and NOPD let me resign rather than charge me with the theft. Jim put in a word with his private security firm and I was offered a job patrolling the empty government buildings. The pay and hours were a helluva lot better than doing the same thing for NOPD. I ended up working for them for almost three years, first here and then as a personal bodyguard in California. That was where I ran into Jim again.”
I saw no reason to question anything he was saying so far. “What happened then?”
“The FBI assigned Jim to L.A. when he got out of the Academy. He was looking for a way to move up when I met him there. Jim’s brother had represented Biggie at his trial and told Jim that Biggie was out of prison and had opened a hip-hop music studio. That could have put Biggie in a great position to go back to dealing drugs or guns. Jim arranged a way for me to meet Biggie in L. A. and to get him to hire me as his bodyguard. Biggie asked me to move back here and then Gabb told the SAC here that he had an informant next to Biggie and wanted to run an operation to bring Biggie down. The FBI gave us the green light in no time.”
“Okay, but why did you start using your brother’s name?”
“In case I ran into any cops who remembered me from when I worked here.”
“So you thought being called Bumper instead of Eric was some sort of disguise?” I didn’t even try not to laugh. “How was Biggie financing the operation?”
“We figured he was paying the bills by dealing drugs or guns but it turned out he was just getting money from Amanda’s husband. I really think John thought he might make some money investing in Biggie. John introduced his wife to Biggie and his bastard son and she started to pressure her husband about seeing if he could find a way to adopt the kid. She saw right through Biggie and knew he was going to destroy the boy’s future. John didn’t want any part of the kid, but he worked it out. It ended up only creating more problems in their marriage and he supposedly starting smacking her around. I heard Georgia beat him up and he moved back to Los Angeles right before he got car-jacked.”
Bumper saw by my reaction that this all something I already knew. I also gave him a look that told him I knew this had been an attempt to distract or bait me. He went back to telling me his story. “Biggie started having financial trouble and started hitting the lawyer up for more and more money. John gave him some money, but then he started taking a percentage of the company as well.”
“How did that sit with Biggie?”
&nb
sp; “Well the lawyer’s dead, right? He made no secret that he wanted John out of the picture.”
“Biggie was behind his death?”
“Sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
“Biggie started paying Georgia to bring the kid around just a few months after the adoption. They got to talking and she said she knew somebody that could take care of John.”
Bumper took some satisfaction in how poorly I took this news.
“You didn’t think Georgia was some sort of Girl Scout did you? Christ, she was screwing a member of one of L.A.’s biggest gangs. They are the go-to guys for guns for the Mexican cartels and street gangs, anybody wanting to get strapped up. Georgia got hooked on coke and had her cousin hide her in rehab because the cartel started saying they didn’t trust her and she knew they’d kill her.”
“So you let Biggie whack Amanda’s husband?” I knew I was on the trail of something, but with so many people covertly monitoring the conversation I had to keep him from implicating anyone besides himself or Gabb in all that had happened.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened. Besides, Jim was pissed that I had blown the one thing we did have on Biggie. He was afraid they were going to close us down.”
“What did you mess up?”
“Biggie used to make everyone promise to go straight when he signed them. They had to give him their guns. Only thing is, Biggie is a felon and can’t touch guns. He had me rent a storage locker where we could put them that wouldn’t trace back to us.”
“The locker out in Harahan.”
“Right,” Biggie nodded. I don’t think he gave me credit for knowing much about this, and I know he didn’t know as much as I did. That was a good thing. “So I did and we filled it up with guns that Biggie thought he could just turn in when NOPD had a big gun buy-back. He thought he was going to drive up with this van full of guns and be some kind of hero. Jim was going to arrest him for gun possession and pack his fat ass back to Angola. Jim also had me talk Georgia into renting the unit. He gave me an ID to have her use, and I gave it back to him when she was done so he’d have her fingerprints on it.”
