Earth Angels

by Gerald Petievich

  "Is there someone else?"

  "No."

  "I'm not much of a mind reader, Gloria. If you don't want to see me again, just say so."

  She looked at him for a long, tantalizing moment. "I want to see you again."

  ****

  EIGHT

  Stepanovich woke early the next morning, feeling more rested than he had in months.

  It was Wednesday, his mother's day off from the Dolly Madison Bakery, where she'd worked as a cake-icer for as long as he could remember and after shaving and showering he drove straight to her house.

  His mother lived near the end of the block on Vega Street, a narrow dead end street that abutted a steep, grassy hill that Stepanovich, Howard Goldberg, Freddie Mascorro, and the other neighborhood kids used to climb. At the top they would race back down full speed, finally tripping and tumbling. The downhill race had been even more exciting on bicycles. Oddly, the hill looked even steeper to him as an adult than it had as a child.

  He pulled in the driveway of the tiny, well kept home. Like the other one and two bedroom houses on the street it was unique, having been built shortly after World War II by family and friends rather than contractors or tract developers. Stepanovich's father, some of his fellow railroad employees, and Stepanovich’s maternal Uncles Pete and Hector Elizondo, who were master carpenters, had built the place in one summer. Like all the other houses on the block, it had steel bars covering the windows. Some families had even invested in wrought iron screen doors and burglar alarms.

  His mother was waiting for him on the front porch wearing a simple flower print blouse and skirt. Standing with her patent leather purse hooked over her arm, she was a rangy woman whose tanned Latin complexion contrasted starkly with the white hair pulled back sternly in a bun. She had piercing dark eyes and wore neither lipstick nor makeup.

  He pulled up at the curb and she came to the car, walking quickly, as was her habit, as he reached over and opened the door. She climbed in and kissed him on the cheek.

  "You have dark circles under your eyes, Jose," she said as he made a U turn and headed back toward Whittier Boulevard.

  "How's everything at the bakery?"

  "The same. I slap on vanilla frosting and listen to gossip in the lunchroom. The women my age talk about arthritis, and the younger ones can't understand why the men they live with won't marry them."

  He chuckled. "What do you tell 'em, Mom?"

  "I tell 'em, 'Why should a man marry you if he's already getting what he wants?' But they don't want no advice. They think they know everything."

  Five blocks away at the twenty four hour Safeway Market, his mother opened her purse and took out the weekly Safeway Market newspaper ad and, moving quickly down the aisles with Stepanovich pushing a grocery cart behind her, picked items from shelves. She'd been shopping at the store for more than thirty years, and knew the location of every item. Stepanovich told her three or four times not to rush, that it didn't matter if he was a few minutes late for work, but she continued to march briskly through the aisles.

  They were in and out of the store and back in the car with a week's supply of groceries within twenty minutes. He noticed three Reno Street gang members standing on the corner as he pulled out of the parking lot. One, a pock marked teenager with styled hair and a long sleeved shirt buttoned to the collar, noticed Stepanovich in turn and made a remark to the others. The three men turned and stared at him with looks of focused enmity as he drove past. He stared back. He remembered arresting Mr. Pockmark, whose name escaped him at the moment, for possession of a gun a month or so earlier. He was pleased his mother hadn't noticed the stares.

  "When you retire at the end of the year, what you ought to do is get out of the neighborhood. You could sell or rent the house and move somewhere else," he said.

  "I'll think about it," she said, though he knew she wouldn't. They'd been through it a hundred times. A few months ago, he'd even offered to buy a condominium in Glendale where they could live together.

  "I won't hold my breath."

  "My parents and her grandparents lived and died within two blocks of here. Why should I go anywhere?"

  "Because this isn't the same neighborhood. You like living behind bars?"

  "Do you have time to come in for breakfast this morning?"

  "I'm working on a big case, Mom. Maybe next week."

  "When you have darkness under your eyes, it means you're worried about something."

  "Everything's OK, Mom," he said, turning onto Vega Street. He pulled into the driveway and, leaving the engine running, carried the groceries to the house. Mrs. Stepanovich unlocked the front door and followed him inside. Having set the two bags on the sink, he gave her a hug and headed outside to the car.

  "I saw those cholos in the parking lot staring at you," she said from the porch.

  He opened the car door. "It's nothing. I arrested one of them."

  "The way you were staring back at them is why you have circles under your eyes. I don't like to see that in you. "

  "Call me if you need anything, Mom."

  He climbed behind the wheel and pulled into the street. He waved at her as he drove away and she waved back.

  At Hollenbeck Station, Stepanovich and the other members of the task force, all puffy eyed and hungover, spent the morning in the parking lot equipping Fordyce's motor home with a police radio. As they worked, Harger dropped by now and then to see how the project was progressing.

  At noon Stepanovich and the others waited in the parking lot as Fordyce drove the car over to Eighteenth Street and transmitted some test counts for a radio check. The messages were received loud and clear on the police radios in the other squad vehicles, and Stepanovich told Fordyce to return. At Arredondo's suggestion Fordyce stopped by Manuel's taco stand on the way back.

  After Stepanovich and the others wolfed down a box of tacos standing in the parking lot, they followed him into the motor home. As Stepanovich spread a city map on the table inside, the others, including Harger, gathered around. Using a red marker pen, he drew a circle around the location of Greenie's apartment house. Taking his time, he selected the best places for the other surveillance units to be positioned. He drew four red dots. "Here's where we'll set up. Fordyce will be across the street inside the motor home." He pointed: "The other units will be stashed here, here, and here, away from the location until the signal is given. No one will notice the motor home parked on the street, but if they see a lot of unmarked cars dicking around the area, no one will dare make a move and we could end up sitting on Eighteenth Street until Christmas."

  Harger studied the notations carefully. "I like the setup. And keep in mind that we're only interested in gang members. If you observe someone selling dope on the street or stealing a car, you didn't see it. We're waiting for shooters and shooters only."

  Fordyce cleared his throat. "I just thought of something. What if the White Fence shooters don't know it was Greenie? Like what if they actually haven't figured out that Greenie was the one who did the shootings at the church? We might be watching Eighteenth Street from now until hell freezes over."

  "If we've been able to find out, they've been able to find out. You can bet on that. And if they know, they'll hit. There's no telling exactly when, but they'll hit," Stepanovich said.

  Harger drummed his fingers on the map for a moment. "Because the DA refused to file the case, Greenie should be getting released from the county jail shortly after five. Let's be set up on location by kick out time."

  At five, Stepanovich cruised along a hillside road looking down on Eighteenth Street. To hide his sedan from the street below, he parked behind a growth of chaparral. He opened his city mapbook and made sure he was familiar with the streets in the area in case there was a pursuit. Though the plan was to trap the shooters on Eighteenth Street, he knew full well that all the planning in the world didn't allow for what a carload of gang shooters high on dope and cruising for blood might do. Taking binoculars from the glove compartment,
he focused them and scanned Eighteenth Street.

  Fordyce's motor home was parked directly across the street from Greenie's apartment. Stepanovich shifted the binoculars to the left. Black's police sedan was parked on a residential street one block north at the edge of a deserted industrial area. To the south, Arredondo sat in the driver's seat of a sedan hidden from the street behind a dumpster. Pleased with the configuration of the surveillance, Stepanovich set the binoculars down on the seat beside him.

  For the next hour he killed time thumbing through a day old copy of the L.A. Herald Examiner. The story about the church shooting was on page four. The article featured a photograph of the mother of the murdered child standing on the steps of the Our Lady Queen of Angels Church clutching a doll; a pose he assumed was the news grabbing idea of some enterprising Herald reporter. In the text of the article the director of the city's Community Gang Services Agency commented that the shooting was a result of the city not allocating enough money to hire ex gang members to counsel the gangs not to kill one another. A member of the city council, whom Stepanovich knew had once been arrested by vice detectives for exposing himself in a Hollywood porno theater, suggested that the mayor was totally insensitive to the gang problem. The mayor suggested that a blue ribbon panel be appointed to study the situation. It was the usual gang-murder newspaper story. Stepanovich turned to the sports page.

  Suddenly the radio crackled. "Fordyce to all units. We have an arrival."

  "Of who?" Black said irritably.

  Stepanovich grabbed the binoculars and focused on the street below as a Chevrolet pulled up in front of Greenie's apartment house. Three men climbed out of the car.

  "Greenie and three of his homeboys," Fordyce said over the radio. "They must have picked him up from jail. It's a Chevy. They're getting out. Greenie looks worried ... everybody up the stairs ... and into the apartment. One of 'em is carrying a case of beer."

  Stepanovich watched the arrival through binoculars, then, to kill some time, tuned the car radio to a Spanish language station. For the next few hours he listened to Latin music interspersed with commercials for beer and immigration lawyers. He switched stations and listened for a while to a shrieking, hoarse-voiced evangelist scold the world. Leaving the radio on, Stepanovich climbed out of the car and walked about to stretch his legs. He found himself almost marching in cadence to the exhortations of the preacher. "You won't find it in greed!" the evangelist rasped. Stepanovich took a few steps. "You won't find it in liquor!" A few more steps. "You won't find it in adultery!" Continue to march. "You won't find it in homosexuality!" Stepanovich lifted his arms above his head and stretched. "You'll find it in the message of Jesus Christ, King of kings, the one and-only son of God, who came to this earth to die on Calvary!"

  Stepanovich opened the car door and turned off the radio. For the next couple of hours he alternated between using the binoculars and rereading the newspaper. Finally he took out his wallet and gave it a thorough cleaning. He purged it of unneeded credit card and cash register receipts, and pulled out an Oasis cocktail bar matchbook cover with the inscription, "MARTI (FRIEND OF JUDY) 213/912 1573," an old lottery ticket, and from a crusty inside compartment, a worn photograph of Nancy looking tanned and sexy in her tennis outfit. He tore the items into small pieces and shoved them into the dashboard ashtray.

  Dusk came as a neon orange sun sank slowly into smog.

  Stepanovich moved to the trunk of the sedan, opened it, and fished among some empty ammunition boxes and roadway flares. He found the night viewing binoculars he always brought on surveillances and tested them by focusing on the apartment house. Because of the infrared lens, everything appeared illuminated in shades of green. Panning the binoculars slowly to the right, he focused on the bay window of a small house south of Greenie's apartment. A man and woman, like mannequins, were slumped in front of the flickering light of a television. Stepanovich wondered what program they were watching.

  The man was eating. Because Stepanovich was hungry, he imagined him enjoying a thick salami sandwich on French bread, heavy with mayonnaise and mustard.

  The sound of static coming from the radio startled him.

  "Homeboy exiting," Fordyce said.

  Stepanovich steadied the binoculars on the apartment house. A young man wearing a baseball cap was descending the steps in front of Greenie's apartment. He looked about, then crossed the small patch of lawn to a customized Chevrolet. Under the illumination of a streetlight, the man stopped, looked around, then climbed behind the wheel.

  "Homeboy into his ride," Fordyce said via radio.

  The Chevrolet pulled away from the curb and cruised slowly down Eighteenth Street toward Whittier Boulevard.

  "Should we follow him?" Black said via radio.

  Stepanovich glanced at his wristwatch. He picked up the microphone and pressed the transmit button. "Let him go."

  "That's a roger."

  A few minutes later the radio crackled again. "Homeboy returning," Fordyce said.

  Stepanovich checked his wristwatch. The man had been gone exactly fourteen minutes. Stepanovich climbed onto the hood of the police sedan to use his binoculars knowing that no one below would be able to see him in the dark. The Chevrolet was pulling up to the curb in front of the apartment. The man climbed out the driver's door and walked to the trunk.

  "Homeboy unloading from the trunk," Fordyce said via radio.

  The man opened the trunk and removed a box. He closed the trunk and headed toward the apartment.

  "All units be advised this was nothing but a beer run," Fordyce said. "He's carrying beer back into the apartment."

  "What are they drinking?" Arredondo said.

  "Coors two cases."

  "They're having a party to celebrate Greenie beating the rap," Black said.

  There was the distinct sound of a beer can being opened over the radio, which Stepanovich recognized as Arredondo's mimicry.

  About eleven, Stepanovich leaned back in the driver's seat and closed his eyes. The hillside was alive with the sound of crickets, and the air earthy and pungent with nightfall. It reminded Stepanovich of Vietnam.

  He remembered lying in jungle darkness on a thin, waterproof ground cover separating him from soil rich and wet, moldy earth mixed with the remains of dead leaves, rodents, and as he used to imagine it, carefully buried Vietcong bodies.

  He'd dropped out of college his second semester and enlisted in the regular Army because he would have never been able to face Uncle Nick or his mother if he'd obtained a fraudulent medical deferment or joined the National Guard to avoid Vietnam service, like so many of his classmates at East Los Angeles Junior College. Though enlisting required that he serve three years rather than the two years draftees served, he was able to pick his branch of the Army. Acting on Uncle Nick's advice, he selected the intelligence corps. Nick claimed that the former Los Angeles Chief of Police, William H. Parker, had once told him he'd organized the department's command structure on what he learned while serving as an Army spook. Nick respected Parker for coming up through the ranks as a two fisted cop. He was not a brown nose or a professional test taker.

  As an Army intelligence sergeant in Vietnam, Stepanovich's first assignment had been at MACV headquarters in Saigon, analyzing stacks of intelligence reports about enemy sightings. Like most Army administrative jobs, his duties seemed fruitless, particularly when it became clear to him that most of the reports were fabricated by low level sources scrambling for favors or a few bucks in confidential funds or by enemy double agents.

  The war became more real to Stepanovich when the Ling Hoc Hotel, where he and the other members of the intelligence unit were billeted, was blown up by a Vietcong satchel charge, and he fell from the second floor into the lobby as the building crumbled. Miraculously, his only injury was a two-inch cut on his back.

  Seeing men he knew killed, he volunteered for the field rather than remain in Saigon, where he knew he could stay for the rest of his combat tour.

  At a
base camp outside of Duc Loc, he had interrogated prisoners and prepared reports like the ones he'd been analyzing in Saigon. There, he'd been as brutal as the other interrogators in getting information out of the Vietcong prisoners because it was the only way to get back at the enemy. Also, as foolish as it sounded to him now, he believed in the mission. At the time he believed the President and the Congress wouldn't have sent him all the way across the world if the cause wasn't just. Though a loyal, hardworking spook, he also recognized even then that few of the intelligence reports he was sending forward could be relied upon because neither he, nor, as far as he was concerned, any other American in Vietnam, could figure out what the hell was going on at any given time.

  His three-year tour of duty completed, he'd been discharged just before the fall of Saigon.

  Suddenly there was the sound of radio static.

  "What's up out there?" Harger said after giving Stepanovich's call sign.

  Stepanovich picked up the microphone. "No activity. They're drinking beer inside."

  "Keep me advised. I want you to stay on it. If nothing happens, I'll get some Metro officers to relieve you tomorrow afternoon."

  "That's a roger."

  Stepanovich climbed out of the car and walked around awhile to stay awake. Around two Fordyce reported that the lights had been turned off in Greenie's apartment. Stepanovich used his night binoculars to check the television watchers. The man was still sitting in his easy chair staring at the tube.

  For the rest of the night Stepanovich alternated between taking catnaps in the car and walking about on the hillside road. As the sun came up the next morning, he gained something like a second wind.

  It was four the next afternoon by the time he and the others were relieved by officers from Metropolitan Division.

  Back at his apartment, the exhausted Stepanovich stripped and climbed into a hot shower. He soaped up his entire body, scrubbed, and rinsed thoroughly. He stepped out of the shower, dried off on the only clean towel he could find in the apartment, then dropped into bed. Lying there, he thought about Gloria until his eyes closed.