Earth Angels

by Gerald Petievich

  With the exterior search completed, Stepanovich stepped down into the shallow ditch to get closer to the car.

  Black aimed the beam of his flashlight on the trunk. It had three bullet holes. "We hit him."

  Noticing that the front passenger window was down a few inches, Stepanovich beamed his flashlight into the interior of the car. There was nothing visible on the seats or the floorboard. He reached into his pocket and took out a ballpoint pen. Carefully, in order to preserve any fingerprints, he touched the pen to the door lock and pushed firmly. The lock made a snap sound and he pulled the door open. Inside, the glove compartment door was open but empty. There was no dust or smudges on the dashboard. He leaned down to the floorboard and used the flashlight to check under the seat. Nothing.

  At the corner of the dashboard he located the tiny aluminum strip bearing the vehicle's identification number. Using the pen and a scrap of paper he dug from his trouser pocket, he copied it carefully. Arredondo, who was standing in the doorway watching him, took the paper out of his hand and headed back toward the police sedan.

  "It's clean," he said, coming to his feet.

  Black was checking the backseat area. "That's a ten four." He said. "Nothing back here either."

  As Stepanovich and Black removed both the front and rear seats of the car and continued to search, they heard the distant sound of Arredondo's voice transmitting the car's identification number via the police radio.

  With the interior search completed, Stepanovich rounded to the trunk of the Chevrolet. Using a handkerchief, he opened the trunk and held up the lid. The trunk area, including the indentation for the spare tire, was completely empty. "Looks like they cleaned up before they left," he said.

  Arredondo returned from the police sedan. "This car is a Hollenbeck stolen taken from Sears and Roebuck parking lot over a year ago. It's a caper car all right."

  "Call Sparky's tow," Stepanovich said, "We'll have it towed in for prints."

  As Arredondo headed back to the police radio and Black began filling out a vehicle impound report, Stepanovich suddenly felt exhausted, and the steel police issue flashlight he was holding seemed inordinately heavy. He rubbed his eyes for a moment, opened them. Just then he spotted something in the bushes a few feet away and advanced closer to get a better look. It was a spray can of Four Star spray lacquer.

  "Looks like the homeboys were sucking some fumes before they did their thing," Black said, joining him.

  Stepanovich carefully lifted the aerosol can by its plastic nozzle and carried it to the police sedan. He took a clear plastic bag from the evidence kit in the backseat and dropped the can into it. Using his ballpoint pen, he marked the bag with his initials and the date.

  By the time the tow truck arrived, morning light was coloring the sky.

  Sparky, the tow truck driver, a fortyish man with a beer barrel, a walrus mustache, and a mask of motor-grease blackheads covering his nose and cheeks, climbed out of the cab. The grayish T-shirt he was wearing bore the words "SOLDIER OF FORTUNE" and a depiction of a human skull wearing a U.S. Army green beret emblazoned across it. "Sorry about Fordyce," he said to Stepanovich.

  Stepanovich nodded. "We think this is the car they used in the drive by. Latent prints will meet us at the tow yard. I want it stored in the garage out of sight so the gangbangers won't know we have it."

  "Yes sir,"

  As Sparky went about attaching a tow chain to the undercarriage of the Chevrolet, Stepanovich noticed that Black and Arredondo, obviously as exhausted as he, were standing at the edge of the slope just staring down into Los Angeles.

  Sparky's towing service and vehicle impound yard, the largest in a row of dingy auto salvage businesses lining Mission Road, was protected by a tall chain link gate. Above the entrance a large metal sign read: "SPARKY'S OFFICIAL POLICE TOW." The silver police badge logo on the sign was a crude, hand painted job, as was the lettering on the sign itself. Behind the fence the auto graveyard's oil soaked ground was crowded with red-tagged vehicles, automobile engines on blocks, stacks of axles, transmissions, doors, and hubcaps of all kinds.

  As police fingerprint technician Maxine Brown worked on the Chevrolet, Stepanovich, Black, and Arredondo were sitting on oil stained folding chairs eating candy bars and watching. It occurred to Stepanovich that Brown, an obese, coffee skinned woman with wide breasts and an unhealthy paunch, was wearing the same threadbare red sweater and baggy black trousers Stepanovich had seen her in for months. Unfashionable perhaps, but quite practical, he said to himself. Why maintain a large wardrobe to scrutinize blood spattered bathrooms, dingy hallways, and automobiles?

  Using a small feather brush, fingerprint powder, and clear tape, she painstakingly moved about the car in an almost automatic pattern. Methodically, without regard for time, she worked her way across the front seat, dusting the dashboard, then, lying prone on the seat for a while with her sweater inched up and revealing abdominal stretch marks, she worked on the steering column itself. Outside the car, she balanced on the running board to do the roof, then dropped heavily to her knees next to the car for the fenders and doors. Working on the bumpers, she maintained a sitting position, dipping dust and brushing with a rapid, sweeping motion like an artist painting sky. She crept sideways on her ample buttocks, working from end to end without regard to either modesty or the fact that she was on sticky, oil stained cement.

  By the time she finished, it was after two.

  "Somebody wiped this car down real well," she said, coming to her feet. "Scrubbed the heck out of it. I couldn't even come up with a partial."

  Stepanovich felt coldness in the pit of his stomach - and seething anger. "So there's nothing?"

  "I didn't say that," she said, holding out a three by-five card bearing a patent fingerprint affixed under a piece of clear tape. "I lifted a fingerprint from the aerosol paint can you found. It looks to me like a thumb. It's a partial doesn't have enough points to testify on but if you have suspects, it would certainly tell you which one did it."

  "I want you to check it against the prints of every White Fence gang member in the bureau index."

  "How many members they be having?"

  "The White Fence gang has a thousand members, but you can start with the ones that are listed as shooters and work from there."

  "I be working on it," she said, closing her attaché case. "Just as soon as I wash up and get me some lunch. But don't be calling the lab every five minutes to waste my time. Just soon as I get me a make, I'll get back to you."

  "You can find me at "

  "I know where to find you," she interrupted on her way out the door. "And if all else fails, I'll check at the Rumor Control." Then she climbed into a compact car with a City of Los Angeles seal on the door. She used a tissue to wipe her face, applied lipstick, and checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. She started the engine and drove slowly out of the lot and west on Mission Road toward downtown.

  ****

  FIFTEEN

  Back at his apartment, Stepanovich pulled the handful of letters and advertising pamphlets from his mailbox and carried it into his apartment. He opened a window to get some fresh air, then flopped down on the beanbag chair. He touched the PLAY button on his telephone answering machine and heard the following message:

  "This is Gloria. If you call my place and don't get an answer, I haven't disappeared. I'm working a double shift at the hospital. Love you. Bye."

  Just the thought of her stirred a sexual excitement more powerful than his exhaustion.

  The telephone rang. "Harger here. I'm going over to fill in the Chief, and I have a couple of questions."

  "Shoot."

  "Number one. Were there any clues in the car? Anything at all?"

  "The only clue is a thumbprint on a spray can I found near the car."

  "But it wasn't inside the vehicle."

  "That's a roger."

  "So it could belong to some paint-head who left it there God knows when?" Harger said.

  "I'm
afraid so."

  "What happened? The gang scenario as you see it."

  "The Chevy is a caper car they keep hidden and use for drive by shootings. They picked it up, drove to Hazard Park, and opened fire, then returned it to Happy Valley, wiped it down for prints, and left in their own car, taking their weapons with them."

  "You're positive the Chevy is the right vehicle?"

  "The car has our bullet holes: freshly made with no rust," Stepanovich said. "It's the one."

  "Good work. Gotta run. The Chief is waiting."

  The phone clicked.

  Stepanovich set the receiver on the cradle and leaned back to thumb through the stack of letters. He yawned and closed his eyes for what he thought was just a moment.

  When he opened his eyes, it was eight o'clock and he was leaning back in the chair with the letters on his lap. He'd slept almost five hours. He rubbed his eyes, then stripped off his sour smelling clothes, and made his way into the bathroom.

  After taking a long shower, he dried off with the last clean towel in the cupboard. He pulled on a clean pair of slacks, threaded his belt through the loop in his holster, and arranged it in cross draw position. In the closet he found a freshly dry cleaned sports coat, one of the three he owned, and freed it from its clear plastic laundry bag.

  On his way through the living room he gathered up the stack of mail on the sofa and dug out an envelope he recognized as the monthly electric bill. That he put on top of the refrigerator, which was the only way, he knew from past experience, he'd ever remember to pay it.

  Fordyce's funeral was held at the spacious St. Felicitas Roman Catholic Church in the suburban city of San Fernando, where Fordyce had lived with his parents. The semicircle of pews in the well-lit sanctuary faced a sacrament table centered on a carpeted platform. A shiny bronze coffin that Stepanovich assumed was made of some kind of durable plastic, was resting in front of the platform. Like other police funerals Stepanovich had attended, the chapel was filled to capacity with men and women in uniform. The silver LAPD police shields of the detectives, including the members of the CRASH unit and other officers in civilian clothes, were all shrouded in the same manner: a strip of black electrician's tape slanted diagonally across the badge's face and were pinned conspicuously to their jackets. The chief of police himself, a steel eyed, athletic looking sixty-year-old black man with distinguished streaks of gray in his frizzy hair, was sitting in the front row next to Harger.

  After a young priest and two altar boys had made their ritual circuits around the sacrament table, Harger came to the lectern and, without notes of any kind, gave the eulogy. As he repeatedly used the words "service, dedication, and selflessness," Stepanovich relived the shooting over and over again, closing his eyes and picturing the black Chevrolet approaching the motor home to see if somehow he could drag an image of the driver or passengers from his memory.

  It didn't do any good.

  After the service, Stepanovich, Black, Arredondo, Harger, and a couple of Fordyce's male cousins acted as pallbearers. The casket was secured in a shiny black hearse, and it followed the police ceremonial motorcycle unit and a cavalcade of police vehicles with flashing red lights from the church to the nearby Rose Hills Cemetery.

  There, in the heat of the day, the pallbearers carried the casket from hearse to graveside. By the time the priest had finished chanting in Latin and Fordyce's mother and father had cringed at the police rifle unit firing the required ceremonial rounds, everyone was drenched with perspiration.

  At the conclusion of the service, Stepanovich joined a line leading to Mr. and Mrs. Fordyce, and expressed his sympathy again. After embracing them, he filed along with the crowd of cops heading toward the line of air-conditioned police vehicles. Stepanovich felt an overpowering rage. From the moment of the shooting, everything seemed a blur of flashing images: the hospital and church and funeral procession and Fordyce, now a corpse in a black uniform lowered into a trench.

  Harger, standing in the shade of the only tree in sight, motioned to him. "Houlihan has been assigned the case by central bureau," he said furtively.

  "A detective from internal affairs division handling a police homicide?" Stepanovich replied.

  "Captain Ratliff assigned him the case," Harger said, speaking rapidly, keeping his eyes on the crowd of departing mourners. "Ratliff has support on the police commission and is making a move for the deputy chief's job. He sees the gang problem and Fordyce's murder as a sure way to get some publicity. Houlihan and Ratliff used to work Vice together."

  "What do I say if Houlihan asks about our part in the investigation?"

  "Don't tell him shit." Harger said as he looked past Stepanovich at the departing mourners. "The Chief wants us to make this case in our way. You have the complete backing of the Chief in keeping Houlihan out of the investigation." With a quick shoulder jab, signifying the end of the conversation, Harger moved away and greeted a group of high-ranking deputy sheriffs.

  Someone called Stepanovich's name just as he reached his sedan. Recognizing Houlihan's voice, he felt the hair on his neck tingle. "I guess by now you've heard I've been assigned the Fordyce case out of major crimes," Houlihan said, slightly out of breath from hurrying to catch up.

  "As a matter of fact, I hadn't."

  "I know you CRASH fellas are out there beating the bushes on your own. I have no objection to that. After all, you're the gang experts ... but I want to be kept informed."

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  "Have you come up with anything so far?"

  Stepanovich shook his head.

  Houlihan used the back of his hand to wipe perspiration from his upper lip. "We're all working toward the same goal," he said, waiting for a reply.

  "I agree."

  "The last thing I want is to have department politics get in the way of this kind of an investigation."

  "Right." Stepanovich opened the driver's door of his sedan and climbed in.

  Houlihan leaned down to the window. "Have you come up with anything so far? Anything at all?"

  "Nothing. How about you?"

  "We should probably get together to coordinate the investigation," Houlihan said. "You know, to avoid stepping on each other's toes."

  "You'll have to take that up with Harger."

  "Look, I know I'm a lieutenant and you're a sergeant, but we can speak man to man, can't we?"

  "Certainly," Stepanovich said, looking him blankly in the eye.

  Houlihan let out his breath in exasperation, then turned and walked away shaking his head.

  Stepanovich pulled into the driveway at his mother's house. He entered without knocking, and Mrs. Stepanovich, wearing an apron, came from the kitchen and hugged him.

  "I'm sorry about your friend," she said.

  Because he could tell that emotion would choke his voice, he just shrugged and turned away. She followed him through a tiny living room decorated with obviously worn but spotless furniture: a sofa, a recliner chair, and a small oak coffee table that she refused to replace. As she herself put it, "Who am I trying to impress?" In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator, took out a beer, and popped the top. "Fordyce was a good policeman," he said.

  "That doesn't matter to his mother. She doesn't care what he was. He was her son."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Every day you were in Vietnam I prayed for you. And when you came home, I thanked God and the angel that watched over you. I knew that nothing bad could ever happen if my son returned home safely from the war. God spared you and I was thankful."

  "That was a long time ago, Mom."

  "If you'd been killed, it wouldn't have mattered why. "

  "Fordyce died doing something he believed in "

  "He died for nothing!" she cried.

  "I know you're upset, but I didn't come over here to argue."

  "I don't want you fighting the gangs anymore," she said, rubbing her hands together nervously. "It's too dangerous."

  "It's my job. We're worki
ng directly for the chief of police."

  "Is it your job to get shot and lose your life? That's what the big shots said about Vietnam. They said it was worth dying for as long as their boys weren't the ones getting killed. Vietnam was all for nothing and your friend Fordyce died for nothing. Piss on the chief of police! The son of a bitch!"

  Stepanovich put his arm around her. "Don't cry, Mom."

  She pulled away from him and ripped a paper towel from a cylindrical rack under the sink and dabbed her eyes. "I didn't raise you to get killed by cholos."

  "I want to introduce you to Gloria Soliz, a woman I've been going out with," he said as she blew her nose. "I was thinking Gloria and you and I can drive up to Jack Mornarich's ranch in Oregon when you get your vacation."

  Pulling away from him, she opened the refrigerator, though he protested he wasn't hungry. Ignoring him, she served him a meal of fried ham, corn bread, and a green salad. They spoke little while eating.

  "I know you're going to go after the ones who did it. I can tell by that look in your eye," she said as he took his plate to the sink.

  "I've gotta get going, Mom. Thanks for the meal." He kissed her on the cheek and headed to the door.

  "God could have never given me a better son," she said. "That's why I don't want anything to happen to you."

  He opened the door and left.

  At the Rumor Control Bar, Sullivan was sitting alone on a bar stool watching television. On the screen a lanky cowboy sauntered into a blacksmith's shop. Though there were no customers in the bar yet, the place would soon fill up as it did after every police funeral.

  Stepanovich walked behind the bar and filled a cocktail glass with ice and scotch. Jiggling the glass for a moment to chill the booze, he took a big gulp. He felt the liquor's warmth descend in his throat.

  "Actors," Sullivan said with his eyes fixed on the television screen.