by David Putnam
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DAD HAD GONE into a trance-like state to tell the story of my mother, a story I had never heard before. In all my life, he’d never said one word about my mother or what had happened to her. On several occasions he got tired of my nagging and said, “Leave it alone, Son, I’m not going to talk about it.” And here he sat telling me all about her from day one of their relationship. I didn’t ask even one question for fear it would stop him from telling more of the story.
I had a mom.
Over the years, the mere idea of a mother had turned into an apparition, something that had, day by day, faded a little more into the sunset until there was nothing left but a ghostly wisp. Now those lost feelings from when I was a child rushed back all at once and made the world wobble on its axis. This new revelation would take days to adjust to, if at all. But why did it matter so much now? She never cared about me as a child. She had left and never looked back. At that moment I realized Sonya had done the same thing with Olivia. Sonya had knocked on my door and handed me a swaddled child, said, “Here, I can’t take it anymore.” Sonya never so much as sent Olivia a birthday card. Had the lack of a mother, later in life, been the key factor that sent Olivia down the path of destruction, her need to be with a sinister actor like Derek Sams? Had the lack of my own mother jaded me to the fact that Olivia had needed a mother in her life?
Dad came out of the trance in mid-sentence and looked around, suddenly aware of the street I’d parked on. He’d been a postman for decades and knew the streets better than anyone else. I was confident that if I put a mask on him, spun him in a circle, drove him around, and then took the mask off only showing him the front of one house that he’d know the street and the address and even probably name of the persons who lived there. He had a mind for that kind of thing.
“What are we doing here? Why’d you bring us here to this spot and park?”
“Dad, don’t stop now, tell me the rest of it. Please? What happened with Bea, I mean, with my mom?”
He pointed. “Right down there, that house is a foster home.” He turned and looked at me. “You brought me here because this is where Alonzo is, right?” His voice turned excited.
“Yes, that’s right. I just wanted to give you something to put your mind at ease, a place that you could—”
He grabbed the door latch and jumped out before I could grab him. I got out and caught up to him walking down the middle of the street. “Wait. Wait, what are you doing? You can’t go up there like this, not in the middle of the night, it’s after ten o’clock. Wait, Dad, please. If we make any contact at all, it could ruin our chances to get custody of Alonzo.” I took a firm hold of his shoulder.
He stopped and turned, his eyes alive with a fire I had not seen for the last six months. “I’m going to see my great-grandson and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Wait, just listen. I brought you here just so you’d know where Alonzo was, that he was safe and close by. I thought that’d give you at least a little bit of comfort.”
He jerked his shoulder out of my grasp and backed up a couple of steps, moving toward his goal.
I held up my hand. “Wait. You go up there and cause a scene, it will hurt our case to get Alonzo assigned to us by the judge. We’ve talked about this. Don’t do it, Dad.”
What a tremendous mistake to bring him along. I should’ve learned by now that when hot emotions are involved you could never predict how someone would act.
He took a step closer and spoke with a firm confidence that almost convinced me he was right. “I know these people; I’ve talked to them many times in the past when I delivered their mail. It’ll be all right. I promise you, don’t worry. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Dad, I can’t go up there. Social Services will have told them to be on the lookout for me. They think I have violent tendencies; they’ll call the police for sure.”
We stood under the streetlight in the middle of a gang-run residential street. He didn’t reply and stared, a thing he did when he wanted me to work out the answer all on my own.
“Oh, so what you’re saying is that I have to stay out here while you go in there and risk making our custody case worse than it is already?” I didn’t mean to sound so calloused and selfish; it just came out that way.
He still said nothing and stared.
“Okay, I’ll wait out here. But go easy, Dad, don’t force it or make a scene, okay? If you meet any kind of resistance, just walk away.”
This was a mistake, a big mistake. What was I thinking, “any kind of resistance?” Just knocking on the door late at night would be enough to cashier our chances.
“It’ll all work out. Just go back and sit in the truck. I won’t be long.” He peeled my hand off his arm. I didn’t realize I’d put it there or that I’d been holding on to him so tightly. He’d have bruises in the morning.
I watched him walk down the middle of the street, cross the grass parkway and the sidewalk, open the dilapidated chain-link gate, and disappear into the dark overgrown front yard. I stood there unable to move. I wanted to do what PJ Reynolds, the PI, had recommended—storm the castle and rescue my grandson. I missed him so. His absence opened a chasm in my chest that ached constantly throughout the day, a constant reminder of my inability to take affirmative action to rescue him.
I stood next to the Ford and bounced on the balls of my feet.
Dad reappeared under the porch light facing the front door as he knocked lightly. He didn’t turn around and smile and wave. I could’ve used one of his reassuring smiles as I moved in his direction back to the middle of the street, anxiety getting the better of me.
A large black woman in a muumuu-like dress opened the door with an angry scowl.
Oh no. Dad, don’t. Back away. Don’t tell her your name. Just turn around and get the hell out of there.
The woman suddenly smiled, stuck both her hands out, and enveloped Dad into a hug. They stepped apart and spoke until the woman nodded. She stepped aside and allowed Dad to enter. The door closed. Dad had made it inside the impenetrable castle with nothing more than words and a big smile.
I waited a few minutes and realized I was still standing in the middle of the street, a perfect target for a gang member protecting his turf. I went back to the Ford Ranger and stood in front of it waiting, too pent up to sit.
The amazing words he’d said about my mother returned so vividly, I saw the story as a movie playing out. I could picture the whole thing. I’d never forget what he’d said or how he’d said it.
But what of the ending? What had happened to Bea? I didn’t know Dad had started out with a dream of being a cop. He’d never mentioned it in all the times we sat in our living room on hot summer nights after my shift working the streets and I told him stories of the job.
A thousand other questions swirled around and around. Did my mother rob the telephone man of all his bags of dimes? What happened to her? Did she still live close by? What happened that a man like my father would banish her from his life—from my life—forever? Dad was the most forgiving man I’d ever had the honor to know.
Minutes passed. The door finally opened. No one came out right away. I held my breath.
Dad stepped out holding Alonzo. My heart soared. He came to the gate, passed through it, and stopped at the sidewalk as if he’d been ordered to go no farther. I ran across the street, tears burning my eyes. When I got close, Alonzo, with sleepy eyes, held out his hands and said, “Pop Pop.” I took him from Dad and hugged my grandson.
I’d started out trying to do Dad a favor, tried to ease his mind just a smidgeon, and he ended up helping me like no one had ever helped me before. Holding Alonzo with his little arms hugging my neck and him calling out my name righted my screwed-up world and again made anything in the future possible.
“He has to stay here, Son.”
“I know, Dad, I know. I don’t know how you did it, but thank you for this.” Dad’s face was wet with tears. The
front door of the house stood open and the big woman stood under the light. I waved to her. She waved back, smiling. I knew I didn’t have long, and for once, wanted time to slow down, to actually stop. I memorized all the wonderful feelings of holding him, his face, his warm, soft skin, the way his chest moved as he breathed. His wonderful scent of baby powder.
Too soon, Dad was trying to pry him from my grasp. I let out a pitiful little yelp when I finally let go. Alonzo started crying and it ripped my heart out. Dad carried him down the walk and handed him to the nice woman. She waved one last time, stepped inside, and closed the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE NEXT MORNING at 9:00 a.m. I pulled into the Compton Courthouse off Willowbrook Avenue. “You stay in the car, you hear me?” I pointed a loaded finger at Junior Mint. I intended to be gone all day and didn’t want to leave him home, cooped up in this summer’s heat. I kept a gallon jug of water on the floor of the back seat and filled a used pot I’d picked up at a thrift store. I left all the windows down and the car parked in the shade of a huge pepper tree. I’d done it before and always found Junior Mint sitting patiently waiting for my return. One time he sat on the roof of the car like he was king of the mountain. No crook would ever get close to the car. Walking away, I turned one last time and pointed at his dejected mug. “Stay.”
People flowed from the two parking lots and got in the line that snaked out the front door and down the steps, everyone queuing for the metal detectors. I couldn’t flash my badge and cut the line for fear one of the crooks waiting for court might be an associate and/or principal that had done business with TW. Word would go out and that would be the end of the sting. I went to the lee of the building, looked around first, and knocked on the side door. Jenkins, an African American deputy who’d worked the street fifteen years, then the court for twenty more, opened it. He’d seen a lot of change in his time. I quickly moved past him and he got the door closed.
“Don’t know why you made the trip, my friend,” Jenkins said.
“What? Why?”
“Your boy didn’t catch the chain from MCJ. His name wasn’t on the intake list.”
“The court dark today? It’s a murder trial, they just don’t do that; it’s too hard on the jury.” I said it more thinking out loud. Jenkins knew how the courts worked better than anyone. My newspaper friend had called and said there hadn’t been court on Friday either. What was going on?
He shrugged. “Sorry, Bruno, not my circus, not my monkeys.”
I hurried away throwing a “Thank you” at him over my shoulder. I avoided the elevator and took the stairs up to three. I peeked in the little square window in the door to the courtroom. Dark all right—the clerk wasn’t even in. I moved down to Judge Connors’ courtroom and peeked in the door window. Esther sat at her usual perch doing her job when there wasn’t a job to do. I didn’t need any more emotional soup to deal with but knocked anyway. She looked up, saw me, and smiled—a small, crooked smile where she usually beamed. She climbed down off her elevated desk and came to the door. She used her keys to unlock it. I pushed in. She immediately glommed onto me. I became a life preserver without any hope of rescue. I put my arms around her and held on tight. Her body shook as she wept for the loss of a great man and longtime friend. She spoke into my shirt. I couldn’t decipher her words muffled by my chest but had a good idea what they entailed.
She finally recovered, stepped back, took her glasses off, and wiped the tears from the lens with a hanky I’d handed her. Her voice came out husky. “Do they have the pendejo who did it? Did you catch him yet, Bruno?” Esther never said words like “pendejo,” which loosely translated from Spanish meant asshole. She’d always been the picture of professionalism with a smile for everyone, even the tatted-down ruthless killers who raged against the judge when a sentence was handed down.
I patted her shoulder. “No, not yet, but I’m working on it. It’s not going to take me long to figure out who did it. I promise, it’ll all be over soon.”
Nobody close to the judge and Jean Anne could put to rest their painful emotions until the suspect was captured, the reason for the killing revealed, and the appropriate amount of justice meted out. The last part, the justice part, fell into my area of expertise, and I was glad Wicks was working with me on this one. No one ever deserved a larger dose of blood and bone than the man who’d used pumpkin balls on my friend and his wife. As a team, we rarely came away without our target captured or at least neutralized with steel or lead. One way or another, we’d put the guy down.
“Esther, can you check your computer and tell me what happened with the Derek Sams trial?”
“Sure, Bruno. Sure.” She turned. I followed her over to her elevated desk and I stood below looking across at her like I had done so many times those two years I’d worked for the judge. She’d been a real pleasure to work with. The only knick-knack of a personal nature she allowed on her desk was a white porcelain vase with cerulean blue lines creating a variety of lovely flowers. The vase contained a dozen wilted red roses.
Her fingers clacked on the keys. “Says here that he’s been released, ‘exceptional clearance,’ pending probation review and final disposition. I’m so sorry, Bruno.”
My mouth dropped open. “Are you sure? That can’t be right, we were in the middle of jury trial. A CI deal is never cut once a trial starts.”
Those words in that sequence were a code used so everyone in law enforcement would know what had happened without letting the nosy press in on the secret. Derek Sams, the killer of my grandson, the man who had his hand in the death of my daughter, had been released from custody as an informant to work an important case.
I wanted to break something. I wanted to pick up a chair and beat the table with it and would have had Esther not been present. Someone had traded the life of my grandson away for a better case that Sams could give him.
No. No, that wasn’t right either; the DA and the cops didn’t know about Albert and how the cruel and brutal Derek Sams had tossed poor Albert off the San Pedro Bridge. Discarded him like so much refuse. In reality, they had traded the death of a dope dealer, Bumpy Spanks, a self-defense death at that. If for some reason that trade did hit the public eye, no one would care, an easy trade to make politically with little risk for blowback.
I took in several deep breaths, regaining control. “Does it say who? Scroll down, it’ll be in the notes. The detective handling it had to have a contract with Sams, one signed off by the DA and a judge to get him out of custody.” If he didn’t perform what he’d promised, or if he ran, he would waive his right to a trial and would be deemed guilty and sentenced immediately upon recapture.
Sams was anything but a fool. If he said he could make a case, then he could make the case rather than risk the ire of the court. Only what case would be bigger than the murder trial he was already in the middle of, and—
Esther said the name the same time I did. “Robby Wicks.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SOMEONE HAD TAKEN a dog out of the pound to run down another dog, and in this case, I didn’t know which dog was a larger threat to society. Both needed to be euthanized before they bit someone else. I retreated from the courtroom after saying my goodbyes to Esther. I promised to keep in touch, to keep her apprised of the investigation.
I took the stairs down two at a time and popped out into the bright sunlight of a beautiful day.
Someone tapped a car horn. I looked to the left and spotted the sleek black Crown Victoria with smoked windows. The car Wicks cherished almost as much as his wife, Barbara. I nodded and waved, put on a fake smile, and headed over to him. The bastard had backed into Judge Connors’ reserved parking spot. Wicks knew Connors wouldn’t be using it. Sometimes Wicks’ lack of decorum made me want to smash him in the face. But I’d come to understand it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t possess the gene for tact and common social interaction. This same gene deficiency made it easy for him to pull the trigger on a dangerous criminal and afterward
go home and sleep like a baby. He was better suited for a world a hundred and twenty years earlier, where in the old West, you lived and died by your gun, not your words needed to engender a circle of friends.
I walked by his open car window and casually said, “Hey, pop the trunk, would ya?”
He hit the button and the trunk deck popped open. “Why?” He said over his shoulder, as he watched in the side mirror. “Whattaya need outta there? Whattaya doin’?”
I shoved his equipment aside and found what I was looking for. I pulled out the tire iron, a long piece of black steel hooked at the end with a knob for the bolt head, and slammed the trunk. I moved to the side of the car, swung as hard as I could, and shattered the back window.
“Hey! Hey! What the hell?”
I broke out the left rear passenger window. He tried to get out. I shoved his door closed and bashed in his side mirror. Hit it several times until it hung from wires. Shards of glass tinkled to the asphalt. Then I went to work on the windshield.
He got out. “Bruno! Bruno! Son of a bitch, stop this shit right now or I’m gonna put a bullet in your ass.”
I moved to the hood and banged and banged, dimpling the smooth glossy finish, exposing bright raw steel. I was finally able to let go of all the pent-up rage I’d been containing for so many months. Rage the doctor and Dad had been so worried about. I banged and kicked and moved. I broke out his headlights, stood back and kicked in the fenders and the door panels on the other side. Broke all those side windows as well.
When I came out of my fugue state, I was breathing hard like I’d just finished a marathon. Wicks had gotten out and stood back watching with his brown polyester suit jacket pulled back, his hands on his hips as he puffed his slim brown cigarette. “Well, are you finished?”
I looked over the decimated car and regretted my actions. The car had never done anything to me. “I guess so. And you’ll be waiting a long time if you expect me to say I’m sorry.”
