A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (6 page)

“Danny Beckett,” I said, extending my hand. He gave it a solid shake, but I knew there was more strength in his arm than he used. I couldn’t tell if I knew that because of my amazing perceptive abilities or because he wanted me to know it. “This is my partner,” I said, “Jennifer Tanaka.”

“Hello,” he said to her, smiling. He initiated a handshake, but when he saw she wasn’t reciprocating, he brought his left up as well and clasped them both in front of his waist. “Can I get you something to drink? A latte?

“No,” I said. “Thank you.” I made a show of looking at Jen and raising my eyebrows.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Very kind of you to offer.”

“Let’s head back, shall we?”

Jen looked him in the eye and said, “Yes.”

The walk was long, as I’m sure it was intended to be. Lawyers with their names on the wall behind the reception desk always want to make sure you have plenty of time to think about how important they are on the long walk back to the corner office.

I was trying to figure out what to make of Benicio Guerra playing the same game as all the other high-end attorneys in Southern California, because he certainly wasn’t like anyone else.

He’d done eight years for a triple murder when he was a soldier in one of the Long Beach Longo sets. No one involved in the investigation thought he had actually pulled the trigger, but he stepped up and took the hit for someone higher up in the pecking order. He served his time, and while he was in prison he was believed to have killed at least two of his fellow inmates. I wanted to appreciate the irony of Guerra going away for murders he didn’t actually commit only to become a murderer inside, but I just couldn’t. That was too cynical even for me.

We came into his office, and he stood, made a show of walking out from behind his expansive desk, and shook our hands.

I’d never met him before, but his history was well known. He’d always been smart, and while he was inside, he took full advantage of his time to study. He’d stacked his time before prisons had started reducing access to their law libraries in the late nineties, and he walked out of prison and into Long Beach City College. After his eight years, Benny found higher education a breeze and transferred to UCLA with a 4.0 GPA and a redemption story that carried all the way through law school. He started as an associate with Sternow and Byrne, a huge Century City firm that allowed him to learn from some of the highest-paid criminal defense attorneys in Southern California. After four years, he started his own practice. And wound up here.

Since his release, he had stayed clean as a hound’s tooth. Not even a parking ticket. Benny had figured out how to make crime really pay.

“Hello, detectives. Welcome.” He gestured toward a pale-beige leather sofa, and we sat. “Can I get you something to drink? An espresso, perhaps?” I wondered if they had just invested in a fancy new coffee machine. When we declined the beverage offer, he took a matching chair opposite us. Our backs were to the window, so he got to enjoy the view of the ocean and the harbor. We didn’t mind. Cops always sit with their backs to the wall whenever they can. Besides, Jen and I had both seen everything on the other side of the glass.

“How can I help you?” he said.

“Do you know why we’re here?” I asked.

He had a narrow, inch-long tendril of scar tissue that ran down his cheek under his left eye from the removal of the three jailhouse teardrop tattoos that his records indicated he’d had removed while on parole. When the light caught it just right, it appeared as if he really was crying, an effect I’m sure the blue-black ink that had been there before had never achieved.

“I’m assuming it’s because of my nephew, but it would be nice if I was wrong.”

Jen said, “You’re not wrong.”

“Tell me how I can help.”

He was studying us. Putting the question to us in the broadest possible terms, trying to read us at the same time we were reading him.

If his statement was a slow and high lob over the net, I wanted to spike it back in his face. The best I could do, though, was, “You can tell us why your nephew thought burning a homeless man to death would impress you.”

He didn’t even flinch. “Is that why he did it?”

“What do you think?” I said.

“I don’t have the slightest idea. I’m not close to him. Haven’t been for years. Not since he was in elementary school.”

“Because of the falling-out you had with your brother?” Jen asked.

“Exactly.” He leaned forward and gave us a sad smile. “You know about my past. That’s why you’re here. I don’t blame you. In fact, I’m sure I’d be doing exactly what you are, were I in your position. The reason I haven’t talked to my nephew in such a long time is because my brother chose to continue down a path I could no longer condone. You’re right to doubt me, but the fact is that I left that life behind me a long time ago. I still make a living from crime. Just look around, I’m sure that’s obvious. But working on the other side of the fence is a fool’s game. Why would I risk all of this?”

His frankness was surprising. And worse, it left us no angle to work on him. So I let go of the angles and just asked a simple and straightforward question. “Then who was he trying to impress?”

“I can only guess,” Benny said. “But I assume it was his father.”

“His father’s in prison,” Jen said.

“Yes. Corcoran.”

“And you think he’s still that big an influence on his son?”

“His old man’s standing up. A word from him could still open doors.”

We knew the doors he was talking about.

“I know you’ve been off the streets for a long time,” I said, “but is torching a helpless old man really going to impress anyone?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why did he do it?”

“Because he’s a fucking idiot.”

We were outside of Benny’s building on Ocean Boulevard and on our way back to the station before I asked Jen, “What do you make of Benny?”

“Got a good song and dance.”

“I know. So good I wonder if it might even be true.”

She said, “I think it’s too good. Let’s see if he’s got any connection to Omar’s lawyer.”

“What if he does?”

“Then we’ll know he’s full of shit and we can look harder at him. Maybe we can shake something loose.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t say anything else.

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just want to ID the vic.”

“You don’t think the name ‘Bishop’ will lead us anyplace?”

“There were a couple of hits on the name with MUPS, but none matched the description. I’m thinking it must be a street name or something.”

“Maybe we’ll get a DNA hit.”

“That would be nice,” I said. “But we’ve still got a few threads we can pull on.”

“There’s something different about this victim for you, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Is it because he burned? You thinking of Megan?”

“Maybe.”

“But that’s not all of it, is it?”

“No.”

She waited for me to go on. Jen was always better at interviews than I was.

I watched the traffic, waiting for the crosswalk signal to change, and thought about why Bishop’s identity seemed to mean so much to me. All I could come up with was this: “He had three pairs of shoes and none of them fit.”

5

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Pedro and Jesús Solano lived in a neighborhood called Zaferia, which was just east and north of Cambodia Town. I’d never heard the name until a year or two earlier, when the city started hanging up banners on the light poles along East Anaheim Street that said “Stop Shop Dine, Historic Zaferia District, Est. 1913.” The drill was familiar—hang up banners everyplace the city council hoped had a shot at gentrification. It didn’t seem to be working around Ohio and Tenth, though, and especially not for the Solano family. They lived in a run-down bungalow that was hidden behind a larger though equally aged home that fronted the street. If I hadn’t checked the place out first on Google Maps, it would have been hard to find it.

Jen and I parked on the street half a block away, in the closest empty spot we could find. Next door was a four-story apartment building. As we walked up the long and narrow driveway past the front house on the lot, someone on one of the balconies said “Five-oh” in a matter-of-fact voice that wasn’t quite loud enough to qualify as a shout. I couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a greeting.

Thirty yards in from the street, there was a small porch up three steps from the driveway. To the left, with doors perpendicular to the front of the house, was a shed that wasn’t quite big enough to qualify as a one-car garage. There was a large ash tree in the small space between the two structures, and its roots were pushing one side of the shed so far out of square that there was a six-inch gap above the left-side door, and a similar one beneath the right. The two sides of the padlock hasp didn’t line up, and a bike chain slipped through the handles was all that secured the doors. It didn’t look like the wood frame could withstand much more displacement from the ash.

Jen leaned against the short stairway’s railing, looked up, and scanned the balconies as I climbed the steps up onto the porch and knocked on the rusty metal security door. The dull, hollow clanging echoed through the small house. Even though visibility through the screen was poor, I could see that there was a couch along one wall of the living room. A small woman in a zip-up hoodie and sweatpants, who I hadn’t realized was there, struggled to her feet and lurched toward the door. I couldn’t get a good read on her, but she appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or something else.

“Mrs. Solano?”

“What do you want?”

I held up my badge. “Are you here by yourself?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

“Where are your kids?”

“Jesús is at school still. Maria’s at the daycare. What do you want?”

I thought about asking her more about Jesús, but it was clear she was wary of police, and I didn’t want to tip her off to the real reason we were there. And she gave me a good opening. “What about Pedro?”

“Pedro?” She raised her voice. The slurring became more pronounced as she grew angrier. “He’s in your jail! You don’t know that? You already have him.”

I faked surprise. “We do? Since when?”

“Last night.” The anger dissipated as quickly as it had risen. Then, sounding vaguely hopeful, she added, “You do have him, don’t you?”

I turned to Jen. “Mrs. Solano says Pedro’s already in lockup.”

Jen played along. “Seriously? What are we doing here, then?”

“I don’t know.” I turned back to the screen door. “I’m sorry we bothered you, Mrs. Solano. Our mistake.” I spun around and started down the stairs.

Behind us, Mrs. Solano was shouting, “You have Pedro, don’t you? You have Pedro?” By the time we got to the sidewalk, we couldn’t hear her anymore.

As Jen drove west on Anaheim, she said to me, “Think maybe you were a little hard on her?”

“Yeah, but it was the right way to play it. We got lucky that we didn’t tip our hand and she didn’t figure out we were looking for Jesús. I don’t know if he’s laying low or what, but if there’s any doubt about where he stands, where he thinks Pedro stands, that’s going to work in our favor.”

“How do you figure?”

“If his mother’s got some doubts about what’s going on with Pedro, and Jesús has to figure it out, then he’s going to have to be talking to people, asking questions.”

“And everyone he talks to is another potential lead.”

We slowed for the red light at Gundry, and I looked out the passenger’s window at the Mark Twain branch of the Long Beach Library. It was only a few years old, opened just before the recession hit, one of the newest in the system. Its contemporary architecture stood out against the older and more run-down buildings in the area, like Tech’s Tires and La Bodega #4 across the street. The gleaming new building, though, told only half the story. Inside, they offered tutoring services for neighborhood kids and the area’s best Internet access. The branch also housed the largest collection of Khmer-language literature in the United States. The first time I’d seen the new library, I’d been troubled by its presence, thinking the cutting-edge design not only seemed out of place in a poor neighborhood but that it also sent the wrong messages about where the city was placing its priorities. Now, though, looking out the window as Jen accelerated, I realized this ostentatious building named after one of literature’s most famous dead white males in a neighborhood filled with poor Asian and Latino immigrants was actually a symbol of the best of Long Beach’s Frankensteined urban stew. The cultural and socioeconomic jumble of pressure and influence and privilege and poverty don’t often come together in any productive way, but on those rare occasions when they do, I try to let the cracks in my preconceived notions widen and let in a little bit of light.

When we got back to the station, I called Robert Kincaid, the ADA who’d be prosecuting the case. He’d already seen all the case files we had so far. After I told him about our visit with Benny War, I asked him about Hector Siguenza.

“He’s part of Benny’s cabal,” Rob said. “Him and four or five other guys. All lawyers. They’ve got a standing tee-time at the Virginia Country Club every week.”

“You figure Benny’s calling in a favor?”

“Yeah. No way Benny would touch it himself, but he wants to stay close. Makes sense that he’d pull in one of his cronies.”

“Think he might be pulling Siguenza’s strings?”

“Benny’s usually too smart to get directly involved, but I’m sure there’s some influence there. Why?”

“Just trying to get a sense of things,” I said.

“Keep me in the loop.”

“I will.”

Maybe I was wrong about Benny, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been trying way too hard to seem like he didn’t give a shit.

That evening I felt like I needed to get my head out of the case for a little while, so I stopped at Ralphs for some beer and drove to Belmont Heights.

“You been practicing?” Harlan Gibbs asked as he led me into his living room. I took the first bottle of Sam Adams out of the six-pack, popped the cap off, and handed it to him.

He was a retired Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy whom I met on a murder investigation a few years earlier. The victim had been an English teacher who rented a small house from Harlan. The first time I saw him, he was pointing a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum at me. He’d mistaken Jen and me for intruders. We’d been friends ever since.

“Yeah.”

“How often?”

“Every day.”

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously.”

He stood up, went into the next room, and came back with a banjo. It was one I didn’t recognize. He checked the tuning, made a small adjustment to the third string, and handed it to me.

“This looks nice.” And it did. It was a Gibson. I couldn’t identify the model, but it looked top-of-the-line with an ebony fingerboard, a figured maple resonator, gold hardware, and pearl inlays. Probably worth ten grand or so. It looked new, but I knew that with Gibsons, new wasn’t always as good as old. “You just buy this?”

“Got a deal.”

Almost a year earlier, when my physical therapist told me I needed to start playing the guitar to treat my chronic pain, Harlan had made a gift to me of a beautiful Deering Saratoga Star and told me it would be even better for rebuilding the strength and dexterity I’d lost with my injury. It was every bit as valuable as the instrument I was holding in my hands, and I thought he’d resigned himself to giving in to the stomach cancer he’d been stricken by. I never figured out if I was right, but Harlan kept fighting, and he was closing on nine cancer-free months. The new banjo seemed to me a good sign, an investment of sorts in the future.

“Flashy,” I said. “You run into some pimp with buyer’s remorse?”

“Bought it for the sound.”

I adjusted the banjo in my lap and picked a forward roll across the strings. Sounded very nice. I tossed a knowing nod in Harlan’s direction.

“Please,” he said. “Like you could recognize a decent sound.”

He was right, of course, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of indicating I knew it.

“Okay, Béla,” Harlan said, “show me a basic chord progression. G, C, D7.”

It wasn’t pretty, but I managed a slow and clumsy alternating roll through all three chords, relieved that I managed the C without the dead plunk from my poor fingering on the fourth string.

“That was lovely,” Harlan said and took a long pull from his beer. “Thought you said you were practicing.”

“I have been. Half an hour every night before bed.”

“Well, it’s not working. You need some lessons.”

I’d tried to weasel some lessons out of him when he’d given me the Deering, and he made an effort, but he wasn’t a teacher. Didn’t have it in him. And because I’d hoped the lessons would be as good for him as they were for me, I hadn’t pushed him to continue.

“I’m taking lessons.”

“With who?”

“Tony Trischka.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Seriously. Tony Trischka’s Online Banjo School.”

“Online? You’re learning banjo on the computer? Jesus.”

“It’s the best I could do. Maybe if I knew any real banjo players, they could help me find some decent lessons.”

The jab landed and earned me half a snort. “All right,” he said. “I’ll ask around.”

We drank in comfortable silence for a bit, and then he said, “Saw the homeless guy on the news. You caught that, right?”

I nodded. Then we talked about banjos and music and old movies for two hours, and I went home.