Contents Under Pressure (21 page)

I stood there with my mouth open.

“Strong as an ox, with the brains of a tractor.” Lottie nudged me with her elbow, as the rumble of Machado’s bike faded in the distance. “You must be onto one helluva story. Did you see that man’s face? He’s so paranoid, he thinks we’re gonna chase after him. Bet he doesn’t come home for days out of fear of us hidin’ in the bushes.”

“He’s not even wearing a helmet. It’s the law.”

“I doubt any traffic cop will write him.”

“He’d have to catch him first. Where do you think he’s headed?”

“Dunno,” she said. “Maybe home to his mama—or his lawyer’s office.”

“Three down, three to go.”

Estrada was just a few blocks away. I half expected to see the Harley, but it wasn’t there. There was a rice burner—a Kawasaki Ninja bike—and a shiny black Syclone, one of those racy pickups they say can outrun a Porsche 911 Carrera on a short course. The tract house was modest, with a small, fenced-in front yard and straggly grass. It was dark now, the vast eastern sky dominated by the great square of Pegasus. We left the car parked on the grassy berm and hesitated outside the gate.

The porch light was on. Something about it didn’t feel quite right to me. Maybe I was just spooked by the way the others had behaved, but I wasn’t alone in my apprehension.

“Did you bring a gun?” Lottie asked quietly.

“I thought about it, but it seemed ridiculous. What the hell would we do with it? Shoot a cop?” This all seemed crazy, the good guys as bad guys.

Lottie nodded. “Let’s do it,” she said, and unlatched the gate.

The house and yard were quiet, too quiet “What do you want to bet he asks how we got his address?” I said softly, pressing the doorbell.

“This is the one that tap dances on automobile hoods and shoots ceilings dead, am I right?”

“You’ve got it”

I sensed movement on the other side of the door, punched the bell again, and called. “Officer Estrada!”

The wooden door inched open, and I heard a strange snuffing from within, as though somebody or something inside was suffering a severe head cold.

“Who is it?”

“Officer Estrada?” I looked up, toward the voice, straining to see the speaker. “Britt Montero and Lottie Dane here, from the
News.
Can we talk to you?”

“Who the fuck is giving out our addresses?”

“They’re public record,” I said, weary of the question.

“Well you’re on
private
property. I’m warning you once. Get your asses off it.”

“You probably didn’t get my messages. I need to talk to you about D. Wayne Hudson.”

“I got a message for you.” He yanked the door open. For one crazy moment I thought he might be inviting us in. He wasn’t. He was letting something out.

“Pit bulls!” Lottie shrieked. Two of them burst out, snarling and scrabbling, short legs churning so fast that for a moment they seemed to run in place.

I glimpsed Estrada for an instant. He loomed in the doorway behind them, his eyes alight with malevolent glee. “Toro, Diablo, go get ‘em! Get ‘em!”

“Call them off! Call them off!” I yelled, as Lottie and I both ran for the gate.

He hooted in laughter as we fled screaming. I swatted the charging brindle across the muzzle with my notebook, the only thing I had to defend myself with. He tore it from my grasp and shook it wildly between powerful jaws. The other dog caught Lottie’s ankle as we scrambled through the gate, screaming. “Call ‘em of!” I yelled as she clung to the gate to stay upright.

A vicious rumble bubbled from his throat as the dog tried to take her down. He must have weighed sixty-five pounds. “Hold on,” I screamed. I lunged toward the animal and jabbed at one eye with my pencil. He yelped and wheeled, snapping viciously as I recoiled. The pencil split in two, splinters flying, as Lottie and I tumbled together outside the gate. I dove at the latch, fumbling to be sure it was engaged as both dogs hurled themselves at it furiously.

“Oh, Lottie,” I sobbed, trying to catch my breath. “How bad are you hurt?”

She leaned on me for support as we lurched to the safety of the car.

I heard Estrada’s feral laughter as he came down the walk. Fearing he would open the gate, I slammed the car doors and rolled up the windows.

Lottie was wincing but still game. “You wanna try to get your notebook back?”

“No way. There was nothing in it anyhow. Let’s get out of here.” My hands shook uncontrollably as I inserted the ignition key. Estrada stood at the gate, spewing obscenities and grinning. In the tawny glow from the streetlight, he looked more dangerous than his dogs. He gave us the finger as we pulled out.

“I guess we can put that down as another ‘No comment,’” Lottie said, rubbing her ankle.

My knees still rubbery, I pulled over in front of an open convenience store and turned on the interior light so we could examine the damage.

“Thank God for cowboy boots,” Lottie said. The dog’s teeth had left holes in the leather but did not break the skin. Her ankle was badly bruised, already swelling and discolored.

“He could have crushed the bone.”

She nodded. “He was gettin’ ready to do just that when you poked him in the damn eye.”

“I didn’t think he’d let go. They have a reputation for hanging on. They’re four-legged land sharks! Remember my story on that woman jogger? Two pit bulls dragged her down and just maimed the hell out of her. She nearly died.”

Lottie nodded. “I shot the pictures of Bobby Applegate,” she said softly.

Who could forget the four-year-old mauled by his uncle’s pit bull? The boy’s disfigured face was being painstakingly restored by plastic surgeons in an endless series of operations. They hoped to finish by the time he was twenty-one. I shuddered involuntarily. “How could he do that to us? He’s a police officer.”

“You’d better hope it’s not him they send if we ever need help and dial 911. I swear, I almost peed my pants.”

“Want to call the cops and report this?” I asked.

“And say what? That we trespassed on this police officer’s property and his watch dogs did their job? They’d laugh their asses off and most likely arrest us for trespassin’.”

“Think we should call the city desk and tell them what happened?”

“And have ‘em call us crybabies who can’t take the heat?” She turned in her seat and stared at me balefully.

She was right.

“How many more?”

“Two to go,” I said. “You feel up to it?”

She nodded, still massaging her ankle.

“I’m sorry I got you into this, Lottie.”

“Heellll,” she said. “It’s still more fun than the damn ten best-dressed women. Who’s next?”

Carpenter’s condo was a boxy building with designated parking spaces. I asked Lottie if she wanted to wait in the car. She did not. We located Lou Carpenter’s name on a metal wall of mailboxes, and took the elevator to the third floor. The hallway was bleak. A vague smell of mildew mingled with combined cooking odors made me queasy.

I knocked, glancing nervously at Lottie.

“What could he have?” she whispered jauntily. “Rattlesnakes? Killer bees?”

During the delay that followed my knock, I had the distinct impression that we were being scrutinized through the tiny peephole. The door opened about two inches, then caught on a metal safety chain.

Carpenter peeped out. The one eye I could see looked weary. “Hey, Britt.”

“Hi there,” I said, moved almost to tears by any reception not openly hostile. “I need to talk to you about the night D. Wayne Hudson got killed.”

“We talked,” he said. “Nothing more I can say.”

“Open the door,” I said. “This is silly. We’re not gonna break in and overpower you.”

“I wish,” he said with a morose smile, and closed the door. We heard the metallic rattle as he removed the chain. The door opened. He was standing on green shag carpet. The furniture behind him was spartan. He did not invite us in.

“What are you doing, Britt?” His tone was accusatory. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“I’m writing a story about what happened to D. Wayne Hudson.”

“I know.” He sighed and seemed at a loss for words, refusing to meet my eyes.

I eased a fresh notebook out of my pocket.

“Tell me about D. Wayne’s traffic accident.”

He shifted position and shielded his eyes with one hand, as though blinded by bright light, though the hall behind us was dim.

“I’m eligible for retirement in six months, Britt.” His voice was a tired monotone. “I’ve got alimony payments, a kid in college, another one still in high school. Things have changed a lot on the department.” He leaned heavily against the doorjamb, as though for support. “Years ago I would have gone out as a lieutenant or higher. But I never even made sergeant. Made the list twice, but they had the mandate to promote minorities. I was still hoping to get stripes before I left, to goose up the pension.”

His eyes belied the trace of hope in his voice.

“Years ago nobody woulda cared about something like this. A lot worse went on. A lot worse.”

“What about the accident?”

“I wrote an accident report. You saw it.”

“But what exactly happened?”

“Why do you ask questions when you already know all the answers?”

My stomach lurched, and I felt Lottie stir beside me.

“How did Hudson get hurt? Who hit him?”

He hesitated. The air felt dense between us.

“I can’t, Britt. I don’t want to be rude, but I just can’t talk to you. Don’t do this to me. Not now,” he mumbled.

He projected the aura of someone ineffectual and almost helpless, not a man invested with enough power and authority to take away somebody’s freedom, or their life.

“You’re making a mistake,” I told him. “You’re the guy who signed your name to the report. There’s going to be a story. Count on it. Why should you be the one to catch the heat?”

“Let me think about it,” he said. “Let me talk to somebody.”

“The FOP lawyer?”

He paused. “You always know everything, don’t you? Never miss anything. Young and smart,” he said vaguely, as though remembering a time when he might have considered himself young and smart. “I wasn’t there when it happened, you know.”

“You know what didn’t happen.”

He said nothing.

“Give me your number,” I said matter-of-factly, “and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Without argument, he recited his home number as I took it down.

Neither Lottie nor I dared speak until the elevator doors closed. “He’s so close to spilling it, so close,” she whispered.

I blew out a puff of air to ease the tension. “Just one more to go. One more.”

The cops were obviously networking, signaling our visits ahead by telephone. Ted had probably been warned and was unlikely to cooperate, but I nurtured a slender hope because he seemed so decent, and I had difficulty believing him capable of participating in anything more than a cover-up for guilty colleagues.

The house stood on a quiet residential street with well-kept lawns and hedges. Two cars, a small Japanese model and a Buick, neither of them new, were parked in a circular blacktop driveway wrapped around a huge spreading ficus tree.

I rang several times, waited, then rang again. Lights were on inside. Ted finally answered the door himself, moving slowly. At first I didn’t recognize him. The man who opened the door was not the flashy spit- and-polish honor cop I knew. This man looked smaller, was pale and rumpled, and hadn’t shaved. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. He had apparently pulled on jeans and a T-shirt to answer our ring.

He simply stood there, his face growing paler.

“I’m sorry, did we wake you?”

“I was having trouble sleeping anyway.” His voice was barely audible. He pushed the door open wide, then turned and walked toward the living room, shoulders stooped, running his fingers through his disheveled hair.

Lottie and I exchanged glances, then followed. I closed the door softly behind me, wondering where Betsy was. There were traces of her presence. Wholesome, delicious smells, like meat loaf and apple crisp, came from the kitchen. I inhaled deeply and vaguely wondered when I had eaten last.

Ted just stared, hollow-eyed.

“Betsy’s next door,” he finally said. “They’re making Halloween costumes for the kids. I was trying to get some sleep.”

He had not been warned, I realized. “You had the phone turned off?”

He looked up, a distracted look in his eyes. “Yeah.” He thanked Lottie for the pictures she had taken that day in the project, and turned back to me. “How’s the story coming?”

“Right along, I’m working on it.”

His fingers danced nervously along the arm of the sofa where he sat.

“Who else have you talked to?”

“Roscoe and Roland, Estrada, Machado, Lou Carpenter.” It was not a lie; we
had
talked to them, albeit briefly, before they slammed doors, ran away, or sicced vicious dogs on us.

He nodded and stared at the floor. “It was one of those things,” he said softly. He lifted his eyes and looked directly into mine, his expression earnest, his voice dropping. “Just got out of hand. Beyond belief. Never should have happened.”

“Who hit D. Wayne?” I asked, my heart thudding.

“One of the Latins. Estrada, I think, pulled him right out of the car window. He was a big guy, but he got dragged right out through the driver’s side window.” He tensed and leaned forward. “I can’t be quoted, Britt. It’s all gonna come down now. But you can’t quote me by name, at least not now. Promise me?”

I hesitated, hating to promise, but I sure didn’t want him to stop.

“Nobody can know I talked to you.”

“You have my word.” We both looked at Lottie, who nodded.

Suddenly he seemed talkative, almost relieved that we were there.

“I heard the BOLO go out, and just a minute later the Blackburns spotted him at Thirty-sixth and the Boulevard. They went after him, but he didn’t stop.”

“Why?” I looked up from my notebook.

Ted looked surprised. “They weren’t in uniform; they were in an unmarked. He probably wasn’t sure who they were.”

Of course. All the police impersonators, robbers posing as cops, pulling people over, committing stickups, rapes, kidnappings, even murders. “I didn’t realize they were in plainclothes that night.”