Earth Angels (3 page)

"What kind of a gun did the man have?"

Garcia looked about at the remaining wedding guests staring at him and shrugged. "I got my ass down. I didn't see nothing."

"Did the man say anything?"

Expressionless, Garcia shrugged.

"How many shots were fired?"

"Three or two, I think. The sound hurt my ears. That's all I know."

"What was the man wearing?"

"I don't remember."

"What did he look like?"

Garcia rubbed his nose. "Don't remember."

"You couldn't have missed getting a good look at the guy."

"He was a Mexican," Garcia said. "That's all I know." He exchanged a smirk with another man sitting across the aisle.

"Would you recognize him if you saw him again?" Stepanovich asked coldly.

"If I did, I wouldn't tell you."

Because Garcia was the twenty seventh witness he'd interviewed, Stepanovich wrote the number twenty-seven in the upper right hand corner of the report form and drew a circle around it. As he did, a mordant thought occurred to him: tomorrow or the next day there would be another shooting somewhere and the numbering of another list of fruitless interviews would start all over again.

"Can I go now?" Garcia asked.

"Where can you be reached during the day?"

Garcia recited the address of the gas station where he worked, and Stepanovich entered the information in the proper section on the report form. "You can go.”

As Garcia stood up and sauntered down the aisle toward the door, Stepanovich made a final note by Garcia's name. It read: "Probably saw it all. Reinterview. "

After the last of the witnesses had been interviewed, Stepanovich and the other three detectives gathered in the sacristy, the only place in the church where they could speak without being overheard. Captain Harger, standing in front of a tall armoire bursting with colorful vestments, waited patiently until the men had quieted down on their own rather than demanding order. As usual, Stepanovich was impressed.

Harger aimed an index finger at Stepanovich. "What do we have?"

Stepanovich took out his notebook and flipped to a page. "The shooter arrives in the bed of a red pickup truck. He fires once, blowing victim number one into the church. Shooter follows him inside, shouts 'Eighteenth Street,' fires twice more, and hits victim two. The shooter is described as a male Mexican wearing county pants and a white T-shirt. In his late twenties or early thirties, using a piece that is most likely a sawed off twelve gauge."

"If anybody recognized the asshole, they aren't talking," Black said.

Harger turned to Arredondo. "Outside?"

Arredondo adjusted his trousers. He flipped open a pocket sized leather notebook with the letters "L.A.P.D." tooled across the front. "The old lady who runs the taco stand across the street saw the shooter jump into the bed of a red pickup truck for the getaway..." He turned a page. "A postal carrier two doors away says there was a getaway driver, possibly one other dude in the passenger seat. She says she won't testify."

Harger turned to Fordyce. "What do the people at records say?"

Fordyce ran his fingers through his thin brown hair. "The computer shows no red pickup truck tied to any known Eighteenth Street gang member. But once I get on the machine myself, I'll be able to check other criteria."

Harger nodded and Fordyce fell silent. "Physical evidence?"

Black held up a small, clear plastic bag containing shotgun wadding. "Nothing but some wadding and pellets. Nowhere to go with them really."

Harger made eye contact with each man: a brief glance that, as far as Stepanovich could tell, was devoid of condescension. "The Chief authorized this special unit and he expects results. This is our first case and I want every clue taken as far as it will go. If it means working all night, gentlemen, I hope you like coffee. If you need special equipment, just ask and ye shall receive."

"With all due respect, sir," Arredondo said, "some gang murders are just unsolvable."

Harger cleared his throat. "I picked you four for this assignment because you've all worked East L.A. and know the M.O. of the gangs. There's going to be a lot of overtime, and if it gets too much for any of you, just say the word and I'll have you replaced. No hard feelings. But as long as you're in this unit, I want you out there among 'em. I want the gangbangers in this part of town hit like they've never been hit before. As to whether a case is unsolvable? We'll talk about that after every peewee, every
veterano
in East L.A. has been turned upside down and kicked in the face. I want these punks hassled, their shit turned over. When they see you coming, I want them to know darkness has fallen."

There was a heavy, almost embarrassed silence for a moment after Harger had finished. Stepanovich could hear the others breathing in the tiny room.

"May I ask a question?" Black said.

Harger nodded.

"What can we do to solve a gang murder that a divisional homicide detective can't?"

Harger made a sardonic expression. "Realistically, we may not be able to make a case on every gang shooter. But what we're going to do is show these
pachucos
there's a price to pay every time they pull the trigger. We'll be answering directly to the chief of police and no one else. And the Chief tells me he isn't going to be worried about the details of how we do our job just the results. The chain of command is him to me...to you. No adjutants or commanders or captains nosing in. That spells 'elite unit,' gentlemen, and I hope you read that loud and clear."

Stepanovich admired the turret like manner in which Harger revolved his head to make eye contact with each one of them.

"Stepanovich, you're known as the gang expert. Tell us what happened here today. I'm talking the big picture. "

"This church is located in what Eighteenth Street considers their territory, sir. Last week Payaso, victim number one, and some of his White Fence pals, including the groom Smokey Salazar and a couple of other
veteranos
, Gordo and Lyncho, insulted Flaca, one of Eighteenth Street's women, by pinching her ass as she walked through Hollenbeck Park. Today's move is retaliation."

"An insult," Harger mused. "Eighteenth picks a shooter, drives him to church, and ends up killing a child?"

"That's the way I read it."

"Do you think Payaso knows who shot him?"

"Gang members always know the members of the other gangs," Black said before Stepanovich could answer.

Harger nodded and put his hand firmly on Stepanovich's shoulder. "I want you and Arredondo to do the hospital follow up," he said, making a turret turn. "Black, grab a couple of blue suiters and recanvass the neighborhood. Fordyce, make the computer hum. Get a list of every red pickup truck registered in East L.A. from the department of motor vehicles, and let's dig out the names of known Eighteenth Street shooters and their associates."

Black cleared his throat. "Elite unit or not, it may not be possible to stop the gangs from killing one another. They've been doing it in this part of town for a hundred years."

"All I'm asking is for you men to trust me and give me your best effort, I'll take the heat for any failure. But frankly, I've studied each of your backgrounds and I'm confident that with a solid team effort, we can hit the gangs like a steamroller. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn't have accepted this assignment from the Chief."

"Count me in," Stepanovich said to break the sudden silence in the room.

"Me too," Arredondo said.

Black rubbed his hands together. "I say, let's go to work."

****

THREE

On the way to the county hospital, Stepanovich turned onto Third Street and cruised past the places of his childhood: old brick buildings, a tortilla factory, a mom and pop market once owned by his best pal Howard Goldberg's father, and a twelve unit stucco apartment house occupied by mostly Serbians and Russians and in recent years by undocumented workers from Peru and Colombia. The tiny two-bedroom house where his mother lived, where he'd spent his childhood, was on Vega Street, less than a block away.

Farther east, he cruised past Evergreen Cemetery, a grassy expanse of graying and blackened tombstones bounded by a chain link fence. As a child the cemetery had been his favorite place for kite flying. Now, bordered as it was by a freeway, a service station, and some rotting wood frame dwellings housing extended families of illegal Mexican aliens, the urban graveyard seemed to him the ugliest piece of land in Los Angeles.

He remembered hot summer nights when he and Howard Goldberg, guided by the bat vision of childhood, would race about between the tombstones and launch commando style raids on the neighborhood ice cream truck that passed by the cemetery every hot night at about nine. Out of the darkness he would race into the dimly lit street and hop up onto the rear bumper of the truck. Holding on with one hand to the light fixture affixed just above the truck's small rectangular door, he'd lift out cartons of Popsicles and strawberry sundaes and drop them gently to the street for Howard to pick up and carry back into the cemetery for a robber's feast. At the age of ten, it was the ultimate excitement, and they were lucky enough never to have been arrested. Unfortunately, in a night of horror he'd never been able to forget, Howard had tripped in the street and been run over by a speeding drunk driver, crippling him for life.

Even at that early age, Stepanovich had wanted to be a policeman when he grew up. His father, a railroad switchman, had died of a heart attack when Jose was five, and the dominant male figure in his life became his father's brother, the clean featured, sharply dressed burglary detective Nick Stepanovich.

Uncle Nick had a permanent charge account at the exclusive Murray's Clothiers and enough girlfriends to start a harem. He always seemed to have liquor on his breath, but never seemed drunk. He brought gifts, mostly food, to the Stepanovich household every week. In fact, on Serbian Orthodox holidays the take included expensive turkeys, hams, wheels of cheese, candies, and enormous baskets of fruit. His frugal mother was always evasive when he asked about Uncle Nick's gifts. But once the inquisitive child found a printed greeting card inside the colored cellophane covering one of the elaborate Christmas fruit displays Uncle Nick had brought over the day before the Serbian saint's day. It read:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Melvoin:

I hope you enjoy your stay at the L.A. Biltmore Hotel.

Larry Hess

General Manager

The kindly Nick took Stepanovich to boxing matches at Olympic Auditorium, always flashing his badge to get in, and to burglary division picnics. Once, having stopped by the house to drop off a large package of porterhouse steaks and a case of canned goods while on duty, Uncle Nick spotted a fugitive meandering down the street. Stepanovich would never forget Uncle Nick, like a magician, actually pulling a gun from under the jacket of his sharkskin suit, chasing the crook, and single handedly tackling, wrestling, and handcuffing the man. With the neighbors watching in awe, Nick dragged the prisoner to his detective car and tossed him into the backseat like a sack of grain.

The capture was Jose's recurrent childhood dream.

At eighteen he had enlisted in the Army and spent two years in Vietnam. With a hunger for excitement, for the bizarre, only made keener by the ennui of military law enforcement duties, he had submitted his application to the L.A. police department the day he was discharged.

Stepanovich pulled up to a stop sign and a leggy Mexican woman wearing a hip hugging knit skirt stepped off the curb and crossed the street in front of the sedan.

"There's a bitch who wants it," Arredondo said, taking a small comb out of his lapel pocket. He raked it through his thick black hair and rapped it sharply on the windowsill.

"How can you tell?"

Arredondo shoved the comb back in his shirt pocket. "Strides."

"Strides?"

"Last week this broad moved into an apartment down the hall from me. I hawk on her immediately: big tits, great ass a ten on a ten scale. That night I'm just sitting there in my apartment watching this English movie and there's a knock on the door. Guess who? None other. She asks if she can borrow a screwdriver. I play it cool, give her a screwdriver. A few minutes later, she brings it back. I ask her if she wants a Budweiser, put some Lola Beltran sounds on the old stereo. An hour later I'm doing her doggie style on the living room floor and she's liking it, screaming 'Fuck me harder!' and all that shit. I'm talking begging for mercy, dude."

Stepanovich stopped at a traffic signal across from a check-cashing establishment emblazoned with signs in Spanish.

"I reached my rocks during 'Coucouroucoucou Paloma.' Afterward the bitch tells me she doesn't know what made her do it blah blah blah, and she'd like to see me again yakety yak she has to be at work in the morning. She leaves. There I am still watching this English movie and I've done a ten on a ten scale." He picked up a logbook resting between them on the seat and began filling in blanks. "If she has AIDS, you're talking to a dead man. But the risk is all part of it. Russian roulette sport fucking."