Earth Angels (32 page)

"Unless we have somebody out there on our side, the system will eat us alive."

"I understand," Harger said, coming to his feet. "The chips are down and nothing is lonelier than riding a beef. I've been there and I know. My advice to you and the others is to try to keep your mind on something else for the time being. If you sit around watching the Monday morning quarterbacks and the bleeding heart Mexicans crying on the news, you'll go crazy."

The phone rang at that moment, and Harger snatched up the receiver. "Harger," he said, turning away from Stepanovich. "Yes sir. He's with me right now, sir." Stretching the telephone cord, he returned to his seat, grabbed a pen, and made notes on the reverse of the legal tablet. "... Got it. Yes sir," he said somberly.

He set the receiver down slowly.

"That was the Commander. You, Black, and Arredondo have been relieved of duty pending a trial board."

"Does the Chief know about this?"

"The Commander gave me a direct order not to talk to either you or the others until the investigation is completed."

"There's no one else in this room except you and me. I want to know what the fuck is going on."

Harger stepped to the door and shoved it closed. "This whole investigation is pro forma because there were so many people shot. The police commission is demanding a shake out to look good for the Hispanic rights groups. It's a game, a scenario."

"The police commission was the one asking for more gang enforcement."

"They were. But that was then. Look, I know you're upset. You have a right to be. But I want you and the other guys to stay cool until this blows over. Just hang in there. Hang tough."

"Are the internal affairs investigators going to present evidence to the district attorney?"

"I've been ordered not to talk to you or the others named in the allegation."

"But at this point there is no formal allegation," Stepanovich said.

"Nevertheless, I've been ordered not to talk to you."

"All along I've been assuring Arredondo and Black the Chief is behind them."

Harger picked up a leather folder from the corner of the desk. He unzipped it and shoved the legal tablet inside without turning it right side up. He zipped it closed. Moving past Stepanovich, he grabbed his suit jacket from a coat rack. "I want you guys to hang in," he said, shrugging on his coat. "It'll work out."

"You're not leveling with me."

"There's something else," Harger said, ignoring the remark. "I'll have to ask you for your badge and gun." Stepanovich's lips felt slightly numb. "The Commander sent someone out to collect Black's and Arredondo's equipment too. This is just until the trial board comes back with a finding."

Stepanovich unclipped his silver police shield from his belt and handed it over. He reached inside his jacket, unholstered his revolver, and handed it, butt first, to Harger.

"Consider it a free vacation," Harger said, slipping the gun and badge into his leather case. He slapped Stepanovich on the shoulder and left the room.

****

TWENTY-FOUR

Stepanovich drove from Hollenbeck Station to the downtown Criminal Courts Building. At the entrance to the building's underground parking lot he pulled up to a guard booth. A young, sleepy eyed county building guard looked up from a copy of the National Enquirer and nodded.

Stepanovich drove inside and cruised along the long rows of automobiles until he found Howard Goldberg's car, a ten year old, primer spotted Oldsmobile with a hand control accelerator device on the steering wheel. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, he climbed in. Sitting behind the wheel, he took out his wallet and removed one of his personalized LAPD business cards. Using a pen in his shirt pocket, he printed the following on the reverse of the card:

"Relieved of duty. Meet at Evergreen."

He affixed the corner of the card under the steering wheel accelerator knob where Howard wouldn't miss it and climbed out.

Because he hadn't eaten all day and knew it would be at least an hour before Howard left his office, Stepanovich drove down Alameda Street to Philippe's sandwich shop and parked in the crowded parking lot. The outside of the ancient delicatessen had recently been repainted in its original beige with new green canvas awnings to make it look like it had in the twenties.

Inside, the restaurant's long, narrow tables were filled with customers eating off trays. Making his way across the sawdust covered floor to a crowded counter, he ordered two lamb sandwiches, a side order of potato salad and set them on a brown plastic tray with a cup of coffee. At a corner table he ate slowly, finishing every morsel, returning to the counter for a coffee refill, because he had time to kill before meeting Howard. On the way back to his table, he stopped at the sundries counter near the front door and purchased a copy of the Los Angeles Times.

On the front page was a large photograph of the sheet-covered bodies lying on the front lawn in front of Payaso's house. The headline read: "POLICE PROBE IN TEEN SHOOTINGS." Unfolding the newspaper, he read the article:

Reliable law enforcement sources report that a major internal investigation is under way in the deaths of seven alleged gang members on Ortega Street last night at the bands of an elite unit of the police gang detail. Undercover officers allegedly exchanged fire with the gang members in an attempt to defend themselves during a street gang battle they allegedly happened onto. Efriam Verdugo, president of the local chapter of the Coalition Against Cop Abuse said it was obvious the officers had used excessive force. "Isn't seven bodies enough to convince anyone that Los Angeles Police Department treats Hispanics as second-class citizens? Can you imagine what would have happened if they had killed seven white teenagers?"

Mr. Verdugo alleged that police abuse has been covered up by LASD higher ups for years and that investigations of police shootings are invariably biased in favor of the police officers involved.

Police Public Affairs Spokesman Merle Gates said that the victims of the shooting were not teenagers and in fact were adults with extensive criminal histories. When questioned as to the nature and background of the special gang unit involved in the shooting, he declined further comment.

Feeling frustration, anger, and guilt welling within him, Stepanovich stopped reading and shoved the paper through the door of a nearby plastic trash can.

Outside, he walked along Alameda past the Terminal Annex Post Office to Olvera Street, a sloping cobblestone throughway between a few buildings someone had designated as historical landmarks. He moved briskly past the small stalls selling plaster toros, serapes, and crude, Mexican puppets with stick torsos, wood and wrought iron personalized nameplates, and other tourist gimcracks.

At the end of the street a circle of vagrants relaxing on cement benches surrounded a pigeon stained plaza. A single file line of school children awaiting the daily Olvera Street historical tour cuffed, teased and wrestled as youthful school teachers shouted and blew whistles to restore discipline.

Standing there without either gun or badge, Stepanovich's mind wandered. There had been other moments like this. Gloomily he recalled his mother informing him of Uncle Nick's death by heart attack. And Nancy, in her businesslike way, informing him that she was leaving to live with Bruce the interior decorator.

Stepanovich parked his car in an alley off Third Street where it couldn't be seen from the street and walked the few blocks to Evergreen Cemetery. Behind the high hedge near the entrance, where he and Howard had once waited for the ice cream truck, he sat on the grass. Through the high, spiked fence surrounding the graveyard he could see the area where Uncle Nick was buried.

A few minutes later, Howard's Olds cruised into the driveway and pulled up. Howard waved and Stepanovich climbed in the passenger seat. The glum expression on Howard's face told him Howard knew something.

"Are we going to ambush an ice cream truck?" Howard said.

"We're just lucky we never got caught."

"We'd have survived."

Stepanovich forced a smile. "You've heard?"

"Everybody in town has heard."

"I'm worried, Howard."

"You should be."

"The White Fence punks we wasted were the ones who killed Fordyce. The others were killers too "

"Oh, I understand," Howard interrupted. "I grew up here, remember?"

"I've been suspended from duty pending a trial board."

"And you'd like to know if the internal affairs people have been over at my office?"

"If you'd rather not tell me, I'll understand."

Howard leaned forward, his arms embracing the steering wheel. "You really did it this time. Houlihan had a one-hour meeting with the district attorney himself. Weber and I sat in. Houlihan pushed for us to file conspiracy to murder on you and the others. Weber readily agreed, of course, because he thought that's what the DA wanted to hear."

Stepanovich felt his throat turn dry.

"I pointed out the weaknesses in the case told them there really is no case but Houlihan was really gilding the lily for excessive use of force. He and Weber were on the bandwagon like a couple of vigilantes. Weber kept making statements like 'We have no way out. It looks to me like we have to file charges.' But you lucked out. The district attorney agreed with me that the case was weak and could not be prosecuted in a criminal court."

Stepanovich let out his breath and ran his fingers through his hair. "Thank God."

"The reason the DA won't prosecute is that he's going to run for state attorney general as a Republican in the next election, and it would be bad politics for him to file on cops at this time. He told me that three weeks ago, but failed to tell Weber because he's a pipeline to the Democrats. Therefore, you lucked out. In the last election, when filing on cops was the thing to do, he was digging through old cases trying to find a cop to put in jail." Howard turned and stared at the cemetery. "Timing is everything." He pointed: "That's where we used to hide and eat the ice cream, isn't it?"

Stepanovich nodded.

"Hitting the trucks is the most exciting memory of my childhood," Howard said. "Almost sexually exciting right up until I fell off. I remember the sound of the ambulance and lying in the street unable to move. You were looking down at me and crying."

"Now that we aren't going to be prosecuted criminally, internal affairs will probably make it extra rough on us at the department trial board."

Howard cleared his throat. "Do you have any brass on your side at the Department?"

"Yes."

"Like who?"

"The Chief."

"You've talked with him personally?"

"He sent the word down through Captain Harger. He's been behind us from the outset."

"If you have the Chief in your pocket, you'll be in good shape in front of a trial board. Kangaroo courts don't go against the wishes of the chief Kangaroo."

At a rustle in the nearby bushes, Stepanovich turned. A pack of sniffing, snapping wild dogs wandered through a break in a hedge and trotted briskly along the length of the cemetery's fence line. Remaining in pack formation, the skinny mongrels stayed close together all the way to Third Street.

"I'm sure we have the Chief s backing," Stepanovich said.

"If you had his complete backing, I doubt if a brown nose like Houlihan would have been sitting in the DA's office begging to get criminal charges filed on you."

"That's just the way Houlihan is. He likes it."

"Is it true he's the guy who used to collect the urine samples from the police recruits to see if they'd been using dope?"

"None other."

Howard just shook his head. "Let me put it to you gently: if the Chief isn't willing to stick his neck out a little for you guys and get the internal affairs people to back off, then you'd better stand by for the ram."

It was standing room only at the Rumor Control Bar. A vice detective had just been promoted to sergeant.

Stepanovich found Black and Arredondo at the bar talking to Sullivan. The three looked grim.

"We're home free on criminal charges," Stepanovich said. "This comes straight from the DA's office."

Neither Black nor Arredondo changed expression.

Sullivan picked up a folded letter lying on the bar in front of them and handed it to Stepanovich. As he tried to read in the dim light, Sullivan picked up a flashlight from behind the bar and shone it on the paper.

FROM: Chief of Police Levester C. Burrel

TO: Stepanovich, Jose L. Det., Sgt. Ser.#613845 Arredondo, Raul A. Dept., Ser.#257491Black, Cyrus R., Det., Ser.#992318

A personnel investigation is being conducted, and it has been alleged that all of you violated the following penal code sections and department regulations:

1. Conspiracy to commit murder

2. Conduct unbecoming an officer

3. Failure to notify a supervisor of an ongoing investigation