Free Fall (11 page)

“Do tell.” We shook. Ray Depente had a hand like warm steel. “What do you investigate?”

“I’m working with something that’s bumped up against a gang called the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys. James Edward says that you know about those guys.”

Ray peeled away the rest of his body pads and used his sweatshirt to wipe his face and neck. Everybody else in the place was wearing heavy canvas karate
gies
, but not Ray. Ray wore desert-issue combat pants and an
orange Marine Corps tee shirt. Old habits. “Bumping up against the Crips isn’t something you want to do if you can help it. Crips got sharp edges.”

I gave him shrug. “Occupational hazard.”

“Uh-huh. Be tough and see.”

“The Gangster Boys a Crip set?” People hear Crips or Bloods and they think it’s just two big gangs, but it isn’t. Both the Crips and the Bloods are made up of smaller gang sets. Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys, Eight-Trey Swan Crips, Rolling Sixties Crips, Double-Seven Hoover Crips, East Coast Crips, like that.

Ray nodded. “Yeah. From down around Eighty-second and Hoover. That’s where they get the name. You want to be a Gangster Boy, you got to do a felony. You want to be OG, you got to pull the trigger. It’s as simple as that.”

James Edward said, “O.G. means Original Gangster. That’s like saying you’re a made man in the Mafia.”

“Okay”

Ray said, “What are you messing around with that’s got you down here in South Central with a goddamned Crip set?”

“Charles Lewis Washington.”

Ray’s smile faded and he looked at James Edward. “How’s your mama doing, son?”

“She’s okay. We got a little problem with the Eight-Deuce, though.”

Ray looked back at me. “You working for the family?”

“Nope. But maybe what I’m doing gets us to the same place.”

Ray looked at James Edward and James Edward nodded. Ray said, “I hadn’t seen Lewis for a couple years, but when I heard about him dying, I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like how it happened. I worked with that boy out of youth services. It was a long time ago and he didn’t stay with it, but there it is. Once you’re one of my
young men, you’re one of my young men. Just like this one.” Ray Depente put a warm steel hand on James Edward’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “I tried to point this one toward the Marines but he liked the idea of ships.” Ray and James Edward grinned at each other, and the grins were as warm as the hand.

I said, “The cops say that Lewis was a Double-Seven gangbanger. His mother says no.”

Ray frowned. “Lewis used to mess around with the Double-Sevens, but that was years ago. That’s how he came to me.”

“He ever have anything to do with the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys?”

“Not that I know.”

“The family filed a wrongful death after Lewis was killed, but James Edward here tells me that a guy named Akeem D’Muere made them back off.”

Ray looked at James Edward again. “You sure?”

James Edward nodded.

I said, “Why would Akeem D’Muere go to bat for a bunch of white LAPD officers?”

Ray shook his head. “I know Akeem. Akeem D’Muere wouldn’t go to bat for anybody unless there’s something in it for him.”

“When Lewis Washington died, every news service in town was looking into it, smelling Rodney King all over again. Maybe Akeem D’Muere wanted all the looking to stop. Maybe there was something going on at the Premier Pawn Shop that he didn’t want anyone to find out.”

“You think?”

I shrugged. “I think there’s a connection. I just don’t know who to ask to find out.”

James Edward said, “That’s why I brought him here, Ray. Figured you’d be the guy to know.”

Ray Depente smiled at James Edward. “You want me to ask around, young mister, I can do that. Know a
man who’ll probably be able to help. But you stay away from those Eight-Deuce. The Navy doesn’t teach you what you need to know to mess with that trash.”

James Edward said, “Hell, Ray.”

The strawberry-haired woman came out of the dressing room, showered and changed, and gave Ray a ten-megawatt smile as she bounced out of the gym and into the sunshine. I said, “Pretty.”

Ray said, “Uh-huh.”

An older woman pushed her head out of a little glass cubicle that served as an office at the rear of the gym. She called, “Ray, it’s somebody from Twentieth Century-Fox. They say it’s some kind of emergency and they need you to come over and show Bruce Willis how to do something for a movie they’re making.”

James Edward grinned. “Bruce Willis. Damn.”

Ray didn’t look as thrilled with Bruce Willis as did James Edward. “Now?”

“They said right away.”

James Edward said, “These studio dudes hire Ray to set up fight scenes and teach his moves to their actors. Arnold been here, man. Sly Stallone useta come here.”

Ray shook his head. “I can do it tonight, but I can’t do it now. I’ve got a class coming in, now.”

The woman said, “They said right away”

Ray shook his head. “Movie people.” He called back to her. “Tell’m I gotta pass.”

James Edward Washington gave impressed. “Is this fuckin’ righteous or what? Tellin’ Bruce Willis to pass.”

The older woman went back into the glass cubicle.

Ray said, “Jesus Christ, James Edward. It ain’t no big thing.” Ray Depente looked my way and gave embarrassed. “These kids think this movie stuff is a big deal. They don’t know. A client’s a client.”

“Sure.”

“I’ve got a class.”

“Sure.”

A dozen little girls came in, shepherded by a tall erect black woman in a neat dress suit. Most of the little girls were black, but a couple were Hispanic. They all wore clean white karate
gies
and tennis shoes. They took off their shoes before they stepped onto the mat. Ray uncrossed his arms and smiled. “Here they are, now.”

James Edward Washington laughed and said, “Damn.”

Ray Depente squeezed James Edward’s shoulder again, then told me that it had been a pleasure to meet me, and that if he learned something he would give James Edward a call. Then he turned away and walked out onto the mat to face his class.

The little girls formed a neat line as if they had done it a thousand times before and bowed toward Ray Depente and shouted
kun hey
with perfect Korean inflection. Ray said something so quietly that I could not hear, and then he bowed to them.

Ray Depente gets five hundred dollars an hour from movie stars, but some things are more important.

J
ames Edward Washington wanted to chill with Ray for a while, so he stayed, and I walked out to my car, making a big deal out of taking off my jacket so that I could look up and down the street and across the intersections. Joe Pike drives an immaculate red Jeep Cherokee, and I was hoping to spot him or the blue sedan, but I saw neither. Of course, maybe they weren’t there. Maybe the blue sedan hadn’t really been following me and I was making a big deal with the jacket for nothing. Elvis Cole, Existential Detective. On the other hand, maybe the guys in the blue sedan were better than me and I wasn’t good enough to spot them.

Not.

I climbed the ramp to the I-10 freeway and went west, changing lanes to avoid slower traffic and speeding up when the traffic allowed and trying to play it normal. Just another Angeleno in the system. It paid off. A quarter mile past the La Brea exit I spotted the blue sedan hiding on the far side of a Ryder moving van, two lanes over. The guy with the Dodgers cap was still driving and the guy with the butch cut was still riding shotgun.

I took the La Cienega exit and went north, timing the lights to get a better view, but always just missing. They were good. Always three or four cars back, always with plenty of separation, and they didn’t seem worried that they’d lose me. That meant they knew they could always pick me up again, or that they were working with a second car. Cops always use a second car.

La Cienega is four lanes, but Caltrans was at it again, and as La Cienega approached Pico, the two northbound lanes became one. There’s a 20/20 Video in a large shopping center on the northeast corner, and the closer I got to the 20/20, the slower I drove. By the time I cleared the work in the intersection, a guy behind me in a Toyota 4×4 had had enough and roared past, giving me the finger. I stayed in the right lane as I crossed Pico, and the remaining two cars behind me turned. Then there was just me and the blue sedan. The driver swung right, making the turn with the two other cars as if they had never intended anything else, and that’s when I picked up the slack car. Floyd Riggens was driving his dark brown sedan two cars back, sitting in traffic behind a couple of guys on mopeds. My, my.

I stayed north on La Cienega and three blocks later the blue sedan sat at a side street ahead of me, waiting. As soon as they made the turn onto Pico they must’ve punched it like an F-16 going into afterburner, then swung north on a parallel side street to come in ahead of me. Floyd would’ve radioed that he still had me in sight, and that we were proceeding northbound, and that’s how they’d know where to wait. Floyd hung back, and after I passed, the blue sedan pulled in behind me again. Right where I wanted them.

I turned east on Beverly, then dropped down Fairfax past CBS Television City to the Farmer’s Market. The Market is a loose collection of buildings surrounded on all sides by parking lots used mostly by tour buses and people from Utah, come to gawk at CBS.

I turned into the north lot and made my way past the buses and about a million empty parking spots toward the east lot. Most of the traffic stays in the north lot, but if you want to get from the north lot to the east, you have to funnel through a cramped drive that runs between a couple of buildings where people sell papayas and framed pictures of Pat Sajak. It’s narrow and it’s cramped and it’s lousy when you’re here on a Saturday and the place is jammed with tourists, but it’s ideal for a private eye looking to spring an ambush.

When I was clear of the little drive, I pulled a quick reverse and backed my car behind a flower truck. A teenaged girl in a white Volkswagen Rabbit came through the gap after me, and, a few seconds later, the blue sedan followed. It came through at a creep, the guy in the passenger seat pointing to the south and the driver sitting high to see what he was pointing at. Whatever he saw he didn’t like it, because he made an angry gesture and looked away and that’s when they saw me. I jumped the Corvette into their path and got out of the car with my hands clear so they could see I had no gun. The kid with the butch bounced out and started yelling into a handi-talkie and the Hispanic guy was running toward me with his badge in one hand and a Browning 9 mm in the other. Floyd Riggens was roaring toward us from the far end of the lot. Thurman wasn’t with him. Thurman wasn’t anywhere around.

The Hispanic guy yelled, “Get your hands up. Out and away from your body.” When the guns come out there’s always a lot of yelling.

The guy with the butch ran over and patted me down with his free hand. I made him for Pinkworth. The other guy for Garcia. While Pinkworth did the shakedown, some of the people from the tour buses began to gather on the walk and look at us. Most of the men were in Bermuda shorts and most of the women were in summer-weight pant suits and just about
everyone held a camera. Tourists. They stood in a little group as they watched, and a fat kid with glasses and a
DES MOINES
sweatshirt said, “Hey, neat.” Maybe they thought we were the CBS version of the Universal stunt show.

Garcia said, “Jesus Christ, we’ve got a goddamned crowd.”

I smiled at him. “My fans.”

Pinkworth looked nervous and lowered his gun like someone might see it and tell. Garcia lowered his, too.

Riggens’s car screeched to a stop and he kicked open the door. His face was flushed and he looked angry. He also looked drunk. “Stay the fuck away from my wife.”

Garcia yelled, “Floyd,” but Floyd wasn’t listening. He took two long steps forward, then lunged toward me with his body sort of cocked to the side like he was going to throw a haymaker and knock me into the next time zone.

He swung, and I stepped outside of it and snapped a high roundhouse kick into the side of his head that knocked him over sideways.

The fat kid said, “Look at that!” and the fat kid’s father aimed a Sony video camera at us.

When Riggens fell, Garcia’s gun came up and Pinkworth started forward, and that’s when Joe Pike reared up from behind their car, snapped the slide on a 12-gauge Ithaca riot gun, and said, “Don’t.”

Garcia and Pinkworth froze. They spread their fingers off their pistol grips, showing they were out of it.

The crowd went, “Ooo.” Some show, all right.

Joe Pike stands six-one and weighs maybe one-ninety, and he’s got large red arrows tattooed on the outside of each deltoid, souvenirs from his days as a Force Recon Marine in Vietnam. He was wearing faded
blue jeans and Nike running shoes and a plain gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and government-issue sunglasses. Angle the sun on him just right, and sometimes the tattoos seem to glow. I think Pike calls it his apparition look.

I said, “Gee, and I thought you’d got lost in traffic.”

Pike’s mouth twitched. He doesn’t smile, but sometimes he’ll twitch. You get a twitch out of Pike, he’s gotta be dying on the inside. In tears, he’s gotta be.

I took Garcia’s and Pinkworth’s guns, and Pike circled the blue sedan, finding a better angle to cover Riggens. When he moved, he seemed to glide, as if he were flowing over the surface of the earth, moving as a panther might move. To move was to stalk. I’d never seen him move any other way.

Garcia said, “Put down that goddamned gun. We’re LAPD officers, goddamn it.”

Pike’s shotgun didn’t waver. An older woman with a lime green sun hat and a purse the size of a mailbag looked at the other tourists and said, “Does the bus leave after this?”

I pulled Riggens’s gun and then I went back to Pinkworth and Garcia and checked their IDs. Pinkworth said, “You’re marked fuck for this, asshole. You’re going down
hard.”

“Uh-huh.”

Riggens moaned and sort of turned onto his side. His head was bleeding where it had bounced on the tarmac, but it didn’t look bad. I took the clips out of the three police guns, tossed them into the blue sedan’s backseat, then went back to Riggens. “Let me see.”