Kind of Blue (13 page)

I craned my neck for a better look. “What is it?”

Ortiz grabbed my arm and tried to lead me out the door. “You don’t want to see it.”

I pushed past Ortiz, and when I reached my desk I dropped the murder book on the floor, the photographs scattering on the linoleum. Someone had crudely slashed red paint in the shape of a swastika. Next to it, taped to the desk, were a picture of Hitler and a magazine photograph of the liberated survivors of Buchenwald, walking skeletons streaming through the barbwire fences.

I felt as if I’d been slugged in the gut. Just then Graupmann ambled by, glanced at the desk and asked, “Fan mail?”

Swinging from the heels. I landed a right cross flush on Graupmann’s jaw, hitting the sweet spot like a batter pounding a fastball on the meat of the bat. Graupmann wobbled to his knees.

“You crazy motherfucker,” Graupmann shouted. He grabbed the side of a desk and was pulling himself to his feet when he dove for me. I sidestepped him, but Graupmann reached out, clutched a pant leg and tugged. I lost my balance and tumbled to the ground. Graupmann, straddling me, tried to punch me in the face, but I jerked my head to the side and he only grazed my cheek. I reached around and, in a windmill motion, slammed him flush on the ear with the heel of my hand. I heard him yelp with pain.

I pushed myself up with one hand and with the other punched him in the Adam’s apple. With a strangled cry, he fell on top of me.

Duffy, who was just coming into work and still clutching his briefcase, separated us with a couple of swift kicks, as if he were breaking up a dogfight in an alley. He grabbed my shirt with a meaty hand, jerked me to my feet with ease, and dragged me into his office, slamming the door shut.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Duffy shouted, stabbing a finger in my face.

“Did you see my desk?” I rasped, trying to catch my breath.

“I caught a quick look at it. But how do you know Graupmann did it?”

“Who else? I worked in this unit six years and never had a problem. All of a sudden he’s here and my desk looks like a Nuremberg war crimes museum.”

“Got any proof it was him?”

I flashed him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look.

“What’s the proof?”

“It’s circumstantial.”

“Then let it go,” Duffy said.

After I stomped out of his office, I spotted a janitor scrubbing my desk with paint remover. I knew I was too pissed off to get any work done, so I snatched the murder book from under my desk and took off.

Ortiz stopped me at the elevator, patted me on the shoulder and said, “Ride it out, Ash. Just chill for the next few months. Then, when you’re back in the groove here and they can’t fuck with you, take care of your business with Graupmann.”

I was still so enraged I was unable to speak. I just nodded and slammed my palm on the elevator’s down button.

I had an appointment with a department psychologist this morning, and I had about ninety minutes to kill. So I drove aimlessly around downtown, swearing to myself, envisioning a number of scenarios where I could drive my fist into Graupmann’s smirking face.

At nine forty-five, I parked in front of the Far East National Bank building on north Broadway in Chinatown and spent a few minutes calming myself down. Then I walked up to the third floor, where the LAPD’s Behavioral Science Services Section is based. A few cops, who
looked distinctly ill at ease, fidgeted in the waiting room. I checked in with a receptionist who was protected by bulletproof glass.

While I waited, I remembered the photographs that Sandy Relovich had given me. Lindsey had taken them on her birthday at her father’s house. As I began flipping through the pictures, the receptionist called my name. She buzzed me through the door and led me down the hallway to Dr. Nathan Blau’s office.

I had first met Dr. Blau when I was a twenty-five-year-old patrolman in the Pacific Division and had just shot and killed a suspect. Shrink time is required by the LAPD after all officer-involved shootings. My partner and I had pulled over a Monte Carlo speeding down Washington Boulevard. I had my hand on the butt of my Beretta when I bent down to ask the driver, a man in his early twenties with stringy blond hair, for his license. When the passenger reached for his waistband, I already had the Beretta out. When I saw the flash of chrome, I blasted the man in the chest. I had no remorse about the killing, probably because after two years in the IDF, I had been blooded; I had already worked through the roiling emotions after taking a life.

Blau had asked me why I was so wary about the occupants that I had my hand on my gun before I even exchanged words with them.

I explained that I had heard the dispatcher announce a bank robbery earlier that afternoon, although no descriptions of the suspects were available. I knew that experienced bank robbers often carried buckets of water in their cars because tellers slip die packs in with the stolen money; sensors by the front door activate the packs within thirty seconds. But robbers dunk the money in the water before the die packs explode. As I approached the car, I had seen a large circle on the carpeting by the back seat, which looked like it could have been the impression of a bucket. My hunch saved my life. I later learned that during a previous heist the man I’d killed had gunned down a guard.

After we talked about the shooting during that first session, Blau had asked me if anything else was troubling me.

“I only have two problems,” I deadpanned. “My mother and the Holocaust.”

Blau snorted with amusement.

Later, when Robin left me, I made an appointment with Blau, who looked more like a truck driver than a psychologist, which seemed to
reassure cops who were spooked about seeing a shrink. He had a thick chest and arms corded with muscle from regular weight-lifting sessions at the academy gym, close-cropped black hair, and a broad, sunburnt, impassive face. Although he was Jewish, he could have passed for Navajo.

Blau sat on a sofa in his sparsely decorated office, sipping coffee. I slumped onto an overstuffed chair across from him, next to a metal end table with a small fountain on top, a trickle of water splashing over polished rocks.

“We haven’t seen each other for a while, Ash,” Blau said. “How are you doing?”

“Not so well this morning.” I told him about how my desk had been defaced.

“Is that going to make your return problematic?”

“Naw. When I first left the academy I got used to dealing with a lot of anti-Semitic shit. You know, LAPD dinosaurs. But a lot of these guys have retired. Things have changed. I remember my first training officer at Pacific. He made some crack about Jews. I got in his face and asked, “What do you have against us?” He looked me up and down and said, “What I’ve got against you is that you people are never happy, no matter what. Hell, Jesus Christ wasn’t even good enough for you.”

Blau and I chuckled.

I described how Duffy stopped by my mother’s house on Friday night and asked me to return to Felony Special and take over the Relovich case. For the next twenty minutes Blau asked me a series of pro forma questions about my drinking habits, appetite, work, financial situation, state of mind, and relationship with family members.

“Been dating?”

“Not much. Still a little gun-shy since I’ve been separated.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good. Except for one thing. During the past year I’ve been getting a lot of headaches. They’re pretty intense sometimes.”

“I’d recommend you see a neurologist. If the doctor says there’s nothing medical or neurological going on, then you and I can deal with it.”

“I know what’s going on. They’re caused by stress.”

“Where’d you go to medical school?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Okay. I’ll go when I have time.”

“How are you sleeping?” he asked.

“Sometimes fine. Other times not so well. Lately, I don’t know why, I’ve been dreaming about the old days in the army, about being on patrol.”

“The VA has an excellent sleep disorder clinic,” Blau said.

“I’m a veteran,” I said. “But wrong army.”

“Right. I remember.” He ran his palm over his bristly hair and said, “Let’s talk about why you left the department last year.”

“Just didn’t want to deal with all the crap,” I said.

“Can you tell me a little about the precipitating incident.”

I listened to the burble of the fountain for a moment. “Korean guy named Bae Soo Sung operated a small market in South Central. He worked sixteen hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Unlike some of the market owners in the ‘hood, everyone liked this guy. He gave people credit; he was friendly; he smiled at the customers; he gave money to the local Boy’s Club. One afternoon, a guy wearing a Shrek mask charges through the door waving a pistol. Sung steps away from the counter. He keeps his hands up. He follows instructions. He dumps the cash from the register into a paper sack. Asshole grabs the sack and starts to walk out. But he pauses at the doorway, whirls around, and for no fucking reason at all, plugs Sung in the chest.”

I recalled the flickering black-and-white images on the store video, the look of terror and surprise on Sung’s face as he crumpled to the ground. “Sung did everything right. He cooperated completely. He couldn’t even identify the shooter because he was wearing a mask. Shooting him made no sense. Asshole was just having some fun, some target practice. So now Sung’s wife’s a widow and his three young children have no father.”

“That’s a terrible thing,” Blau said. “But why were you investigating the case? I didn’t think Felony Special handled South Central market shootings.”

“We don’t. But the case went unsolved, the detectives moved onto other homicides and wouldn’t even return Sung’s wife’s calls. So she started pestering that new Korean city councilman. He either felt sorry for her or decided that this was a good political issue to run with and get some ink. So he held a press conference and contended that the LAPD
doesn’t care about Korean victims. He called the chief and complained about the investigation’s lack of progress. The chief had the murder book sent from South Bureau Homicide over to us. I ended up with the case.”

My head ached sharply and I asked Blau for a glass of water. I drained it in two gulps.

“I read about the death of the witness in the paper.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Did they ever find out who killed her or who killed Sung?”

“Both unsolved.”

“Does Felony Special have any leads?”

“We’re not handling either case anymore. Because of my suspension and all the bad pub Felony Special got after the hit on the witness, the case got sent back to South Bureau.”

“You have any ideas?”

“The only thing I know is
why
my wit was killed. Because of me, because of my actions, she got taken out.”

Blau frowned and shook his head. “A lot of witnesses get killed in gang areas. It’s not always the detective’s fault.”

“It was mine.”

“Can you honestly say that it was one hundred percent your fault? That no other factors were involved?”

After a moment I said, “There were other factors involved.”

“Can you tell me about those factors?”

I sighed wearily. “I’d just like to get back to work and forget about it.”

“But you haven’t been able to forget about it.”

I shook my head.

“Then it’ll probably help to talk about it.”

“Maybe some other time. But for now let me ask you something. Let’s say I’ve got to deal with another witness. What if I keep thinking of what happened to my last wit? What if I melt down and start to lose it?”

“Take a break. Go the bathroom. Breathe deeply. Remind yourself that it wasn’t your fault, that you did all you could, despite the way you’re beating yourself up over it.”

“I’ll give it a try,” I said without much conviction.

“So after you got suspended, you quit.”

“The next week.”

“It seems that quitting was a pretty dramatic response.”

“I didn’t get into this business to kill people.”

Blau looked at me for a moment. “I think you know that you didn’t kill anybody.”

“Well, she ended up dead.”

“That’s a very different thing.”

I could feel my head pound. When had I taken my last Tylenol?

“You felt the suspension was unfair?” Blau asked.

I massaged my temples. “I needed the support of Duffy, my lieutenant. I was going through a lot of shit. But instead of him backing me up, he told me to take a hike for a few weeks. Then he slipped a letter of reprimand into my file.”

“As I recall, he was your mentor.”

“
Was
. I felt betrayed. I was getting hammered in the papers. I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I knew her family was filing a civil suit against the department. I was dreading the hostile depositions and the media circus trial. Fortunately, I was spared that when the family settled with the city out of court, after I’d left the department. But at the time, I thought it would be easier away from the job.”

“Was it?”

I chewed on my thumbnail. “Probably not.”

“How did your family handle this?”

“Well, my marriage was circling the drain. But you know all about that. We talked about it last year. This finished it off. And you know about my brother Marty. He was too fucking wasted to care. For my mother, it was just confirmation that I shouldn’t have become a cop in the first place.”

“How did that case finish off your marriage?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Take all the time you need.”

“Fact is, it’s over. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to move on.”

Blau studied me for a moment and said, “How does your mother feel about you returning to the LAPD?”

“Not happy. And I know it sounds sick, but I was glad my dad wasn’t alive to see all those bullshit articles about me.”

“Isn’t he a survivor?”

“Yeah. He died a few years ago.”

“You seem too young to be the child of a survivor.”

“He was only fourteen when he was sent to Treblinka. And he was in his forties when I was born.”

“I have a lot of admiration for people like him.”