Kind of Blue (3 page)

“Mom, I haven’t worked South Central for years.”

Duffy clasped her hand in both of his and said, “We’ve got an excop murdered.
He’s
got a mother grieving for him. The killer may kill again if he’s not stopped. This is honorable work, Mrs. Levine. You know that. That’s why Ash cares so much, why he puts so much of himself into each case—”

I held up my hand. “Save the speeches for El Compadre. I want a few things.”

“I’m listening,” Duffy said.

“I pick up my pension benefits from the date I left.”

“I think that can be arranged.”

“I don’t care what you think. I want a guarantee.”

“Okay. I’ll make sure it gets done.”

“On this case, I don’t want to wait months for fingerprint and trace results and a year for DNA—the typical LAPD bullshit. I want you to call in your chits, lean on Grazzo, and promise to get everything back to me within a few weeks.”

“You know I can’t promise that.”

“Then find someone else.”

Duffy stuck a hand in his pocket and fiddled with his keys. “Okay. Cutting through the bureaucracy of the LAPD is like moving mountains. But I’ll get it done.”

“After that Latisha Patton crap, I don’t trust many people in that room. If you’re going to give me a partner, give me Oscar Ortiz.”

“He just partnered up. Can’t split them up now.”

“Then I’ll work alone.”

“I don’t like that idea and it won’t—”

“If you want me back, that’s the way it’s got to be.”

“Just on this first case,” Duffy said.

I walked across the room and grabbed a brown leather jacket out of the closet. “I want to go to Relovich’s tonight.”

My mother wagged a forefinger at me. “Chasing a murder on Shabbes. That’s a
shanda
. You should be ashamed of—”

“What about
Pikuah Nefesh
,” I interrupted.

“What’s that mean?” Duffy asked.

“To save a life,” I explained. “Jewish law allows you to break the Sabbath to save a life. Like if I was a doctor.” I turned toward my mother. “And I
could
be saving a life. If I don’t catch this guy soon, he could kill again.”

She swatted the air. “I don’t approve of—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I interrupted.

She sighed heavily. “I just want you to be happy. I know you haven’t been happy this past year. So if going back will make you happy, then go back. You’ve got my blessing.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She kissed me on the cheek and said, “
Gay Gezunt
.”

As we strolled down the brick path toward the sidewalk Duffy complained, “I had to park two blocks away. Not a single spot on this street. I guess there’s still enough Jews left in this ‘hood who can’t drive again until sundown tomorrow.”

I wasn’t in the mood to chitchat with Duffy; I would have preferred to hit the crime scene alone. But I knew that since I was returning to Felony Special, I would have to keep it civil with him and maintain a rapport. If I wasn’t able to do that, there was no point in returning. He was my boss and there was nothing I could do about it. There would be a time to confront Duffy. It just wasn’t now.

Duffy kicked an empty Old English 800 malt liquor can into the gutter. “This street has hit the fucking skids. You ought to get your mom out of here.”

“I’ve tried. But she can walk to the synagogue. Her Hadassah chapter’s only a few blocks away. And one of her yenta friends still lives down the street. So she won’t budge.”

Duffy slapped the back of my head. “She’s stubborn as hell—just like her son.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence, past dozens of families on their way to shul, the men in dark suits and yarmulkes, the women wearing imposing hats and pushing strollers, the boys with their long side curls. We passed a duplex on the corner—Mrs. Pearl’s place, my mother’s last remaining friend in the neighborhood—with the only other garden that was still lush. The hibiscus in the front yard sprouted blood red blossoms and the flowers on the thick stands of oleander were so milky white they appeared to glow. The breeze carried the scent of gardenias.

We climbed into Duffy’s unmarked Crown Victoria, raced down Fairfax, pulled onto the Santa Monica freeway, and then headed south on the Harbor Freeway, toward San Pedro.

“So what’s happening with the Patton murder?” I asked. “I assume if someone had cleared it, I’d have read about it in the paper.”

“Still unsolved.”

“Who at Felony Special is working it?”

“After all the hubbub surrounding the case,” Duffy said with a sour expression, “I had to ship it out. It’s being handled by South Bureau Homicide.”

After Duffy and I left the unit, they changed the name to Criminal Gang Homicide Division, but everyone still called it South Bureau Homicide. “Christ, I mumbled. “They making any progress.”

“I have no idea. I’m out of the loop on that one.” Duffy flashed me a sly look. “I know you’re probably figuring that while you’re working Relovich, you’ll have time to track the Patton homicide, too. Squeeze in some interviews, check out some suspects. Well, get that out of your mind. I want a full-court press on Relovich. I don’t want you distracted. That Patton case has caused you enough grief. Let South Bureau handle it. Leave it alone.”

“I was thinking—”

“I want you thinking about the case at hand. Forget Patton. Concentrate on Relovich. I called the Harbor Division lieutenant before I came over and he gave me a quick rundown. Homicide was last night. Coroner investigator gives time of death at around twenty-three hundred. The knucklehead busted out a back window. Probably a junkie hot prowl. Relovich’s wallet was open with cash missing. Ex-wife said Relovich always wore his father’s lapis ring and old Hamilton watch. Both were ripped off. Neighbors already been canvassed. No one heard the shot. No one saw anybody suspicious on the street. The next morning a neighbor looking for a lost dog knocked on the door, didn’t hear an answer, looked through a window and saw the body. Detectives recovered a .40-caliber slug. No casings at the scene.”

I nodded, but didn’t ask any follow-up questions. I don’t like entering a crime scene with too many preconceived notions. If I become fixated on one particular theory, I’m afraid I’ll develop tunnel vision and I might miss the nuances of the true murder scenario.

After Duffy snaked through downtown, the traffic thinned and he zipped through the southside—South Central to the west of the freeway and its more depressed neighbor, Watts, to the east—then
past the oil refineries of Wilmington that belched clouds of acrid smoke, white against the black sky, the horizon resembling a photographic negative.

I leaned back on the seat, closed my eyes, and recalled that afternoon when my paratroop unit was searching a terrorist’s house in the West Bank. While I waited in the living room, I leafed through a Koran with Arabic on one side of the page and English on the other. I still remembered one of the passages, although it hadn’t meant much to me at the time:
Does there not pass over every man a space of time when his life is blank?
That’s how the past eleven months had been, I thought. An utter blank. Serving subpoenas, tracking down witnesses, and shepherding people to depositions for my brother’s law firm was a bore. I occasionally studied the LSAT prep book, but with little enthusiasm. I felt lost, drifting in a miasma of self-flagellation and anger. I was angry at Duffy. Angry at the department. Angry at myself.

Now I realized how much I had missed this part of the job: riding to the crime scene, adrenaline pumping, not knowing what I would find when I arrived, what clues would be apparent, what evidence would be discernible, what traces the killer left behind. I missed the unpredictability of the call-outs, how they came at any time, any day, any hour, and how they would immediately send me hurtling into the unknown. I missed encountering the parts of the crime-scene puzzle; they were always different and I never put them together the same way.

Most of all, I missed the life, the life of a homicide detective in which the stakes of a case are always high and everything else seems unimportant by comparison. This all-consuming nature of the job had always been a balm for the bullshit in my life; the challenge of the chase demanded so much from me, I simply did not have the luxury of dwelling on anything else.

Duffy pulled off the freeway in San Pedro and parked behind the Harbor Division station. We nodded to a group of cops smoking in the parking lot and traversed a long, scuffed linoleum hallway that smelled of vomit and urine and unwashed bodies, past detention benches with burglars, rapists, wife beaters, gangbangers, psychos, crackheads, and muggers cuffed to the metal rings; past drunks blowing into breathalyzer machines; past vice officers wearing jeans and Hawaiian shirts pushing screaming hookers into interview rooms. We entered the watch
commander’s office and greeted the p.m. shift lieutenant, who sifted through his desk drawer and handed Duffy an envelope with the key to Relovich’s house. We left the station, drove toward the water, and then climbed a steep hill.

Relovich lived near the end of a cul-de-sac, in a ramshackle pale blue clapboard bungalow with peeling paint and a sagging roof. When I was a kid, this had been a working-class neighborhood, populated mostly by Croatian fishermen. But now, homes with a view of the water were at a premium in Los Angeles and property values had soared. Most of the fisherman had sold to investors, who viewed the modest homes as teardowns, replacing them with mammoth two- and three-story monstrosities, spanning lot line to lot line. Relovich’s house, which was encircled by yellow crime-scene tape, was flanked by two gray and white clapboard Cape Cod-style McMansions that could sell for more than a million dollars.

I pulled out a pair of latex gloves, a few small Baggies, and a flashlight from a wooden box in Duffy’s trunk, stuffed them in my pocket, and walked to Relovich’s front porch, which faced the harbor. Lingering for a moment, I looked out at the inky black water laced with streaks of silver from the three-quarter moon. Lights atop the graceful span of the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which connected San Pedro to Terminal Island, twinkled in the distance. An offshore wind, brisker here than in the central city, blew off the water, carrying the smell of seaweed, brine, and a hint of diesel fuel.

Duffy opened the front door and flipped on the lights. I followed him inside. The house had an air of dereliction. In the living room, newspapers, unopened mail, fast-food wrappers, and empty Dr. Pepper cans were strewn on the nicked hardwood floor. Fingerprint powder streaked the wooden arms of the sofa, the chipped coffee table in front, two chairs beside a picture window, and every other smooth surface. I took a deep breath and nodded. After a year of disorientation, I finally felt at home again. Yes, this is what I’ve missed. Homicide.

I left Duffy in the living room and walked through an archway to the kitchen, where dishes were piled up in the sink. More fingerprint dust stippled the white cabinets and Formica counter. The faint smell of cooked meat and stale cigarette smoke lingered in the house. I walked down a narrow hallway from the kitchen to Relovich’s bedroom. The
double bed was unmade, the sheets a dingy white. An old gray blanket covered the window.

Walking across the hallway to the other bedroom, I was surprised because it was neat and the narrow bed—covered with a
Little Mermaid
bedspread—was made. Taped to the wall above the bed, was a child’s finger painting of a rainbow. A small bookcase on the opposite wall was lined with children’s books, and the bottom shelf was stacked with kids’ videos. I figured he was divorced and had weekend custody of his daughter.

I walked over to a wooden desk next to the bookcase. The top drawer was lined with coloring books and a Crayon box. The bottom drawer was stuffed with cancelled checks, phone bills for the past month, a calculator, and a roll of stamps. I grabbed the envelopes containing the cancelled checks and phone bills and returned to the living room. I found Duffy staring out the window at the harbor lights. He turned around when he heard me and said, “Our killer entered from the—”

I cut him off with a karate chop in the air.

“Okay, okay,” Duffy said. “I’ll leave you alone.”

A few brick-colored smudges glimmering on the hardwood floor in front of the sofa caught my eye. I crouched and studied them. Even now, after so many murders, I am still surprised at the color of dried blood. I still expect it to be bright red; maybe it was all those detective shows I had watched as a kid. As it dries, blood loses much of its vividness and looks more brown than crimson, but it keeps its arresting sheen. Looking at this patch from different angles, I watched it flicker in the dim light.

I flipped on my Maglite and, rising, slowly turned, illuminating the walls. Behind the sofa, about waist high, was what looked like a miniature pointillist portrait: blood spatter.

I walked over to a chair a few feet from the sofa. Sitting down on the ripped upholstery, I extended my arm toward the sofa, lifted my right hand—thumb up, index finger extended—and said softly, “Bang.”

“This was no B and E, no junkie hot prowl,” I said to Duffy. “Relovich knew his killer.”

Duffy raised an eyebrow. “The Harbor Division detectives say otherwise.”

“Look at the blood splatter pattern,” I said impatiently. “Look at the
directional tail. Look at the trajectory. It was a straight shot to the sofa. Asshole is sitting on a chair, across from Relovich, who’s lounging on the sofa. So they’re obviously comfortable with each other. They’re probably chatting. And then, before Relovich can move, asshole pulls out his piece and drills him in the melon.”

I stood up and paced beside the sofa. “A street-wise cop like Relovich would have been on his feet, making for a door if this was some junkie ripping him off. And no junkie would be sitting on a chair chatting. He’d be jumpy, too nervous to sit.”

“Those Harbor detectives had their heads up their asses,” Duffy said.

“No. They’ve just been working the same kinds of murders too long. Too many drive-bys. Too many street corner drug shootings. Some of ’em have never worked an indoor crime scene.”